But the relation between the Christian home and the church implies reciprocal obligations and duties.  The former should not only exist under the patronage of the latter, but in the spirit of a true subordination.  Parents should teach and rule and appropriate the means of grace under the supervision of the church.  They should take their household, with them to her public service, send their children to her schools, and in all respects bring them up in her nurture and admonition.

Thus the family should exist as the faithful daughter of the church; and as the latter in the wilderness “leaned upon her beloved,” so the former should repose itself upon her who is “the mother of us all,” and in whom, as the “body of Christ,” shall “all the families of the earth be blessed.”  As her loving and confiding daughter, the family should live under her government and discipline, listen to her maternal voice, and be led by her maternal hand.  The minister in his pastoral functions, is the representative of the church in each of the families of his flock; and should, therefore, be received, loved, confided in and obeyed, as such.  The home that repels his proffered ministrations in the name and according to the will of the church, throws off its allegiance to the latter, and through it, to Christ,—­her glorious head, and is hence unworthy of the name of Christian home.  The true Christian home yearns after the church, loves to lean upon it, to look up to it, to consecrate all to it, to move and develop its interests in the sphere of the church, and to labor to complete itself in it.

  “For her my tears shall fall;
    For her my prayers ascend;
  To her my cares and toils be giv’n,
    Till toils and cares shall end.”

CHAPTER V.

Home influence.

  “By the soft green light in the woody glade,
  On the banks of moss, where thy childhood play’d;
  By the gathering round the winter hearth,
  When the twilight call’d unto household mirth,
  By the quiet hour when hearts unite
  In the parting prayer and the kind ‘Good night;’
  By the smiling eye and the loving tone,
  Over thy life has the spell been thrown,
  And bless that gift, it hath gentle might,
  A guarding power and a guiding light!”

The Christian home has an influence which is stronger than death.  It is a law to our hearts, and binds us with, a spell which neither time nor change can break.  The darkest villainies which have disgraced humanity cannot neutralize it.  Gray-haired and demon guilt will make his dismal cell the sacred urn of tears wept over the memories of home; and these will soften and melt into penitence even the heart of adamant.

[Illustration:  Maternal Influence]

The home-influence is either a blessing or a curse, either for good or for evil.  It cannot be neutral.  In either case it is mighty, commencing with our birth, going with us through life, clinging to us in death, and reaching into the eternal world.  It is that unitive power which arises out of the manifold relations and associations of domestic life.  The specific influences of husband and wife, of parent and child, of brother and sister, of teacher and pupil, united and harmoniously blended, constitute the home-influence.