philosophy, fiction, yea, all the
works of classic Greece and Rome, may crowd upon her shelves; but of these
she will soon grow wearied, and the dust of neglect will gather thick upon
their gilded leaves; but of the bible the Christian home can never become
weary. Its sufficiency for all her purposes will throw a garland of
freshness around every page; its variety and manifoldness; its simplicity
and beauty; its depth of thought and intensity of feeling, adapt it to
every capacity and to every want, to every emergency and to every member,
of the household. The little child and the old man, hoary with the frost of
many winters, find an equal interest there. The rich and the poor, the
learned and the ignorant, the high and the low, are alike enriched from its
inexhaustible treasury.

It is a book for the mind, the heart, the conscience, the will and the
life. It suits the palace and the cottage, the afflicted and the
prosperous, the living and the dying. It is a comfort to "the house of
mourning," and a check to "the house of feasting." It "giveth seed to the
sower, and bread to the eater." It is simple, yet grand; mysterious, yet
plain; and though from God, it is nevertheless, within the comprehension of
a little child. You may send your children to school to study other books,
from which they may be educated for this world; but in this divine book
they study the science of the eternal world.

The family bible has given to the Christian home that unmeasured
superiority in all the dignities and decencies and enjoyments of life, over
the home of the heathen. It has elevated woman, revealed her true mission,
developed the true idea and sacredness of marriage and of the
home-relationship; it has unfolded the holy mission of the mother, the
responsibilities of the parent, and the blessings of the child. Take this
book from the family, and she will degenerate into a mere conventionalism,
marriage into a "social contract;" the spirit of mother will depart;
natural affection will sink to mere brute fondness, and what we now call
home would become a den of sullen selfishness and barbaric lust!

The bible should, therefore, be the text-book of home-education. Where it
is not, parents are recreant to their duty. It is the basis of all
teaching, because it reveals "the truth, the way and the life," because it
is God's testimony and message, and is "profitable for doctrine, for
reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousn