latter, as the highest form of
religious association, demands the former, and the former looks to the
latter as its completion. Where the religion of the family does not move in
the element of the church, it is at best but sentimentalism on the one
hand, and rationalism on the other. It is a spurious pietism. To be genuine
it must be moulded by the church. Without this it is destitute of sterling
principle, of a living-faith, of well-directed effort and lofty aims. The
family which does not move in the element of the church is a perversion of
the true purpose of God in its institution. It will afford no legitimate
development of Christian doctrine, and the whole scheme of its religion
will rest for its execution upon unreliable agencies extraneous to home
itself. Hence we find that the piety of those families or individuals that
isolate themselves from the church, is at best but ephemeral in its
existence, contracted in spirit, moving and operating by mere impulse and
irregular starts, and withal destitute of vitality and saving influence. A
death-bed scene may awaken a transient and visionary sense of duty;
adversity may startle the drowsy ear, and cause the parents to turn for the
time to the souls of their children; but these continue only while the tear
and the wound are fresh, and the apprehensions of the eternal world are
moving in their terrible visions before them!

The efficacy of the Christian home, therefore, depends upon its true
relation to the church. The members should be conscious of this. Then both
parents and children Will appreciate the religious ministrations of home.
Then the former will not grow weary in well doing, but will have something
to rest upon, something to look to; and the latter will love the church of
their fathers, and venerate the family as its nursery.

But the relation between the Christian home and the church implies
reciprocal obligations and duties. 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 rep