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.