“If ye count society for past time,—­what happier recreation
    than a nursling,
  Its winning ways, its prattling tongue, its innocence and mirth? 
  If ye count society for good,—­how fair a field is here,
  To guide these souls to God, and multiply thyself in heaven!”

“Walk, therefore, worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called, with all lowliness and meekness.”  “Magnify your office.”  Be faithful to your home-mission.  Draw your pleasure from it.  Souls are committed to your trust and hang upon your hire.  Your regard for the temporal and eternal welfare of your children should prompt you to faithfulness to the holy mission of your family.  You love your children, and desire their welfare and happiness.  But do what you will for them, if you are unfaithful to their souls, you wrest from them the means of safety and of happiness; you aid in their misery in this and in the world to come.  You are more cruel to them than was Herod who slew the bodies of children.  You murder their souls.  He murdered the children of others; you murder your own; he employed others to do it for him; you do the work of slaughter yourself!  If, then, you love your children; if their souls are committed to you; if your unfaithfulness to them may result in their ruin; if God blesses the holy mission of your home to their temporal and eternal welfare; if its fulfillment by you be “like words spoken in a whispering-gallery, which, will be heard at the distance of years, and echoed along the corridors of ages yet to come;” and if it will prove to them in life like the lone star to the mariner upon the dark and stormy sea,—­should you not be faithful to your home-vocation!

Not only so, but your regard for your own comfort and happiness here and hereafter should impel you to this faithfulness.  Do you love yourself?  Do you regard your own comfort and welfare?  Would you avoid painful solicitude, bitter reflection, heart-burning remorse, dreadful foreboding?  Then be faithful to the home-mission.  If you are, God will bless you for it through your children.  What a comfort it will be to you to see them become Christians, enter the church, and, at their side around the Lord’s Table, hold communion with them in the joys of faith and in the anticipations of heaven!  And should God remove them from you by death, you will be cheered amidst the agonies of separation by their dying consolation.  The hope of a speedy reunion with them in heaven would afford a sweet solace to your bereaved heart.

Or should you be taken before them, what a comfort would they afford you in your last moments!  With the glow of Christian faith and hope, they would whisper to you the consolations of the gospel, and bless you for your faithfulness to them.  And when you and they shall meet at the bar of God, they will rise up and call you blessed.