And what an effectual antidote are such instructions against vice and temptation!  How many have by them been arrested from the devouring jaws of infidelity and ruin!  Thus it was with John Randolph, who said that in the days of the French revolution, when infidel reason took the place of God and the bible, and infidelity prowled unmolested throughout France, he would have become an infidel himself, had it not been for the remembrance of his childhood days, when his pious mother taught him to kneel by her side, and to say, “Our Father, who art in heaven!” Thus, too, with the pious and learned J.Q.  Adams, who daily repeated the little prayers his mother taught him when a child.

Thus, then, we see that parents are encouraged by the most brilliant examples of history, to teach their children religion at the home-fireside, “when thou liest down and risest up.”  Oh, let the gentle courtesies and sweet endearments of home engrave the Word and Spirit of God upon their tender hearts.  Wait not until they are matured in rebellion, and sin lay beds of flinty rock over their hearts; but let them breathe from infancy the atmosphere of holiness, and drink from the living fountains of divine truth.  See that your homes become their birth-place in the spiritual kingdom of Christ.

Such religious training will be the guardian of their future life, and will fortify them against impending evil.  What made Daniel steadfast amidst all the efforts to heathenize him during his captivity in Babylon?  His early religious culture.  It was the means of his preservation.  The truth had been deeply engraven upon his heart when young, and nothing could ever efface it.  His early home-impressions glowed there with pristine freshness and power amid all the terrors which surrounded him in the den and before the throne of his implacable foe.  These home instructions may be silenced for a time, but never destroyed.  They may be overshadowed, but not annihilated.  Says Dr. Cumming, “The words spoken by parents to their children in the privacy of home are like words spoken in a whispering-gallery, and will be clearly heard at the distance of years, and along the corridors of ages that are yet to come.  They will prove like the lone star to the mariner upon a dark and stormy sea, associated with a mother’s love, with a father’s example, with the roof-tree beneath which they lived and loved, and will prove in after life to mould the man and enable him to adorn and improve the age in which he is placed.”

Be faithful, therefore, in the spiritual culture of your children.  Give them “line upon line and precept upon precept, here a little and there a little.”  Lead them on by degrees to Christ until each indelible impression becomes an established habit.  In the morning of their life sow the seed; and God will give the increase; and then in the day of judgment your children will rise up and call you blessed!

SECTION II.