Family religion includes parental bible instruction, family prayer, and religious education, government, discipline and example.  These involve the parent’s position in his household as a prophet, priest, and king.  “Thou shalt teach my words diligently unto thy children, and talk of them when thou sittest in thy house.”

  “Daily let part of Holy Writ be read,
  Let as the body, so the soul have bread. 
  For look! how many souls in thy house be,
  With just as many souls God trusteth thee!”

Thus felt and acted our primitive fathers.  By every winning art, they sought to fill their children with the knowledge of God’s Word.  The entire range of nursery instruction and amusement was comprised in scripture pictures and hieroglyphics.  They intermingled religion with all their home pursuits, and entwined it with their earliest and purest associations of childhood.  If Christian parents would follow their example now, in these days of parental delinquency, we would not behold so many of their children grow up in religious ignorance and indifference.

The same may be said of the family altar and prayer.  A prayerless family is an irreligious, godless family.  Says Henry, “They who daily pray in their houses do well; they that not only pray, but read the scriptures, do better; but they do best of all, who not only pray and read the scriptures, but sing the praises of God.”

Besides, the religion of home implies that we “command our children and household to keep the way of the Lord,”—­that we “bring them up in His nurture and admonition,” and “train them up as He would have them go;” and that in things pertaining to their spiritual welfare we “go in and out” before them as their pattern and example, bidding them to “follow us even as we follow Christ,” and living in their midst as “the living epistles of Christ, known and read” of them all.

Family religion must “show itself by its works” of Christian charity and benevolence to the poor, the sick and the distressed.  We should “lay by” a certain amount each year of what God bestows, for the support of the church and the propagation of the gospel.  Oh, how little do Christians now give to these benevolent objects!  A penurious, close-fisted, selfish home cannot be a religious household.  Family religion must be reproductive, must return to God as well as receive from Him.  But as these characteristic features of the Christian home will be considered hereafter, we shall not enlarge upon them here.  Suffice it to say that the mission of home demands family religion.  Its interests cannot be secured without it.  Let our homes be divorced from piety, and they will become selfish, sensual, unsatisfactory, and unhappy.  Piety should always reign in our homes,—­not only on the Sabbath, but during the week; not only in sickness and adversity, but in health and prosperity.  It must, if genuine, inspire and consecrate the minutest interests and employments of the household.  It must appear in every scene and feeling and look, and in each heart, as the life, the light, the hope, and the joy of all the members.