The family

Contents

Preface Page 9

Chapter II

The Family, a Religious Institution. — As truly so as the Church — established by God — recognised by him as a religious institution — religious instruction enjoined in it — promises and threatenings addressed to it. Family sacrifices. God covenants with families. The family recognised in the ten commandments. Covenant under the christian dispensation. Correspondence between the state of the family institution and true piety. The opposition of infidelity. The guardianship of God. An illustration 23

Chapter III

The Family, a Religious Institution, (continued.) — Internal evidence. Miracle at Cana of Galilee. Duty of ministers. Position of irreligious parents. Pitiable condition of the children of such parents. Why parental affection is implanted so deeply. Obligation of household prayer. Duty of the church to the family. Every house a sanctuary. Remarks on multiplied religious services. , , 33

1* vi.

CONTENTS.

Chapter IV

The Family Constitution.— Heaven the model of a christian family. God our real, and man but our representative father. The father, officially considered, bears the image of God. The wisdom and beneficence of this constitution. Remarks on Psalm 82d. Observations on the general structure of society. Application to the family

Chapter V

The Chief Matter of Parental Solicitude.— This a natural subject of inquiry. Folly of seeking chiefly the things of this world. The supreme importance of piety. The neglect of this matter— an anecdote illustrating it. Piety, when the end of family arrangements, causes the family to harmonize with heaven

Chapter VI

Habits of Childhood.— Obedience— the dependence of man teaches the duty. It is the essence of creature holiness. It should be the prominent habit inculcated. Love. It is essential to genuine obedience. Character of heavenly obedience. The obedience of the church founded in love. Obedience of love ,

CHAPTER Vn.

Parental Duties and Responsibilities.— Parents should be mindful of them. They are not to intercept their children from God, but conduct them to him. Criminality of neglecting this. The parent a type of Godfallen— recovered by grace. The importance of parental duties— in view of the strength of early habits. Parents must govern as God governs— requiring constant and cheerful obedience. This duty solemn and imperative. The cruelty of neglecting it. The ruin consequent. The authority of conscience. The happiness

•of obedience A

CONTENTS vii

CHAPTER Vm.

On the Culture of Filial Obedience. — The mode of culture. How it is cultivated in heaven. The Divine method of advancing it on earth. In like manner to be cultivated in the family. Father's influence. Maternal ascendency over the affections. Correspondence between family affection and family government. Error hi the indiscreet use of the rod. Its sphere denned. Method of exhibiting love. On concentrating filial affections. Words and tones of kindness. An anecdote. Duty of parental forbearance. Presence of parents with then children. Necessity of parents living near to God ., 112

CHAPTER IX.

The Season ofParent.il Effort. — Importance of childhood. An absurd doctrine. Childhood is the fit season. It is the indicated season. The baptismal ordinance. The teachings of Scripture. Invitations of the Saviour. The religion of a little child — wherein manifested. Childhood is a neglected season. Parental anxiety awakened too late. It is the season of scripture promise. Importance of intelligent and systematic and persevering - effort. Errors to be avoided 13-3

CHAPTER X.

On Guiding the Affections to God. — Remarks on the development of early piety. Extraordinary instances. How to secure piety towards God — an important inquiry. Means to be employed. Children to be taught, early, of God. Religion to be rendered pleasing and attractive. Stated means of grace, in and out of the family, to be employed. An holy example to be set. Evil influences to be arrested. Dependence on divine gTace 149 viii.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER. XI.

The Family Covenant and Seal.— Encouragement to parents. The wants of the family not forgotten in the provisions of redemption. There is a family covenant. Signification of covenant. Promise to Abraham. Subjects and import thereof. Conditions of the promise. Language of the Old Testament concerning this promise. Connection of the promise with parental fidelity. The promise to Abraham inherited by all Gentile believers. Proved by the language of the promise— by the practices of the Jews— by the prophecies— by the New Testament. Community of interest in Christ Privileges of the present, not less than those of the past dispensation. The Seal of the Covenant. Infant baptism. Its relation to circumcision. Obliffatorv upon all believing parents. An objector answered. Utilitv of the ordinance. Children of believers, the only subjects. 1

CHAPTER XH.

The Family Covenant, (continued.)— The covenant definite : securing blessings to the children of aU obedient parents. Definiteness essential to a covenant. Terms of the covenant are not indefinite. An argument derived from parental affections. These affections implanted by God, and regarded in the provisions of his grace. Abundance of children promised to God : s people. Neeled of parents, and consequent failure on their part in confirming the covenant. Blessings proportionate to fidelity. Motives to holiness y

CHAPTER xm.

Preface

It is, by no means, a just impression with regard to every subject, that it becomes exhausted, or necessarily irksome, in proportion to the frequency with which it is treated. The polish of the marble will continue the same under the hands of successive workmen, until the very stone itself be gone. The lustre of the gold cannot be effaced by attrition. And so with many subjects on which our minds may act. They are incapable of exhaustion. They are invested with a deep and permanent interest, even though no new beauty be discovered, and no new truth be brought to light.

If the author judges right, the subject which he attempts to treat in the following pages is of the class described. It is common; but from its very nature and relations it can never be divested of deep interest and profit, while the parental relation continues, and especially while there are christian parents to look upon their little ones as entering upon an immortal career.

Home is a precious sanctuary; and the influences that are active there are of incalculable importance. That state of society which fosters a just appreciation of the family relation, and causes its privileges and joys to be

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PREFACE.

prized and preserved in the greatest purity, is one most to be desired. The quiet of a rural village is generally more favorable to healthful family influences, and to the inviolateness of the household sanctuary, than the excitement of a commercial place. Whatever tends to divert the thoughts or the presence of parents or children away from their own firesides, and send them elsewhere for greater enjoyment, tends seriously to infringe the power and the benefits of the family.

Let those who have gone from the quiet places of their youth, where they were educated, amid the sacred restraints and endearments of a well-ordered rural home, and are now resident, with their own growing households, in the midst of some more bustling town, or in the bosom of some vast and whirling metropolis— let them look back and contrast the home of their own youthful days with the present home of their children, and they cannot fail to see the peculiar advantages of the former, and the besetting snares of the latter. Amid the ten thousand diversions of the city, frequently operating, alike upon parents and children, either drawing them from their own evening circles, or interrupting their hallowed quiet, by the infusion of countless frivolities, there is imminent danger that household bonds will become extensively weakened— that parental influence will become circumscribed— that the home of youth will be poisoned, and the foundations of society become out of course.

These dangers are somewhat proportionate, in any community, to the prevalence of a commercial spirit, with its many exciting and diverting influences. When have we heard of infidelity nurtured and growing strong

PREFACE.

xi amid rural hamlets; and when have we seen it there raising its destructive arm to strike down the family institution, and destroy 1 he tender ties of connubial and parental and filial love? Never. These relations are too sacred there, where all that is most precious in memory is associated with the humble homes of youth. But it is in those communities where external excitements and influences have supplanted or corrupted the more genial bonds and restraints of home, where associations of delight cluster, less and less exclusively, around the retired domestic circle— it is there that infidelity is conceived, and rears its head, and utters its iron voice of war upon all that virtue holds dear. And wherever there exists a diversion of interest and attachment from the quiet scenes of home, there the most noxious influences more easily prevail, and there is an easy tendency to all that is corrupt and desolate.

But it is manifest that the whole world is assuming a more busy, excited aspect. The quiet of past ages seems to have given away to the commercial enterprise and busy spirit that, on every hand, is becoming prevalent The causes of external excitement are increasing, and, along with them, the current seems to set from, rather than to, the domestic circle, and parental influences are in danger of being overwhelmed. These causes are not confined to populous places, but they stretch out with our rail-roads and canals, by our newspapers and lecturers, into the hitherto most retired portions of our country. There are more things out of doors, and fewer things within doors. The ends of the earth are brought together. Exciting topics of intelligence are borne to us on the wings of every wind. Commerce receives a new

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PKEFACE.

impulse and opens new temptations. Men are brought more into contact with those to whom they are strangers. Thus the sight of father and mother and home is in danger of becoming obsolete amid the thousand new things that are crowding on the minds, and awakening the wonder and the enterprise and ambition of the vigor^ ous and the joung.

It cannot justly excite our astonishment, then, to find the value of home depreciated,, its influences weakened, and its restraints less regarded. Sons often seem to look upon the parental abode as the place of mere boarding and lodging, and the opportunities of parental inspection, and the culture of those social feelings which chasten and sweeten life, become circumscribed to the few fleeting moments of a hurried repast. And thus becomes formed a taste for every thing abroad, and for but little at home.

It is for this taste that Satan is ready and diliaPnt to provide. And hence are set on foot shows, convivialities, plays, and entertainments, in countless multitude, to crowd on the distracted attention, and to steal even the hours of needful quiet and repose— to do their part in turning men loose from home, and breaking those hallowed social bonds which are the strong guards of viitue, and among the firmest barriers to vice. All these things come of those new and rapid developments of society, which have occurred in recent years, and the progress of which is to be more and more astonishing

To give these tendencies a more healthful direction, lyceums, literary associations, and kindred institutions of various kinds have been laudably set on foot, and, so far as wisely regulated, tend to impart correctness' to

PREFACE.

Xlll public taste, and a more elevated tone to public morals, But while these institutions may be made subservient of great good, they can never prove an equivalent to those hallowed associations of home, the absence of which can never be compensated. And it may be also partially attributable to the same cause thai there has been, of late years, a remarkable multiplication of religious services, that this awakened public attention, that goes so instinctively forth from home for its food and enjoyment, may find provided some healthful spiritual banquets. But it behooves us to guard, lest, while we seek lawfully to accommodate ourselves to these tendencies, we should seem to give them too great a sanction. And we are not to overlook, that one tendency of these multiplied religious services (we may be allowed to point out their dangers, without being understood to speak their condemnation.) may be to diaw attention away from the religious duties of the family — to lessen pious watchfulness and instructions there, and to let down that high tone of sacred importance which should ever attach to the strict religious culture of the family circle. Parents are to be the chief cultivators of the household soil, and it is in vain for them to think that, with profit, they can, either to the teacher or the preacher, "J&rm out" the spiritual interests of their children. And how often do we witness a species of this error, and see parents bringing their little ones within the reach of the more public instrumentalities, that they may receive there the tender impressions which they have failed to receive at home. And when childhood has become merged in youth, we see again these same unwilling children thrust into the sanctuary to be submitted to the 2 xiv

PREFACE.

exorcisms of some Boanerges, or the excitement of some wonderful measures, that those results may be produced, which might have been more reasonably looked for as the fruits of a wise and diligent domestic training, during the season of early childhood.

That this hasty sketch of the present state and tendencies of society is generally correct, the author thinks will be freely admitted. It may augment the fears of many that society is on the eve of trying times, and that the strength of the powers of darkness will triumph, more than ever, over all that Piety holds dear. If these evils (some may reason) have crept over the present generation, many of whose living parents are themselves the descendants of better times, what is to become of society, and household virtue and restraint, when the children of this more corrupt generation are, in turn, the parents of those that are to come, and when the golden days of more quiet times, and stronger family ties have passed to be remembered as fables? Let us look at this, not with despondency and fear, but in the spirit of christian hope, and confidence, and aroused action. "A prudent man foreseeth the evil, and hideth himself" — i. e. makes suitable preparation against the day of its coming.

But how shall we effect this? Shall we attempt to stay the causes of all these changes, and to reinstate the security of more ancient times by lessening the temptations of the present? Shall we, as a religious community, set our faces against all the improvements of the age? Shall we clip the wings of commerce? Shall we dry up the resources of ingenuity, and place our ban upon the spring- tide of prosperity? Shall we demolish our rail-roads and fill up our canals, and depopulate our

PREFACE.

XV towns and cities, and attempt to forbid that many shall "go to and fro in the earth and knowledge be increased?" because, forsooth, these things bring with them a vast amount of excitement and temptation, and seem to threaten the serious injury or ruin of some of our most cherished and important religious institutions! By no means. We are only witnessing a new phase of human society — a phase to which Christianity must accommodate itself— a phase, to the demands of which, our energies should be aroused. We are not to despond, because, at first, evil influences seem to preponderate. They are ever more on the alert, and our religious sensibilities are the slowest to be awakened to efficient action.

It indeed cannot have occurred that Christianity has grown decrepid; that it cannot grapple with and surmount its new difficulties; that it must retire from business and excitement, lest its feeble flame be extinguished, and that it must therefore oppose all advancement of the physical aud Intellectual energies of a fallen world, lest it be found inadequate to its task of regenerating and ruling iti

No. It is not thus that we relinquish its claim to be £{ the power of God and the wisdom of God." Though, through the tardiness and ill-discipline of its earthly host, it may ever seem, for a while, to wane under the more rapidly developing powers of an unsanctified world, still it will rise and continue to rise, until, its present difficulties proving its eventual advantages, it meets with the fulfillment of prophecy, that "Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low: and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it."

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PREFACE.

The application of these remarks is plain. Do we behold the family institution in danger of waning before the excitements of the age — its restraints in danger of being diminished — its hallowed influences in danger of being overwhelmed? Then there is the louder call upon the fidelity of all who can exert the least counteracting influence. And among all, and above all, let the pulpit be heard to speak forth from its eminence, and warn of the increasing dangers of household neglect. Let voice answer to voice from the watch-towers of Zion, as her watchmen foresee the danger. Let them "cry aloud and spare not," wherever error prevails; being constant, patient and wise in their instructions. Let Bishops, and Elders, and Deacons be "ensamples unto the flock," each ruling "well his own house, having his children in subjection with all gravity." And let all, to whom in any measure is given the oversight of the flock of God, see to it, that while they are engaging with zeal in the various departments of benevolent effort, which are of more recent origin, that they do not enforce with diminished, but with a proportionally increased earnestness the obligations of household duties. Labors, like virtues, are often to be valued according to their unobtrusiveness.

To look after families — to teach, and warn, and admonish from house to house, or for parents to sit amid the quiet of their own domestic circles, and labor, and teach, and pray, savors but little of ostentation. But these nurseries are not to be neglected. The good that the people of God secure to the cause of Christ by their more public and high sounding efforts, is secured at a ruinous cost, if the religious culture of christian households is thereby in the least relaxed.

PREFACE.

xvu

If the following pages, which owe their origin to the views expressed above, shall be found, in the humblest degree, to contribute to the desired end, the author's wishes will be fully met. They were first prepared and delivered as discourses to the congregation under his pastoral charge, and are now, in their present form, Dedicated to the Maternal Association in connection with his church and people. The existence of that association was the occasion of their delivery from the pulpit; and the interest manifested by its members, together with their personal efforts, have been one of the chief causes of their assuming this more permanent form.

If, in the limited sphere of the author's personal acquaintance and influence, they should prove acceptable and useful, all his ambition will be gratified, while all his reasonable expectations will be fully answered.

E. H.

Second Presbyterian Church, > Troy, 2V. F., June, 1840. 5

Chapter I Introductory

Every thing that God has made, he has made for his own glory. There is not a single soul or thing, law or relation, at present existing according to the first pure ordinance of heaven, but what has a religious adaptation. Every wonder and every law of physical nature is fitted to declare the glory of God to us, and to attract our meditations and our hearts upward to Him,

If, then, even things inanimate, and their various relations and dependencies, may be declared to be religious, in the sense of being adapted to the highest religious end — the glory of God ; surely all the divinely instituted social relations are of an eminently religious character. For religion consists in the right and holy exercise of the social affections toward God, and toward one another. And whatever institutions, therefore, God has es^

INTRODUCTORY.

tablished for the culture of the social feelings and relations of his intelligent creatures, must be pre-eminently religious. They have in view, more immediately than any thing else, the training of man for the love and worship of God, and, being themselves ordered and fashioned, in all their laws and relations, by Infinite Wisdom, they must constitute that earthly sphere, in which all the means of human sanctification are found resident and efficient.

Of these social institutions there are three, the character, modes and laws of which seem to be more directly ordained of God. There is, first, that great universal family which embraces all perfect and confirmed intelligencies above, over which Jehovah presides, as the ever-living and watchful Head, and in the midst of which is His peculiar glory and manifested presence. Here is the throne of His holiness and power, encircled, day and night, by the attendance and praises of His holy and His happy creatures.

It is on earth that we find the other two religious institutions or societies, holding a close relation and similitude to their great prototype, and being the ordained earthly instrumentalities whereby our ruined race may be raised to the great and the perfect family above. These two are the

INTRODUCTORY. *i

Family and the Church. These institutions contain within themselves a sufficiency for the entire control and redemption of ruined man. They embrace all of government that can lay claim to direct divine authority, and are, in themselves, therefore, sufficient for all its purposes. The necessity of human governments arise not from the defect, but from the simple neglect of that which is divine. Such a necessity, it is readily conceded, exists, and such governments are recognised in scripture as holding a secondary authority over all men.

But, though we do not look for the time ever to come, when the principles of the divine government will be so fully developed and established on earth, as to supersede the existing necessity of those that are human ; still we should seek to approximate that developement, and God's people should learn more and more of the pre-eminent importance and efficiency of those institutions which have their origin in Infinite Wisdom, and are ordained by direct divine authority.

The views taken in the following pages are mainly based, not merely on a connection, but on an actual similitude between the Family and the Church on earth, and the great Family above. The former are the miniatures of the latter, and

INTRODUCTORY.

as such are intended as introductory to its heavenly enjoyments. It is in the light of this similitude that the author attempts to exhibit the parental relation and responsibilities. He hopes that, by the blessing of God, it may make an unwonted impress upon some parents, concerning the high dignity and exalted duties of their station.

Chapter II. The Family, A Religious Institution

That the Church of Christ is a purely religious institution, is unquestionable. But that the family is as strictly and solely so, is not a conviction that is generally and definitely prevalent. It is regarded as exerting a high moral influence ; as being the proper nursery of the future man, and of the undying spirit : but it is far from being invested, in the popular mind, with that high and heaven-derived religious character which properly attaches to it. It is the object of this chapter to show, that the Family is as strictly a religious institution as the Church. Where the form of either exists without the indwelling spirit of piety, they are perverted and corrupt. The remark is equally applicable to both, for an irreligious family is as essentially an abhorrence in the sight of God, as a soulless and corrupt church.

That God has established the social eel a* tion of the Faxily ciecle. is a full justification of the foregoing remarks. When He had laid the foundations of the earth, and fixed the bounds of the sea. and set in sure and lasting order all material things. He established the law of marriage also to regulate man. whom He had made a social and moral being. It was thus that, in this institution. He laid the foundation of society, on which, the whole superstructure of morality and piety was to rest. Man was at that time, a holy being, and all the circumstances and relations that were then ordered concerning him. had reference to the holy end for which he was created. Therefore it is, that this family relation, being established by God for the right regulation and developement of holy man., is a purely religious institution.

Yea. and it has even a pre-eminence over the church, in the fact of its pre- existence. It was the first religious institution. It was. as we shall see in subsequent chapters, an earthly type, pure and symmetrical, of the heavenly world : it was an appropriate nursery of newly created beings, and was fully adapted to prepare them tor that family, in which God is recognised, more directly, as the Father, and of which, in itself, it was the lovely miniature.

The Church ranks after it in order of time, because it ranks after it, in order of necessity. It was not until man, through the blinding influence of sin, lost sight of the great family above, that the church, with its rich provisions for man's fallen state, became necessary as a remedial institution, The church on earth is now a more extended type than the family, embodying, more palpably, to the darkened eye of man, the heavenly world, to which it is introductory. It is a new link inserted to reconnect the broken chain. Heaven being forgotten, the Church is the New Jerusalem which has come dozen from heaven, embosoming unnumbered blessings in the illustrations it affords to man of the glorious church above ; in the instructions it furnishes ; and in the regenerating and sanctifying grace it dispenses.

Thus it appears, not only that the Family is as truly a religious institution as the Church, but that, in fact of priority at least, it claims a pre-eminence. And it is now, what it ever has been, and ever will be in this world, the great corner stone of the whole social religious superstructure.*

* That the marriage relation was intended to be perpetual, is evident from the words employed by the sacred writer, " Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife." It had evident reference to the posterity of this first pair,

But both the character and the perpetuity of the Family, as a religious institution, is farther seen in the fact that God deals wtth axd recognises it as such. He gives promises unto the households of those who will fear Him and keep His commandments. He threatens household calamities as the consequence of parental disobedience. He enjoins religious duties in families, Alluding to his commandments and ordinances, He says, " And ye shall teach them to your children, speaking of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, when thou liest down and when thou risest up : and thou shalt write them upon the door posts of thine house, and upon thy gates ; that your days may be multiplied and the days of your children in the land which the Lord sware unto your fathers to give them, as the days of heaven upon the earth."

The scriptures abound with passages of like na-

for of them only could the leaving of father or mother be predicated. And the words still following, " and they shall be one flesh," referriD 2 here, as they do, to a " man" leaving his father and mother and cleaving unto his " wife," and quoted as they are by our Saviour, « and they twain shall be one flesh," indicate clearly that, whatever we may say of the subsequent practice of polygamy, it had the reverse of a sanction in the original institution of marriage. The tamily relation, therefore, as established and intended to be perpetual is the intimate and endeared relation, subsisting between one man and his one wife, and their immediate children.

tare, most unequivocally confirming the declaration that God deals with families as religious institutions. It is to the faithful discharge of household duties, and the consistent manifestation of family piety, that He makes the amplest promises of temporal and spiritual blessings : and to the neglect of these that He threatens the severest judgments.

Under the old Dispensation which, though ceremonial, was typical of that which is more spiritual, family sacrifices were instituted ; especially the sacrifice of the Paschal Lamb by every household. And from the earliest ages of the world, as recorded in scripture, the heads of households were accustomed to offer their household sacrifices. And as there can be no doubt that these sacrifices were of divine origin, we cannot but interpret their practice in the patriarchal, and subsequently in all the Israelitish families, as a seal, divinely set, to distinguish them as the primary religious communities.

God covenanted with Abraham and his seed ; and he established circumcision as the seal and token of his solemn covenant with the families of the Jews. Thus here we have, by God himself, in this covenant transaction, another distinct recognition of the family institution as one strictly religious.

THE FAMILY, A RELIGIOUS INSTITUTION.

Among the ten commandments, the requirements of which are moral, and therefore perpetual, the fifth was framed expressly for the Family; the second contains a striking instance of God's purposed dealings with families, and the fourth enjoins upon the parent the duty of direct and authoritative religious supervision of his household. And when it is borne in mind that these moral laws are based in the very nature of things, and therefore, ever have been and ever will be binding, we can be no longer at a loss how to view the Family institution. Its recognition here, indicates decisively that it is in its character religious ; in its origin coeval, and in its purposed existence coextensive with the human race.