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