Dathan and Abiram sinned, their wives and children, standing with them in the doors of their tents, are seen to descend alive with their fathers into the abyss. But we also behold Noah entering with his house into the ark: we can see that God meant the strange family bond for good.

These bonds of the family are more than imaginary; they are grounds of imputation. They belong to us as "fearfully and wonderfully made;" and as death visits the household, and a parent, a brother, a sister, or a child falls and is borne to the tomb, the souls of them that remain mourn in the depths of their nature as if a part of their very life were taken away. Human institutions, however carefully erected, though consecrated by oaths solemnly taken, and imposing ceremonies, yet reach no farther than interest or, at best, sentiment; but God's institutions reach to the very life of man, and take hold of his spiritual nature.

Thus has God set off every family from all other families, and given to it in all lands a seclusion, and a seclusion the more sacred as His word obtains a power the more sacred over the heart. The important reasons of this seclusion we shall see as we come to the second part of our discourse; but there is another thought connected with the sacredness of the institution which we cannot pass by. It is, that God has made the human family the symbol of heaven and of heavenly things. And so generally is this the case, that, were infidelity to succeed in its miserable attempt to break up the household, a vast portion of the word of God would become unintelligible, and all the best portions of our knowledge and highest conceptions of spiritual things would disappear. "He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh," nature itself has our modern reformers in derision, as they attempt to stir, and upheave, and re-arrange the pillars of this mighty government of God, in which it is the wisdom and the blessedness of ignorant man to take refuge as a bird in its mountain. How without the family could we comprehend God as a Father? The Parable of the Prodigal Son would be forever lost to us, and the Spirit of Adoption and our Father's House would become to us sounds of unknown significance. The life of Jesus would be as worthless to us as a myth to be swept into the rubbish of the past, for we could no longer comprehend the beauty of its pervading spirit of love, nor imitate His acts of fraternal and childlike affection. It is by the family that we understand the relations of the church to Christ as the Bride of the Lamb, and the Church as the mother of us all, by whom we are nourished and nurtured for a higher life, or the relations the redeemed are to sustain unto each other as they dwell in the "many mansions" and eat bread with the Elder Brother. But what a sanctity does the employment of the family images for such a purpose throw around this institution on which we are prone to look so slight

ingly. Taken for the service of the temple, "Holiness to the Lord" is written upon it. Having its origin in the dawnings of time, it has through all ages been a shadow of spiritual and heavenly realities-a reflection in these turbid waters of the light of our distant home. Ah! Christian parent, it was not when the stranger died that you looked from the symbol to the reality. It was when your child left you, you saw the mute beckonings of the young spirit as it was ascending to a Father's bosom, and to dwell with its kindred; then only you found consolation in the thought that this is the shadow that passeth away, but the substance abideth forever.

From what we have said it is evident that the family can be no otherwise than an institution of vast influence and power in the world. However simple its organization or limited its resources, there are in it so much of the wisdom and authority of God, that we can only cease to regard it with awe when we have lost all reverence for Him, or respect for His purposes, or fear of His judgments.

II. But we must now proceed to inquire, "What is the design of the Family institution in the divine economy?

Temporal though it be in its nature, yet the briefest observation will show us its most intimate connection with the eternal, its solemn bearing upon all that goes to make up our life in this world and the next-the divinely appointed habitation in which the young and ignorant spirit finds a temporal home. Unconscious as yet of its origin or destiny, of its capacities, of duty, of danger, coming an entire stranger into the universe it is never again to leave; it here derives its first impressions (which give a coloring to all others). It finds its ideas of what life is, or what is its end, where it meets the true or pretended guides which lead it onward or send it forth with instructions upon its endless journey. The family is the nursery of all those affections, the regulation and exercise of which is in all after-life to constitute the happiness or wretchedness of their possessor. Here it is, if ever, the basis is to be laid in parental authority for reverence and the spirit of submission; in parental truth for faith; in parental affection for filial love. We may best conceive how much we owe to the family in the development of the social affections by bringing before us a complete household, modelled and conducted according to the divine command. father, remembering that he is the representative of God and therefore careful to mingle his commands with affection, to see that they are founded in perfect righteousness and that therefore they are always obeyed. The mother, ever conscious that God has made her the representative of the church, and taking for her guidance the law of her God. And both looking up to Him who "giveth wisdom," and consecrating their children to holi

The

ness, would be sure of the return of reverential, affectionate, and trustful hearts. If affliction come, all their sons and daughters would rise up to comfort them; if disease-if poverty-enter as an "armed man," filial love would protect them as the shield of the mighty. When old age comes on, no neglect from ungrateful children would dishonor their "crown of glory," as leaning on the strong arm of manhood they would go down to rest in the grave. The moral effect of such a life no mind can estimate, or the value of such an education just when it is possible in the life of the soul, when it is to be decided what affections shall predominate, when the foundations are laid to which the building must conform. In such a family rise up the brotherly affections and their accompaniments, self-denial and mutual assistance, compassion for the sick, tenderness for the weak, sense of mutual rights, obedience to law among equals and for inferiors. In a word, all those characteristics which fit man for life in the world are here developed, and for this end the family is instituted. Qualities, which in individual men have awed or charmed the world, are traceable back to the family; and the greatest men the world has known, have confessed that to a father's or a mother's teaching they owed the impulse which sent them onward. The man's life as a citizen of this world will be mainly shaped by the influences of home. The orderly citizen most generally has come from the orderly home; the law-breaker from the lawless household. Go into the state prison and you will find it so; and hundreds, with one voice, will tell you in effect, "I was never in my home inspired with one high or true conception of life. My father never seemed to think of my futurity, or to know any responsibility. My mother lived for show and dress and vanity, and never imparted to me one lofty guiding thought. Without an idea of government I was sent into the world, and only by the stern, harsh, soulless edicts and penalties of the civil State am I educated for time and eternity. I had no home, or my home was like a hell." Thus does every family send out its representatives into the world to tell its secrets. But a truth of far greater importance is that in the design of God the Family is the nursery of the Church. Whether in the case of Abraham, the Family and the Church being one, God designed to lay down a great principle we need not now inquire; but that He afterwards taught the intimate connection of the two institutions is sufficiently evident, for He not only ordained the rite of circumcision and baptism to the household, but He solemnly enjoined upon His people to teach to their households, and especially to their children, the great truths held by the church, and to impress upon their minds its principles. "Thou shalt teach these things diligently to thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thy house, and when thou walkest by the way; when thou liest down, and when thou risest up.' Train up

your children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. The Christian family is holy. It is itself a miniature church, to which promises are made, yea, with which God enters into covenant, where praises are rendered, and the brotherly love, which afterward finds a field for exercise in the church at large, originates and is cultured. All the qualities which go to make one a useful or a useless member of the House of God, are developed in the family. On the one hand, benevolence, sympathy for suffering, gentleness, love for God's works of Nature, enlarged views of the world; or, on the other, covetousness, fear of poverty, ignorance of the wants of a great suffering world. It is of vast importance that Christian parents should understand that they are appointed by God to bring up, to edacate their children as members of the Church of Christ; that in their own hearts they are to keep that thought uppermost in all their discipline, remembering that in this great work they have the promised aid of God. And until they act upon this thought, they have done nothing of real value for their child. And the question often recurring to every Christian parent should be, not what is this child to be, as a member of society, but what is he to be in the church of Jesus Christ. Am I shaping his views in accordance with a calling so high and glorious, in accordance with the movings of Providence, and the signs of the times! We do not mean to assert that the parent can convert the child, but that he should train him up in the expectation of his conversion; should seek to develop those traits of character which make the useful Christian; should chisel the marble into shape, although he cannot give life. Let him act in faith, and the law of the kingdom is that life shall come.

But there is another truth to which we have already alluded, but which rises transcendent in magnitude, and in whose shadows we may well sit trembling-the family is the nursery for eternity. There is indeed one redeeming power beyond it, and that is the Church, and blessed be God! it has reclaimed thousands who have gone forth from Godless homes. But what are these to the millions who, under the power of a mighty and perverted law, are hurried from the habitations of men to the habitations of the lost. You are educating forever, ye parents, those immortal spirits whose emotions are seen in smiles or tears. They are spirits, oh! my hearer, that look forth upon you from their earthly house-that have mysteriously come to your dwelling as a home-that have entwined themselves around your hearts-that cling to you to guide them into rest. If you are wise, you will make no impress there without prayer for heavenly wisdom. We look forward into the eternal world, and behold a human spirit, who for ages has stood before the throne of God; and yet, amid the glory that envelopes him, we see the likeness he bore on earth. The powers that have become vast, are those which began to

move in the human family; reverence, trust, all found nutriment there; and the poor teachings of the earthly home are deathless, because they were imparted to a living soul. Neither will the 1 fires of hell eradicate the impress of the family influence; but still the lost soul will carry the family likeness; will trace back its emotions, its spirit of disobedience, its irreverence to that home of earth, where the prayerless parent baptized it for despair, and taught it to forsake the house of God, to live without prayer, to love gold, and to seek for rest in the honors of the fading world.

We can clearly see from this why God has secluded families and divided the earth into households. It is that we may definitely look upon the Family by itself as His institution, and that by countless instances He may show its power for good and for evil, and by terrible or encouraging examples and results of good or evil training. All over the earth and for thousands of years sending His mercy to the families that kept His commands, He has taught mankind, pouring out His fury on the families that called not on His name. Another reason equally important is seen for this separation of households, that each may for itself uncontrolled by others decide on obedience or disobedience. Thus God sets forth families, that wickedness may not be perpetual, that the curse may be cut off as the new household is formed after righteousness, but that continually the sources of influence may be new. That instinctive fear the Christian parent feels, lest the child should be contaminated with the world, is implanted by God, and accords with the divine design. It is that his family may be kept holy and become a centre of holy influence, that each like Abraham may with his household be separate from the godless and worldly, except to do them good; that here the voice of instruction may be heard; and here, and not among strangers, the training of the child for time and eternity may go on.

In this discourse, my friends, I have felt, and I think you have, that we have been wandering in. an ideal world; and as we look at the real conduct of most human families we are ready to ask, were not the instructions of the Bible upon the Family given for some other race? Alas! how has sin defaced all the beautiful things of God, and strewn the earth with broken fragments of the house of divine symmetry and proportion! Here and there the fair household virtues shine forth in this night of sin but separate, save as the Gospel has united them from the heavenly. My brethren, if we saw the Family in the light of revelation, we should look with the same horror upon the prayerless house, as we now do on a desecrated temple of God. Upon it we should see resting the frown of an incensed Deity, and awaiting it and all its unhappy inmates a doom over which human tragedy may not presume to utter its wail. The prayerless house is a doomed