The former should not only exist under
the patronage of the latter, but in the spirit of a true subordination.
Parents should teach and rule and appropriate the means of grace under the
supervision of the church. They should take their household, with them to
her public service, send their children to her schools, and in all respects
bring them up in her nurture and admonition.
Thus the family should exist as the faithful daughter of the church; and as
the latter in the wilderness "leaned upon her beloved," so the former
should repose itself upon her who is "the mother of us all," and in whom,
as the "body of Christ," shall "all the families of the earth be blessed."
As her loving and confiding daughter, the family should live under her
government and discipline, listen to her maternal voice, and be led by her
maternal hand. The minister in his pastoral functions, is the
representative of the church in each of the families of his flock; and
should, therefore, be received, loved, confided in and obeyed, as such. The
home that repels his proffered ministrations in the name and according to
the will of the church, throws off its allegiance to the latter, and
through it, to Christ,--her glorious head, and is hence unworthy of the
name of Christian home. The true Christian home yearns after the church,
loves to lean upon it, to look up to it, to consecrate all to it, to move
and develop its interests in the sphere of the church, and to labor to
complete itself in it.
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