THE CHRISTIAN HOUSEHOLD. EMBRACING THE CHRISTIAN HOME, HUSBAND, WIFE, FATHER, MOTHER, BY REV. GEORGE S. WEAVER, AUTHOR OF "LECTURES ON MENTAL SCIENCE," "HOPES AND HELPS BOSTON: A. TOMPKINS AND B. B. MUSSEY & CO. 1854. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1854, by A. TOMPKINS, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. Stereotyped by New England Type and Stereotype Foundry, BOSTON. BV 4501 то MY MOTHER, WHOSE CARE WAS THE SHIELD OF MY CHILDHOOD, · WHOSE FAITH WAS THE STRENGTH OF MY YOUTH, WHOSE LOVE IS THE DELIGHT OF MY MANHOOD, And whose Christian Teachings PLANTED EARLY IN MY SOUL THE SEEDS OF WHICH MY CHRISTIAN LIFE AND LABORS ARE THE FRUITS, THIS LITTLE VOLUME IS MOST GRATEFULLY AND AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED. PREFACE. THIS little volume is designed as a partial answer to one of the most solicitous wants of Christian families. I have for years seen and sorrowed over the absence of Christ in our households. Among the Christian people of every sect there is a sad deficiency of Christian principle and practice at home. The devotion and the love of the Gospel life are alarmingly absent from these sacred places. Thousands of professedly Christian families are unvisited by a song of praise or a voice of prayer, or anything in spirit or practice that distinguishes them from those who scoff at religion. Why is it so? Is it not because, in the Christian race set before us, our theology has outrun our religion? Have we not preached and practised more theology than Christian principle and life? Christendom has been, and is, a grand arena for theological conflict. What avails doctrine, if it do not produce life? But theology is good, necessary. It is the seed. The culture of that seed to its fruit-bearing is religion. It is as necessary to cultivate as to sow. Christians have not sown too much, but cultivated too little; they have not had too much theology, but too little religion. This little |