waste; its members move in the
putrid atmosphere of vitiated feeling and misdirected power. Brutal
passions become dominant; we hear the stern voice of parental despotism; we
behold a scene of filial strife and insubordination; there is throughout a
heart-blank. Domestic life becomes clouded by a thousand crosses and
disappointments; the solemn realities of the eternal world are cast into
the shade; the home-conscience and feeling become stultified; the sense of
moral duty distorted, and all the true interests of home appear in a haze.
Natural affection is debased, and love is prostituted to the base designs
of self, and the entire family, with all its tender cords, ardent hopes,
and promised interests, becomes engulfed in the vortex of criminal
worldliness!

But reverse the picture! See what home becomes with religion as its life
and rule. Human nature is there checked and moulded by the amiable spirit
and lovely character of Jesus. The mind is expanded, the heart softened,
sentiments refined, passions subdued, hopes elevated, pursuits ennobled,
the world cast into the shade, and heaven realized as the first prize. The
great want of our intellectual and moral nature is here met, and home
education becomes impregnated with the spirit and elements of our
preparation for eternity.

The relations of home demand family religion. These are relations of mutual
dependence, involving such close affinity that the good or evil which
befalls one member must in some degree extend to all the other members.
They involve "helps." Each member becomes an instrument in the salvation or
damnation of the others. "For what knowest, O wife, whether thou shalt save
thy husband? or how knowest thou, O man, whether thou shalt save thy
wife?"--1 Cor. vii., 16. "If one member Suffer, all the members suffer with
it." They stimulate each other either to salvation or to ruin; and hence
those children that go to ruin in consequence of parental unfaithfulness,
will "curse the father that begat them, the womb that bare them," and the
day they entered their home.

Many parents seek to excuse themselves from the practice of family
religion, upon the ground that they have not the capacity nor the time. If
so, you should not have married. But if you are Christians, you have the
capacity, and you will take the time.

But some are ashamed to begin family religion. Ashamed of what? of your
piety? of your children? of the true glory and greatness of your h