this is their family bible!  Ah! it is not so heartsome as that well-marked and long-used old bible which lies upon the table of the nursery room, speaking of many year’s service in family devotion!  The other unused bible seems like a stranger to the home-heart, and lies in the parlor just to show their visiting friends that they have a bible!  Go into the nursery and other private apartments of that home, and you see no bible, while you behold piles of romance and filthy novels,—­those exponents of a vitiated taste and a corrupt society, suited to destroy the young forever;—­whose outward appearance indicates a studied perusal by both parents and children, and shows perhaps that they have been wept over; and whose inward substance must ever nauseate healthy reason, as well as poison the heart of youth, leading them from the sober realities of life into a world of nonentities.

But upon the family bible you cannot trace the hand of diligent piety.  It is shoved back into some part of the room, as a worthless thing, obsolete and superfluous.  And see! it is not even kept in decent order.  The dust of many day’s neglect has gathered thick upon its lids.  Oh, Christian parents, when you thus close up the wells of salvation by the trash of degenerate taste and vitiated morals, you are despising the testimonies of the Lord, and leading your children step by step to the verge of destruction.  You may buy them splendid, bibles, gilt and clasped with gold, and have their names labeled in golden letters upon its lid; but if the good old family bible is neglected, and the yellow covered literature of the day substituted in its stead; if you permit them to buy and read love-sick tales in preference to their bible, and they see you do the same, you are but making a mock of God’s Word, and must answer before Him for your children’s neglect of its sacred pages.

Let me, therefore, affectionately admonish you to be faithful to that precious book you call the family bible.  Read it to your children every day.  From its sacred pages teach them the way to live and the way to die.  Let it be an opened, studied family chart to guide you and them in visions of untold glory to the many mansions of your Father’s offered home in heaven.  It will soothe your sorrows, calm your fears, strengthen your faith, brighten your hopes, and throw around the graves of the loved and the cherished dead, the light and promise of reunion in heaven!

  “A drop of balm from this rich store,
  Hath healed the broken heart once more. 
  Like angels round a dying bed,
  Its truths a heavenly radiance shed;
  And hovering on celestial wings,
  Breathe music from unnumbered strings.”

CHAPTER IX.

Infancy.

  “A babe in a house is a well-spring of pleasure, a messenger of
    peace and love;
  A resting place for innocence on earth; a link between angels and men;
  Yet it is a talent of trust to be rendered back with interest;
  A delight, but redolent of care, honey sweet, but lacking not the bitter,
  For character groweth day by day, and all things aid it in unfolding,
  And the bent unto good or evil may be given, in the hours of infancy.”