It is, therefore, a duty which you cannot shake off, and which involves both for you and for your child, the most momentous consequences.  Christian parents! be faithful to this duty.  Magnify your office as a teacher; be faithful to your household as a school.  Diligently serve your children as the pupils that God has put under your care.  Educate them for Him.  Teach them to “walk by faith, not by sight.”  Cultivate in them a sense of the unseen world,—­the feeling of the actual influence of the Spirit of God, the guardianship of his holy angels, and of the communion of saints.  Teach them how to live and how to die; and by the force of your own holy example allure them to the cross, and lead them onward and upward in the living way of eternal life.  You are encouraged to do so by the assurance of God that “when they grow old they will not depart from it.”

CHAPTER XVII.

Family habits.

  “Dost thou live, man, dost thou live, or only breathe and labor? 
  Art thou free, or enslaved to a routine, the daily machinery of habit? 
  For one man is quickened into life, where thousands exist as in a torpor,
  Feeding, toiling, sleeping, an insensate weary round;
  The plough, or the ledger, or the trade, with animal cares and indolence,
  Make the mass of vital years a heavy lump unleavened.”

Much of the character, usefulness and happiness of home depend upon home habits.  No one is without habits, good or bad.  They have much to do with our welfare here and hereafter.  Hence the importance of establishing proper habits.

Habit is a state of any thing, implying some continuance or permanence.  It may be formed by nature or induced by extraneous circumstances.  It is a settled disposition of the mind or body, involving an aptitude for the performance of certain actions, acquired by custom or frequent repetition.  There are habits of the body, of the mind, of action; physical, mental, moral and religious habits.  All these are included in the term home-habits.

Habit has been considered an “ultimate fact,” that is, one of those qualities of life which are found to exist, and beyond which no investigation can be made.  Habit may be referred to the law of action which pervades all vital being.  Nature demands the repetition of vital action, and habit arises from this demand and from the manner in which it is supplied.  It is the fruit of the operation of the law of repetition of action in all life.  Hence it is, that habit becomes a part of our very existence, and that the well-being and happiness of our existence depend so much upon it.

The facility of action depends upon habit.  In proportion as the actions of life become a habit, they will be easily performed, and performed with pleasure.  The capacity to establish habits is the consequence of the power given us to promote our own welfare.  This capacity is designed to bind us to that course of action which will accomplish the purposes of our existence.  If rightly used, it is the guardian of our happiness; but if misused it will be our certain ruin.  It will delight and fascinate until it subjugate our will, and lead us on, as in the case of the drunkard and the gambler, to infamy and to hell.