Yet in this home, no prayer is offered up, no bible instructions given, no holy example set, no Christian government and discipline instituted, no religious interests promoted.  But on the other hand, sin is overlooked, winked at, and the world alone sought.  These children behold their parents toil day after day to provide for their natural life; they notice the interest they take in their health and education, and the self-denial with which they seek to secure for them a temporal competency.  And from all this they quickly and very justly infer that their parents love their bodies and value this world, and by the force of filial imitation they soon learn to do the same, and with their parents, neglect their souls and kneel at the altars of Mammon rather than bow in prayer before God.  And thus they go on from one step in departure from God to another, until they die without hope and without salvation.

Tell me now, will not God hold these parents responsible for the ruin of their children?  Will not the “blood of their destruction rest upon them?” Will not the “voice of that blood” cry out from their family against them?  If, as a consequence of their negligence and of the unholy influence they exerted upon them, they become desperadoes in crime and villainy, and at last drench their hands in a brother’s blood; and expiate their guilt upon the gibbet, and from there go down to the grave of infamy and to the hell of the murderer, will not their blood, “cry unto them,” and will not the woes and anathemas of Almighty God come in upon them like a flood?

Home-responsibility may be inferred from the relation of the family to God as a stewardship.  We have seen that parents are stewards of God in their household, and that as such they are placed over their children, invested with delegated authority.  God entrusts them to the care of their parents.  Their nature is pliable, fit for any impression, exposed to sin and ruin, entering upon a course of life which must terminate in eternal happiness or misery, with bodies to develop, minds to educate, hearts to mould, volitions to direct, habits to form, energies to rule, pursuits to follow, interests to secure, temptations to resist, trials to endure, souls to save!  Oh, how the parental heart must swell with emotions too big for utterance, when they contemplate these features of their important trust.  What a mission this, to superintend the character and shape the destiny of such a being!  Such is the plastic power you exert upon it, that upon your guidance will hinge its weal or its woe; and yours, therefore, will be the lasting benefit or the lasting shame.  What you are now doing for your children is incorporated with their very being, and will be as imperishable as their undying souls.  As the stewards of God, your provision for them will be “either a savor of life unto life or a savor of death unto death.”