And then, when you travel outside the domestic circle, and mark the conduct of the heads and members of the family toward those outside--mark their business, if they be in business, hear the testimony of those who deal with them, as to the quality of their goods, the style and character of their work; the spirit and temper in which they carry on their business; such grasping and griping, such covetousness, such commercial trickery; nothing of God, nothing of Christ, nothing to distinguish them from the most thorough worldlings around; yea, the conduct of those very worldlings, of those who would never think of such a thing as family worship, would put them to shame. Under such painful and humiliating circumstances, what of the family worship--the family reading--the family altar? Alas! it is an empty formality--a powerless, worthless, unseemly proceeding; in place of being a morning and evening sacrifice, it is a morning and evening lie--a solemn mockery--an insult to God. All this is sadly true. There is a terrible lack of household testimony--of common, practical righteousness in our families and in the entire economy of our houses. There is but little of the white raiment--the fine linen, which is the righteousness of saints. We seem to forget those weighty words of the inspired apostle in Romans xiv.--"The kingdom of God is not meat and drink; but _righteousness_, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost." Some of us seem to think that whenever we meet with the word "righteousness," it must needs mean the righteousness of God in which we stand, or righteousness imputed to us. This is a very great mistake indeed. We must remember there is a practical and human side of this question; there is the subjective as well as the objective--the walk as well as the standing--the condition as well as the position. These things must never be separated. It is of little use to set up or seek to maintain a family altar amid the ruins of family testimony. It is nothing short of a hideous caricature to begin and end with so-called family worship a day characterized throughout by ungodliness and unrighteousness, levity, folly, and vanity. Can aught be more unsightly or more miserably inconsistent than an evening spent in song-singing, charades, and other light games, closed up with a contemptible bit of religion in the shape of reading and prayer?