Husband and wife may love each other, and live together in all the
peace and harmony of reciprocated affection; yet if the religious part of
their home-mission remain unfulfilled, their family is divested of its
noblest attraction; its greatest interests will fall into ruin; its highest
destiny will not be attained; and soon its fruits will be entombed in
oblivion; while their children, neglected and perishing, will look back
upon that home with a bitterness of spirit which the world can neither
soothe nor extract!
How many such homes there are! Even the homes of church members are too
often reckless of their high vocation. Their moral stewardship is
neglected; their dedications, formal and heartless. No prayers are heard;
no bible read; no instructions given; no pious examples set; no holy
discipline exercised. Their interests, their hopes and their enjoyments;
their education, their labor and their rest, are all of the
world,--worldly. The curse of God is upon such a home!
The importance and responsibility of the home-mission may be seen in its
vicarious character, and in its influence upon the members. The principle
of moral reproduction is manifest in all the home-relations. What the
parent does is reproduced, as it were, in the child, and will tell upon the
generations that follow them. Those close affinities by which all the
members are allied, give to each a moulding influence over all the rest.
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