to the other.  They have the same foundation.  Home is not erected upon a quicksand, but reared upon the same rock upon which the church is built.  Like the church, it rises superior to all the fluctuations of civil society, and will live and flourish in all its tender charities, in all its sweet enjoyments, and in all its moral force, in the humble cottage as well as in the costly palace, under the shadow of liberty as well as under the frowns of despotism, in every nation, age, and clime.  Like the church of which it is the type, it can never be made desolate; break it up on earth, and you find it in heaven.  Its nuptial union with the church is like that between the latter and Christ.  Nothing can throw over our homes a higher sanctity, or invest them with greater beauty, or be to them a greater bulwark of strength, than the church.  Home is the nursery of the church.  “Those who are planted in the house of the Lord shall flourish in the courts of our God, and shall bring forth fruit in old age.”

Thus, therefore, we see that the relation between the Christian home and the church is one of mutual dependence.  The latter, as the highest form of religious association, demands the former, and the former looks to the latter as its completion.  Where the religion of the family does not move in the element of the church, it is at best but sentimentalism on the one hand, and rationalism on the other.  It is a spurious pietism.  To be genuine it must be moulded by the church.  Without this it is destitute of sterling principle, of a living-faith, of well-directed effort and lofty aims.  The family which does not move in the element of the church is a perversion of the true purpose of God in its institution.  It will afford no legitimate development of Christian doctrine, and the whole scheme of its religion will rest for its execution upon unreliable agencies extraneous to home itself.  Hence we find that the piety of those families or individuals that isolate themselves from the church, is at best but ephemeral in its existence, contracted in spirit, moving and operating by mere impulse and irregular starts, and withal destitute of vitality and saving influence.  A death-bed scene may awaken a transient and visionary sense of duty; adversity may startle the drowsy ear, and cause the parents to turn for the time to the souls of their children; but these continue only while the tear and the wound are fresh, and the apprehensions of the eternal world are moving in their terrible visions before them!

The efficacy of the Christian home, therefore, depends upon its true relation to the church.  The members should be conscious of this.  Then both parents and children Will appreciate the religious ministrations of home.  Then the former will not grow weary in well doing, but will have something to rest upon, something to look to; and the latter will love the church of their fathers, and venerate the family as its nursery.