“Parent who plantedst in the joy of love,
  Yet hast not gather’d fruit,—­save rankling thorns,
  Or Sodom’s bitter apples,—­hast thou read
  Heaven’s promise to the seeker?  Thou may’st bring
  Those o’er whose cradle thou didst watch with pride,
  And lay them at thy Savior’s feet, for lo! 
  His shadow falling on the wayward soul,
  May give it holy health.  And when thou kneel’st
  Low at the pavement of sweet Mercy’s gate,
  Beseeching for thine erring ones, unfold
  The passport of the King,—­’Ask, and receive! 
  Knock,—­and it shall be opened!"’

The promises of the Christian home may be divided into two kinds, viz.:  Those which God has given to the family; and those which Christian parents have made to God.

God has not only laid His requisitions upon the Christian home, but given his promises.  Every command is accompanied with a promise.  These promises give color to all the hopes of home.

When the dark cloud of tribulation overhangs the parent’s heart; when the overwhelming storm of misfortune rages around his habitation, uprooting his hopes and demolishing his interests; when the ruthless hand of death tears from his embrace the wife of his bosom and the children of his love;—­even in hours of bereavement like these, the promises of God dispel the gloom, and surround his home and his heart with the sunshine of peace and joy.

His promises extend to both the parents and their offspring.  “Unto you, and unto your children,” “I will pour my spirit on thy seed, and my blessing on thine offspring; and they shall spring up as among the grass, as willows by the watercourses.  One shall say, I am the Lord’s; and another shall call himself by the name of Jacob; and another shall subscribe with his hand unto the Lord, and surname himself by the name of Israel.”  His promises extend to children’s children; and whatever they may be for the parent, they are “visited upon the children unto the third and fourth generation.”

Now these divine promises are of two kinds,—­the promise of punishment, and the promise of reward.  He promises to punish the unfaithful parent, and to reward the faithful parent.  He also promises to visit both the evil and the good of the parents upon their children.  Such is the constitution of the family, and such are the vital relations which the members sustain to each other, that by the law of natural and moral reproduction, the child is either blessed or cursed in the parent.  What the parent does will run out in its legitimate consequences to the child, either as a malediction or as a benediction.