She teaches them the privilege of prayer.
Look! how their infant eyes with rapture speak;
Mark the flushed lily on the dimpled cheek;
Their hearts are filled with gratitude and love,
Their hopes are centered in a world above!"

The Christian home demands a family religion. This makes it a "household of
God." Without this it is but a "den of thieves." It is "the one thing
needful."

What is "family religion?" It is not an exotic, but is indigenous to the
Christian home. It is not a "new measure," but an essential ingredient of
the home-constitution,--coexistent with home itself. The first family
"began to call upon the name of the Lord;" the first parent acted as
high-priest of God in his family.

It is not individual piety as such, not simply closet devotion, but family
service of God,--religion taken up in the home-consciousness and life.
Hence a family, and not simply a personal religion.

Such religion, we say, is as old as the church. We find it in Eden, in the
tents of the patriarchs and in the wilderness of the prophets. We find it
in the tent of Abraham in the plains of Mamre, in the "house" of Moses, in
the "service" of Joshua, in the "offerings" of Job, and in the palace of
David and Solomon. It is also a prominent feature of the gospel economy.
The commendation bestowed by Paul upon Timothy, was that "from a child" he
enjoyed the "unfeigned faith" of his mother Eunice and his grandmother
Lois. Paul exhorts Christians thus: "Rule well your own houses; speaking to
yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs." The same family
religion was a prominent feature of the homes of the primitive Christians.
With them, every house was a sanctuary, and every parent a minister in holy
things to its members. The bible was not only a parlor ornament, but a lamp
to their feet and a guide to their path, used, meditated upon, prayed over.
Says Turtullian of its members, "They are united in spirit and in flesh;
they kneel down together; they pray and fast together; they teach, exhort
and support each other with gentleness."

How, alas! have Christian homes degenerated since then in family piety!
They received a reviving impulse in the Reformation; yet even this was
meteor-like, and seemed but the transient glow of some mere natural
emotion. The fire which then flashed so brilliantly upon the altar of home,
has now become taper-like and sepulchral; and the altar of family religion,
like the altar of Jehovah u