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!"