ths, loses the
greatest opportunity that family life affords. Among the different
instances known to the author, the following three may serve as
illustrations of what may be found in many communities:

I knew a mother who regularly on Sunday afternoons gathered her
children about her and read them religious books and literature. In her
considerable family, every child became eminently useful. One, who was a
university professor, told me that those Sunday afternoons with his
mother in the nursery embodied the most formative influences of his
life.

I know another family, of some seven or eight children, where Sunday was
always used for religious instruction with the children. With the
reading and other things, they always "played church", and the
experience of those early childhood days made the boys splendid public
talkers, and the girls were also very capable in the same direction. No
better school of oratory was ever organized.

I know another family of four children, where the entire family looked
forward throughout the week to the special and larger pleasure which
Sunday always brought. They grew up naturally into a religious life, and
developed that ability for public address and service which could not so
well be gained in any other way.

Sunday is about the only day in most of households where the father is
home with his family. It adds greatly to the pleasure and impressiveness
of the day and its services if the father, with the mother, enters
heartily into the spirit of that which will be all the more enjoyed by
the children. It will enable him also to stamp his personality deeper
into the character of his children than possibly any other opportunity
which may be afforded him in life.

These brief object talks grew out of the necessities found in the
author's own parish. When called to the pastorate of the Second English
Lutheran Church, of Baltimore, I found a depleted congregation, while at
the same time the Sunday-school was one of the largest and most
flourishing in the city. It was then for the first time that I
introduced regularly the preaching of "Five-minute object sermons"
before the accustomed sermon on Sunday morning. In a very brief period,
about one-fourth of the infant department and two-thirds of the main
department of the school were in regular attendance upon the Sunday
morning service, and, even after this particular form of address had
been discontinued, the teachers and scholars cont