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