Besides, there are names of distinguished Christians, such as Wilberforce, Howard, Page, Martyn, Paul, Peter, John, Fenelon, Clement, Baxter, &c.,—­bright as dew-drops on the page of history, and as beautiful in their enunciation as any chosen from the world of heartless fashion,—­as beautiful in sound, and infinitely more so in associations which bind them to deeds of humanity and Christian love.  The utterance of such names would be more becoming the Christian home; because they aid in developing the purest, holiest and loftiest idea of its nature and calling.  Such names will bind your little ones to pure and holy persons and deeds, and will suit the book of life in which you hope to have them enrolled.

  “Then, safe within a better home, where time and its titles are not
    found,
  God will give thee His new name, and write it on thy heart;
  A name, better than of sons, a name dearer than of daughters,
  A name of union, peace and praise, as numbered in thy God.”

CHAPTER XIII.

Home as A nursery.

  “The Ostrich, silliest of the feathered kind,
  And formed of God without a parent’s mind,
  Commits her eggs, incautious, to the dust,
  Forgetful that the foot may crush the trust;
  And, while on public nurseries they rely,
  Not knowing, and too oft not caring why,
  Irrational in what they thus prefer
  No few, that would seem wise, resemble her.”

To nurse means to educate or draw out and direct what exists in a state of mere involution.  It means to protect, to foster, to supply with appropriate food, to cause to grow or promote growth, to manage with a view to increase.  Thus Greece was the nurse of the liberal arts; Rome was the nurse of law.  In horticulture, a shrub or tree is the nurse or protector of a young and tender plant.  We are said to nurse our national resources.  Isaiah, in speaking of the coming Messiah and the glory of his church, says, “Thy daughters shall be nursed at thy side.”  “Kings shall be thy nursing fathers, and their queens thy nursing mothers.”

The place or apartment appropriated to such nursing is called a nursery.  Thus a plantation of young trees is called a nursery.  Shakspeare calls Padua the nursery of arts.  We call a very bad place the nursery of thieves and rogues.  Dram-shops are the nurseries of intemperance.  Commerce is called the nursery of seamen.  Universities are the nurseries of the arts and sciences.  The church on earth is called the nursery of the church in heaven.  Christian families are called the nurseries of the church on earth, because in the former its members are nursed and propagated for the purpose of being transplanted into the latter.