ness cannot rest the body. No good comes of it. The truest rest is that which comes, not of lethargy, but of simple change of work; and the father, mother, son, daughter, who will rise as early on Sunday as on any other day, and set about the Sunday's duties, will find themselves as truly refreshed when Monday comes as those who loitered long in bed, while they will have gained a day in which every thing had its proper place and time. It is a grave mistake of the home to allow the earlier hours of its Sundays to be spent in sleep.

To consecrate and complete the home, there must be religion in it; and, as the world and life are, Sunday must be looked to mainly for the giving that consecration and completeness. In itself the home is a sacred place. Its founder is God. Its gifts, its possibilities are his. The things sacred to the soul and life are of it. It is the place of birth, of growth, of death, and these three great mysteries, these processes in our being, sanctify it unto us. Distinctively religious then should the home be made by us, and every father and mother be known as the priest and priestess of the domestic altar. The old Levitical law should be revived among us, and every man "sanctify his house to be holy unto the Lord."

But here we are in the midst of difficulties various and great, which many seem to think they escape by avoiding altogether, — which are only to be escaped

by being met. What is to be the religion of home, and by what means is it to be established?

The religion of home should be broad and genial as religion in itself is, not confined to seasons and to tasks, not to catechisms and articles of faith, not to set acts and forms, not to the Bible and devotion, but liberal and complete, enfolding and touching every thing, everybody, every position, relation, act, — joys as well as sorrows, the least, the common, as well as the greatest and the exceptional. It should have all the reverence of the first commandment, and all the scope of the second, and this secured by word and work, by precept, by influence direct and indirect, not by causing to know and do, but by leading the way in knowing and doing. The thing most to be apprehended, most to guard against, is disgusting the members of the home with the subject of religion, a thing many well-meaning homes have done.

I presume that nearly every child in what would commonly be called a Christian home has been taught to pray. That is, in its early childhood it was taught the Lord's Prayer, or some simple petition which it nightly repeated to its mother. But this habit would seem to be put away with other childish things, and the parent really knows nothing about the devotional habits of the growing boys and girls, who probably have long ago discontinued a practice whose spiritual

meaning and importance they never knew any thing about. Of the religious habits of their parents children are left very much in the dark, save as a suspicion may grow in their minds that they talk of, and perhaps demand of them, that of which in themselves they give no evidence. A child will sometimes be so simple as to turn upon a parent and ask him if he prays, or believes, or does this or that, to the parental confusion, perhaps, though scarcely to his reformation. This is wrong. No child should ever be left to doubt or suspect a parent's faith. There should be a free and true communion on this first and greatest of subjects, - an interchange of thought and feeling, purpose and hope. Home was made for the soul, and the parent is parent of it as well as of the body, and he has but skimmed the surface of his duty who has fed and fashioned the body, stored and disciplined the mind, but done nothing for the soul. I do not believe in talk about one's inner life for talk's sake, but how it would hallow the relation of parent and child, help them both, if the interior of each heart were laid bare, as it many times may be in the confidential intercourse of home, and how it would speed a child onward in its work could it but know that through just these experiences and struggles father and mother have passed before.

I do not believe much in children's going to church.

I do not understand upon what grounds any one can reasonably expect a child, the very incarnation of unrest, to sit all dressed and prim, with his feet dangling in the air, for a mortal hour or more, when he cannot be kept still five minutes at home. It is an idea that had better be exploded, that there is any good to come from such a martyrdom. Between the sufferings of the child, the anxiety of the mother, and the general disturbance in the neighborhood if any thing goes wrong, an amount of wretchedness results from the experiment not to be compensated by any advantage supposed to be derived from the early formation of a habit. The child can get no instruction from the church services, the subjects treated and the mode of treatment are alike beyond his grasp. You do not take him to Lyceum lectures, you do not read to him dry essays of morality, or expect him to comprehend or delight in many of the topics of your own discourse; and how can you expect that the constrained attitude and enforced decorum of the pew should be any thing short of a penance, endangering rather than securing an after habit or after love of attendance. I do not believe the church is any place for children under ten years of age, unless they go willingly, and require no oversight. There is an amount of misery growing out of this custom that would amaze us if we could become cognizant of it. The place for

the child on the Sunday is at home, and his earlier religious culture should be exclusively of it.

I say this not forgetting that there is such an institution as the Sunday school. Much as I think it capable of accomplishing, there grows in me the conviction that it has had a direct and largely injurious effect upon religious training in our homes, and, from being a supplement, has ended in supplanting the teaching of home. The home should be the Sunday school of the child. It used to be so; but no one can doubt that, since the prevalence of this institution, there has been a marked decay in the religious instruction of home, even very conscientious and careful parents delegating this delicate task. I think it a pity that the Sunday school ever departed from its original mission to the poor, the ignorant, and degraded. It has a work and a place among them; it supplies what they could not otherwise obtain. It is not so with us. We are capable of teaching our children, any one of us. That is one of the things we ought not to allow any other to do for us; that is one of the things for which Sunday was given to the home; virtually, that is one of the things we engaged to do when God intrusted to our keeping the immortal spirits of our children; and through all discouragement, defeat, and failure, we are to toil at it, till, by experiment and the blessing of God, we have arrived