en, you would make your
families what I have described, you must yourself come under the power
of religion, must give your heart to God, and then you will find the
duties of the family becoming comparatively easy. Unless you do so, you
will find yourselves constantly failing in your most strenuous efforts,
and will be far from reaching the point which I have sought to describe.
Natural affection may indeed be much cultivated by this course, and
drawn forth in its native simplicity or regulated by the forms of
refined education, it will throw an inestimable beauty and charm around
the fireside. But it will be, after all, but merely natural affection.
It cannot rise so high nor exert such heavenly influence over the family
circle as will the power of religion. It sanctifies and exalts natural
affections. It not only restrains but actually softens the natural
asperities of the temper, harmonizes discordant feelings and interests,
and secures that happy co-operation which makes a Christian circle an
emblem of heaven. In one word, religion will make you a happy family
forever, happy here and happy in yonder world of bliss. Without religion
also, allow me to add, the very beauty and enjoyment, arising from the
exercise of these domestic virtues, will prove injurious to your eternal
interests. They will serve to strew with comforts your path leading away
from God to heaven. The powerful influence of a much loved brother is
exerted to keep the sister in the path of worldliness; while, in return,
the sister's boundless influence, for in such a family the sister's
influence may be said to be boundless, will all be added to the snares
of an ungodly world, to drive the brother onward in his neglect of God
and his own soul. My young friends, seek not only to make those around
you happy in this world, but happy forever. Give thine own heart to
Jesus, and thou mayest save thy brother and thy sister, and thou shalt
meet them on high. Refuse to do so, and thou mayest drag these loved
ones down with thee to that cold dark region, where affection is unknown
and nothing is heard but blasphemies and curses. Oh, thou kind and
loving brother and sister, can ye endure the thought of spending an
eternity in cursing each other as the instruments of each other's
destruction? Christ alone can deliver you from such a woe.

* * * * *

HABIT.--"I trust everything, under God," said Lord Brougham,
"to habit, upon which