The Family Will be Seen at Once to be Very Adaptable to Religious Convictions

This organization, the family, will be seen at once to be very adaptable to religious convictions. On no other subject have I seen so much sympathy as in this great business pertaining to our families’ eternal welfare. I look at a family circle. What tense' feelings! What shared love! What common joys! What united sorrows! The blow that strikes one member hits all of them. The joy that lights up one face spreads its blessings over all of them also. Together they bend over a sick member and together they rejoice at their recovery; or together they bow their heads and weep, and go sadly to their grave. They are plunged into the same allegiance. They are together under the fearful visitations of that difficulty which has traveled down from Paradise lost. They are going to a common tomb; and over this family circle shine’s the same sunbeams of hope; and the same balm of Gilead, and the same great Physician may spread health, peace and salvation there. Cheered by the hopes of the same eternal life, they may travel to the tomb; and with the joy in faith that beams from our Father's eye, may be reflected from the happy faces of beloved sons and daughters.

The whole family organization is clearly one of the most profound and wise in this world, to deepen, extend, and perpetuate the principles of the Christian belief. Of this any one may be satisfied who will for a moment compare the services of the deepening and prolonging of the feelings for religion under all the advantages of the family sympathy. Compared with what sadness there would and must be if the earth were occupied by isolated and independent individuals.

God designed the family with reference to all that is pure and lovely in people. And in fact he has at all times made the family organization one of the most important amenities for extending, and to achieve the religious feeling. The question now arises, whether the full benefits of this organization can be accomplished without the aid of family devotion? In answer to this, you will see at once, that the neglect of religion as a family will be to break in on the whole design of the organization, so far as religion is concerned, and to throw every member on his own individual strength and responsibilities. That is, to separate religion from all other things, and deny it the help that is given to every other object that you wish to promote. The aid derived from the sympathies of this domestic alliance, and the kind word of the family circle.

You call in this aid when you wish to promote other commendable designs-when you would prompt to industry, to learning, to morals, to esteem; and you withhold this aid in the greatest and most important matter that can ever press on the attention of your sons and daughters, and make their religion to be a cold, isolated, independent matter, in which they receive no sympathy from you; and where they are rudely put back from all the tender sympathies which divide their sorrows, and joys, in all their other interests. We all know the power of alliance and confederation. It is the way in which good and evil ever have been, and ever must be, propagated in this world. Solitary, undivided efforts avail little, and from the nature of the case must avail little. This is understood by all men. He who wishes to rouse his countrymen to arms, does it by an appeal to the social principle, and seeks confederated talents and valor. Individual and unorganized efforts would do little in the day when people struggle for freedom. Hence they seek to pour on the battle field combined talent, and organized and compacted energy. So in great deeds of evil; the drunkard, the profligate, the infidel, the pirate, seeks alliance and desires confederation in the enormous deeds of guilt which is contemplated and planned. In the same way, if religion is to be spread, it must be by the same alliance and confederation. It must be by bringing combined powers to act on combined ills and dangers. It is designed to be done by calling in all the aid of the family confederation; by appealing to all the authority and respect of a father; the tender love of a mother; the silken cords which bind sons and daughters in common love, and in common hopes. This is clearly on great design of the organization.