CHAPTER VII.

Responsibilities of the christian home.

      “What a holy charge
  Is theirs!—­with what a kingly power their love
  Might rule the fountains of the new-born mind! 
  Warn them to wake at early dawn, and sow
  Good seed before the world has sown its tares.”

From the potent influence and moral stewardship of the Christian home, we may infer its responsibility.  The former is the argument for the latter.  The extent of the one is the measure of the other.  “To whom much is given, of them much will be required.”  Our responsibilities are thus commensurate with our abilities.  If the latter are properly devoted, we have our reward; if not, our curse.  God will hold us accountable for the achievements we make by the abilities he has given us.  If he gives us a field to cultivate, seed to sow, plants to train up, then we are responsible for the harvest, just in proportion to our agency in its production.  If there is not a harvest of the right kind, because we neglected to cultivate the soil, to sow the proper seed, and to train up the plants, then He will hold, us accountable, and “we shall not come out thence till we have paid the uttermost farthing.”

This is an evident gospel principle.  Who will doubt its application to the Christian home?  The family is such a field; the seed of good or evil the parents can sow therein; their children are young and tender plants, entrusted to their care; their mission from God is to “bring them up in his nurture” and to “train them in his ways.”  And where God gives the command, he also gives the power to obey.

If, then, by their neglect, these tender plants are blighted, grow up in the crooked ways of folly and iniquity, and the leprosy of sin spread its dreadful infection over all the posterity of home; if, as a consequence of their unfaithfulness, the family becomes a moral desolation, and the anathemas of unnumbered souls in perdition, rise up in the day of judgment against them; or if, on the other hand, as the fruit of their faithful stewardship, blessings and testimonials of gratitude are now pouring forth from the sainted loved ones in glory, is it not plain that a responsibility rests upon the Christian home, commensurate with, those abilities which God has given her, and with those interests he has entrusted to her care?

Let us look at the objective force of this.  The family is responsible for the kind of influence she exerts upon her members Look at this in its practical light.  There is a family.  God has given children to the parents.  How fondly they cling to them, and look up to them for support and direction.  They inherit from their parents a predisposition to evil or to good; they imitate them as their example, in all things, take their word as the law of life, and follow in their footsteps as the sure path to happiness.  These parents are members of the church, and, as such, have dedicated their children to the Lord at the altar of baptism, and there in the presence of God and a witnessing assembly, they vowed to bring them up in the nurture of their divine Master, and to minister in spiritual things to their souls.