t society for good,--how fair a field is here,
To guide these souls to God, and multiply thyself in heaven!"

"Walk, therefore, worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called, with all
lowliness and meekness." "Magnify your office." Be faithful to your
home-mission. Draw your pleasure from it. Souls are committed to your trust
and hang upon your hire. Your regard for the temporal and eternal welfare
of your children should prompt you to faithfulness to the holy mission of
your family. You love your children, and desire their welfare and
happiness. But do what you will for them, if you are unfaithful to their
souls, you wrest from them the means of safety and of happiness; you aid in
their misery in this and in the world to come. You are more cruel to them
than was Herod who slew the bodies of children. You murder their souls. He
murdered the children of others; you murder your own; he employed others to
do it for him; you do the work of slaughter yourself! If, then, you love
your children; if their souls are committed to you; if your unfaithfulness
to them may result in their ruin; if God blesses the holy mission of your
home to their temporal and eternal welfare; if its fulfillment by you be
"like words spoken in a whispering-gallery, which, will be heard at the
distance of years, and echoed along the corridors of ages yet to come;" and
if it will prove to them in life like the lone star to the mariner upon the
dark and stormy sea,--should you not be faithful to your home-vocation!

Not only so, but your regard for your own comfort and happiness here and
hereafter should impel you to this faithfulness. Do you love yourself? Do
you regard your own comfort and welfare? Would you avoid painful
solicitude, bitter reflection, heart-burning remorse, dreadful foreboding?
Then be faithful to the home-mission. If you are, God will bless you for it
through your children. What a comfort it will be to you to see them become
Christians, enter the church, and, at their side around the Lord's Table,
hold communion with them in the joys of faith and in the anticipations of
heaven! And should God remove them from you by death, you will be cheered
amidst the agonies of separation by their dying consolation. The hope of a
speedy reunion with them in heaven would afford a sweet solace to your
bereaved heart.

Or should you be taken before them, what a comfort would they afford you in
your last moments! With the glow of Christian faith a