fashion than for a lamp to the
Christian's path. We find the bible upon their parlor table, but how seldom
in the family room! They make it a part of their fashionable furniture, to
be looked at as a pretty, gilded thing. Its golden clasps and beautiful
binding make it an attractive appendage to the parlor. Hence they buy the
bible, but not the truth it contains. They place it upon the table as such;
and indeed many do not even give it that prominence, but, yielding to the
taste of fashion, place it under the parlor table, and there it rests,
unmolested, untouched and unread even for years. In many professedly
religious families this is their family bible! Ah! it is not so heartsome
as that well-marked and long-used old bible which lies upon the table of
the nursery room, speaking of many year's service in family devotion! The
other unused bible seems like a stranger to the home-heart, and lies in the
parlor just to show their visiting friends that they have a bible! Go into
the nursery and other private apartments of that home, and you see no
bible, while you behold piles of romance and filthy novels,--those
exponents of a vitiated taste and a corrupt society, suited to destroy the
young forever;--whose outward appearance indicates a studied perusal by
both parents and children, and shows perhaps that they have been wept over;
and whose inward substance must ever nauseate healthy reason, as well as
poison the heart of youth, leading them from the sober realities of life
into a world of nonentities.

But upon the family bible you cannot trace the hand of diligent piety. It
is shoved back into some part of the room, as a worthless thing, obsolete
and superfluous. And see! it is not even kept in decent order. The dust of
many day's neglect has gathered thick upon its lids. Oh, Christian parents,
when you thus close up the wells of salvation by the trash of degenerate
taste and vitiated morals, you are despising the testimonies of the Lord,
and leading your children step by step to the verge of destruction. You may
buy them splendid, bibles, gilt and clasped with gold, and have their names
labeled in golden letters upon its lid; but if the good old family bible is
neglected, and the yellow covered literature of the day substituted in its
stead; if you permit them to buy and read love-sick tales in preference to
their bible, and they see you do the same, you are but making a mock of
God's Word, and must answer before Him for