ome? Then
you are ashamed of Jesus! You should rather blush that you have not begun
this good work.

The great defect of family religion in the present day is, that it is not
educational. Parents wait until their children have grown up, and
established habits of sin, when they suppose that the efforts of some
"protracted meeting" will compensate for their neglect in childhood. They
overlook the command of God to teach them His words. The influence of this
defect and delusion has been most destructive. Many Christian homes are now
altogether destitute of religious appliances. If the angel that visited the
homes of Israel were to visit the Christian homes of this age, would he not
be tempted to say, as Abraham said to Abimelech, "Surely the fear of God is
not in this place!"

One great reason, perhaps, why there are so many such homes is, that there
are now so many irreligious marriages, where husband and wife are
"unequally yoked together," one a believer and the other not. "How can two
walk together except they be agreed?" Can there be family religion when
husband and wife are traveling to eternity in opposite roads? No! There
will be hindrances instead of "helps." If they marry not "in the Lord,"
religion will not be in their home. Says the pious Jay, "I am persuaded
that it is very much owing to the prevalence of these indiscriminate and
unhallowed connections, that we have fallen so far short of those men of
God, who are gone before us, in the discharge of family worship, and in the
training up of our households in the nurture and admonition of the Lord."

Family religion is implied in the marriage relation and obligation. It is
included in the necessities of our children, and in the covenant promises
of God. The penalties of its neglect, and the rewards of our faithfulness
to it, should prompt us to its establishment in our homes. Its absence is a
curse; its presence a blessing. It is a foretaste of heaven. Like manna, it
will feed our souls, quench our thirst, sweeten the cup of life, and shed a
halo of glory and of gladness around our firesides. Let yours, therefore,
be the religious home; and then be sure that God will delight to dwell
therein, and His blessing will descend, like the dews of heaven, upon it.
Your children shall "not be found begging bread," but shall be like "olive
plants around your table,"--the "heritage of the Lord." Yours will be the
home of love and harmony; it shall have the charter of fam