But the worship of GOD is only one of the duties of the Sabbath. The cultivation of family religion is a work which should occupy at least some portion of time on this day. The Sabbath was designed to be a day of rest and holy joy. And surely these ends will be answered if, in every little household, parents and children shall meet together in happy and unrestrained intercourse; if it be a time when children shall listen, from a mother’s lips, to the histories of GOD’S Saints, and hear from her of the love of JESUS; when parents shall use all their efforts, that those who have gathered beneath the same earthly roof, and sat around the same fireside, may not be separated in the Eternal Home above. Are we to be interested in each others’ worldly pleasures and pursuits, to share each others’ earthly joys and sorrows, and yet to have sealed hearts and sealed lips, where “those things which belong to our everlasting peace” are concerned? I believe that, under GOD’S blessing, there is no more powerful instrument for good, than the early religious instruction of home. The instruction of Sunday Schools is good, and is a mighty instrument in the hands of the Church, for advancing the cause of the REDEEMER, but to be really effectual it must be combined with the education of home. Who shall calculate its influence? Who shall say how many a wayward one a mother’s affectionate counsels and admonitions, conveyed in the lesson of the Sunday evening, have been the means of recalling from the paths of sin? Who can tell how long those golden memories lingered in the heart, ere their voice was stilled by long-continued disobedience to GOD? Nothing, perhaps, is so deeply to be lamented in after life, as the want of the early religious instruction of home. It entwines the things of Heaven with the best and purest of earthly affections. It associates them with the innocence of childhood, and the happiness of home. It stamps upon the heart an impression, which no subsequent career of sin can ever efface, that religion is a happy thing. It makes the Sabbath to be, what it was ever designed to be, “a delight.”