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The Christian Home

by Samuel Philips · English · Gutenberg #14237 · 533,460 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Christian Home

Author: Samuel Philips


        
Release date: December 2, 2004 [eBook #14237]
                Most recently updated: October 28, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CHRISTIAN HOME ***

THE CHRISTIAN HOME

AS IT IS IN THE

Sphere of Nature and the Church.

SHOWING

The Mission, Duties, Influences, Habits, and Responsibilities of Home its
Education, Government, and Discipline; with Hints on "Match Making," and
the Relation of Parents to the Marriage Choice of their Children; together
with a consideration of the Tests in the Selection of a Companion, Etc.

by

REV. S. PHILIPS, A.M.

Published By Gurdon Bill,
Springfield, Mass.
H. C. Johnson, Detroit, Mich.

1865







  "Sweet is the smile of Home! the mutual look,
    When hearts are of each other sure;
  Sweet all the joys that crowd the household nook,
    The haunt of all affections pure."





PREFACE.


It is a fact conceded by all, that the constitution of the Christian
family, and its social and spiritual relations, are not as fully developed
as they should be. In this age of extreme individualism, we have almost
left out of view the mission of home as the first form of society, and the
important bearing it has upon the formation of character. Its interests are
not appreciated; its duties and privileges are neglected; husbands and
wives do not fully realize their moral relation to each other; parents are
inclined to renounce their authority; and children, brought up in a state
of domestic libertinism, neither respect nor obey their parents as they
should. The idea of human character as a development from the nursery to
the grave, is not realized. Home as a preparation for both the state and
the church, and its bearing, as such, upon the prosperity of both, are
renounced as traditionary, and too old and stale to suit this age of
mechanical progression and "young Americanism."

As a consequence, the influence of home is lost; the lambs of the flock are
neglected, grow up in spiritual ignorance, and become a curse both to
themselves and to their parents. The vice and infidelity which prevail to
such an alarming extent in the present day, may be ascribed to parental
neglect of the young. The desolating curse of heaven invariably accompanies
neglect of domestic obligations and duties; it was this that constituted
that dreadful degeneracy which preceded the coming of the Messiah. The
parents were alienated from the children, and the children from their
parents. And the only way in which the Jews could avert deserved and
impending ruin, was by "turning the heart of the fathers to the children,
and the heart of the children to their fathers."

We must adopt the same method. We need in the present day a deeper and more
scriptural sense, both in the state and church, of the importance of the
family, and of its position in the sphere of natural and religious life.
The attention of the people should be directed to the nature, the
influences, the responsibilities, the prerogatives, duties and blessings of
the Christian home.

Any work which contributes to this end is worthy of our high regard and
subserves a noble purpose; for it is only when the details of home-life are
given to the public, that proper interest in them will be developed, and we
can hope for a better state of things in this first form of associated
life.

The following work is an humble contribution to this important cause. It is
intended to excite interest in the religious elements of family life, and
to show that the development of individual character and happiness in the
church and state, in time and in eternity, starts with, and depends upon,
home-training and nurture. The author, in presenting it to the public, is
fully conscious of its many palpable imperfections; yet, as it is his first
effort, and as it was prepared amid the multiplied perplexities and
interruptions of his professional life, he confidently expects that it will
be received with charitable consideration. It is now published as an
introduction to a work on the historical development of home, to which his
attention has for years been directed. If this unassuming volume should be
instrumental in the saving of one family from ruin, we shall feel ourself
fully compensated.

THE AUTHOR.

CHAMBERSBURG, PA., 1859.




CONTENTS.


PREFACE

CHAPTER I.

WHAT IS THE CHRISTIAN HOME.--_Section I.: Home in the Sphere of
Nature._--The Power of Home-Association. Inadequate Ideas of Home. Home is
a Divine Institute. Its Highest Conception. Definition of Home. Its
Two-fold Aspect. As simply Physical. As purely Moral. Home in the Sphere of
Natural Affection. Home-Love. Home-Ties. The Angel-Spirit of Home. Our
Nature Demands Home. Home-Sickness. Conclusion.

_Section II.: Some in the Sphere of the Church_.--The Heathen Home.
Constituent Elements of the Christian Home. Marriage. Husband and Wife.
Parents and Children. Union of the Members of a Family. The Christian Home
must be Churchly. How we Abuse it. Examples of True Homes. Parental
Neglect. Address to Parents and Children. Home-Meetings and Greetings.


CHAPTER II.

THE MISSION OF THE CHRISTIAN HOME.--The Nature of this Mission. David.
Joshua. It is Two-fold. The Temporal Well-Being of the Members. How Parents
Abuse this part of the Home-Mission. The Eternal Well-Being of the Members.
Extent of the Home-Mission. Its Importance and Responsibility. Seen in the
Vicarious Character of Home. The Principle of Moral Reproduction. The
Visitation of Parental Iniquity upon the Children. The Guilt of
Unfaithfulness to this Mission. Qualifications for it. The Law of Equality
in Marriage. How Parents may Disqualify themselves for it. Incentives to
Faithfulness. Address to Parents.


CHAPTER III.

FAMILY RELIGION.--The Christian Home Demands Family Religion. What is it?
Different from Personal Religion. Co-existent with. Home. Essential to its
Constitution. Its Historical Development from Eden to the Present Age. Its
Present Neglect. What it Includes. The Example of our Primitive Fathers.
The Forms in which it is Developed. The Home-Mission Demands it. Its
Necessity seen in the Value of the Soul. Home without it. Home with it.
Relations of Home Demand it. Reply to Excuses from it. Defect of it now.
Reasons for this. It is Implied in the Marriage Relation and Obligation.
Motives to Establish it.


CHAPTER IV.

THE RELATION OF HOME TO THE CHURCH.--It must be Churchly. This Relation is
Vital and Necessary, involving Mutual Dependence. Relation of Preparation.
Home Completes Itself in the Church. It has Power only in the Sphere of
the Church. This Relation involves Duties and Responsibilities.


CHAPTER V.

HOME-INFLUENCE.--Home has Power. This is either a Curse or a Blessing. What
is Home-Influence? Its Character. Its Degree Estimated from the Force of
First Impressions. Scripture Testimony to it. Its Legitimate Objects. How
it Acts in the Formation of Character. Augustine. Washington. John Q.
Adams. Bishop Hall. Dr. Doddridge. Dr. Cumming. A Mother Won to Christ by a
Daughter. Its Influence upon the State. Napoleon. Homes of the Revolution.
The Spartan Mother and Home. Its Influence upon the Church. Its
Responsibility Inferred.


CHAPTER VI.

HOME AS A STEWARDSHIP.--What is a Steward? Home is a Stewardship. Parents.
Home-Interests. Identity of Interest between the Master and Steward. Mother
of Moses. Character and Responsibilities of this Stewardship. The Social
Prostitution of Home. The Principle of Accountability this Stewardship
Involves. The Final Settlement.


CHAPTER VII.

RESPONSIBILITIES OF THE CHRISTIAN HOME.--These Inferred from Home-Influence
and Stewardship. Their Measure. By the Magnitude of Home-Interest. By the
Kind of Influence upon the Members. By the Guilt and Punishment of Parental
Unfaithfulness. They are Incentives to Parental Integrity. A Family Drama
in Two Acts. Filial Responsibility. Address to Parents and Children.


CHAPTER VIII.

THE FAMILY BIBLE.--The Memories which cluster around it. The Household
Interests it Contains. The Bible as a Family Record. As a Home-Inheritance.
As the Gift of a Mother's Love. An Indispensable Appendage to Home. Its
Adaptation to Home. It should be Used as the Text-Book of Home-Education.
Its Abuse and Neglect.


CHAPTER IX.

INFANCY.--New Eras in Family History. The First-Born. Charm and Interest of
Infancy. The Infant as a Member of Home. Its Emblematic Character. Its
Helplessness. Its Prophetical Character. The Trust and Responsibility
Involved. The Mother's Relation to Infancy. Address to Parents.


CHAPTER X.

HOME-DEDICATION.--The Hebrew Mother and her Child. Reasons for Dedication.
Dedication of Children. Abraham. Offering of Isaac. Little Samuel. David.
Typical Character of Old Testament Family Offerings. Benefits of
Home-Dedication. Duty of Parents to Devote their Sons to the Ministry. The
Unfaithfulness of Parents to this duty.


CHAPTER XI.

CHRISTIAN BAPTISM.--The Baptismal Altar. It is the Sacrament of
Home-Dedication. Infants are its True Subjects. Home Demands it. Infant
Baptism Proven, by the Child's Need of Salvation, by the Idea and Mission
of Christ, by the Idea of the Church, by the Hereditary Character of Sin,
by the Relation of Christian Parents to their Children, by the Constitution
of Family Life. Enemies of Infant Baptism. Why Opposed to it. Their
Sophistry. Dr. A. Carson. Appeal to Parents. Duty and Privilege of Parents
to have their Children Baptized. Its Neglect and Abuse. How Abused. The Old
Landmarks. Striking Statistics. Abuse by Parents and Children.


CHAPTER XII.

CHRISTIAN NAMES.--Proper Kind of Names. Law of Correspondence and
Association. Christian Names. Much in a Name. Naming a Child should not be
Arbitrary. Nebuchadnezzar. Adam. The Hebrews. Woman. Eve. Cain. Seth.
Samuel. Dr. Krummacher. Names now Given. The Folly and Evil of it. Why we
should give Suitable Names. Why Scriptural Names. Mary. Instances of Proper
Christian Names.


CHAPTER XIII.

HOME AS A NURSERY.--Idea of Nursing. What a Nursery Is. The sense in which
Home is a Nursery. Character of the Home-Nursery. The Mother's Special
Sphere. Relation of the Nursery to the Formation of Character. The Nursery
is Physical. Sickly and Immoral Nurses. Consequences. It is Intellectual.
Its Abuse. It is Moral and Spiritual. The Ways in which the Nursery is
Abused. Boarding Schools.


CHAPTER XIV.

HOME-SYMPATHY.--An Argument against the Neglect and Abuse of the Nursery.
Its Natural Elements. Its Definition and Nature. The Ancients. Baptista
Porta. Plato. Middle Ages. It is Passive and Active. Its Disease. Good
Samaritan. Rousseau. Robespierre. Its Relation to Natural Affection. Its
Relation to Woman. Its Religious Elements. Christ. Ruth. Joseph. Mother of
Samuel. Peter. Esther. Paul. Family of Lazarus. Its True Pattern. Its
Attractive Power. Unfaithfulness to its Law. Its Highest Element.


CHAPTER XV.

FAMILY PRAYER.--Its Relation to Home-Sympathy. Its Necessity. Its Idea. Dr.
Dwight's View. The Duty to establish it Proven. Its Neglect. Excuses from
Family Prayer. Address to Parents.


CHAPTER XVI.

HOME-EDUCATION.--_Section I.: The Character of Home-Education._ What is
Home-Education. Different Kinds. It must be Physical. Intellectual. Moral.
The Means. Circumstances. Temptation. Example. Training. Habit. The
Feelings. Conscience. Motives. Cardinal Virtues. When it should Begin. It
must be Religious. Necessity of this. St. Pierre. The Mother as Teacher.
Objections Considered. Encouragement to Home-Training. Dr. Doddridge. A
Pious Minister. Dr. Dwight. Young Edwards. Polycarp. Timothy. John
Randolph. J.Q. Adams. Daniel. The Power of Home-Training in Religion.

_Section II.: The Neglect and Abuse of Home-Education._--Popular Prejudices
Exposed. Dr. Johnson. Edmund Burke. Miss Sedgwick. Everett. Robert Hall.
Fruits of a Neglected Education. Law of the Icelanders. Parents are
Responsible. Crates. Pleasure of Teaching the Young. Thompson. Abuse of it.
Fashionable Boarding-Schools. A Hopeful Young Lady. How to Ruin a Son.
Duty of Parents inferred. Books. Bartholin. Home-Training not isolated from
Church-Training. Must be Churchly.


CHAPTER XVII.

FAMILY HABITS.--Their Importance. Their Idea. Different Kinds. Their
Formation. Tobacco and Liquor. Evil and Good Habits. Family Prayer.
Omission of Duty. Their Influence. Rev. C.C. Colton. A Criminal in India.
Habit as the Interpreter of Character. Its Reproductive Power. We are
Responsible for our Habits. Christian Habits. Habit of Industry.
Rutherford. Habits of Perseverance and Contentment.


CHAPTER XVIII.

HOME-GOVERNMENT.--Home is a Little Commonwealth. Includes the Legal
Principle. Relation of Parents to Children. Principle of Home-Government.
Parental Authority Threefold. Schlegel. Old Roman Law. A Divine,
Inalienable Right. Extent of Parental Authority. False View of it.
Correlative Relation between Filial Obedience and Parental Authority.
Character and Extent of Filial Obedience. Neglect and Abuse of
Home-Government. Parental Indulgence and Despotism. The True Medium.
Address to Parents.


CHAPTER XIX.

HOME-DISCIPLINE.--Its Idea. Its Necessity. False Systems. Discipline from
the standpoint of Law without Love. Its Fruits. A Quaint Anecdote. The
Europeans. The Arabs. Discipline from the standpoint of Love without Law.
Examples. Eli. David. Its Fruits. True Christian Discipline. Chastisement.
A Model System. Abraham. His Children. When Discipline should be
Introduced. When it should be Administered. Importance of Parental
Co-operation. Favoritism. Relation of Command to Chastisement. The Kind of
Rein and Whip. When Corporeal Punishment should be Used. Dr. South. Dr.
Bell. Its Adaptation to the Real Wants of the Child. Fidelity to Threats
and Promises. Examination of Offenses. Never Chastise in Anger. Let your
Child know the Object of Discipline.


CHAPTER XX.

HOME-EXAMPLE.--Its Idea and Influence. The Child is the Moral Reproduction
of the Parent. Solomon. Paul. Shakspeare. Dr. Young. Its Necessity proven
from its Relation to Precept--William Jay; from its Adaptation to the
Capacity and Imitative Disposition of the Child. Duty of Parents to show a
Model Example to the Child. Archbishop Tillotson. Motives to this Duty.
Obstacles to the Efficacy of good Home-Example. Unequal Marriages. Jacob's
Marriage. Zacharias and Elizabeth.


CHAPTER XXI.

THE CHOICE OF PURSUITS.--Duty of Preparation for some Useful Occupation.
This should be made in Childhood. The part Parents should take in this.
Duty of all Persons to engage in some Useful Pursuit shown from the
Relation of the Individual to the State, from the Possibility of Future
Misfortune, from the Excessive Prodigality of those who have been brought
up in Idleness. Law of the Athenians. What Parents should consider in their
selection of an Occupation for their Children. Injudicious Course of some
Parents. Fruits of Disobedience to the Law of Adaptation. Social Position.
Exigencies. But one Pursuit. Jack of All Trades. Loaferism. Fruits of
Indolence.


CHAPTER XXII.

THE HOME-PARLOR.--Its Idea and Relations to Society. Why we should hold it
Sacred. The most Dangerous Departments of Home. Duty of Parents to instruct
their Children in reference to it. How far the Christian Parlor may Conform
to the Laws and Customs of Fashion. Adulteration of the Christian Home
through Indiscriminate Association. The Sad and Demoralizing Effects.
Address to Parents.


CHAPTER XXIII.

MATCH-MAKING.--_Section I.: The Relation of Parents to the Marriage Choice
of their Children_.--The Bridal Hour. A Home-Crisis. The Bride's Farewell.
Have Parents a right to take any part in the Marriage Choice of their
Children? This Right Proven from their Relation to their Children, from the
Inexperience of Children, from Sacred History. The Patriarchal Age.
Judaism. The Christian Church. The Extent of this Right. The Duties it
Involves. Moral Control. Coercive Measures. Improper Parental
Interposition. Its Sad Effects. Persuasive Measures. Should Parents Banish
and Disinherit Children for their Marrying against their will? Paley.

_Section II.: False Tests in the Selection of a Companion_.--The Mere
Outward. How we determine Unhappy Matches. The Manner of Paying Addresses.
The Habit of Match-Making. Tricks of Match-Makers. The Sad Fruits. Book
Match-Makers. Their Auxiliaries. The Evil. How Parents may Preserve their
Children. False Influences. Smitten. Outward Beauty. Impulsive Passion.
Falling in Love at First Sight. Wealth. Rank. English Aristocracy.
Nepotism. Snobbishness.

_Section III.: True Tests in the Selection of a Companion_.--Judicious
Views of the Nature and Responsibilities of the Marriage Institution. Our
Forefathers. Reciprocal Affection. Paley. True Love. Adaptation of
Character and Position. Fitness of Circumstances, Means, and Age. Religious
Equality and Adaptation. Only in the Lord. The Sad Effect of Inequality.
Should Persons Marry Outside of their Own Branch of the Church? Sin and
Curse of Disobedience to the Law of Religious Equality. Duty of Parents in
reference to Religious Equality. All Matches not made in Heaven. Law of
Moses. Abraham. Historical Instances of the Fruits of Disobeying this Law.
Reasonableness of the Law. The Primitive Christians. Sense of the Christian
Church. Address to Christians.


CHAPTER XXIV.

THE CHILDREN'S PATRIMONY.--The Question this Involves. Not Confined to
Wealth. A Good Character and Occupation. True Religion. How Parents should
proceed in the Distribution of their Property. Why they should give only a
Competency. The Rules to Determine a Competence. Paley. What the Law of
Competence Forbids. Penalties of its Violation. History. Impartiality.
Paley. The Infatuation of many Parents.


CHAPTER XXV.

THE PROMISES OF THE CHRISTIAN HOME.--Two Kinds. Divine Promises to Parents
and Children. Those of Punishment. Law of Reproduction. Iniquity of the
Parents upon the Children. Promises of Reward. In this Life. John Q. Adams.
In the Life to Come. God's Fidelity to His Promises. They are Conditional.
When they become Absolute. Popular Objections. Compatibility between
Promises and Agencies. Paul. Moses. Promises made by Parents.


CHAPTER XXVI.

THE BEREAVEMENTS OF HOME.--Separation. Bereavements Diversified. Reverses
of Fortune. Death. First Death. Of Husband and Father. Of a Wife and
Mother. Of Children. Of the Infant. Of the First-Born. Wisdom and Goodness
of God in Bereavements. Discipline. Moral Instruction. The Dead and Living
still Together. Benefit. Death of Little Children is a Kindness to them.
Why. Why Christ became a Little Child. We should not wish them Back. Their
Death is a Benefit to the Living. Communion of Saints. Ministering Spirits.
The Spirit-World. A Ministering Child. A Ministering Mother. Infant
Salvation. Zuinlius. Calvin. Dr. Junkin. Newton. The Hope of Re-union in
Heaven. We should not murmur against God. This does not forbid Godly Sorrow
and Tears. Meekly Submit.


CHAPTER XXVII.

THE MEMORIES OF HOME.--Chief Justice Gibson. Relation of Memory to
Bereavement. Memories are Pleasing and Painful. Pleasing and Pious
Memories. A Mother's Recollection. The Pleasures of Remembering the Pious
Dead. Irving. The Saving Influence of Memory. Painful Memories. Critical
Power of Memory. Mementoes of Home. Pictures. Memorials. Letters from Home.
Seek Pleasing Memories.


CHAPTER XXVIII.

THE ANTITYPE OF THE CHRISTIAN HOME.--Typical Relation between Home and
Heaven. The Christian's Tent-Home in its Relation to Heaven. The
Antitypical Character of Heaven. A Comparative View of our Earthly and our
Heavenly Home. Christ the Center of Heaven's Joy and Attraction. Union
between Home and Heaven. A Conscious Union of the Members in Heaven. Family
Recognition and Love in Heaven. Family Greeting and Joy in Heaven. Longings
after Heaven. Conclusion.




CHAPTER I.

WHAT IS THE CHRISTIAN HOME?

SECTION I.

HOME IN THE SPHERE OF NATURE.

  "My home! the spirit of its love is breathing
    In every wind that plays across my track,
  From its white walls the very tendrils wreathing
    Seem with soft links to draw the wanderer back.
  There am I loved--there prayed for!--there my mother
    Sits by the hearth with meekly thoughtful eye,
  There my young sisters watch to greet their brother;
    Soon their glad footsteps down the path will fly!
  And what is home? and where, but with the loving?"


Home! That name touches every fibre of the soul, and strikes every chord of
the human heart as with angelic fingers. Nothing but death can break its
spell. What tender associations are linked with home! What pleasing images
and deep emotions it awakens! It calls up the fondest memories of life, and
opens in our nature the purest, deepest, richest gush of consecrated
thought and feeling.

  "Home! 'tis a blessed name! And they who rove,
  Careless or scornful of its pleasant bonds,
  Nor gather round them those linked soul to soul
  By nature's fondest ties,...
    But dream they're happy!"

But what _is_ home,--home in the sphere of nature? It is not simply an
ideal which feeds the fancy, nor the flimsy emotion of a sentimental heart.
We should seek for its meaning, not in the flowery vales of imagination,
but amid the sober realities of thought and of faith.

Home is not the mere dwelling place of our parents, and the theater upon
which we played the part of merry childhood. It is not simply a habitation.
This would identify it with the lion's lair and the eagle's nest. It is not
the mere mechanical juxtaposition of so many human beings, herding together
like animals in the den or stall. It is not mere conventionalism,--a human
association made up of the nursery, the parlor, the outward of domestic
life, resting upon some evanescent passion, some sensual impression and
policy. These do not make up the idea of home.

Home is a divine institution, coeval and congenital with man. The first
home was in Eden; the last home will be in Heaven. It is the first form of
society, a little commonwealth in which we first lose our individualism and
come to the consciousness of our relation to others. Thus it is the
foundation of all our relationships in life,--the preparation-state for
our position in the State and in the Church. It is the first form and
development of the associating principle, the normal relation in which
human character first unfolds itself. It is the first partnership of nature
and of life; and when it involves "the communion of saints," it reaches its
highest form of development. It is an organic unity of nature and of
interest,--the moral center of all those educational influences which are
exerted upon our inward being. The idea of the home-institution rests upon
the true love of our moral nature, involving the marriage union of
congenial souls, binding up into itself the whole of life, forming and
moulding all its relations, and causing body, mind and spirit to partake of
a common evolution. The loving soul is the central fact of home. In it the
inner life of the members find their true complement, and enjoy a kind of
community of consciousness.

  "Home's not merely four square walls,
  Though with pictures hung and gilded;
  Home is where affection calls--
  Filled with shrines the heart hath builded."

Home may be viewed in a two-fold aspect, as simply physical, and as purely
moral. The former comes finally to its full meaning and force only in the
latter. They are interwoven; we cannot understand the one without the
other; they are complements; and the complete idea of home as we find it
in the sphere of nature, lies in the living union of both.

By the physical idea of home, we mean, not only its outward, mechanical
structure, made up of different parts and members, but that living whole or
oneness into which these parts are bound up. Hence it is not merely
adventitious,--a corporation of individual interests, but that organic
unity of natural life and interest in which the members are bound up. By
the moral idea of home, we mean the union of the moral life and interests
of its members. This explodes the infidel systems of Fourierism, Socialism,
Mormonism, and "Woman's Rights." These forms of Agrarianism destroy the
ethical idea and mission of home; for they are not only opposed to
revelation and history, but violate the plainest maxims of natural
affection.

Love is an essential element of home. Without this we may have the form of
a home, but not its spirit, its beating heart, its true motive power, and
its sunshine. The inward stream would he gone, and home would not be the
oneness of kindred souls. Home-love is instinctive, and begets all those
silken chords, those sweet harmonies, those tender sympathies and
endearments which give to the family its magic power. This home-love is the
mother of all home delights, yea, of all the love of life. We first draw
love from our mother's breast, and it is love which ministers to our first
wants. It flashes from parent to parent, and from parent to child,
making-up the sunshine and the loveliness of domestic life. Without it
home would have no meaning. It engenders the "home-feeling" and the
"home-sickness," and is the moral net-work of the home-existence and
economy. It is stronger than death; it rises superior to adversity, and
towers in sublime beauty above the niggardly selfishness of the world.
Misfortune cannot suppress it; enmity cannot alienate it; temptation cannot
enslave it. It is the guardian angel of the nursery and the sick-bed; it
gives an affectionate concord to the partnership of home-life and interest.
Circumstances cannot modify it; it ever remains the same, to sweeten
existence, to purify the cup of life, to smooth our rugged pathway to the
grave, and to melt into moral pliability the brittle nature of man. It is
the ministering spirit of home, hovering in soothing caresses over the
cradle and the death-beds of the household, and filling up the urn of all
its sacred memories.

But home demands not only such love, but ties, tender, strong, and sacred.
These bind up the many in the one. They are the fibres of the home-life,
and cannot be wrenched without causing the heart to bleed at every pore.
Death may dissect them and tear away the objects around which they entwine;
and they will still live in the imperishable love which survives. From them
proceed mutual devotions and confiding faith. They bind together in one
all-expanding unity, the perogatives of the husband, and the subordination
of the wife, the authority of the parent and the obedience of the child.

  "O, not the smile of other lands,
    Though far and wide our feet may roam,
  Can e'er untie the genial bands
    That knit our hearts to home!"

The mother is the angel-spirit of home. Her tender yearnings over the
cradle of her infant babe, her guardian care of the child and youth, and
her bosom companionship with the man of her love and choice, make her the
personal center of the interests, the hopes and the happiness of the
family. Her love glows in her sympathies and reigns in all her thoughts and
deeds. It never cools, never tires, never dreads, never sleeps, but ever
glows and burns with increasing ardor, and with sweet and holy incense upon
the altar of home-devotion. And even when she is gone to her last rest, the
sainted mother in heaven sways a mightier influence over her wayward
husband or child, than when she was present. Her departed spirit still
hovers over his affections, overshadows his path, and draws him by unseen
cords to herself in heaven.

Our nature demands home. It is the first essential element of our social
being. The whole social system rests upon it: body, mind and spirit are
concerned in it. These cannot be complete out of the home-relations; there
would be no proper equilibrium of life and character without the home
feeling and influence. The heart, when bereaved and disappointed, naturally
turns for refuge to home-life and sympathy. No spot is so attractive to the
weary one; it is the heart's moral oasis; there is a mother's watchful
love, and a father's sustaining influence; there is a husband's protection,
and a wife's tender sympathy; there is the circle of loving brothers and
sisters,--happy in each other's love. Oh, what is life without these? A
desolation!--a painful, glooming pilgrimage through "desert heaths and
barren sands." But home gives to life its fertilizing dews, its budding
hopes, and its blossoming joys. When far away in distant lands or upon the
ocean's heaving breast, we pine away and become "home-sick;" no voice there
like a mother's; no sympathy there like a wife's; no loved one there like a
child; no resting place there like home; and we cry out, "Home! sweet,
sweet home!"

Thus our nature instinctively longs for the deep love and the true hearts
of home. It has for our life more satisfaction than all the honors, and the
riches and the luxuries of the world. We soon grow sick of these, and
become sick for home, however humble it may be. Its endearments are ever
fresh, as if in the bursting joys of their first experience. They remain
unforgotten in our memories and imperishable in our hearts. When friends
become cold, society heartless, and adversity frowns darkly and heavily
upon us, oh, it is then that we turn with fond assurance to home, where
loved ones will weep as well as rejoice with us.

  "Oh, the blessing of a home, where old and young mix kindly,
  The young unawed, the old unchilled, in unreserved communion!
  Oh that refuge from the world, when a stricken son or daughter
  May seek with confidence of love, a father's hearth and heart;
  Come unto me, my son, if men rebuke and mock thee,
  There always shall be one to bless,--for I am on thy side!"


SECTION II.

HOME IN THE SPHERE OF THE CHURCH.

      "A holy home,
  Where those who sought the footprints of the Lord,
  Along the paths of pain, and care, and gloom,
  Shall find the rest of heaven a rich reward."


What is the _Christian_ home? Only in the sphere of christianity does the
true idea of home become fully developed. Home with the savage is but a
herding, a servitude. Even among many of the Jews it was little better
than a Mahommedan seraglio. The most eminent of the heathen world degrade
the family by making it the scene of lust, and introducing concubinage and
polygamy. Plato, one of the most enlightened of the heathen, had base
conceptions of home, and abused its highest and holiest prerogatives by his
ideas of polygamy. We find too that in the ethics of Aristotle, the most
lovely and sacred attributes of the family are totally discarded. The home
which he holds up to view is unadorned with chastity and virtue. And
Sophocles follows in the same path, stripping home of all that is sacred
and essential to its true constitution. And when we come down to the
present age, and view this divine institute in the light of Mormonism and
Socialism, who will say that here we have unfolded its true idea and sacred
character?

How different is the true Christian home! Here the marriage union is
preserved "honorable," held sacred, and woman is raised to her true
position. In the sphere of the Christian church, home is brought fairly and
completely into view. Here it rises above the measure of natural affection,
and temporal interest. It enters the sphere of supernatural faith, and
becomes the adumbration of our home in heaven.

The Christian home is a true type of the church. "The husband is the head
of the wife, as Christ is of the church." The love of the family is
self-denying and holy, like that between Christ and His church. The
children are "the heritage of the Lord;" the parents are His stewards.
Like the church, the Christian home has its ministry. Yea, the church is in
the home, as the mother is in her child. We cannot separate them; they are
correlatives. The one demands the other. The Christian home can have
existence only in the sphere of the church. It is the vestibule of the
church, bound to her by the bonds of Christian marriage, of holy baptism,
and of the communion of saints, leading to her in the course of moral
development, and completing her life only in the church-consciousness.

Home is, therefore, a partnership of spiritual as well as of natural life.
The members thereof dwell "as being heirs together of the grace of life."
"Heavenly mindedness," "the hidden man of the heart," and a "hope full of
immortality," are the ornaments of the Christian home. Hers is "the
incorruptibility of a meek and quiet spirit;" her members are "joint heirs
of salvation;" they are "one," not only in nature, but "in Christ." They
enjoy a "communion in spirit," that their "joy might be full." "What God,
therefore, hath joined together, let not man put asunder."

Such a home, being "right with God," must be "full of good fruits, without
partiality and without hypocrisy." Here the Christian shows his real
character. In the sphere of the church, the family reaches its highest
excellence and its purest enjoyment. Says the learned D'Aubigne, "Without
the knowledge and the love of God, a family is but a collection of
individuals who may have more or less of natural affection for one another;
but the real bond,--the love of God our Father, in Jesus Christ, our
Lord,--is wanting."

We, therefore, abuse the idea of home when we divest it of the religious
element. As the family is a divine institute and a type of the church and
of heaven, it cannot be understood in its isolation from christianity; it
must involve Christian principles, duties, and interests; and embrace in
its educational functions, a preparation, not only for the State, but also
for the church. The church gives to home a sacred religious ministry, a
spiritual calling, a divine mission; investing it with prophetic, priestly
and kingly prerogatives, and laying it under religious responsibilities.

This gives to the Christian home its true meaning, and secures for its
members--

  "A sacred and home-felt delight,
  A sober certainty of waking bliss."

Such was the home of Abraham, who "commanded his children and his household
to keep the way of the Lord, to do justice and judgment,"--of Joshua, who
with "his house served the Lord,"--of David, who "returned to bless his
household,"--of Job, who "offered burnt-offering according to the number of
his sons,"--of Cornelius, who "feared God with all his house,"--of Lydia,
and Crispus, and the jailor of Philippi, who "believed in the Lord with all
their house."

How many Christian parents practically discard this attribute of home!
While all their temporal interests cluster around their home, and their
hearts are fondly wedded to it as their retreat from a cold and repulsive
world, they never think perhaps that God is in their family, that He has
instituted it, and given those cherished ones who "set like olive plants
around their table." They are faithful to all natural duties, and make
ample provision for the temporal wants of their offspring; the mother bends
with untiring assiduity over the cradle of her babe, and ministers to all
its wants, watching with delight every opening beauty of that bud of
promise, and willingly sacrificing all for its good. With what rapture she
catches its first lispings of mother! The father toils from year to year to
secure it a fair patrimony, a finished education, and an honorable position
in life. How unremittingly these parents watch over the sick-bed of their
children and of each other; and oh, what burning tears gush forth as the
utterance of their agonizing hearts, when death threatens to blight a
single bud, or lay his cold hand upon a single member!

This is all right, noble, and faithful to the natural elements of home.
Natural affection prompts it, and it is well. But if this is all; if
Christian parents and their children are governed only by the promptings
of nature; if they are bound together by no spiritual ties and interests
and hopes; if they are not prompted by faith to make provision for the
soul, and for eternity; then we think they have not as yet realized the
deepest and holiest significance of their home.

The Christian home demands the Christian consciousness,--the sense of a
spirit-world with all its obligations and interests and responsibilities.
Oh, is it not too often the case that even the Christian mother, while she
teaches her babe the accents of her own name, never thinks of teaching it
to lisp the name of Jesus,--never seeks to unfold its infant spirit,--never
supplies it with spiritual food, nor directs its soul to the eternal world!
In the same way the pious wife neglects her impenitent husband; and the
pious husband, his reckless wife. There is too much such dereliction of
duty in the homes of church members.

Our homes give us an interest in, and bind us by peculiar bonds to, the
eternal world; those loved ones who have gone before us, look down from
heaven upon those they have left behind; though absent from us in body,
their spirits are still with us; and they come thronging upon glowing
pinions, as ministering spirits, to our hearts. Mother! that little babe
that perished in your arms, hovers over thee now, and is the guardian angel
of your heart and home. It meets thee still! And oh, how joyful will your
home-meeting be in heaven! Children! the spirit of your sainted mother
lingers around your home to minister in holy things to thee. She has left
you in body; she lies mouldering now in the humid earth; but she is with
thee in spirit. Your home, dwelling in the sphere of the church on earth,
has a spiritual communion with the sainted ones of the church in heaven.
Thus, as the home-feeling can never he eradicated, so the home-meetings can
never be broken up. Even the dead are with us there; their seats may be
empty, and their forms may no longer move before us; but their spirits meet
with us, and imprint their ministrations upon our hearts. The dead and the
living meet in home!

    "We are all here!
    Father, mother,
    Sister, brother,
  All who hold each other dear,
  Each chair is filled, we're all at home!
  Let gentle peace assert her power,
  And kind affection rule the hour--
    We're all--all here!
  Even they--the dead--though dead so dear,
  Fond memory to her duty true,
  Brings back their faded forms to view.
  How life-like through the mist of years,
  Each well-remembered face appears;
  We hear their words, their smiles behold,
  They're round us as they were of old--
    We are all here!"




CHAPTER II.

THE MISSION OF THE CHRISTIAN HOME.

  "If in the family thou art the best,
  Pray oft, and be mouth unto the rest;
  Whom God hath made the heads of families,
  He hath made priests to offer sacrifice."


The home is a divine institution, and includes the religious element,
moving in the sphere of nature and of the church, then its calling must be
of God; its mission is divine; it is designed to subserve a spiritual
purpose; it has a soul-mission. This was the view of David when he
"returned to _bless_ his household." To him his family was a church in
miniature, and he its priest. Thus too Joshua felt that his service of God
must include family worship.

What then is the mission, of the Christian home? It is two-fold,--the
temporal and eternal well-being of its members. It is the mission of home
to provide for the temporal well-being of its members. They are parts of
one great whole. Each must seek the welfare of all the rest. This involves
obedience to the law of co-operation; and has special reference to that
provision which the heads of families should make for the wants of those
who are placed under their protection. As the parent sustains a physical,
intellectual and moral relation to the child, it is his mission to provide
for its physical, mental and moral wants. "He that provideth not for his
own house hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel." Natural
affection will prompt to this. Children are in a state of utter
helplessness. The infant is at the mercy of the parent. Instinct impels the
parent to provide for its wants. Even the brute does this.

That it is a part, therefore, of the home mission to provide for the
physical wants of the dependents there, is very evident. To refuse to
fulfill it is a crime against nature. This part of the home-mission
includes the education of the body, by properly unfolding and directing its
powers, and providing it with appropriate nutriment, raiment and shelter.
In a word, we should make proper provision for the development and maturity
of the physical life of our children. This is the mission of the parent
until the child is able to provide for itself. This, says Blackstone, "is a
principle of natural law;" and, in the language of Puffendorf, is "an
obligation laid on parents, not only by nature herself, but by their own
proper act in bringing them into the world." The laws of the land also
command it. The child has a legal claim upon the parent for physical
sustenance and education.

It is another part of the home-mission to provide for the intellectual
wants and welfare of the child. Children have mind as well as body. The
former needs nourishment and training as well as the latter. Hence it is as
much the mission of the family to minister to the well-being of the mind of
the child, as to that of its body. Civil law enforces this. Children have a
legal as well as a natural claim to mental culture. In a word, it is the
home-mission to provide for the child all things necessary to prepare it
for a citizenship in the state.

Parents abuse this mission in two ways, either when they by their own
indolence and dissipation compel their children to support them; or, on the
other hand, when they become the willing slaves of their children, labor to
amass a fortune for them, and, in the anticipation of that, permit them to
grow up in ignorance, idleness, and prodigality, fit only to abuse and
spend the fruit of parental servitude. In this way the misapplied provision
made by parents often becomes a curse, not only to the members of the
family, but to the state and church.

Another part of the home-mission is, the spiritual and eternal well-being
of its members. This is seen in the typical character of the Christian
family. It is an emblem of the church and of heaven. According to this,
parents are called to administer the means of grace to their household, to
provide for soul as well as for body, to prepare the child for a true
membership in the church, as well as for a citizenship in the state, to
train for heaven as well as for earth.

Parents are "priests unto their families," and have the commission to act
for them as faithful stewards of God in all things pertaining to their
everlasting welfare. Their souls, as well as their bodies, are committed to
their trust, and God says to them,--

  "Go nurse them for the King of Heaven,
  And He will pay thee hire."

This is their great mission, and corresponds with the conception of the
Christian home as a spiritual nursery. The family is "God's husbandry;" and
this implies a spiritual culture. As its members dwell as "being heirs
together of the grace of life," it is the function of each to labor to make
all the rest "fellow-citizens with the saints, and of the household of
God." Parents should provide for the religious wants of their children.
Mere physical maintenance and mental culture cannot supersede the necessity
of spiritual training. Children have a right to such training.

This religious provision is twofold; their moral and spiritual faculties
should be developed; and their moral nature supplied with appropriate
nutriment. All the wants of their moral nature are to be faithfully
provided for. The home-mission involves the business of education of body,
of mind, and of spirit;--of preparation for the state, for the church, for
eternity. It is this which makes it so sacred and responsible. Strip the
Christian family of its mission as a nursery for the soul; wrest from the
parents their high prerogative as stewards of God; and you heathenize home,
yea, you brutalize it! Tell me, what Christian home can accomplish its holy
mission, when the soul is neglected, when religion is left out of view,
when training up for God is abandoned, when the church is repudiated, and
eternity cast off? You may provide for the body and mind of your children;
you may amass for them a fortune; you may give them an accomplished
education; you may introduce them into the best society; you may establish
them in the best business; you may fit them for an honorable and
responsible position in life; you may be careful of their health and
reputation; and you may caress them with all the tender ardor of the
parental heart and hand; yet if you provide not for their souls; if you
seek not their salvation; if you minister only to their temporal, and not
to their eternal welfare, all will be vain, yea, a curse both to you and to
them. Husband and wife may love each other, and live together in all the
peace and harmony of reciprocated affection; yet if the religious part of
their home-mission remain unfulfilled, their family is divested of its
noblest attraction; its greatest interests will fall into ruin; its highest
destiny will not be attained; and soon its fruits will be entombed in
oblivion; while their children, neglected and perishing, will look back
upon that home with a bitterness of spirit which the world can neither
soothe nor extract!

How many such homes there are! Even the homes of church members are too
often reckless of their high vocation. Their moral stewardship is
neglected; their dedications, formal and heartless. No prayers are heard;
no bible read; no instructions given; no pious examples set; no holy
discipline exercised. Their interests, their hopes and their enjoyments;
their education, their labor and their rest, are all of the
world,--worldly. The curse of God is upon such a home!

The importance and responsibility of the home-mission may be seen in its
vicarious character, and in its influence upon the members. The principle
of moral reproduction is manifest in all the home-relations. What the
parent does is reproduced, as it were, in the child, and will tell upon the
generations that follow them. Those close affinities by which all the
members are allied, give to each a moulding influence over all the rest.
The parents live, not for themselves alone, but for their children, and the
consequence of such a life is also entailed upon their offspring. "The
iniquity of the fathers shall be visited upon the children unto the third
and fourth generation." If the parent "sow to the flesh," the child, with
him, "shall of the flesh reap corruption;" but if he "sow to the spirit,"
his offspring, with him, shall "of the spirit reap life everlasting."

Sacred and profane history proves and illustrates this great truth. Did
not God punish the first born of Israel, because their fathers had sinned?
And is it not a matter of daily observation that the wickedness of the
parent is entailed upon the child? Such is indeed the affinity between them
that the child cannot, unless by some special interposition of Providence,
escape the curse of a parent's sin. "If one member suffer, all the members
suffer with it."

The guilt and condemnation of unfaithfulness to the home-mission may be
inferred from its importance and responsibility. Those who are unfaithful
are guilty of "blood." We see the curse of such neglect in that
deterioration of character which so rapidly succeeds parental delinquency.
They must answer before God for the loss which the soul, the state, and the
church sustain thereby. "It shall be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrah
in the day of judgment than for them."

The Christian home should be qualified for this mission. There can be no
such qualification, however, where the marriage alliance involves
inequality--one of the parents a Christian, the other not; for they cannot
"dwell together as heirs of the grace of life," neither can they
effectually dispense that grace to their offspring. When thus "the house is
divided against itself, it must fall." "Be ye not, therefore, unequally
yoked together." If one draws heavenward and the other hellward, there will
be a halting between Baal and God, and the influence of the one will be
counteracted by that of the other. What communion hath light with darkness?
"What fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? What part hath he
that believeth with an infidel?" Thus divided, their home will be unfit for
its high vocation. Hence parents, in their marriage alliance as well as in
their individual character, should qualify themselves for the responsible
mission of home. Can the ungodly wife or husband fulfill this mission? Can
the irreligious parent bring up his offspring "in the nurture and
admonition of the Lord?"

Many parents disqualify themselves for their home-mission by devoting too
much attention to society,--by spending more time abroad, at parties,
theaters and masquerade balls, in gossiping and recreation, than at home
with each other and with their children. They commit their children, with
all the family interests, to nurses and servants. They regard their
offspring as mere playthings to be dandled upon the knee, brought up like
calves in the stall, and then turned out to shape their own destiny.

This is a sad mistake! There is no substitute for home,--no transfer of a
parent's commission, no adequate compensation for a parent's loss. None can
effectually take the parent's place. Their influence is overwhelming and
absolute.

    "With what a kingly power their love
  Might rule the fountains of the new-born mind!"

Not even the dark villainies which have disgraced humanity can neutralize
it. Gray-haired and demon guilt will weep in his dismal cell over the
melting, soothing memories of home. Their impressions are indelible, "like
the deep borings into the flinty rock." To erase them we must remove every
strata of their being. They give texture and coloring to the whole woof and
web of the child's character. The mother especially preoeccupies the
unwritten page of its being, and mingles with it in its cradle dreams,
making thus a deathless impress upon its soul.

  "The mother in her office, holds the key
  Of the soul; and she it is who stamps the coin
  Of character, and makes the being who would be a savage
  But for her cares, a Christian man!"

What a folly and a sin, therefore, for Christian parents to give over their
holy mission to another, while they immerse themselves in the forbidden
pleasures and recreations of the world! Oh, if you are loving, faithful
parents, you will love the society of your household more than the fashions
and the fashionable resorts of the world; you will not substitute the
"nurse" and the "boarding school" for the more efficient ministrations of
the Christian home.

  "If ye count society for past time,--what happier recreation
    than a nursling,
  Its winning ways, its prattling tongue, its innocence and mirth?
  If ye count 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 and hope, they would
whisper to you the consolations of the gospel, and bless you for your
faithfulness to them. And when you and they shall meet at the bar of God,
they will rise up and call you blessed.

But, on the other hand, should you neglect them; and, as a consequence,
they grow up in wickedness and crime; oh, what a source of withering
remorse they would cause you! No sin more heavily punishes the guilty, and
mingles for him a more bitter cup, than the sin of parental neglect. What
if after the lapse of a few years, your neglected child be taken from you,
and consigned to the cold grave, think you not that when you meet it before
the bar of God, it will rise up as a witness against you, and pour down its
curses upon your head!

But suppose that child grows up, unprovided for by you in its early life;
and profligacy mark his pathway, and demon guilt throw its chains around
him in the prison cell; and he trace back the beginning of his ruin to your
unfaithfulness, oh, with what pungency would the reflection send the pang
of remorse to your soul!

     "Go ask that musing father, why yon grave So narrow, and so noteless,
     might not close Without a tear?"

Because of the bitter and heart-stricken memories of a neglected, ruined
child that slumbers there!

Or suppose that you die before your neglected children, think you not that
the recollection of your past parental unfaithfulness will plant thorns in
your pillow, and invest with deeper shades of horror your descent to the
dark valley of death? And oh, when you meet them before the bar of the
avenging judge, most fearful will be your interview with them. Tell me, how
will you dare to meet them there, when the voice of their blood will cry
out from the hallowed ground of home against you! And then, eternity, oh,
eternity! who shall bring out from the secrets of the eternal world, those
awful maledictions which God has attached to parental unfaithfulness?

Provide, therefore, for your family as the Lord commands. Remember that if
you do not, you "deny the faith and are worse than an infidel;" and in the
day of Judgment "it shall be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrah than for
you."




CHAPTER III.

FAMILY RELIGION.

  "Lo! where yon cottage whitens through the green,
  The loveliest feature of a matchless scene;
  Beneath its shading elm, with pious fear,
  An aged mother draws her children near,
  While from the Holy Word, with earnest air,
  She teaches them the privilege of prayer.
  Look! how their infant eyes with rapture speak;
  Mark the flushed lily on the dimpled cheek;
  Their hearts are filled with gratitude and love,
  Their hopes are centered in a world above!"


The Christian home demands a family religion. This makes it a "household of
God." Without this it is but a "den of thieves." It is "the one thing
needful."

What is "family religion?" It is not an exotic, but is indigenous to the
Christian home. It is not a "new measure," but an essential ingredient of
the home-constitution,--coexistent with home itself. The first family
"began to call upon the name of the Lord;" the first parent acted as
high-priest of God in his family.

It is not individual piety as such, not simply closet devotion, but family
service of God,--religion taken up in the home-consciousness and life.
Hence a family, and not simply a personal religion.

Such religion, we say, is as old as the church. We find it in Eden, in the
tents of the patriarchs and in the wilderness of the prophets. We find it
in the tent of Abraham in the plains of Mamre, in the "house" of Moses, in
the "service" of Joshua, in the "offerings" of Job, and in the palace of
David and Solomon. It is also a prominent feature of the gospel economy.
The commendation bestowed by Paul upon Timothy, was that "from a child" he
enjoyed the "unfeigned faith" of his mother Eunice and his grandmother
Lois. Paul exhorts Christians thus: "Rule well your own houses; speaking to
yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs." The same family
religion was a prominent feature of the homes of the primitive Christians.
With them, every house was a sanctuary, and every parent a minister in holy
things to its members. The bible was not only a parlor ornament, but a lamp
to their feet and a guide to their path, used, meditated upon, prayed over.
Says Turtullian of its members, "They are united in spirit and in flesh;
they kneel down together; they pray and fast together; they teach, exhort
and support each other with gentleness."

How, alas! have Christian homes degenerated since then in family piety!
They received a reviving impulse in the Reformation; yet even this was
meteor-like, and seemed but the transient glow of some mere natural
emotion. The fire which then flashed so brilliantly upon the altar of home,
has now become taper-like and sepulchral; and the altar of family religion,
like the altar of Jehovah upon Mt. Carmel, has been demolished, and
forsaken. Only here and there do we find a Christian home erect and
surround a Christian altar. Parents seem now ashamed to serve the Lord at
home. They have neither time nor inclination. Upon the subject of religion
they maintain a bashful, sullen, wonderful silence before their families.
They seem to be impressed with the strange idea that their wives and
children put no confidence in their piety, (and may they not have reason
for it?) and that it would, therefore, be vain for them to pray, or exhort
their households. "Many walk thus," says Paul, "of whom I have told you
often, and now tell you even weeping, that they are the enemies of the
cross of Christ!" Upon them shall be answered the prayer of Jeremiah, "Oh
Lord, pour out thy fury upon the families that call not upon thy name!"

Thus, therefore, we see that the Christian home demands a family religion.
The private devotion of the individual can be no effectual substitute for
it.

  "The parents pair their secret homage,
  And offer up to heaven the warm request,
  That He who stills the raven's clamorous nest,
    And decks the lily fair in flowery pride,
  Would, in the way His wisdom sees the best,
    For them and for their little ones provide."

Family religion includes parental bible instruction, family prayer, and
religious education, government, discipline and example. These involve the
parent's position in his household as a prophet, priest, and king. "Thou
shalt teach my words diligently unto thy children, and talk of them when
thou sittest in thy house."

  "Daily let part of Holy Writ be read,
  Let as the body, so the soul have bread.
  For look! how many souls in thy house be,
  With just as many souls God trusteth thee!"

Thus felt and acted our primitive fathers. By every winning art, they
sought to fill their children with the knowledge of God's Word. The entire
range of nursery instruction and amusement was comprised in scripture
pictures and hieroglyphics. They intermingled religion with all their home
pursuits, and entwined it with their earliest and purest associations of
childhood. If Christian parents would follow their example now, in these
days of parental delinquency, we would not behold so many of their children
grow up in religious ignorance and indifference.

The same may be said of the family altar and prayer. A prayerless family
is an irreligious, godless family. Says Henry, "They who daily pray in
their houses do well; they that not only pray, but read the scriptures, do
better; but they do best of all, who not only pray and read the scriptures,
but sing the praises of God."

Besides, the religion of home implies that we "command our children and
household to keep the way of the Lord,"--that we "bring them up in His
nurture and admonition," and "train them up as He would have them go;" and
that in things pertaining to their spiritual welfare we "go in and out"
before them as their pattern and example, bidding them to "follow us even
as we follow Christ," and living in their midst as "the living epistles of
Christ, known and read" of them all.

Family religion must "show itself by its works" of Christian charity and
benevolence to the poor, the sick and the distressed. We should "lay by" a
certain amount each year of what God bestows, for the support of the church
and the propagation of the gospel. Oh, how little do Christians now give to
these benevolent objects! A penurious, close-fisted, selfish home cannot be
a religious household. Family religion must be reproductive, must return to
God as well as receive from Him. But as these characteristic features of
the Christian home will be considered hereafter, we shall not enlarge upon
them here. Suffice it to say that the mission of home demands family
religion. Its interests cannot be secured without it. Let our homes be
divorced from piety, and they will become selfish, sensual, unsatisfactory,
and unhappy. Piety should always reign in our homes,--not only on the
Sabbath, but during the week; not only in sickness and adversity, but in
health and prosperity. It must, if genuine, inspire and consecrate the
minutest interests and employments of the household. It must appear in
every scene and feeling and look, and in each heart, as the life, the
light, the hope, and the joy of all the members.

The necessity of family religion is seen in the value of the soul. The soul
is the dearest treasure and the most responsible trust of home. What shall
it profit the family if its members gain the whole world and lose their own
souls? What would Christian parents give in exchange for the souls of their
little ones? Is it not more important that they teach them to pray than to
dance, to "seek the kingdom of heaven" than the enjoyment of "the pleasures
of sin for a season?" Oh, what is home without a title to, and personal
meetness for, that kingdom? It is a moral 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 home? 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 family rights and
privileges, the ward of family interests, the palladium of family hopes and
happiness. Your household piety will be the crowning attribute of your
peaceful home,--the "crown of living stars" that shall adorn the night of
its tribulation, and the pillar of cloud and of fire in its pilgrimage to a
"better country." It shall strew the family threshold with the flowers of
promise, and enshrine the memory of loved ones gone before, in all the
fragrance of that "blessed hope" of reunion in heaven which looms up from a
dying hour. It shall give to the infant soul its "perfect flowering," and
expand it in all the fullness of a generous love and conscious blessedness,
making it "lustrous in the livery of divine knowledge." And then in the
dark hour of home separation and bereavement, when the question is put to
thee, mourning parents, "Is it well with the child? is it well with thee?"
you can answer with joy, "It is well!"




CHAPTER IV.

THE RELATION OF HOME TO THE CHURCH.


The Christian home sustains a direct relation to the church. This relation
is similar to that which it sustains to the state. The nature and mission
of home demand the church. The former is the adumbration of the latter. The
one is in the other. "Greet the church that is in thine house." The church
was in the house of Aquila and Priscilla, in the tent of Abraham, and in
the palace of David. It must be in every Christian home, and every
Christian home must be in the church. In a word, our families must be
churchly.

This relation is vital and necessary,--a relation of mutual dependence. The
family is a preparation for the church, subordinate to it, and must,
therefore, throw its influence in its favor, be moulded by it, and labor
With direct reference to the church in the way of training up for
membership in it. As the civil and political relations of home involve the
duty of parents to train up their children for efficient citizenship in the
state, so its moral and religious relations involve the duty of education
for the church. Hence the Christian home is churchly in its spirit,
religion, education, influence, and mission.

Family religion is an element of home, not only as a mere fact or principle
in its subjective form, but in the form and force of the church. In its
unchurchly form it is powerless. It must be experienced and administered in
a churchly spirit and way, not as something detached from the organic
embodiment of Christianity. The relation of the church to the family
forbids this. The church pervades all the forms of society. It includes the
home and the state. It gives to each proper vitality, legitimate
principles, proper direction, and a true destiny.

But home is not only a preparation for the church, but completes itself in
the church,--never out of the church. By the "mystery" of marriage and the
sacrament of holy baptism, home and the church are bound up into each other
by indissoluble bonds. The one receives the mark and superscription of the
other; the one is the type or emblem of the other.

The church, through her ordinances, ministry and means of grace, is brought
directly "into the house," and operates there constantly as a spiritual
leaven. It is the purpose of God that our homes be entrenched within the
sacred enclosures of His church. The former, in its relation to the latter,
is like "a wheel within a wheel,"--one of the parts which make up the great
machinery of the kingdom of grace, operating harmoniously and in its place
with all the rest, and for the same end. The former is built upon the
latter,--receives her dedication and sanctity from it. They are
correlatives. The one demands the other. Hence they cannot be divorced. The
individual passes over to the church through the Christian home. The one is
the step to the other. They have the same foundation. Home is not erected
upon a quicksand, but reared upon the same rock upon which the church is
built. Like the church, it rises superior to all the fluctuations of civil
society, and will live and flourish in all its tender charities, in all its
sweet enjoyments, and in all its moral force, in the humble cottage as well
as in the costly palace, under the shadow of liberty as well as under the
frowns of despotism, in every nation, age, and clime. Like the church of
which it is the type, it can never be made desolate; break it up on earth,
and you find it in heaven. Its nuptial union with the church is like that
between the latter and Christ. Nothing can throw over our homes a higher
sanctity, or invest them with greater beauty, or be to them a greater
bulwark of strength, than the church. Home is the nursery of the church.
"Those who are planted in the house of the Lord shall flourish in the
courts of our God, and shall bring forth fruit in old age."

Thus, therefore, we see that the relation between the Christian home and
the church is one of mutual dependence. The latter, as the highest form of
religious association, demands the former, and the former looks to the
latter as its completion. Where the religion of the family does not move in
the element of the church, it is at best but sentimentalism on the one
hand, and rationalism on the other. It is a spurious pietism. To be genuine
it must be moulded by the church. Without this it is destitute of sterling
principle, of a living-faith, of well-directed effort and lofty aims. The
family which does not move in the element of the church is a perversion of
the true purpose of God in its institution. It will afford no legitimate
development of Christian doctrine, and the whole scheme of its religion
will rest for its execution upon unreliable agencies extraneous to home
itself. Hence we find that the piety of those families or individuals that
isolate themselves from the church, is at best but ephemeral in its
existence, contracted in spirit, moving and operating by mere impulse and
irregular starts, and withal destitute of vitality and saving influence. A
death-bed scene may awaken a transient and visionary sense of duty;
adversity may startle the drowsy ear, and cause the parents to turn for the
time to the souls of their children; but these continue only while the tear
and the wound are fresh, and the apprehensions of the eternal world are
moving in their terrible visions before them!

The efficacy of the Christian home, therefore, depends upon its true
relation to the church. The members should be conscious of this. Then both
parents and children Will appreciate the religious ministrations of home.
Then the former will not grow weary in well doing, but will have something
to rest upon, something to look to; and the latter will love the church of
their fathers, and venerate the family as its nursery.

But the relation between the Christian home and the church implies
reciprocal obligations and duties. The former should not only exist under
the patronage of the latter, but in the spirit of a true subordination.
Parents should teach and rule and appropriate the means of grace under the
supervision of the church. They should take their household, with them to
her public service, send their children to her schools, and in all respects
bring them up in her nurture and admonition.

Thus the family should exist as the faithful daughter of the church; and as
the latter in the wilderness "leaned upon her beloved," so the former
should repose itself upon her who is "the mother of us all," and in whom,
as the "body of Christ," shall "all the families of the earth be blessed."
As her loving and confiding daughter, the family should live under her
government and discipline, listen to her maternal voice, and be led by her
maternal hand. The minister in his pastoral functions, is the
representative of the church in each of the families of his flock; and
should, therefore, be received, loved, confided in and obeyed, as such. The
home that repels his proffered ministrations in the name and according to
the will of the church, throws off its allegiance to the latter, and
through it, to Christ,--her glorious head, and is hence unworthy of the
name of Christian home. The true Christian home yearns after the church,
loves to lean upon it, to look up to it, to consecrate all to it, to move
and develop its interests in the sphere of the church, and to labor to
complete itself in it.

  "For her my tears shall fall;
    For her my prayers ascend;
  To her my cares and toils be giv'n,
    Till toils and cares shall end."




CHAPTER V.

HOME INFLUENCE.

  "By the soft green light in the woody glade,
  On the banks of moss, where thy childhood play'd;
  By the gathering round the winter hearth,
  When the twilight call'd unto household mirth,
  By the quiet hour when hearts unite
  In the parting prayer and the kind 'Good night;'
  By the smiling eye and the loving tone,
  Over thy life has the spell been thrown,
  And bless that gift, it hath gentle might,
  A guarding power and a guiding light!"


The Christian home has an influence which is stronger than death. It is a
law to our hearts, and binds us with, a spell which neither time nor change
can break. The darkest villainies which have disgraced humanity cannot
neutralize it. Gray-haired and demon guilt will make his dismal cell the
sacred urn of tears wept over the memories of home; and these will soften
and melt into penitence even the heart of adamant.

[Illustration: Maternal Influence]


The home-influence is either a blessing or a curse, either for good or for
evil. It cannot be neutral. In either case it is mighty, commencing with
our birth, going with us through life, clinging to us in death, and
reaching into the eternal world. It is that unitive power which arises out
of the manifold relations and associations of domestic life. The specific
influences of husband and wife, of parent and child, of brother and sister,
of teacher and pupil, united and harmoniously blended, constitute the
home-influence.

From this we may infer the character of home-influence. It is great,
silent, irresistible, and permanent. Like the calm, deep stream, it moves
on in silent, but overwhelming power. It strikes its roots deep into the
human heart, and spreads its branches wide over our whole being. Like the
lily that braves the tempest, and "the Alpine flower that leans its cheek
on the bosom of eternal snows," it is exerted amid the wildest storms of
life, and breathes a softening spell in our bosom even when a heartless
world is freezing up the fountains of sympathy and love. It is governing,
restraining, attracting and traditional. It holds the empire of the heart,
and rules the life. It restrains the wayward passions of the child, and
checks him in his mad career of ruin.

  "Hold the little hands in prayer, teach the weak knees their kneeling,
  Let him see thee speaking to thy God; he will not forget it afterward;
  When old and gray, will he feelingly remember a mother's tender piety,
  And the touching recollection of her prayers shall arrest the strong
    man in his sin!"

Home-influence is traditional. It passes down the current of life from one
generation to another. Its continuity is preserved from first to last. The
homes of our forefathers rule us even now, and will pass from us to our
children's children. Hence it has been called the "fixed capital" of home.
It keeps up a continuous stream of home-life and feeling and interest.
Hence the family likeness, moral as well as physical,--the family virtues
and vices,--coming from the family root and rising into all the branches,
and developing in all the elements of the family history.

Home-influence is attractive. It draws us to home, and throws a spell
around our existence, which we have not the power to break.

  "The holy prayer from my thoughts hath pass'd,
  The prayer at my mother's knee--
  Darken'd and troubled I come at last,
  Thou home of my boyish glee!"

Home-influence may he estimated from the immense force of first
impressions. It is the prerogative of home to make the first impression
upon our nature, and to give that nature its first direction onward and
upward. It uncovers the moral fountain, chooses its channel, and gives the
stream its first impulse. It makes the "first stamp and sets the first
seal" upon the plastic nature of the child. It gives the first tone to our
desires, and furnishes ingredients that will either sweeten or embitter the
whole cup of life. These impressions are indelible, and durable as life.
Compared with them, other impressions are like those made upon sand or wax.
These are like "the deep borings into the flinty rock." To erase them we
must remove every strata of our being. Even the infidel lives under the
holy influence of a pious mother's impressions. John Randolph could never
shake off the restraining influence of a little prayer his mother taught
him when a child. It preserved him from the clutches of avowed infidelity.

The promises of God bear testimony to the influence of the Christian home.
"When he grows old he will not depart from it!" History confirms and
illustrates this. Look at those scenes of intemperance and riot, of crime
and of blood, which throw the mantle of infamy over human life! Look at
your prisons, your hospitals, and your gibbets; go to the gaming-table and
the rum-shop. Tell me, who are those that are there? What is their history?
Where did they come from? From the faithful Christian home? Had they pious
fathers and mothers? Did they go to these places under the holy influence
of devout and faithful parents? No! And who are they that are dying without
hope and without God? Who are they that now throng the regions of the
damned? Those who were "trained up in the way they should go?" No! if they
are, then the promises of God must fail. You may perhaps find a few such.
But these are exceptions to a general law. The damning influence of their
unfaithful home brought them there. Could they but speak to us from their
chambers of wo, we should hear them pouring out curses upon their parents,
and ascribing the cause of their ruin to their neglect. On the other hand,
could we but listen to the anthems of the redeemed in heaven, we should
doubtless hear sentiments of gratitude for a mother's prayer and a father's
counsel.

Let us now briefly advert to the objects of home-influence. It is exerted
upon the members of home, especially upon the formation of their character
and destiny. It moulds their character. The parents assimilate their
children to themselves to such an extent that we can judge the former by
the latter. Lamartine says that, when he wants to know a woman's character,
he ascertains it by an inspection of her home,--that he judges the daughter
by the mother. His judgment rests upon the known influence the latter has
over the former. It gives texture and coloring to the whole woof and web of
character. It forms the head and the heart, moulds the affections, the will
and the conscience, and throws around our entire nature the means and
appliances of its development for good or for evil. Every word, every
incident, every look, every lesson of home, has its bearing upon our life.
Had one of these been omitted, our lives would perhaps be different. One
prayer in our childhood, was perhaps the lever that raised us from ruin.
One omission of parental duty may result in the destruction of the child.
What an influence home exerts upon our faith! Most of our convictions and
opinions rest upon home-teaching and faith. A minister was once asked, "Do
you not believe christianity upon its evidences?" He replied, "No; I
believe it because my mother taught me!"

The same may be said of its influence upon our sympathies, and in the
formation of habits. It draws us by magnetic power to home, and develops in
us all that which is included in home-feeling and home-sickness.

  "I need but pluck yon garden flower,
    From where the wild weeds rise,
  To wake with strange and sudden power,
    A thousand sympathies!"

In this respect how irresistible is the influence of a mother's love and
kindness! Her very name awakens the torpid streams of life, gives a fresh
glow to the tablets of memory, and fills our hearts with a deep gush of
consecrated feeling.

Our habits, too, are formed under the moulding power of home. The "tender
twig" is there bent, the spirit shaped, principles implanted, and the whole
character is formed until it becomes a habit. Goodness or evil are there
"resolved into necessity." Who does not feel this influence of home upon
all his habits of life? The gray-haired father who wails in his second
infancy, feels the traces of his childhood-home in his spirit, desires and
habits. Ask the strong man in the prime of life, whether the most firm and
reliable principles of his character were not the inheritance of the
parental home. What an influence the teaching's and prayers of his mother
Monica had upon the whole character of the pious Augustine! The sterling
worth of Washington is a testimony to the formative power of parental
instruction. John Quincy Adams, even when his eloquence thundered through
our legislative halls, and caused a nation to startle from her slumber,
bent his aged form before God, and repeated the prayer of his childhood.
"How often in old age," says Bishop Hall, "have I valued those divine
passages of experimental divinity that I heard from the lips of a mother!"
Dr. Doddridge ever lived under the influence of those scripture
instructions his mother gave him from the Dutch tiles of her fireside. He
says, "these lessons were the instruments of my conversion." "Generally,"
says Dr. Cumming, "when, there is a Sarah in the house, there will be an
Isaac in the cradle; wherever there is a Eunice teaching a Timothy the
scriptures from a child, there will be a Timothy teaching the gospel to the
rest of mankind." By the force of this same influence, the pious wife may
win over to Christ her ungodly husband, and the godly child may save the
unbelieving parent. "Well," said a mother one day weeping, "I will resist
no longer! How can I bear to see my dear child love and read the
scriptures, while I never look into the bible,--to see her retire and seek
God, while I never pray,--to see her going to the Lord's table, while His
death is nothing to me! I know she is right, and I am wrong. I ought to
have taught her; but I am sure she has taught me. How can I bear to see her
joining the church of God, and leaving me behind--perhaps forever!"

The Christian home has its influence also upon the state. It forms the
citizen, lays the foundation for civil and political character, prepares
the social element and taste, and determines our national prosperity or
adversity. We owe to the family, therefore, what we are as a nation as well
as individuals. We trace this influence in the pulpit, on the rostrum, in
the press, in our civil and political institutions. It is written upon the
scroll of our national glory.

The most illustrious statesmen, the most distinguished warriors, the most
eloquent ministers, and the greatest benefactors of human kind, owe their
greatness to the fostering influence of home. Napoleon knew and felt this
when he said, "What France wants is good mothers, and you may be sure then
that France will have good sons." The homes of the American revolution made
the men of the revolution. Their influence reaches yet far into the inmost
frame and constitution of our glorious republic. It controls the fountains
of her power, forms the character of her citizens and statesmen, and shapes
our destiny as a people. Did not the Spartan mother and her home give
character to the Spartan nation? Her lessons to her child infused the iron
nerve into the heart of that nation, and caused her sons, in the wild
tumult of battle, "either to live behind their shields, or to die upon
them!" Her influence fired them with a patriotism which was stronger than
death. Had it been hallowed by the pure spirit and principles of
Christianity, what a power for good it would have been!

But alas! the home of an Aspasia had not the heart and ornaments of the
Christian family. Though "the monuments of Cornelia's virtues were the
character of her children," yet these were not "the ornaments of a quiet
spirit." Had the central heart of the Spartan home been that of the
Christian mother, the Spartan nation would now perhaps adorn the brightest
page of history.

But the family, whether Christian or heathen, exerts an overwhelming
influence over the state. It is on the family altar that the fire of
patriotism is first kindled, and often, too, by a mother's hand.

  "It hath led the freeman forth to stand
  In the mountain battles of his land;
  It hath brought the wanderer o'er the seas,
  To die on the hills of his own fresh breeze."

The same, too, may be said of the influence of home on the church. It is
the nursery of the church, lays the foundation of her membership, and
conditions the character of her members. The most faithful of her ministers
and members are those generally who have been trained up in the most
faithful families. Wherever there is the greatest number of such homes,
there the church enjoys the greatest prosperity.

What a fearful responsibility must rest, therefore upon the Christian
home! If its influence is for good or for evil, for weal or for woe, for
heaven or for hell; if it is either a powerful emissary of Satan for the
soul's destruction, or an efficient agent of God for the soul's salvation,
then how responsible are those who wield this influence!

  "Upon thy heart is laid a spell,
  Holy and precious--oh! guard it well!"

Are you not, Christian parents, responsible to God for the exercise of such
sovereign power over the character and well-being of your dear children?
And will not the day soon come when you must "give an account of your
stewardship?" Oh! what if it be exerted for the ruin of your loved ones,
and they "curse the day you begat them?" What if, in the day of final
reckoning, you find your hands drenched in the blood of your offspring, and
hear the voice of that blood cry out from the hallowed ground of home
against you, saying, "How long, oh Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge
and avenge our blood on them that dwell on earth?" Oh see, then, that your
influence be wielded for good.

  "For round the heart thy power hast spun
    A thousand dear mysterious ties;
  Then take the heart thy charms have won,
    And nurse it for the skies!"




CHAPTER VI.

HOME AS A STEWARDSHIP.

     "Take this child away, and nurse it for me, and I will give thee thy
     wages."--EXODUS II., 9.

  "For look, how many souls in thy house be,
  With just as many souls God trusteth thee!"


The Christian home is a stewardship. The parents are stewards of God. A
steward is a servant of a particular kind, to whom the master commits a
certain portion of his interest to be prosecuted in his name and by his
authority, and according to his laws and regulations. The steward must act
according to the will of his master, in his dealing with what is committed
to his care. Such was Eliezer in the house of Abraham; and such was Joseph
in the house of Potiphar. One of the specific duties of a steward was to
dispense portions of food to the different members of the household, to
give servants their portion in due season, and to superintend the general
interests of the master's household.

In a religious sense, a steward is a minister of Christ, whose duty is to
dispense the provisions of the gospel, to preach its doctrines and to
administer its ordinances. It is required of such that they be found
faithful.--1 Cor., chap. iv.

In its application to the Christian home, it expresses its relation of
subordination to God, and the kind of services which the former must render
to the latter. The stewardship of home is that official character with
which God has invested the family. In this sense the proprietorship of
parents is from God. They are invested only with delegated authority. Their
home is held by them only in trust. It belongs to them in the same sense in
which a household belongs to a steward. It is not at their absolute
disposal. It is the "household of the Lord," and they are to live and rule
therein as the Lord directs. They are to appropriate it and dispose of its
interests according to the known law and will of their divine Master, and
in this sense, yield, with their whole household, a voluntary subordination
to His authority.

As a stewardship, God has entrusted the Christian home with important
interests. He has committed to her trust, body and soul, talents and means
of grace. He has entrusted to the parents the training of their children
both for time and for eternity. These children are the heritage of the
Lord; they are not at the absolute disposal of their parents; but merely
entrusted to their care to be educated and dealt with according to the will
of God.

There is one great peculiarity in this stewardship of the Christian
family,--the absolute identity of interest between the Master and the
steward. The interest of the former is that also of the latter; and the
latter, in promoting the interest of his Lord, is but advancing his own
welfare. Such is the economy of the gospel, and it is this which makes the
servitude of the Christian so delightful. Faithfulness to God is
faithfulness to our own souls. Parents who are thus faithful to God must be
faithful to themselves and to their children. Thus, then, the interest of
God in our families is the welfare of all the members. When we act towards
our children as God directs, we are but promoting their greatest welfare.
This is one prominent feature of God's mercy towards us in all His dealings
with us. He identifies His interest with the interest of His people. This
is a powerful incentive to parental integrity, and is beautifully
exemplified in the mother of Moses. When the daughter of Pharaoh said to
her, "Take this child and nurse it for me, and I will pay thee thy wages,"
was not the interest of the queen and the nurse the same? In nursing him
for the queen, that devoted mother nursed him also for herself; and in
doing this, she was also promoting the welfare of her son, and executing
the will of God concerning him. This illustrates the principle of
stewardship in the Christian home. Of every child, God says to its
parent,--

  "Go nurse it for the King of heaven,
  And He will pay thee hire."

Here is the important trust; here, too, is the duty of the steward. It is
a trust from God, and the nursing is for God. The child is a tender plant,
an invaluable treasure, more priceless than gold, or pearls, or diamonds.
Your duty as a steward, is to nurse it, to cultivate it, to polish the
lovely gem, to take care of it. And in doing this for God, are you not also
doing it for the child,--yea, if you are Christian parents,--for
yourselves? Will not even natural affection, as well as the discerning eye
of faith, like that of the mother of Moses, detect in this stewardship an
identity between the interest of the Master and that of the steward? It was
not the simple compensation which stimulated the mother of Moses to accede
to the proposition of Pharaoh's daughter. What cared she for the "hire," if
she could but save her son! This was her great reward.

Thus the interest of the child should be the reward of the parent. God
will, it is true, reward the faithful steward of the family; but He
specially rewards and blesses parental faithfulness in making His purposes
concerning home, identical with the parent's and the children's welfare. In
this domestic stewardship,

  "Like warp and woof, all interests
  Are woven fast;
  Locked in sympathy like the keys
  Of an organ vast."

"Fear not, little flock; for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you
the kingdom. Who, then, is that faithful and wise steward whom his Lord
shall make ruler over his household, to give them their portion of meat in
due season? Blessed is that servant whom his Lord, when He cometh, shall
find so doing. Of a truth I say unto you, that He will make him ruler over
all he hath. But and if that servant say in his heart, my Lord delayeth His
coming, and shall begin to beat the men-servants and maidens, and to eat
and drink, and to be drunken; the Lord of that servant will come in a day
when he looketh not for him, and at an hour when he is not aware, and will
cut him in sunder, and will appoint him his portion with the unbelievers.
And that servant which knew his Lord's will and prepared not himself,
neither did according to His will, shall be beaten with many stripes."

Here, then, we have the character and duties of the steward in the
Christian home, the rewards of their faithfulness, and the penalties of
their unfaithfulness. As the stewards of God, we must be faithful, giving
the souls as well as the bodies of our children "their meat in due season;"
we must not "waste the goods" of our Lord, but be "blameless, not
self-willed, not soon angry, not given to filthy lucre, but a lover of
hospitality, sober, just, holy, temperate, holding fast the faithful word
as we have been taught." As the faithful stewards of God, we should
dedicate our household in all respects to Him, and make it tributary to His
glory. "Seek ye first the kingdom of heaven, and all these things shall be
added unto you." The unjust steward will first seek the world and the
things of the world, its gold, its pleasures and its honors; and after that
seek the kingdom of heaven. But this is reversing the order of procedure as
prescribed by the Master; it is running counter to His will, and,
consequently, wasting His goods.

But the greatest trust committed to parents is, the souls of their
children; and hence their most responsible duty, as the stewards of God, is
to attend to their salvation. You should "give them the bread of life in
due season." It will be of no avail for you to inquire, "What shall they
eat, and what shall they drink, and wherewithal shall they be clothed;" if
you neglect this their highest interest and your greatest trust? "What
shall a man give in exchange for his soul?" It is not the wealth, nor the
magnificence of life which will make your home happy; these are but the
outward and fleeting ornaments of the world, and are too often the gaudy
drapery in which demon guilt and misery are clothed.

  "The cobwebbed cottage, with its ragged wall
  Of mouldering mud, is royalty to me,"

if souls are there "fed upon the sincere milk of the word," and "trained up
in the ways of the Lord." The training of the soul for heaven is both the
duty and the glory of our homes. What if parents lay up affluence here for
their children, and secure for them all that the world calls interest,
while they permit their souls to famish, and do nothing for their
redemption! Will not such parents be denounced in the day of judgment as
unjust and unfaithful stewards? And yet alas! how many such Christian
parents there are who prostitute this highest interest of home either at
the altar of mammon or of fashion! The precious time and talents with which
God has entrusted them, they squander away in things of folly and of sin,
leaving their children to grow up in spiritual ignorance and wickedness,
while they resort to balls and theaters and masquerades, in pursuit of
unhallowed amusement and pleasure.

Such are unnatural parents as well as unjust stewards, and their homes will
ere long be made desolate. Other parents prostitute the holy trust of home
to money. They are "self-willed" stewards, "given to filthy lucre," who,
for the sake of a few dollars, will "waste the goods" of their Lord, make
their homes a drudgery, and work their children like their horses, bring
them up in ignorance, like "calves in the stall," and contract their whole
existence, and all their capacities, desires and hopes, in the narrow
compass of work and money.

We would direct the attention of such parents to our last thought upon the
stewardship of the Christian home, (the practical view of which we shall
consider in the next chapter,) viz., that it involves the principle of
accountability. It implies a settlement, a time when the Master and his
steward shall meet together to close accounts. "Give an account of thy
stewardship; for thou mayest be no longer steward." That time will be when
"the dead, both small and great, shall stand before God." Then He will
examine into your stewardship. He will ask you how you employed your
talents, and to what purpose you appropriated those interests He committed
to your trust; and whether you were faithful to those souls which "hung
upon your hire;" whether you "nursed them for him," and whether you
provided them with "their meat in due season." And if you can answer, "Yea,
Lord, here are those talents which thou hast given me; behold I have gained
for thee five other talents. Here, Lord, are those children whom thou hast
given me; I have brought them up in thy nurture, and trained them in thy
ways." Your Lord will then answer, "Well done, thou good and faithful
servant, thou hast been faithful over a few things; behold I will make thee
ruler over many things; enter thou into the joy of thy Lord!"

But if you have been unfaithful as stewards, and have made your household
unproductive for God, then you shall hear from his lips the dreadful
denunciation, "Thou wicked and slothful servant!" "Take the talent from
him, and cast ye the unprofitable servant into outer darkness; there shall
be weeping and gnashing of teeth; for unto every one that hath shall be
given, and he shall have abundance; but from him that hath not shall be
taken away even that which he hath!"




CHAPTER VII.

RESPONSIBILITIES OF THE CHRISTIAN HOME.

      "What a holy charge
  Is theirs!--with what a kingly power their love
  Might rule the fountains of the new-born mind!
  Warn them to wake at early dawn, and sow
  Good seed before the world has sown its tares."


From the potent influence and moral stewardship of the Christian home, we
may infer its responsibility. The former is the argument for the latter.
The extent of the one is the measure of the other. "To whom much is given,
of them much will be required." Our responsibilities are thus commensurate
with our abilities. If the latter are properly devoted, we have our reward;
if not, our curse. God will hold us accountable for the achievements we
make by the abilities he has given us. If he gives us a field to cultivate,
seed to sow, plants to train up, then we are responsible for the harvest,
just in proportion to our agency in its production. If there is not a
harvest of the right kind, because we neglected to cultivate the soil, to
sow the proper seed, and to train up the plants, then He will hold, us
accountable, and "we shall not come out thence till we have paid the
uttermost farthing."

This is an evident gospel principle. Who will doubt its application to the
Christian home? The family is such a field; the seed of good or evil the
parents can sow therein; their children are young and tender plants,
entrusted to their care; their mission from God is to "bring them up in his
nurture" and to "train them in his ways." And where God gives the command,
he also gives the power to obey.

If, then, by their neglect, these tender plants are blighted, grow up in
the crooked ways of folly and iniquity, and the leprosy of sin spread its
dreadful infection over all the posterity of home; if, as a consequence of
their unfaithfulness, the family becomes a moral desolation, and the
anathemas of unnumbered souls in perdition, rise up in the day of judgment
against them; or if, on the other hand, as the fruit of their faithful
stewardship, blessings and testimonials of gratitude are now pouring forth
from the sainted loved ones in glory, is it not plain that a responsibility
rests upon the Christian home, commensurate with, those abilities which God
has given her, and with those interests he has entrusted to her care?

Let us look at the objective force of this. The family is responsible for
the kind of influence she exerts upon her members Look at this in its
practical light. There is a family. God has given children to the parents.
How fondly they cling to them, and look up to them for support and
direction. They inherit from their parents a predisposition to evil or to
good; they imitate them as their example, in all things, take their word as
the law of life, and follow in their footsteps as the sure path to
happiness. These parents are members of the church, and, as such, have
dedicated their children to the Lord at the altar of baptism, and there in
the presence of God and a witnessing assembly, they vowed to bring them up
in the nurture of their divine Master, and to minister in spiritual things
to their souls.

Yet in this home, no prayer is offered up, no bible instructions given, no
holy example set, no Christian government and discipline instituted, no
religious interests promoted. But on the other hand, sin is overlooked,
winked at, and the world alone sought. These children behold their parents
toil day after day to provide for their natural life; they notice the
interest they take in their health and education, and the self-denial with
which they seek to secure for them a temporal competency. And from all this
they quickly and very justly infer that their parents love their bodies and
value this world, and by the force of filial imitation they soon learn to
do the same, and with their parents, neglect their souls and kneel at the
altars of Mammon rather than bow in prayer before God. And thus they go on
from one step in departure from God to another, until they die without hope
and without salvation.

Tell me now, will not God hold these parents responsible for the ruin of
their children? Will not the "blood of their destruction rest upon them?"
Will not the "voice of that blood" cry out from their family against them?
If, as a consequence of their negligence and of the unholy influence they
exerted upon them, they become desperadoes in crime and villainy, and at
last drench their hands in a brother's blood; and expiate their guilt upon
the gibbet, and from there go down to the grave of infamy and to the hell
of the murderer, will not their blood, "cry unto them," and will not the
woes and anathemas of Almighty God come in upon them like a flood?

Home-responsibility may be inferred from the relation of the family to God
as a stewardship. We have seen that parents are stewards of God in their
household, and that as such they are placed over their children, invested
with delegated authority. God entrusts them to the care of their parents.
Their nature is pliable, fit for any impression, exposed to sin and ruin,
entering upon a course of life which must terminate in eternal happiness or
misery, with bodies to develop, minds to educate, hearts to mould,
volitions to direct, habits to form, energies to rule, pursuits to follow,
interests to secure, temptations to resist, trials to endure, souls to
save! Oh, how the parental heart must swell with emotions too big for
utterance, when they contemplate these features of their important trust.
What a mission this, to superintend the character and shape the destiny of
such a being! Such is the plastic power you exert upon it, that upon your
guidance will hinge its weal or its woe; and yours, therefore, will be the
lasting benefit or the lasting shame. What you are now doing for your
children is incorporated with their very being, and will be as imperishable
as their undying souls. As the stewards of God, your provision for them
will be "either a savor of life unto life or a savor of death unto death."

We have seen that God has given to you the ability and means of making them
subservient to his glory; and hence from you he will require them as
entrusted talents. If you have been unfaithful to them, your punishment
will be in proportion to the wretchedness entailed upon your children. If,
instead of the bread from heaven, you feed their souls with the husks of
life, and lead them on by the opiates of bastard joys; if, "when they ask
of you bread, you give them a stone, or for a fish, you give them a
serpent," will it not be "more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrah in the day
of judgment than for you?"

Thus, therefore, you see, christian parents, how your responsibility is
measured, by the magnitude of those interests committed to your care, by
the kind of influence you exert over them, and by the enormity of that
guilt and wo which are consequent upon your unfaithfulness. Let this be an
incentive to parental integrity. The day is rapidly approaching when you
must give an account of your stewardship. Oh, what, if in that day you
behold your children "fit for the eternal burning," and remember that that
fitness is but the impress of a parent's hand!

Though it is painful to lose a child here; bitter tears are shed; pungent
agonies are felt; there are heart-burnings kindled over the grave of buried
love. But oh, how much more agonizing it is to bend over the dying bed of
an impenitent, ruined child! And especially if, in that terrible moment, he
turns his eyes, wild with despair and ominous of curses, upon the parents,
and ascribes his ruin to their neglect! Let me ask you, would not this part
of that sad drama add to your cup of bitterness, give a fearful emphasis to
all your sighs, and burnings to your flooding tears? God would also speak
to you, and say as he did to Cain, "the voice of thy" children's "blood
crieth unto me!" "And now thou art cursed from the earth which hath opened
her mouth to receive thy" children's "blood from thy hand."

But the scene would not close at the death-bed of your child; the second
act would open at the bar of God. The maledictions of that ruined one would
there be poured out with increased fury upon you. Parents of my home on
earth! I am lost--lost forever! Soon I shall go where "the worm dieth not,
and the fire is not quenched." Had you, in the home of my childhood, but
instructed me, and been as faithful to my soul as you were to my body, I
might stand here with a palm of victory in my hand, a crown of glory on my
head, the joy of the redeemed in my heart, and with hosannas of praise
upon my lips, rise upward to the untold felicities of God's eternal throne!
But you did not! You fed my body, but you starved my soul, and left it to
perish forever! Cursed, be the day in which you begat me, and the paps that
gave me suck! Cursed be the years that I lived under your roof,--cursed be
you! Oh, parents, such rebuke would leave an undying worm in your souls;
and would cry unto you from the very depths of hell.

This is no over-wrought picture. It is but the scripture prospectus of that
terrible scene which shall be enacted "in the terrible and notable day of
the Lord," when every Christian home shall be called to give an "account of
her stewardship," and be dealt with "according to the deeds done in the
body."

And let me say too, that a similar and corresponding responsibility rests
upon those children who enjoy the benefits of a faithful Christian home.
They must answer to God for every blessing there enjoyed. If they turn a
deaf ear and a cold heart to all the entreaties of their parents, and
resist those saving influences which are brought to bear upon them, and as
a consequence, become outcasts from society and from heaven, then let me
warn them that, every prayer they heard at the family altar, every lesson
given, every admonition delivered, and every holy example set them, by
their pious parents, will be ingredients in that bitter cup which it will
take eternity for them to exhaust! Oh, children of the Christian home!
think of this, and remember the responsibility of enjoying the precious
benefits of a pious, faithful parent. They will be your weal or your
woe,--your lasting glory or your lasting shame!

And, ye parents, be faithful to those little ones that are growing up "like
olive plants around your table," so that in the day of judgment, you may
say with joy, in the full assurance of reward, "Here are we, Lord, and the
children whom thou hast given us!" And your reward shall be, "Well done,
thou good and faithful servant! Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord!"




CHAPTER VIII.

THE FAMILY BIBLE.

  "What household thoughts around thee, as their shrine,
    Cling reverently!--Of anxious looks beguiled,
  My mother's eyes upon thy page divine,
    Each day were bent; her accents, gravely mild,
    Breathed out thy love; whilst I, a dreamy child,
  Wandered on breeze-like fancies oft away,
                    ... Yet would the solemn Word,
    At times, with kindlings of young wonder heard
  Fall on my wakened spirit, there to be
    A seed not lost; for which in darker years,
    O, book of heaven! I pour with grateful tears,
  Heart-blessings on the holy dead, and thee!"


The family bible! What sweet and hallowed memories cling like tendrils
around that book of books! How familiar its sacred pages! How often in the
sunny days of childhood, we were fed from its manna by the maternal hand!
It was our guide to the opening path of life, and a lamp to the feeble,
faltering steps of youth. Who can forget the family bible? It was the
household oracle of our grandfathers and grandmothers,--of our dear
parents. It bears the record of their venerated names; their birth, their
baptism, their confirmation, their marriage, are here; and

  "Though they are with the silent dead,
  Here are they living still!"

How joyfully they gathered around the cheerful hearth to read this book
divine. How often their hearts drew consolation from its living springs!
What a balm it has poured into bleeding and disconsolate hearts. It has
irradiated with the glories of eternal day, the darkest chamber of their
home. What brilliant hopes and promises it has hung around the parental
heart! And here too are the names of our parents,--long since gathered with
their fathers. Here too are our names, and birth, and baptism, written by
that parental hand, long since cold in death!

  "My father read this holy book
    To brothers, sisters dear;
  How calm was my poor mother's look,
    Who loved God's word to hear.
  Her angel-face--I see it yet!
    What thronging memories come?
  Again that little group is met
    Within the halls of home!"

That old family bible! Do we not love it? Our names and our children's
names are drawn from it. It is the message of our Father in heaven. It is
the link which connects our earthly with our heavenly home; and when we
open its sacred page, we gaze upon words which our loved ones in heaven
have whispered, and which dwell even now upon their sainted lips; and which
when we utter them, there is joy in heaven! We would, therefore, say to the
infidel, of this "family tree," as the returning child said to the
woodsman, of the old tree which sheltered the slumbers and frolics of his
childhood, "I'll protect it now."

The old family bible! What an inheritance from a Christian home! Clasp it,
child, to thy heart; it was the gift of a mother's love! It bears the
impress of her hand; it is the memento of her devotedness to thee; and when
just before her spirit took its flight to a better land, she gave it as a
guide for her child to the same happy home:

  "My mother's hand this bible clasped;
  She, dying, gave it me!"

And the spirit of that sainted mother shall still whisper to me through
these sacred pages. In the light of this lamp I follow her to a better
home. With this blessed chart I shall meet her in heaven.

  "With faltering lip and throbbing brow,
  I press it to my heart."

Every Christian home has a family bible. It is found in the hut as well as
in the palace. It is an indispensable appendage to home. Without it the
Christian home would be in darkness; with it, she is a "light which shineth
in darkness." It is the chart and compass of the parent and the child in
their pilgrimage to a better home.

                          "Therein thy dim eyes
  Will meet a cheering light; and silent words
  Of mercy breathed from heaven, will be exhaled
  From the blest page into thy withered heart."

Like an ethereal principle of light and life, its blessed truths extend
with electric force through all the avenues and elements of the
home-existence, "giving music to language, elevation to thought, vitality
to feeling, intensity to power, beauty and happiness."

The bible is adapted to the Christian home. It is the book for the family.
It is the guardian of her interests, the exposition of her duties, her
privileges, her hopes and her enjoyments. It exposes her errors, reveals
her authority and government, sanctions her obedience, proclaims her
promises, and points out her path to heaven. It makes sacred her marriages,
furnishes names for her children, gives the sacrament of her dedication to
God, and consecrates her bereavements. It is the fountain of her richest
blessings, the source of her true consolation, and the ground of her
brightest hope. It is, therefore, the book of home. She may have large and
splendid libraries; history, poetry, philosophy, fiction, yea, all the
works of classic Greece and Rome, may crowd upon her shelves; but of these
she will soon grow wearied, and the dust of neglect will gather thick upon
their gilded leaves; but of the bible the Christian home can never become
weary. Its sufficiency for all her purposes will throw a garland of
freshness around every page; its variety and manifoldness; its simplicity
and beauty; its depth of thought and intensity of feeling, adapt it to
every capacity and to every want, to every emergency and to every member,
of the household. The little child and the old man, hoary with the frost of
many winters, find an equal interest there. The rich and the poor, the
learned and the ignorant, the high and the low, are alike enriched from its
inexhaustible treasury.

It is a book for the mind, the heart, the conscience, the will and the
life. It suits the palace and the cottage, the afflicted and the
prosperous, the living and the dying. It is a comfort to "the house of
mourning," and a check to "the house of feasting." It "giveth seed to the
sower, and bread to the eater." It is simple, yet grand; mysterious, yet
plain; and though from God, it is nevertheless, within the comprehension of
a little child. You may send your children to school to study other books,
from which they may be educated for this world; but in this divine book
they study the science of the eternal world.

The family bible has given to the Christian home that unmeasured
superiority in all the dignities and decencies and enjoyments of life, over
the home of the heathen. It has elevated woman, revealed her true mission,
developed the true idea and sacredness of marriage and of the
home-relationship; it has unfolded the holy mission of the mother, the
responsibilities of the parent, and the blessings of the child. Take this
book from the family, and she will degenerate into a mere conventionalism,
marriage into a "social contract;" the spirit of mother will depart;
natural affection will sink to mere brute fondness, and what we now call
home would become a den of sullen selfishness and barbaric lust!

The bible should, therefore, be the text-book of home-education. Where it
is not, parents are recreant to their duty. It is the basis of all
teaching, because it reveals "the truth, the way and the life," because it
is God's testimony and message, and is "profitable for doctrine, for
reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness," and was written
"for our learning, that we, through patience and comfort of the scriptures,
might have hope," and be made "wise unto salvation."

  "While thou wert teaching my lips to move
    And my heart to rise in prayer,
  I learned the way to a home above;
    And thou shalt meet me there!"

Its invaluable treasures, its manifoldness, its beautiful simplicity, its
striking narrative, its startling history, its touches of home-life, its
expansive views of human nature, of this life and of that which is to come,
its poetry, eloquence, and soul-stirring sympathies and aspirations, make
it the book for home-training. These features of its character will develop
in beautiful harmony the whole nature of your child. Do you wish to inspire
them with song? What songs are like those of Zion? Do you wish them to come
under the influence of eloquent oration? What orations so eloquent as those
of the prophets, of Christ, and of his apostles? Do you desire to refine
and elevate their souls with beauty and sublimity? Here in these sacred
pages is a beauty ever fresh, and a sublimity which towers in dazzling
radiance far beyond the reach of human genius. This is evident from the
fact that tributes of admiration have been paid to the bible by the most
eminent poets, jurists, statesmen, and philosophers, such as Milton, Hale,
Boyle, Newton and Locke. Erasmus and John Locke betook themselves solely to
the bible, after they had wandered through the gloomy maze of human
erudition. Neither Grecian song nor Roman eloquence; neither the waters of
Castalia, nor the fine-spun theorisms of scholastic philosophy, could
satisfy their yearnings. But when they wandered amid the consecrated bowers
of Zion, and drank from Siloah's brook, the thirst of their genius was
quenched, and they took their seats with Mary at the feet of Jesus, and
like little children, learned of him!

Even deists and infidels have yielded their tribute of praise. What says
the infidel Rosseau? Hear him: "The majesty of the scriptures strikes me
with astonishment. Look at the volumes of the philosophers, with all their
pomp, how contemptible do they appear in comparison with this! Is it
possible that a book at once so simple and sublime, can be the work, of
men?" Thus

  "Learning and zeal, from age to age,
  Have worshiped, loved, explored the page."

How often is this precious book abused! In many would-be Christian homes,
it is used more for an ornament of 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 your children's neglect of its
sacred pages.

Let me, therefore, affectionately admonish you to be faithful to that
precious book you call the family bible. Read it to your children every
day. From its sacred pages teach them the way to live and the way to die.
Let it be an opened, studied family chart to guide you and them in visions
of untold glory to the many mansions of your Father's offered home in
heaven. It will soothe your sorrows, calm your fears, strengthen your
faith, brighten your hopes, and throw around the graves of the loved and
the cherished dead, the light and promise of reunion in heaven!

  "A drop of balm from this rich store,
  Hath healed the broken heart once more.
  Like angels round a dying bed,
  Its truths a heavenly radiance shed;
  And hovering on celestial wings,
  Breathe music from unnumbered strings."




CHAPTER IX.

INFANCY.

  "A babe in a house is a well-spring of pleasure, a messenger of
    peace and love;
  A resting place for innocence on earth; a link between angels and men;
  Yet it is a talent of trust to be rendered back with interest;
  A delight, but redolent of care, honey sweet, but lacking not the bitter,
  For character groweth day by day, and all things aid it in unfolding,
  And the bent unto good or evil may be given, in the hours of infancy."


The birth of each child constitutes a new era in the Christian home, and
multiplies its cares, its pleasures and its responsibilities. The
first-born babe, like

                        "The first gilt thing
  That wears the trembling pearls of spring,"

throws the rainbow colors of hope and joy over the bowers of home, and
awakens in the bosom of parents, emotions and sympathies, new-born and
never before experienced; cords in the heart, before untouched, now begin
to thrill with new joy; sympathies, before unfelt, now swell the bosom.
Sleep on, thou little one, in thy "rosy mesh of infancy," in the first
buddings of thy being! These hours of thy innocence are the happiest of thy
life. Thou art "the parent's transport and the parent's care." Blessings
are fondly poured upon thy head. Rest thee there in thy little bed, thou
happy emblem of the loved and pure in heaven!

                     "Visions sure of joy
  Are gladdening his rest; and ah, who knows
  But waiting angels do converse in sleep
  With babes like this!"

imparting to his infant soul unutterable things, whispering soft of bliss
immortal given, and pouring into his new-born senses the dreams of opening
heaven.

What charms and momentous interests surround the cradle of infancy! When
the first wailing of dependence reaches the listening ear, what new-born
sympathies spring up in the parent's bosom! What a thrill of rapture the
first soft smile of her babe sends to the mother's heart! It is this, the
parents' likeness unsullied by their faults and cares; it is this, their
living love in personal being,--their love breathing and smiling before
them, lisping their names; it is this,--their new-born hope and care,--that
gives to infancy such a charm, such a never-dying interest, and causes the
parent to cling to it with such fond tenacity. "Can a mother forget her
sucking child?" Never, while she claims a mother's heart! The couch of her
babe is the depository of all those fond hopes and joys and cares and
memories to which a mother's heart is sacred.

The infant is the most interesting member of the Christian home. It is the
first budding of home-life, disclosing every day some new beauty, "the
father's lustre and the mother's bloom," to gladden the hearts of the
family. "As the dewy morning is more beautiful than the perfect day; as the
opening bud is more lovely than the full blown flower, so is the joyous
dawn of infant life more interesting than the calm monotony of riper
years." It is the most interesting, because the purest, member of the
household. It is the connecting link which binds home to its great antitype
above. "Ye stand nearest to God, ye little ones," nearer than those who
have tasted the bitter cup of actual sin. They are the budding promises,
the young loves, the precious plants of home; they are its sunshine, its
progressive interest, its prophetic happiness, the first link in the chain
of its perpetuity. Like the purple hue of the wild heath, throwing its gay
color over the rugged hill-side, they cast a magic polish over the spirit
of the parent, causing the home-fireside to glow with new life and
cheerfulness.

Infants are emblems of the loved and sainted ones in heaven. "Of such is
the kingdom of heaven." "Except ye become as this little child, ye cannot
enter into the kingdom of heaven." This is based upon proper principles.
The heart of the child is purely devotional and confidential. It is a
helpless dependent upon the parent. It abdicates its self-will with joy;
silently do the laws of home control it; its reverence and love are the
melody of its being; its life is an exchange of obedience for protection.
Its path is chosen for it by the lamp of parental experience, and the calm
pure light of a mother's love. How close it keeps to the heart that loves
it, and to the hand that leads it! It looks without doubt or suspicion in
the parent's eye, and makes the parent's home and interest its own.

Here is a picture of the true child of God in his tent-home on earth, and
in his eternal home in heaven. For this they are given to us. As they are
to us, their parents, so should we be to our Father in heaven, and so are
all those loved and sainted ones who have gone before us.

  "Little children, flowers from heaven,
    Strewn on earth by God's own hand,
  Earnest emblems to us given,
    From, the fields of angel-land!"

Hence it was that Jesus loved little children, took them in His arms,
blessed them, and regarded them as "the lambs of His flock." "He shall
gather the lambs with His arm." He gazed with pleasure into their sweet
faces, invited their parents to bring them unto Him, and held them up as
the type of the spirit and character of the admitted, into heaven. And the
aged John, having in view this typical character of children, addressed his
followers as his little children!

Infants are helpless dependents upon others for subsistence and protection.
If abandoned at their birth, their first breath would soon be succeeded by
their last. Hence they demand all the attention which maternal love and
tenderness can bestow. They live like the tender bud or the opening
blossom, exposed to the blight of a thousand fortuitous events. Hence their
existence is very precarious; in a moment they may sink like the frosted
flower in its lovely blush. This may be said of the soul as well as of the
body and mind. What an argument, therefore, we have here for parental
diligence and promptness in duty to the eternal as well as to the temporal
well-being of the child.

The infant is the first prophecy of the man. It is the germ of manhood. It
is the man in a state of involution. It is the undeveloped man. Infancy is
the twilight of life,--the first morning of an endless being, the age of
germ and of mere sense. As the first dawn of spring is the season of the
undeveloped harvest, so childhood is manhood in possibility. The infant is
the vernal bud of life; it is a being of promise and of hope,--the prophecy
of the future man. Hence the age of education. The mother, in the nursery,
is ever evolving into the strength of maturity those powers of her child
which will be wielded for happiness or for misery. Her babe is an "embryo
angel, or an infant fiend." We behold in that fragile form, the bud of the
strong man,--the possibility of one who may in a few years arouse with his
thrilling eloquence a slumbering nation, or with the torch and sword of
revolution, overturn empires and dethrone kings, or with his feet upon the
walls of Zion, and the words of life upon his lips, overthrow the
strongholds of Satan, and bring the rebel sinner in penitence to the feet
of Jesus. Yea, we see in that wailing infant of a week, the outspringing of
an immortal spirit which may soon hover on cherub-pinion around the throne
of God, or perhaps, in a few years, sink to the regions of untold anguish.
Oh, it is this which gives to the cradle of infancy such a thrilling
interest. The star of those new-born hopes, which hangs over it, will set
in eternal night, or rise with increasing splendor, till it is lost in the
full blaze of eternal day!

Infants are a great, a dangerous and responsible trust. They are the
property of God,--"an heritage from the Lord," given to their parents as a
loan, a "talent of trust to be rendered back with interest." The infant is
especially the mother's trust.

  "Though first by thee it lived, on thee it smiled,
  Yet not for thee existence must it hold,
  For God's it is, not thine!"

Given by its Creator in trust to her, it is her task to bring it up for
God. Here especially do we see the holy mission of the mother. None but the
mother's heart and love can give security for this trust. The father is
unfit by nature for the delicate training of infancy. The mother's hand
alone can smooth the infant's couch, and her voice alone can sing him to
his rosy rest. Her never-wearied love alone can watch beside him "till the
last pale star had set,"

  "While to the fullness of her heart's glad heavings
  His fair cheek rose and fell; and his bright hair
  Waved softly to her breast."

She is the ministering angel of infancy, and the priestess of the nursery
of home. She sets the first seal, makes the first stamp, gives the first
direction, supplies the first want, and soothes the first sorrow. To her is
committed human life in its most helpless and dangerous state. Touch it
then with the rude hand of parental selfishness; let it grow up in a barren
soil, amid noxious weeds, under the influence of unholy example; and the
delicate tints of this blossom will soon fade; the blush of loveliness will
soon give way to the blight of moral deformity.

[Illustration: TEACHING THE SCRIPTURES. J. Porter]

Hence every babe will be the parent's glory or the parent's shame, their
weal or their woe. If entrusted to them, God will hold them responsible for
its moral training. He will require it from them with interest. Their trust
involves the eternal happiness or misery of their child. The productions of
art will perish; the sun will be blotted out, and all the glory and
magnificence of the world will vanish away, but your babe will live
forever. It will survive the wreck of nature, and either shine as a diadem
in the Redeemer's crown of glory, or dwell in the blackness and darkness of
perdition forever.

To you, Christian parents, as the stewards of God, this precious being is
entrusted. The care of its body, mind and spirit is committed to you; and
its character and destiny in after life will be the fruit of your dealings
with it. It looks to you for all things. It confides in you, draws its
confidence from your protection, relies on your known love, takes you as
the pattern of its life, imitates you as its example, learns from you as
its teacher, is ruled by you as its governor, is measured by you as its
model, feels satisfied with you as its sufficiency, and rests its all upon
you as its all and in all.

Thus you are the very life and soul of its being, and hence in its
maturity, it will be a fair exponent of your character. You are the center
around which its life revolves, the circumference beyond which it never
seeks to go. What, therefore, if you are unfit to move and act in its
presence! What, if in its imitation of you, its life be a progressive
departure from God! Oh, what, if in the day of judgment, it be an outcast
from heaven, and, as such, bear the impress of a parent's hand! God will
then hold you accountable for every injury you may have done your child.

Begin, therefore, the work of training that infant, now, while its nature
is pliable, susceptible, yet tenacious of first impressions. "With his
mother's milk the young child drinketh education." What you now do for your
child will be seen in all future ages. "Scratch the green rind of a
sapling, or wantonly twist it in the soil, the scarred and crooked oak will
tell of thee for centuries to come." "It will not depart from the ways in
which you train it." If, therefore, you would be a blessing to your child,
and avert those terrible judgments of God which rest upon parental
delinquency, begin now, while your infant is in the cradle, to sow the
seeds of life. Prune well the tender olive plants, and direct its evolving
life in the way God would have it go.

  "Soon as the playful innocent can prove
  A tear of pity or a smile of love,"

teach it to lisp the name of Jesus and to walk in His commandments. But
alas! how many Christian parents are recreant to this duty! How many
destroy their children by the over-indulgence of a misdirected love and
sympathy, and by procrastinating the period of home-education. Forgetful of
the power of first impressions, they wait until their children are
established in sin, and the seeds of evil are sown in their hearts.

This is the reason why so many reckless and wicked children come out of
Christian homes. Their parents permit their misdirected fondness to absorb
all their thoughts and apprehensions of danger and responsibility. Their
love for the body and mind of their children seems to repel all love for,
or interest in, their soul. The former they tenderly nurse, fondly caress,
and zealously direct. But the soul of the infant is unhonored, unloved and
uncared for. It is blighted in its first bursting of beauty. Oh, cruel and
unthinking parents! why will you thus abuse the loveliest and noblest part
of your child? Why make that babe of yours a mere plaything? If "out of the
mouths of babes and sucklings God has perfected praise," then why not train
them up to praise Him? "Take heed that ye despise not one of these little
ones, for I say unto you, that in heaven their angels do always behold the
face of my Father which is in heaven." Oh, you who are the nurse of infant
innocence, have you ever thought of the deep curse that will attend your
neglect of the babe which God has given you! Have you, pious mother, as you
pressed your child to your bosom, ever thought that it would one day be a
witness for or against you? Far better for thee and it that it were not
born and you never revered as mother, than that you should nourish it for
spiritual beggary here, and for the eternal burnings hereafter! Oh, look
upon that babe! It is the gift of God--given to thee, mother, to nurse for
Him. Look upon that cherished one! See its smile of confidence turned to
you! It is a frail and helpless bark on the tumultuous sea of life; it
looks to you for direction,--for compass and for chart; your prayers for
it will be heard; your hand can save it; the touch of your impressions will
be a savor of life unto life, or of death unto death.

  "Then take the heart thy charms have won,
  And nurse it for the skies!"




CHAPTER X.

HOME DEDICATION.

  "The rose was rich in bloom on Sharon's plain,
  When a young mother with her first born thence
  Went up to Zion, for the boy was vowed
  Unto the Temple-service; by the hand
  She led him, and her silent soul, the while,
  Oft as the dewy laughter of his eye
  Met her sweet serious glance, rejoiced to think
  That aught so pure, so beautiful, was hers,
  To bring before her God!"


Beautiful thought, and thrice beautiful deed,--fresh from the pure fount of
maternal piety! The Hebrew mother consecrating her first-born child to the
Temple-service,--dedicating him to the God who gave him! What visions of
unearthly glory must have been before her, as she led her little boy before
the altar of the "King of kings!" Happy mother! thou hast long since gone
to thy great reward. And happy child! to be led by such a mother. Ye are
now together in that temple "not made with hands, eternal in the heavens,"
and with united voice swelling those anthems of glory which are poured
from angelic lips and harps to Him who sitteth upon the throne.

What an example is this for the Christian parent! God is the Father of
every home. From Him cometh down every good and perfect gift; and hence to
Him should all the interests and the loved ones of the household, be
dedicated. This is essential to the very conception of a Christian home.

But especially should the children be dedicated to the Lord. That infant
over which the mother bends and watches with such passionate fondness, is
"an heritage of the Lord," given to her only in trust, and will again be
required from her. As soon as children are given they should be devoted to
Him; for "the flower, when offered in the bud, is no mean sacrifice." Then
and then only will parents properly respect and value their offspring, and
deal with them as becometh the property of God. By withholding them, the
parents become guilty of the deed of Ananias and Sapphira. Like the Hebrew
mother, every Christian parent will gratefully devote them to Him, and
rejoice that they have such a pure oblation to "bring before their God."

  "My child, my treasure, I have given thee up
  To Him who gave thee me! Ere yet thine eye
  Rested with conscious love upon thy mother,
  Long ere thy lips could gently sound her name,
  She gave thee up to God; she sought for thee
  One boon alone, that thou mightest he His child;
  His child sojourning on this distant land,
  His child above the blue and radiant sky,
  'Tis all I ask of thee, beloved one, still!"

Here is a dedication worthy of a Christian mother. Natural affection and
human pride might lead the fond mother to dedicate her child at the altar
of Mammon, to gold, to fame, to magnificence, to the world. But no, every
wish of the pious mother's heart is merged in one great wish and prayer,
"that thou may'st be His child."

The dedication of our children to the Lord is one of the first acts of the
religious ministry of home. All the means of grace will be of no avail
without it. What will the acts of the gospel minister avail if they are not
preceded by an offering of himself to the Lord who has called him? His holy
vocation demands such an offering. It is his voluntary response to and
acceptance of his calling of God. Thus with Christian parents. What will
baptism avail, so far as the parents are concerned, without this dedication
of their children to Him in whose name they are baptised? No more than the
form apart from the spirit. It would be but a mockery of God.

We have a beautiful example and illustration of this dedication, in the
family of the faithful Abraham. "By faith Abraham, when he was tried,
offered up Isaac: and he that had received the promises offered up his only
begotten son." We might at first view regard this act of his as an
evidence of his want of parental sympathy and tenderness. But not so; it is
rather an evidence of these. What he did was the prompting of a true faith,
yielding implicit obedience to the Lord, and offering as an obligation to
Him, what he loved most upon earth. Had he not loved him so dearly, God
would not have chosen him as a means of testing his father's religious
fidelity. Hence this oblation of his son was the best evidence of his
supreme love to God, and that all he had was consecrated to his service.
This act called for the subordination of natural affection to Christian
faith and love. "Take now thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get
thee into the land of Moriah, and offer him there for a burnt offering!"

What a startling command was this! How it must have stirred up the soul of
that parent, and for the time caused a bitter conflict between natural
affection and Christian faith! "Take thy son,"--had it been a slave, the
command would not have been so stirring; but a son, an only son, the joy of
his heart, and the pride and hope of his age,--the son he so much
loved,--oh it was this that harrowed up such a revulsion in his soul, and,
for the moment doubtless, caused him to shrink from the very thought of
obedience. But the command was imperious,--it was from God; and though the
parent shrunk from the deed, yet the faith of the faithful servant gained a
signal triumph over all the protestations of natural affection, and
silenced all its rising murmurs; for "Abraham rose up early in the morning,
and saddled his ass, and took two of his young men with, him, and Isaac his
son, and clave the wood for the burnt offering, and rose up, and went unto
the place of which God had told him." There he built an altar, laid the
wood in order, bound Isaac, and laid him upon the wood on the altar. But
when with uplifted sacrificial knife, he was about to slay his son, just at
the point where God had the true test of his faith, a ministering angel
stayed his hand, and prevented the bloody form in which he was about to
offer his only son to God; "for now I know that thou fearest God, seeing
thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son, from me!" He needed now but
dedicate him in the moral sense to God.

The case of Samuel is another instance of the offering of children unto the
Lord. His mother had asked him of the Lord, and vowed, as she prayed, to
"give him unto the Lord all the days of his life."--1 Sam. I., 11. Her
prayer was answered, and in obedience to her holy vow, she took him, when
very young, with her to the Temple, where she offered him up as an oblation
to the Lord. "For this child I prayed, and the Lord hath given me my
petition which I asked of him; therefore also have I lent him to the Lord;
as long as he liveth shall he be lent unto the Lord!" David also
consecrated all that he had to the Lord,--his possessions as well as his
children. When he built a house, he dedicated it to the Lord, and prepared
"a psalm and song at the dedication of the house."

Here in these examples of Old Testament family offerings to God, we have a
type and illustration of the oblations of the Christian home. The Lord does
not ask the Christian parent, as he did Abraham, to build an altar upon the
summit of some lofty cliff, and there to thrust a sacrificial knife to the
heart of his child, and offer his quivering flesh and bleeding body a burnt
offering to him; but he commands him to bring his child to the altar of
baptism in his church, and there dedicate his life, his talents, his all,
as a living sacrifice "holy and acceptable unto God," vowing before
witnessing angels and men that, as the steward of God and the
representative of the child, he will hold it sacred, as the property of the
Lord, given to him only in trust; that he will consult and faithfully
execute the will of the Lord concerning the child, and that in all his
relations to it, he will seek to make it subserve his purposes and reflect
his glory.

This is the most precious and acceptable oblation of the parent's heart and
home,--more precious than gold or pearls, than rivers of blood, or streams
of oil; and where there is a corresponding dedication of all that belongs
to home, it promotes and preserves the highest privileges and the greatest
well-being of the child. With the deep and sublime feelings of faith we
should, therefore, take our little ones, in infancy, before the Lord, as
the free-will offering of the Christian home; and in all subsequent
periods of their life under the parental roof, we should eagerly watch, in
each expanding faculty, in each growing inclination, in the bent of each
tender thought, in the warm glow of each feeling and desire, for some
indications of the will of God concerning their mission in this life.

This leads us to remark finally, that, in the dedication of our children to
the Lord, we should have reference to the highest function within the
calling of man, viz: the christian ministry; or in other words, we should
offer our sons to God with the hope and prayer that He may call them to the
work of the ministry, and every indication of His answer to our prayer,
given in their mental and moral fitness, should encourage the parent to
train them up with special reference to that sacred office.

This, the state of the church and the many destitute and waste places of
the earth, imperiously demand. Like the Hebrew mother, we should at least
devote one of our sons to the Temple-service, direct his attention to it,
favor it by all our intercourse with him, and use all proper means for his
preparation for it. And you may be assured that God will answer your
prayer. Your offering, if holy, will be acceptable.

  "Even thus, of old, a babe was offered up--
  Young Samuel, for the service of His Temple;
  Nor He refused the boon, but poured on him
  The anointing of all gifts and graces meet
  For his high office."

But alas! how many parents refuse thus to yield their sons unto God! They
will formally and outwardly dedicate their children to Him in holy baptism;
but afterwards obstruct their way to the ministry, yea, even discourage it
for reasons the most worldly and infidel. They will remind them of its
arduous duties and self-denials; they will remind them that it affords no
money speculations, that the salary of ministers is so small, no wealth can
be amassed by preaching, and besides, they will have to remove so far from
home. And thus by urging such frivolous objections, they beget in their
sons a prejudice against the ministry,--yea, a contempt for it. Ah, if
preaching were a money-making business; if it opened the door to luxury and
affluence and worldly ease, then I am sure every parent would show the
outward piety of dedicating his sons (and daughters too) to the ministry.
Here we see how natural affection, misdirected by the love of worldly gain,
neutralizes the promptings of faith. Had Abraham lived under the same
influence, he would not have obeyed the edict of God. It is because of the
dominant spirit of worldliness in the Christian home, that the laborers
upon the walls of Zion are inadequate to the great work to be done, that
they are insufficient for the great harvest of souls. And this will ever
continue so long as Christian parents refuse to make an offering of their
sons to God, and turn their homes into a den of thieves.

Such parental reservation of children for filthy lucre and the pleasures
of sin for a season, involves a guilt which no redeeming attribute can
mitigate. If God gave his only Son to suffer and die upon the accursed
tree, shall we, his professed followers, not give in turn our sons to Him,
to proclaim the glad news of a purchased and offered redemption? Think of
this, oh ye who profess to be the parents of a Christian home, and have
with the lip had your children dedicated to God in baptism! Think that the
gift of God has bought them with a price, and that as they belong to Him,
you rob God when you withhold them, and deal with them as your own
property, leaving out of view the great law of stewardship. Mistaken
parents! methinks you would give your children to all save to God; you
would devote them to any thing but religion. You fit them for this life,
choose their occupation, labor to leave them a large inheritance, and
rejoice when they rise to eminence in the world.

But in all this, God, religion and eternity are cast into the shade; you
act towards them as if God had no claim upon them, and you were under no
obligations to meet that claim. Think of this, ye who have been recreant to
your duty,--ye who have not followed Abraham to the mount of oblation, nor
brought up your sons as an offered Samuel. Oh think, that God will demand
of you these children, and that if they are not now devoted to the Lord,
you will not have them to return to Him in the great day of final
reckoning. May the momentous interests and responsibilities of that coming
day bring you with your children around the altar of consecration, and
constrain you there to say--

  "I give thee to thy God--the God that gave thee,
  A well-spring of deep gladness to my heart!
          And precious as thou art,
  And pure as dew of Hermon, He shall have thee,
  My own, my beautiful, my undefiled!
          And thou shalt be His child!"




CHAPTER XI.

CHRISTIAN BAPTISM.

  "Water--of blest purity
  Emblem--do we pour on thee;
  Little one! regenerate be--
  Only by the crimson flood
  Of the Spotless, in the blood
  Of the very Son of God!
  Father, Son and Holy Ghost!
  Take the feeble, take the lost,
  Purchased once at Calvary's cost!"


What delightful associations cluster around the baptismal altar! How
tenderly does the pious mother fold her babe to her yearning heart, as she
devoutly approaches that consecrated spot, and there dedicates in and
through this holy sacrament, the child of her love and hope, to Him who
gave it! What a holy charge she there assumes; what a sacred vow she there
makes; what a solemn promise she there gives; what a momentous interest is
entrusted to her there; what a weight of responsibility is there laid upon
her!

Her charge is an infant soul; her vow is to be faithful to it; her promise
is to train it up for God; and her's will be the lasting glory or the
lasting shame! These very engagements and trusts elevate the pious parents;
diffuse a tenderness and sympathy over all the domestic relations, and make
better husbands, better wives, better parents, and better children, by the
deep insight which is given to their faith in those mysterious relations
and mutual obligations which bind them together. As the consecrated water
falls upon the face of the devoted child, the parents feel the solemn vow
sink deep into the soul, and realize the weight of that responsibility
which God lays upon them.

God commands us not only to dedicate our children to Him, but to do so in
the way He has appointed, viz., in and through Christian baptism. In this
way we bring our children into the church, and train them up in a churchly
way. We bring them to God through the church. In their baptism we have, as
it were, a confirmation of their dedication by "the mighty Master's seal."
It is the link which binds our children to the church, the rite of their
initiation into the kingdom of Christ, the sign and seal of their saving
relation to the covenant of grace. By it they are solemnly set apart to the
service of God, enrolled among the members of His kingdom, entitled to its
privileges and guardian care, and placed in the appointed way of salvation
and eternal life, receiving the seal and superscription of the Son of God.
This is indispensable to the demands of the Christian faith. To deny that
infants are thus included in the covenant of grace, destroys the purity and
spiritual unity of the Christian compact, and subverts the foundations and
harmony of the Christian home.

It is revolting to the parent's faith to forbid his little ones the
privilege of the church, and to treat them as aliens from the covenant of
promise. Does the gospel place them under such a ban of proscription?
Surely not! He who instituted the family relation had special regard to the
family in all the appointments of his grace. His command is like that of
Noah, "Come thou and all thy house into the ark." "The promise is unto you
and your children." This is the comfort of the parent, that his children
are planted by the ordinance of God into the soil of grace, where they may
grow up as a tender plant in the likeness of His death, and be "like a tree
planted by the rivers of water, that shall bring forth his fruit in his
season; his leaf shall not wither, and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper."

Baptism in the Christian home is eminently infant baptism. Take this away,
and you sever the strongest cord that binds church and home. As the Jew was
commanded to circumcise his child, and thus bring it into proper relations
to the theocratical covenant, so the Christian has a similar command from
Christ to bring his children, through the holy sacrament of baptism, to
Him. It is not our purpose to discuss the baptistic question. When we
shall have thrown sufficient light upon it to convince the Christian
parent, that it is a duty to have little children dedicated to God in
baptism, our plan shall be fully executed. We must either admit infant
baptism, or deny that the Christian covenant includes children, and that
the parent is bound to dedicate them to God. Hence the objection brought
against infant baptism can, with equal propriety, be urged against
circumcision; for the latter is the type of the former. In baptism Christ
places Himself in true organic relations to the child, and thus opens up to
it the sources from which alone the Christian life can proceed and develop
itself.

The baptism of our children is grounded in their need of salvation at every
age and stage of development. It is also based upon the very idea of Christ
Himself; upon primitive christianity; upon the extent and compass of the
Christian covenant; and upon those vital relations which believing parents
sustain to their offspring. It might be proven from the commission given by
Christ to His disciples to "preach the gospel to every creature;" from His
language and conduct in reference to children; from the usage of the
Apostles and of the apostolic church. The idea and mission of Christ
Himself, we think, would be a sufficient argument in favor of infant
baptism. He included in His life the stage of childhood, and came to save
the child as well as the man. His own infancy and childhood are securities
for this. He entered into and passed through all the various states and
stages of man's development on earth, and thus became adapted to the wants
of every period of our life,--man's infancy as well as man's maturity.
Ireneus says, "Christ Jesus became a child to children, a youth to youth,
and a man to man." The fact, too, that the blessings of the covenant of
grace are extended to the children of believing parents, is sufficient to
prove the validity of infant baptism. Peter said on the day of Pentecost,
when he called upon his hearers to be baptized: "for the promise is to you,
and your children, and all that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our
God shall call."

Thus His gospel excludes none, neither is it restricted to a certain age or
capacity. As the child, as well as the man, fell and died in the first
Adam, so the child, as well as the man, can be made alive in the second
Adam. As infants, therefore, are subjects of grace, why not subjects also
of baptism? As they are included in the covenant, why not enter it by the
divinely constituted sacrament of initiation? As they are included in the
plan of salvation, why not receive it in a churchly way? If Christ is the
Saviour of infants, why not bring them to Him through baptism?

Besides, the idea of following Christ reaches its full meaning only through
infant baptism. His own infancy, as we have already seen, is a warrant of
this. Without it He cannot penetrate and rule in every natural stage of
human life. Hence a denial of infant baptism is a subversion of the
fundamentals of Christian doctrine. The very constitution of the Christian
family, its unity and mission must be overthrown; for infant baptism is
incorporated with the nature of christianity itself, with the conception
and necessities of the individual Christian life, and of the Christian
family life.

And yet with the plainest teachings of the gospel before them, is it not
strange that there are so many virulent enemies to infant baptism? Their
rejection of it seems to rest mainly upon the untenable position that
baptism has meaning and force only when it is the fruit of an antecedent,
self-conscious faith on the part of the subject, and that it is but the
outward demonstration of a separate and prior participation of some inward
grace. As infants have not a self-conscious faith, it is believed,
therefore, that they are not, of course, fit subjects of baptism.

There is a cunning sophistry in all this. It goes upon the supposition that
faith necessarily demands the prior development of self-consciousness. It
assumes that faith is bound to a particular age, and can be exercised only
after the full and complete development of the logical consciousness, and
is dependent upon it; it also assumes that this faith must necessarily be
exercised by the subject of Christian baptism.

Now this is all mere assumption. There is no scripture for it. In all this,
the distinction is not made between faith in its first bud, and faith in
its ripe fruit. The first may exist in the unconscious infant, just as
undeveloped reason exists there; because natural powers do not generate
supernatural faith. Faith is the gift of God; and its existence does not
depend upon any particular stage of mental development. The enemies of
infant baptism can see nothing in baptism. They can see no objective force
in that holy sacrament; but regard it as something merely external,
extraneous, unproductive,--a mere unmeaning form in which a prior faith is
pleased to express itself, as the conclusion of a work already
accomplished. The great error here lies just in this, that they mistake it
as an act of faith, whereas it is an act of Christ. They think it is the
formal rite through which they elect and receive Christ; whereas it is the
sacrament in which Christ elects and receives them.

If, in church worship, man placed himself in a relation to God, without God
placing Himself in a relation to man, then we might reject infant baptism.
But this is not so. God, in baptism, places Himself in a relation to the
subject, receives the subject until it become a part of the organism of
grace in its subjective and objective force, and is recognized as a member
of the church of Christ. Now the falsity of the position assumed by the
enemies of infant baptism lies just here, that only the subjective side of
baptism is held up, while its objective, sacramental character is left
altogether out of view. It reverses the relative positions of faith and
baptism, making the former to take the place of the latter, and holding
that any one dissociated with the church, can receive and exercise a true
living faith, which overthrows the very idea of the church itself. It makes
faith first, baptism second, entering the church third; whereas baptism
comes before the conscious faith of the subject. If so, then why object to
infant baptism?

Baptism is that sacrament by means of which the order of divine grace is
continued. It generates faith, and its development is from authoritative,
to free, personal faith. "What the personal election of Christ was to the
first circle of disciples, that baptism is for the successive church, the
divine fact through which Christ gives to His church its true and eternal
beginning in the individual." If so, then is it not plain that baptism goes
before the self-conscious faith of the subject? And if this church-founding
sacrament brings your child into a living and saving relation to the
church, then why deny it that baptism? Dare you reverse the divine
procedure which God has ordained for the salvation of His people? And if
Christ is related to the individual only through the general; if He is
related to the members only through the body, and having fellowship with
them only as the Head of that body, then is it not plain that your
children, in order to come to Him as such, to be incorporated with Him and
related to Him in a saving way, must come to Him through the church,--must
become a member of it, and that too in the manner and through the medium
He has prescribed, viz., baptism?

He who, for the reason, therefore, that children can have no self-conscious
faith, refuses to have them baptized, but exposes his ignorance of the
divine procedure of grace as developed in the church, of the true moral
relation between parent and child, and of the scripture idea of the
Christian home. Why not for the very same reason refuse to teach them, to
have them pray, to bring them up to church service? Yea, why not deny to
them salvation itself? For the very same reason for which you reject infant
baptism, you must also reject infant salvation; for faith is held up in the
Word of God as a qualification for salvation with more emphasis than as a
qualification for baptism. Hence if you say that infants cannot be baptized
because incapable of faith, you must also say, by a parity of reasoning,
that infants cannot be saved, because incapable of faith.

This is a dilemma, and to avoid it, some enemies to infant baptism have
even confessed that they see no hope for the salvation of children. Thus
Dr. Alexander Carson says, "The gospel has nothing to do with infants. It
is good news, but to infants it is no news at all. None can be saved by the
gospel who do not believe it! Consequently by the gospel no infants can be
saved!" But if out of Christ there is no salvation, then tell me, how will
infants be saved? We have no answer from these enemies, yea, there is no
answer!

Christian parents! what think you of this? When bending over the grave of
a beloved child, with the cherished hope of meeting it in heaven, how would
such intelligence as this startle you from your dream of reunion there, and
cast a deep pall of desolation around your sorrowing hearts? Does not the
parent's faith forbid the intrusion of a doctrine so revolting as this?
Though you have been in your home, the divinely appointed representative of
your child, and in its baptism exercised faith in its behalf, on the ground
of those natural and moral relations which the Lord has constituted between
you and your child, yet in this startling dogma of the enemies of its
baptism, you find a virtual denial of the existence of such moral relations
and parental vicarage; yea, a denial of parental stewardship and of the
religious ministry of the Christian home. The revulsion with which the
Christian heart receives such a denial of infant baptism is at least a
presumptive evidence against it. But we think enough has been said to lay
the foundation of some practical comments upon the subject of Christian
baptism.

If it is a fact that infants are proper subjects of baptism, then it is the
duty of Christian parents to have them baptized. It is not only a duty, but
a delightful privilege, to consecrate them to God in a perpetual covenant
never to be forgotten, regarding them as the members of the kingdom of
Christ, and so called to be God's children by adoption and grace.

Their baptism involves many parental duties and responsibilities. If it is
both a sign and a seal of the covenant of grace, and a means of grace, so
that the parent's faith, in their baptism, places the child in covenant
relation to the Incarnate Word, through the life-giving Spirit, then it is
plain that the parent is bound to secure for the child those blessings
which that baptism contemplates, and which hang upon the exercise of a
receiving faith. This sacrament gives the child a churchly claim upon
parental interposition in its behalf, in all things pertaining to its
spiritual culture,--in a true religious training, in a proper direction in
the use of the means of grace, in a holy Christian example. Here it is the
parent's duty to represent the church, to act for the church in religious
ministrations to the child, to be the steward of the church in the
Christian home, to rear up the child for a responsible membership.

No parent, therefore, who neglects the baptism of the child, can have "the
answer of a good conscience towards God." If we are satisfied to have our
homes separate from the church; if we are satisfied with individualistic,
disembodied, unassociated christianity,--a religion that owns no church,
but which has its origin, root and maturity in the self-conscious activity
of the individual, we may then neglect this duty. But in doing so, to be
consistent, we must also discard the sister ordinance of the Lord's supper,
yea, all the churchly means of grace; yea, the church itself; for why
repudiate one ordinance,--one idea of associated Christianity, and not all
the others?

That baptism is greatly abused and neglected, none will deny. It is often
abused by neglect of the proper time of its administration. The earliest
period of infancy is the proper time; for then there will be a proper
correspondence in time between the dedication and the baptism. In this we
have an example from Jewish circumcision. The pious Jew took the infant
when it was but eight days old, and had it circumcised. But many Christian
parents defer the baptism of their children until late childhood, while
their vows of dedication are left in mere naked feeling and resolution,
having no sacramental force and expression; and as a consequence will grow
cold and indifferent. When parents thus delay having their children brought
within the fold of God and the bosom of the church, they presume to be
wiser than God, and oppose their own weak reason to His word and promises.

Baptism is often abused, also, by being used as a mere habit, an unmeaning
form, without a proper sense of its significance, importance, duties and
responsibilities. It is administered because others do the same,--because
customary among most church members, and because perhaps it looks like an
adherence to the outward of christianity and the church at least. When they
have thus obeyed the law of habit, and girded themselves with the formula
of parental duty, they feel they have done enough; and perhaps neither
their children nor the vows they assumed at their baptism ever after recur
to them as objects of specific duty.

But we would remind such parents, that habit is not always duty, and our
adherence to habit does not prove our sincerity and the truthfulness of our
purpose. It does not always imply "the answer of a good conscience towards
God." If having our children baptized is simple obedience to the law of
habit, it is not the performance of a parental duty, but the abuse of a
blessed privilege; there is in it all no living churchly expression of
willing vows. In this way we only reach its outward form, and we do that,
not because of its inherent worth, not because of a duty and privilege; but
because we desire to cope with others, and decorate our religion in the
popular dress of other people's habits.

Baptism is also abused by mistaking the object and design of its
administration. Why do many parents have their children baptized? Because
they wish to express their vows of dedication in that sacramental form and
way which God has appointed? Because they desire to bring them into the
fold and bosom of the church, and place them in saving relations to the
means of grace? Alas, no! but too often because they make their baptism the
mere occasion of giving them, in a formal, public way, their Christian
names. They christen their children to give them a name; and often with
them this holy sacrament is as empty as the name. Their baptism, in their
view, is but the sealing and confirming the name they had before chosen for
the child; and when this is done they have no more thought of the baptism.
With them the baptism of their children is the ordinance of name-giving.
Before it takes place they are busied about getting a name from the most
approved, and fashionable novels of the day. This takes the place of
dedication. Their prior thoughts are all absorbed in getting a strange,
new-fangled name,--such an one as will carry you away by association to
some love-sick tale, or remind you of the burning of Rome, or some other
deed which has disgraced humanity. And then as soon as this is done, they
fix upon some auspicious occasion when either in the church or in the
presence of a select company at home, (for children cry now-a-days too much
to bring them to church) they have their pastor to baptize them.

Perhaps a great feast is prepared; godfathers and godmothers (if they have
the warrant of some valuable presents) are chosen; and then in all the
glare and parade of fashion, they have the ordinance administered. And what
then is the first joyful cry of the fond parents, after the solemn ceremony
is ended? Why "now, dear, you have your name!" And this is the end,--yes,
the finale of the vows there made before God,--the end of all until God
shall call them to account!

It requires but very little discrimination to see that in all this the
nature, design, and obligations of Christian baptism are left totally out
of view. They do not here appreciate this ordinance as a channel for the
communication of God's grace to their children. When baptized they do not
regard them as having been received into gracious relation to God, as
plants in the Lord's vineyard, as having put on Christ, and as having their
ingrafting into Him not only signified but sealed. Thus being undervalued,
it is, as a consequence, abused and neglected.

The great neglect of Christian baptism is doubtless owing to the low,
unscriptural views of its nature and practical importance; for if they
realized its relations to the plan of salvation, and its office in the
appropriation of that salvation to their children, they would not permit
them to grow up unbaptized, neither would they be recreant to the solemn
duties which are binding upon the parent after its administration. But upon
the subject of baptism itself, we have seen that there is great laxity of
feeling and opinion.

The spirit of our fathers upon this point is becoming so diluted that we
can scarcely discern any longer a vestige of the good old landmarks of
their sacramental character. Instead of walking in them, Christians are now
falling a prey to a latitudinarian spirit of the most destructive kind.
They are, in leaving these old landmarks, falling into the clutches of
rationalism and radicalism, which will ere long leave their homes and their
church

  "A wreck at random driven,
  Without one glimpse of reason or of heaven!"

Even ministers themselves seem to grow indifferent to this wide-spread and
growing evil. They hardly ever utter a word of warning from the pulpit
against it. Their members may be known by them to neglect the baptism of
their children; and yet by their silence they wink at this dereliction; and
when they have occasion to speak of this ordinance, many advert to it as a
mere sign, as something only outward, not communicating an invisible grace,
not as a seal of the new covenant, ingrafting into Christ. No wonder when
this holy sacrament is thus disparagingly spoken of, that Christian parents
will neglect it practically, as a redundancy in the church,--as a tradition
coming in its last wailing cry from ages and forms departed,--as a church
rite marked obsolete, as an old ceremonial savoring of old Jewish shackles,
embodying no substantial grace, and unfit for this age of railroad
progression and gospel libertinism.

Will any one deny the extent of such a spirit in the church and homes of
the present day? Let him refer to church statistics, where he may receive
some idea of the magnitude of this evil. In them we can see the extent to
which parents have neglected the baptism of their children. We take from a
note in the "Mercersburg Review" the following statistical items: "The
presbytery of Londonderry reports but one baptism to sixty-four
communicants; the presbytery of Buffalo city, the same; the presbytery of
Rochester city, one to forty-six; the presbytery of Michigan, one to
seventy-seven; the presbytery of Columbus, one to thirty. In the presbytery
of New Brunswick, there are three churches which report thus: one reports
three hundred and forty-three communicants, and three baptisms; another
reports three hundred and forty communicants, and two baptisms. In
Philadelphia, one church reports three hundred and three communicants, and
seven baptisms; another, two hundred and eighty-seven communicants, and one
baptism."

These statistics speak volumes. They tell us how Christian parents neglect
the baptism of their children, and also how the church winks at it. And
from this neglect we can easily infer their indifference to it. If we refer
to the statistics of all other churches, we shall witness a similar
neglect. No branch of the church now is free from the imputation of such
neglect. It is now difficult indeed, to induce parents to have their
children baptized, because they think it is no use! "Let them wait," say
they, "till they grow up, and then they will know more about it!" This
shows us where the parent stands, viz., in an unchurchly state, and radical
to the very core. It shows us what that influence is, which is at work upon
his mind. "He will know more about it!"--just as if that in religion is
worthless until we know all about it. Baptism then is not worth anything
until the child understands all about it! In that parental utterance we
hear the wildest shout of triumphant rationalism!

But again, baptism is often abused by parental unfaithfulness to its
obligations. In the baptism of their children, parents solemnly vow to
bring them up in the nurture of the Lord, to train them up in His holy
ways, to teach them by precept and example, to pray for them and teach them
the privilege of prayer. And yet how grossly are these solemn vows left
unperformed, and even never thought of in all after life! Perhaps the very
opposite course is taken even on the day of baptism. Parents! by this you
endanger your own souls as well as the souls of your children. How will the
memory of such neglected duty and privilege sink with deepening anguish in
your souls, when you shall be called hence to answer to God for your
parental stewardship! Be not deceived; God is not mocked; neither will he
hold you guiltless when you thus outrage His holy sacrament.

Baptism is often abused by the unfaithfulness of children to its
privileges, influences and blessings. Many children fight against these,
prevent parents from performing their duties, and repel all the overtures
of the Christian home, all the offers of the Spirit's baptism, abandoning
the means of grace, refusing to assume the baptismal engagement taken for
them by their parents; and thus, so far as they are concerned, undo and
neutralize what their parents did for them. Oh, ye baptized children,--ye
to whom the holy ministry of home has been faithfully applied,--know ye
not that the frowns of abused heaven are upon you, and that the memory of
your rebellion against the prerogatives of the family, will constitute an
ingredient in your cup of woe? The privilege of baptism lays you under
solemn requisition. If unfaithful to it, it will be your condemnation, and
add new fuel to the flame of a burning conscience.

Parents and children! be faithful to this holy ordinance of God. It is a
solemn service. You should approach the baptismal font with a trembling
step and a consecrated heart. And what a solemn moment it is, when you take
your child away from that altar! There you gave it up to God,--dedicated it
to His service; and there in turn He commits it to you in trust, saying to
you as Pharaoh's daughter said to the mother of Moses, "Take this child and
nurse it for me, and I will pay thee thy wages," and you bore it away, as
did that faithful mother, to bring it up for God. There you solemnly
promised that in training that child, the will of God should be your will,
and the law of all your conduct towards it. You can never forget that
solemn transaction, and how you there vowed before witnessing men and
angels that you would be faithful to the little one God has given you. What
now has been the result? Eternity will answer.




CHAPTER XII.

CHRISTIAN NAMES.

  "She named the child Ichabod."--1 SAMUEL.

                "Thus was the building left
  Ridiculous, and the work confusion named."


Christian baptism suggests Christian names. This introduces us to an
important topic, viz., the kind of names Christian parents should give to
their children at their baptism. Baptismal names are indeed an important
item of the Christian home. Much more depends upon them than we are at
first sight of the subject, disposed to grant.

Christianity eminently includes the great law of correspondence between its
inward spirit and its outward form. Its form and contents cannot be
separated. The principle of fitness, it everywhere exhibits; and hence its
nomenclature is the herald of its spirit and truth. The names that religion
has given to her followers signify some principle of association between
them. They were adopted to designate some fact in the history of the
individual, or in his relation to the church. Hence the names adopted for
the children of the Christian home should be the utterance of some fact or
calling which belongs to that home. Their name is one of the first things
which children know, and hence it makes a deep impression upon them. And as
our Christian names are given to us at the time of our baptism, one would
think that there is always a correspondence between the name and some fact
or interest connected with the occasion. We should then receive a Christian
name, a name which does not bind us by the laws of association to what is
evil either in the past or the present, but which indicates a relation to
some precious boon involved in the dedication of the child to God.

Is this always so? By no means. It once was. It was so in the Hebrew home
and in the families of the apostolic age. But in this day of parental rage
after new-fangled things and names, taken from works of fiction and novels
of doubtful character, we find that parents care but very little about the
baptismal name being the herald of a religious fact. "What is in a name?"
was a question propounded by a poet. His answer was "nothing!"

              "That which we call a rose
  By any other name would smell as sweet."

The principle here evolved is false. There is much in a name; and at the
creation names were not mechanically given to things; but there was a
vital correspondence between the name and the thing named. Much depends
upon the name. It exerts a potent influence for good, or for evil upon the
bearer and upon all around him.

Primarily, a name supposed some correspondence between its meaning and the
person who bore it. Hence the name should not be arbitrary in its
application, but should "link its fitness to idea," and with the person,
run in parallel courses.

  "For mind is apt and quick to wed ideas and names together,
  Nor stoppeth its perceptions to be curious of priorities."

Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, felt that practically there was much in a
name, when he heathenized the names of the young Hebrew captives. By this
he thought to detach them from their Hebrew associations. God was in each
of their original names, and in this way they were reminded of their
religion. But the names this Chaldee king gave them were either social or
alluded to the idolatry of Babylon. Their Hebrew names were to them
witnesses for God, mementoes of the faith of their fathers; hence the king,
to destroy their influence, called Daniel, Belteshazzar, i.e. "the
treasurer of the god Bel;" Hannaniah he called Shadrach, i.e. "the
messenger of the king;" Mishael he called Meshach, i.e. "the devotee of the
goddess Shesach." He showed his cunning in this, and a historical testimony
to the potent influence of a name.

By this same rule of correspondence, Adam doubtless named, by order of his
Creator, the things of nature as they struck his senses.

  "He specified the partridge by her cry, and the forest prowler by
    his roving,
  The tree by its use, and the flower by its beauty, and everything
    according to its truth."

The Hebrews obeyed the same law in naming their children. With them there
was a sacred importance attached to the giving of a name. For every chosen
name they had a reason which involved the person's life, character or
destiny. Adam named the companion of his bosom, "woman because she was
taken out of man." He called "his wife's name Eve, because she was the
mother of all living." Eve called her first-born Cain (possession) "because
I have gotten a man from the Lord." She called another son Seth
(appointed,) "for God hath appointed me another seed instead of Abel, whom
Cain slew." Samuel was so named because he was "asked of and sent to God."
God Himself often gave names to His people; and each name thus given,
conveyed a promise, or taught some rule of life, or bore some divine
memorial, or indicated some calling of the person named. Says Dr.
Krummacher on this point: "Names were to the people like memoranda, and
like the bells on the garments of the priests, reminding them of the Lord
and His government, and furnishing matter for a variety of salutary
reflections. To the receivers of them they ministered consolation and
strength, warning and encouragement; and to others they served to attract
the attention and heart of God." This was right, and fully accorded with
the economy of the Hebrew home, and with the conception of language itself.

Would that the Christian home followed her pious example! But Christians
now are too much under the influence of irreligious fashion. Instead of
giving their children those good old religious names which their fathers
bore, and which are endeared to us by many hallowed associations, they now
repudiate them with a sneer as too vulgar and tasteless. They are out of
fashion, too common, don't lead us into a labyrinth of love-scrapes and
scenes of refined iniquity, and are now only fit for a servant.

Hence instead of resorting to the bible for a name, these sentimental
parents will pore over filthy novels, or catch at some foreign accent, to
get a name which may have a fashionable sound, and a claim upon the
prevailing taste of the times, and which may remind one of the battles of
some ambitious general, or of the adventures of some love-sick swain, or of
the tragic deeds of some fashionable libertine!

And when such a name is found to suit the ear of fashion and of folly, it
is applied to the child, and reiterated by the minister before the
baptismal font; and as often as it is afterwards repeated it reminds one
perhaps of deeds which put modesty to blush, and startle the ear of justice
and humanity. What a burning shame is this to the Christian home! The
child who is cursed with such a name has ever before him the memorandum of
his parent's folly, and as a recognized example, the character of him after
whom he has been named. As often as he is hailed by it, he blushes to think
that he has been called by pious parents after one who, perhaps, has turned
many a home into desolation, and disgraced and blighted forever the fond
hopes and joys of the young and old.

Have thoughts and associations like these no demoralizing influence? How
can parents admonish their children against novel reading after they have
taken their names from novels? The giving of Christian names at the present
time is indeed a ridiculous farce, an insult to christianity, and a
representation of stoical infidelity before the baptismal altar. It is
there an act of the Babylonish king to heathenize the child. We might
almost say that the folly has become a rage. The rage for new names
especially,--names which do not adorn the sacred page, nor carry us back to
the times and faith of our fathers, but which have gained notoriety in the
world of fiction, and associate us with the lover's affrays and with the
desperado's feats,--these are the names which Christian parents too often
seek with avidity for their children. If you were to judge their homes by
these names, you would think yourself in a Turkish seraglio, or amid the
voluptuous scenes of a Parisian court, or in the bosom of a heathen
family. What, for instance, is there about such names as Nero, Caesar,
Pompey, Punch, that would remind you that you were in a Christian home?

It is often disgusting, too, to see how some Christian parents, who live in
humble life, seek to ape, in their children, the empty sounding titles of
the world. They only show their vanity and weakness, and often bring
ridicule upon their children; for--

  "To lend the low-born noble names, is to shed upon them ridicule
    and evil;
  Yea, many weeds run rank in pride, if men have dubbed them cedars,
  And to herald common mediocrity with the noisy notes of fame,
  Tendeth to its deeper scorn, as if it were to call the mole a mammoth."

When we thus give our children names associated with battle-fields, empty
titles, brilliant honors, and lucrative offices,--positions in life which
they can never expect to reach, and which, if they did, would not do honor
to the child of a Christian family, we do them great injury; we fasten in
them feelings the most disastrous, and draw out propensities unbecoming the
child devoted to the Lord, breeding in his soul a peevish repining at his
station. Alas! that Christian homes should ever become so servile in their
devotions to the rotten sentiments and flimsy interests of misguided and
perverted fashion! Her smile in your home is that of a harlot; her touch is
the withering blight of corruption; her dominion is the desolation of
family hopes and the extermination of those sacred prerogatives with which
the Lord has invested the Christian fireside. The ball will take the place
of prayer; novels will take the place of the bible; favorites will take the
place of husbands and wives; and the children will regard their parents
only as their masters.

Christian parents should, therefore, give suitable names to their children,
that is, such names as will correspond with their state, character and
relations to God,--names which do not suggest the idea of war, rapine,
humbug, romance, and sensuality, but which are associated with the
Christian life and calling, and which serve as a true index to the spirit
and character of the parental fireside. Reason, as well as faith, will
dictate such a choice; for

  "There is wisdom in calling a thing fitly; names should note particulars
  Through a character obvious to all men, and worthy of their instant
    acceptation."

Our name is the first and the last possession at our disposal. It
determines from the days of childhood our inclinations. It employs our
attention through life, and even transports us beyond the grave. Hence we
should give appropriate names to our children,--such as will interest them,
and neither be a reproach, on the one hand, nor reach to unattainable and
unworthy heights, on the other; for the mind of your child will take a
bias, from its name, to good or to evil.

Why not adopt scriptural names for them? Are they not as beautiful as other
names? They are. And is not their influence as salutary? It is. And are
they not more suitable for the Christian home than any other? They are.
Where is there a more lovely name than Mary,--lovely in its utterance, and
thrice lovely in the glowing memories which cluster around it, and in the
hallowed home-associations it awakens in the Christian heart, drawing us at
once to the feet of Jesus, where a Mary sat in confiding pupilage, and
sealed her instructions and gratitude with the tear-drop that glowed like
early dew upon her dimpled cheek? Would Christian parents desire to give
their children more beautiful names,--beautiful in the light of history and
of heaven,--than that of Benjamin, "son of the right hand;" of David,
"dear, beloved;" of Dionysius, "divinely touched;" of Eleazar, "help of
God;" of Eli, "my offering;" of Enoch, "dedicated;" of Jacob, "my present;"
of Lemuel, "God is with them;" of Nathan, "given, gift;" of Nathaniel,
"gift of God;" of Samuel, "asked of God and sent of God," &c.?

Besides, there are names of distinguished Christians, such as Wilberforce,
Howard, Page, Martyn, Paul, Peter, John, Fenelon, Clement, Baxter,
&c.,--bright as dew-drops on the page of history, and as beautiful in their
enunciation as any chosen from the world of heartless fashion,--as
beautiful in sound, and infinitely more so in associations which bind them
to deeds of humanity and Christian love. The utterance of such names would
be more becoming the Christian home; because they aid in developing the
purest, holiest and loftiest idea of its nature and calling. Such names
will bind your little ones to pure and holy persons and deeds, and will
suit the book of life in which you hope to have them enrolled.

  "Then, safe within a better home, where time and its titles are not
    found,
  God will give thee His new name, and write it on thy heart;
  A name, better than of sons, a name dearer than of daughters,
  A name of union, peace and praise, as numbered in thy God."




CHAPTER XIII.

HOME AS A NURSERY.

  "The Ostrich, silliest of the feathered kind,
  And formed of God without a parent's mind,
  Commits her eggs, incautious, to the dust,
  Forgetful that the foot may crush the trust;
  And, while on public nurseries they rely,
  Not knowing, and too oft not caring why,
  Irrational in what they thus prefer
  No few, that would seem wise, resemble her."


To nurse means to educate or draw out and direct what exists in a state of
mere involution. It means to protect, to foster, to supply with appropriate
food, to cause to grow or promote growth, to manage with a view to
increase. Thus Greece was the nurse of the liberal arts; Rome was the nurse
of law. In horticulture, a shrub or tree is the nurse or protector of a
young and tender plant. We are said to nurse our national resources.
Isaiah, in speaking of the coming Messiah and the glory of his church,
says, "Thy daughters shall be nursed at thy side." "Kings shall be thy
nursing fathers, and their queens thy nursing mothers."

The place or apartment appropriated to such nursing is called a nursery.
Thus a plantation of young trees is called a nursery. Shakspeare calls
Padua the nursery of arts. We call a very bad place the nursery of thieves
and rogues. Dram-shops are the nurseries of intemperance. Commerce is
called the nursery of seamen. Universities are the nurseries of the arts
and sciences. The church on earth is called the nursery of the church in
heaven. Christian families are called the nurseries of the church on earth,
because in the former its members are nursed and propagated for the purpose
of being transplanted into the latter.

In the same sense and for the same reason, the Christian home is the
nursery of the young,--of human nature in its normal state. And as home is
the nursery of the state as well as of the church on earth and in heaven,
we must see that it is a physical, intellectual and religious nursery. We
shall briefly consider it in these aspects. Indeed the Christian home
cannot be considered in a more interesting and responsible light. The
little child, dedicated to God in holy baptism, is entirely helpless and
dependent upon the ministrations of the nursery. There is the department of
its first impressions, of its first directions, of its first intellectual
and moral formation, of the first evolution of physical and moral life.
There the child exists as but the germ of what is to be. It grows up under
the fostering care and plastic power of the parents. God's commission to
them in the nursery is, to bring up these germs of life, in His nurture
admonition.

  "Take the germ, and make it
    A bud of moral beauty. Let the dews
  Of knowledge, and the light of virtue, wake it
    In richest fragrance and in purest hues."

The nursery is the department of home in which the mother fulfils her
peculiar mission. This is her special sphere. None can effectually take her
place there. She is the center of attraction, the guardian of the infant's
destiny; and none like she, can overrule the unfolding life and character
of the child. God has fitted her for the work of the nursery. Here she
reigns supreme, the arbitress of the everlasting weal or woe of untutored
infancy. On her the fairest hopes of educated man depend, and in the
exercise of her power there, she sways a nation's destiny, gives to the
infant body and soul their beauty, their bias and their direction. She
there possesses the immense force of first impressions. The soul of her
child lies unveiled before her, and she makes the stamp of her own spirit
and personality upon its pliable nature. She there engrafts it, as it were,
into her own being, and from the combined elements of her own character,
builds up and establishes the character of her offspring. Hers will,
therefore, be the glory or the shame.

  "Then take the heart thy charms have won,
  And nurse it for the skies."

The nursery is that department of home in which the formation of our
character is begun. Infancy demands the nursery. It is not full-formed and
equipped for the battle of life. It lies in the cradle in a state of mere
involution, and in the hands of its parents is altogether passive, and
susceptible of impressions as wax before the sun. The germ of the man is
there; but it has yet to be developed. Its indwelling life must be nurtured
with tender and assiduous care. It demands an influence suited to the
expansion of its nature into bloom and maturity. It demands physical
development, mental evolution, moral training, and spiritual elevation. In
order to these it must live amidst the sweet and plastic socialities of
maternal relationship. It must come under the fostering influence of a
mother's heart, and be reared up by the tender touches of a mother's hand.
This idea is embodied in home as a nursery. This is fourfold in its
conception and relation to the child.

The nursery is physical. This involves the means of keeping the child in
health, and the appliances of a vigorous physical development. The
Christian mother, to this end, should make herself acquainted with the
physiology of the infant body. Many well-meaning mothers, from sheer
ignorance, destroy the health of their children; and it is on this account
perhaps that four-tenths of them die under five years of age. They should
also consider the bearing of the body upon the mind and morals of their
children. How often do ignorant and indolent parents, by giving their
children over to the care of sickly and immoral nurses, ruin forever the
health and souls of their offspring. Much, then, depends upon the physical
nurture of your child. If you would not injure its mind and soul, you must
nurse its body with tender care and wisdom. A vital bond unites them; they
reciprocally influence each other, and hence what affects the one must have
a corresponding influence upon the other. Neglect the body of your child;
destroy its health either by extreme and fastidious care, or by a brutal
neglect, and you at the 

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