them the dangers and corruptions which lurk in their midst and follow in the train of rustling silks and fashionable denouement.  They should never permit their parlor to become the scene of fashionable tyranny.  The Christian parlor can be no depot for fashion.  It should be sacred to God and to the church.  It should be a true exponent of the social elements of Christianity.  It should not be a hermitage, a state of seclusion from the world; but should conform to fashion, yet so far only as the laws of a sanctified taste and refinement will admit.

These laws exclude all compromise and amalgamation with the ungodly spirit and customs of the world.  Allegiance to the higher and better law of God will keep us from submission to the laws of a depraved taste and carnal desire.  We must keep ourselves unspotted from the world.  Whenever we submit with scrupulous exactness to the laws of fashion; whenever we yield a servile complaisance to its forms and ceremonies, wink at its extremes and immoralities and absurd expenditures, seek its flatteries and indulge in its whims and caprices, by throwing open our parlors as the theatre of their denouement, and introducing our children to their actors and master-spirits, we prostitute our homes, our religion and those whom God has given us to train up for Himself, to interests and pleasures the most unworthy the Christian name and character.

There is much danger now of the Christian home becoming in this way slavishly bound to the influence and attractions of society beyond the pale of the church, until all relish for home-enjoyment is lost, and its members no longer seek and enjoy each other’s association.  They drain the cup of voluptuous pleasure to its dregs, and flee from home as jejune and supine.  The husband leaves his wife, and seeks his company in fashionable saloons, at the card table or in halls of revelry.  The wife leaves the society of her children, and in company with a bosom companion, seeks to throw off the tedium of home, at masquerade meetings, at the theater or in the ball-room, where

     “Vice, once by modest Nature chained,
  And legal ties, expatiates unrestrained;
  Without thin decency held up to view,
  Naked she stalks o’er law and gospel too!”

The children follow their example; become disgusted with each other’s company, and sacrifice their time and talents to a thousand little trifles and absurdities.  Taste becomes depraved, and loses all relish for rational enjoyment.  The heart teems with idle fancies and vain imaginations.  Sentimentalism takes the place of religion; filthy literature and fashionable cards shove the Family Bible in some obscure nook of their parlor and their hearts.  The hours devoted to family prayer are now spent in a giddy whirl of amusement and intoxicating pleasure, in the study of the latest fashions and of the newly-published love adventures of some nabob in the world of refined scoundrelism.  The parental solicitude, once directed to the eternal welfare of the child, is now expended in match-making and setting out in the world.