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