If parents but leave their children to their own ways,
they will run into evil habits; for sin is an epidemic. Profanity and
falsehood and all other outrages against God will soon become the
controlling habits of their lives. But when taken early, parents have
complete power over their offspring. It is, therefore, a gross abuse of the
Christian home when parents become indifferent to the formation of habits.
It is their duty to crush every evil habit in its incipient state.
The forming of a good habit may not at first be congenial with our
feelings. It may be irksome. But if we persevere in it, that which at
first was painful and difficult will soon be a source of enjoyment. Thus
the habit of family prayer may at first be repulsive even to the Christian
parent; a feeling of delicacy and the sense of unworthiness may, at the
family altar, repress the feelings of enjoyment experienced in the closet;
but soon the habit of this devotion will be formed, when it will be enjoyed
as an essential part of home. To abandon it would be like breaking up the
tenderest ties which bind the members together. The same may be said of the
omission of a duty. How easily can the Christian form the habit of omitting
family prayer or any other duty! Every such omission but forms and
increases the habit, until it gains an ascendancy over our sense of duty,
and at last exhibits its sovereign power in our total abandonment of the
duty.
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