there so conducted as to make it a matter of surprise that any of the children of such households should turn out otherwise than pious!  How many that lead us greatly to wonder that any of the children should turn out otherwise than irreligious!  On the other hand, how subduing and how melting are the fervent supplications of a godly and consistent father, when his voice, tremulous with emotion, is giving utterance to the desires of his heart to the God of heaven for the children bending around him!  Is there, out of heaven, a sight more deeply interesting than a family, gathered at morning or evening prayer, where the worship is what it ought to be?”

It is hardly to be supposed that any pious heads, or pious members, of American households, are in doubt whether family worship be a duty.  We are rather to take it for granted, as a duty universally acknowledged among Christians, nature itself serving to suggest and teach it, and the word of God abundantly confirming and enforcing it, both by precept and example.  God himself being the author and constitutor of the family relation, it is but a dictate of reason that He should be owned and acknowledged as such, “who setteth the children of men in families like a flock, who hath strengthened the bars of thy gates, and hath blessed thy children within thee.”  Of whom it is said, “Lo, children are an heritage of the Lord, and the fruit of the womb is his reward.”

It is this great Family-God, whose solemn charges, by his servant Moses, are as binding upon Christian families now as of old upon the children of Israel—­Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might:  and these words which I command thee this day shall be in thy heart:  and thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and thou shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down and when thou risest up.

This is God’s command, and He will hold every parent responsible for the religious instruction of his or her children.  In such an education for God, which is the duty of the parent and the right of the child, the habit of family worship constitutes an essential part.  Nothing can make up for the want of this.  Neither the best of preaching and instruction in the sanctuary or Sabbath-school, nor the finest education abroad, in the boarding-schools or seminaries, will at all answer for the daily discipline of family religion.  This is something which no artificial accomplishment can supply.  A religious home education, under the daily influence of family worship, and the devout acknowledgment of God at the frugal board, and the godly example and instruction of a pious parentage, are more influential upon the future character and destiny of the child than all the other agencies put together.