“Here is our chief hope for posterity. This kindles an altar of perpetual fire in the house. This lightens our faces when we hold our little ones for the affusion of baptism. This revives our souls when we fold their hands in ours as they kneel beside us. This consecrates the delightful moment when their lisping words first echo to us the name of “Jesus”. This spreads a canopy of promise over the morning and the evening group in the tabernacle of prayer. And this lifts us above ourselves when we catch a Sabbath glimpse of the towers of the sanctuary, and lead our chief treasures along the way; when the little hand throbs in ours, and we say, “Come, let us go up to the house of the Lord.” …It is by the salvation of the children of the Church more than from all other means that we hope for the salvation of the world” (Alexander, 103).

“There is no member of a household whose individual piety is of such importance to all the rest as the father or head; and there is no one whose soul is so directly influenced by the exercise of domestic worship. Where the head of a family is lukewarm or worldly, he will send the chill through the whole house; and if any happy exception occurs, and one or another surpasses him in faithfulness, it will be in spite of his evil example. He who ought, by his instructions and life, to afford a perpetual incitement to his inferiors and juniors, is made to feel, in case of such delinquency, that they must look elsewhere for guidance, even if they do not weep in secret places over his neglects. Where the head of the family is a man of faith, affection, and zeal, consecrating all his works and life to Christ, it is very rare to find all his household otherwise-minded” (Alexander, 16-17).