Is such, Christian brother, the sympathy of your home?  It will be a safeguard against the follies and the false interests of life.  It will restrict the fashionable taste and sentiments of the age.  It will teach wisdom to the pious mother, and be a sure defense against the dangers and indiscretions of the nursery and fashionable boarding school.  Under its influence, mothers will not trust the souls of their children to the guardianship of irreligious nurses, nor expose them to the perils of a corrupted and heartless fashion.  They will deny themselves the ruinous pleasures of a gay and reckless association with the world; and with maternal solicitude, attend upon the opening of those buds of life which God has committed to them.  The pious mother will wield her power over her children, by the force of this sympathy; for her’s is the deepest, purest, and most saving of all home-sympathy: 

                              “Earth may chill
  And sever other sympathies, and prove
  How weak all human bonds are—­it may kill
  Friendship, and crush hearts with them—­but the thrill
  Of the maternal breast must ever move
  In blest communion with her child, and fill
  Even heaven itself with prayers and hymns of love!”

CHAPTER XV.

Family prayer.

  “Hush! ’tis a holy hour,—­the quiet room
  Seems like a temple, while yon soft lamp sheds
  A faint and starry radiance through the room
  And the sweet stillness, down on yon bright heads
  With all their clustering locks, untouched by care,
  And bowed, as flowers are bowed with night,—­in prayer. 
  Gaze on, ’tis lovely—­childhood’s lip and cheek
  Mantling beneath its earnest brow of thought!”

Home-sympathy will prompt to family devotion.  The latter is the fruit of the former.  A prayerless home is destitute of religious sympathy.  The family demands prayer.  Its relation to God, its dependence and specific duties, involve devotion.  Communion with God constitutes a part of the intercourse and society of home.  The necessity of family prayer arises out of the home-constitution and mission.  Family mercies and blessings; family dangers and weaknesses; family hopes and temptations,—­all bespeak the importance of family worship.  If you occupy the responsible station of a parent; if God has made you the head of a religious household, and you profess to stand and live on the Lord’s side, then, tell me, have you not by implication vowed to maintain regular family worship?  Besides, the benefits and privilege of prayer develop the obligation of the family to engage in it.  Is not every privilege a duty?  And if it is a duty for individuals and congregations to pray, is it not, for a similar reason, the duty of the family to establish her altar of devotion?  As a family we daily need and receive mercies, daily sin, are tempted and in danger every day; why not then as a family daily pray?