Home-education should be religious.  As the child has a religious nature, religious wants, and a religious end to accomplish, it should receive from its parents a religious training.  Religion is educational.  We are commanded to teach religion to our children.  The admonition to “train up a child in the way he should go,” and to “bring him up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord,” is a scripture sanction of religious education.  Nature and the bible are the text-books for such a training.  The child should be taught natural and revealed religion.  Such education involves the development of the child’s religious nature, and the diligent use of those means by which it may become an adopted child of God.

Education should be suited to the wants and the destination of the child.  Religion is its first want,—­the one thing needful, the chief concern; and should, therefore, be the first object of attention in home-training.  The fear and love of God should be the first lesson taught.  This is the beginning of wisdom.  Teach your children to love Him above father and mother, sister and brother.  The child is capable of such ideas of God.  Children can possess the sentiment of God; and when this is instilled and developed as a rudiment of their character, they have a preparation for the grace of God.  What is the mere secular, without such a religious education?  It is education without its essence; for piety is the essence of all education.  Irreligious training is destructive,—­a curse rather than a blessing,—­only a training up to crime and to ruin.  “The mildew of a cultivated, but depraved mind, blights whatever it falls upon.”  “Religion,” says Dr. Barrow, “is the only science, which is equally and indispensably necessary to men of every rank, every age, and every profession.”  “The end of learning,” says Milton, “is to repair the ruins of our first parents, by requiring to know God aright, and out of that knowledge, to love Him, and to imitate Him.”

We see, therefore, that religious training is the only true palladium of your children’s happiness and destiny; and should be the great end of all home-teaching.  Tinge all their thoughts and feelings with a sense of eternity.  Train them up to build for another world.  Stamp the impress of a future life upon their tender hearts.  Beget in them longings after immortality.  See that their designs extend beyond this world.  As the Spartan mother gave character to her nation by the instructions she gave her child, so you give character to your religion, your church, your home, by the spiritual culture of your offspring.  Let the jewels you give them be the virtues and the gifts of the Holy Ghost,—­the ornaments of a meek and quiet spirit.

            “Take the germ, and make it
    A bud of moral beauty.  Let the dews
  Of knowledge and the light of virtue, wake it
    In richest fragrance and in purest hues.”