It is a foretaste of heaven. Like manna, it
will feed our souls, quench our thirst, sweeten the cup of life, and shed a
halo of glory and of gladness around our firesides. Let yours, therefore,
be the religious home; and then be sure that God will delight to dwell
therein, and His blessing will descend, like the dews of heaven, upon it.
Your children shall "not be found begging bread," but shall be like "olive
plants around your table,"--the "heritage of the Lord." Yours will be the
home of love and harmony; it shall have the charter of family rights and
privileges, the ward of family interests, the palladium of family hopes and
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.
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