The child who lives in exile from his country and his home, is soothed in the midst of his cares and disappointments, by the stirring imagery of his far-distant friends and home.  And oh, if he has been unfaithful to the ministrations of that home; if he has trodden under foot the proffered love of his parents, and repulsed all the overtures of their pious solicitude, will not the memory of their anguish haunt his soul, and plough deep furrows of remorse in his conscience?  The sense of past filial ingratitude, and the recollection of a parent’s injured love and disappointed hope, constitute one of the most powerful incentives to repentance and reformation.  It was thus with the prodigal son.  As soon as he came to himself, he remembered the dear home of his youth, the kind love of his father, and his own unworthiness and ingratitude; and this brought him to repentance and to the resolution to return to his father, confess his sin, and seek pardon.  How many now, in thus looking back upon the home of their childhood, do not remember their abuse of parental love and kindness!

  “Oh! in our stern manhood, when no ray
  Of earlier sunshine glimmers on our way;
  When girt with sin and sorrow, and the toil
  Of cares, which tear the bosom that they soil;
  Oh! if there be in retrospection’s chain
  One link that knits us with young dreams again—­
  One thought so sweet we scarcely dare to muse
  On all the hoarded raptures it reviews;
  Which seems each instant, in its backward range,
  The heart to soften, and its ties to change,
  And every spring untouched for years to move,
  It is—­the memory of a mother’s love!”

We see, therefore, that there are painful, as well as pleasant, memories of home.  When the absent disobedient child remembers how he abused the privileges of the parental home, and brought the gray hairs of his parents down with sorrow to the grave, and turned that household into a desolation; when

  “Pensive memory lingers o’er
  Those scenes to be enjoyed no more,
  Those scenes regretted ever,”

how dark and painful must be the shadows which then sweep over his penitent spirit!  “If thou art a child, and hast ever added a sorrow to the soul or a furrow to the silvered brow of an affectionate parent; if thou art a husband, and hast ever caused the fond bosom that ventured its whole happiness in thy arms, to doubt one moment of thy kindness or thy truth; if thou art a friend, and hast ever wronged the spirit that generously confided in thee; if thou art a lover, and hast ever given one unmerited pang to that true heart that now lies cold and still beneath thy feet; then be sure that every unkind look, every ungracious word, every ungentle action, will come thronging back upon thy memory; then be sure that thou wilt lie down sorrowing and penitent on the grave!”

If we would avoid the agony of declining age, let us be faithful to our childhood-home.  What must be the anguish of that wretch who has brought infamy upon it; how painful must be every recollection of it, when in the distance of years and of space, from its scenes and its loved ones, his remembrance hails them with its burning tear.