of piety, prudence, diligence in the domestic station, and a holy and devout life. Hers is the sphere that was occupied by Hannah, the mother of Samuel; by Elizabeth, the mother of John; and by Mary, the mother of Jesus. Hers is "the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, which, in the sight of God, is of great price." Hers is the respect and esteem of mankind. Hers is that silent, unobserved, unobtrusive influence by which she accomplishes more for her race than many whose names occupy a broad space on the page of history. More than this, too, does the Bible do for woman. It opens to her the stores of knowledge. It proscribes her no intellectual advancement. It commits to her intelligent culture the minds of the rising generation. It tells her that her peculiar province is to embellish and adorn. It opens before her the loveliest spheres of active benevolence. And while it tells her to be a "keeper at home," it at the same time points her to the poor, the afflicted, the widow, the orphan, the sick, and the dying, and says, "Pure religion, and undefiled before God and the Father, is to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep herself unspotted from the world." It does more for her than for the stronger sex, because it gives her more piety than it gives to pious men ; more ardency and devotion in her religious affections; more numerous, as well as more illustrious examples of converting grace; a greater reward, and a brighter crown. Nor can she ever know what she owes to the Bible, until she is presented by her great Lord and Husband, faultless before the throne.

But let us turn a moment to another of the social relations: I mean that which exists between parents and children. I have often wondered why there are so few scenes of domestic joy painted in pagan his

tory; and whence it is that we never find access to the bosom of a well regulated and happy family in pagan lands. May not the reason be that the materials for the picture never existed? Pagan historians there were, of a high standard of excellence; and pagan poets, whose classical sublimity and beauty it would be treason to the cause of a polished and elegant literature to question. But their themes are conflict and revolution; deified heroes and heroines. a base and corrupting mythology; the beauties and tranquillity of pastoral life; or the passion of a shepherd for some beautiful boy. Though many of the pagan poets maintain the first rank of excellence, and abound with imagery that might naturally have found culture and aliment amid the more virtuous and lovely scenes of domestic joy, yet do these scenes seem, even to their polished minds, to be almost interdicted themes. Before the introduction of Christianity, there was a strong tendency to sacrifice the domestic to a more public life. The citizen of Rome and Athens was distinguished, not for his domestic virtues, but for his literary attainments and his public valour. He employed his life in the field, in the academy, or in the forum, but found little to interest him at home. He lived abroad amid the alluring examples of a licentious world; he threw himself into the current of its seductive temptations; but rarely found interest and happiness in the society of his children. Home was a word dissevered from all those high and holy associations, inseparable from it in a Christian family. He was known rather as a citizen, than as a father, a son, a friend. He had indeed his household gods, his altar and his fireside; but he had no voice of supplication and praise-no bond of God's eternal covenant sealing blessing to

him and to his for a great while to come. In ancient Rome, under the emperors, it was even considered an advantage to be without children; and fathers often renounced them for the estimation and flattery which were showered upon them by those who might be expectants of their inheritance. More than once has an affluent citizen proved too powerful for his accusers, simply because he was childless. And it was no strange occurrence for children as frequently to become the accusers, as the advocates of a father, and as ready to destroy, as to protect him against his enemies. A father pleading for his life, while his son stands forth his accuser; what a scene were this in Christian lands! Nero poisoned his mother; and Seneca, one of the wisest and best of the heathen philosophers, was accessory to the base transaction. Where in all the annals of Christendom, is registered so foul a deed? Men never sin so obstinately, as when they sin from principle. And even at the present day, it is deemed a religious duty in pagan lands, for parents to destroy their children; and, as though God had with awful severity inflicted the law of retaliation in return, for children to destroy their parents.

But see how the Scriptures speak of this relation. Mark how they honour and protect it, and how they define and enforce its corresponding rights and duties. To the parent they say, "Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it." To the child they say, "Honour thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee." To the parent they say, " And ye fathers provoke not your children to wrath, lest they be discouraged." To the child they say, and in language never to be forgotten

"The eye that mocketh at his father, and refuseth to obey his mother, the ravens of the valley shall pick it out, and the young eagles shall eat it." Under the Mosaic law, the man that cursed his parent was surely to be put to death; the men of his city "should stone him with stones, that he die." The whole scope and spirit of the Bible consider the appropriate performance of the relative duties which result from the relation of parent and child as laying the foundation of every private and public virtue. They recoil from the arbitrary power and cruel tyranny of a parent, and from the hardened impiety and obstinate stubbornness of a child. The Spartans venerated age; but how much more energetic and authoritative is the language of the Jewish lawgiver when he says, "Thou shalt rise up before the face of the hoary head, and honour the face of the old man, and fear thy God." Have my youthful readers been instructed by example, by precept, by unsleeping vigilance and unwearied effort, and by a discipline equitable and kind, in habits of virtue; have their minds been enlightened and their wants supplied; and are they conscious that it has been the united aim of their parents by their self-denial, their counsels and prayers to render them religious, useful and happy; permit me to remind them, they owe this distinction to the Bible. And where is the parent who is surrounded with the tokens of filial piety, and whose heart has been habitually comforted by all that is tender and grateful in the affections, and respectful and dutiful in the deportment of his children, but feels that for all this he is indebted to the same divine source? There is a beautiful incident in the life of Christ, which illustrates the influence of the gospel upon domestic life. It was among those last sublime

and tender exhibitions of his nature which took place upon the cross. Forgiveness, love, and resignation had already beamed divinely through the horrors of that scene, and attracted the eye of the believer to a picture where otherwise all was so sad and revolting. The Saviour was in his bitterest agony. The guilt of dying men was weighing upon his soul; interests incalculably vast were absorbing his attention, and he might well be supposed to have lost sight of those by whom he was surrounded. In such an hour, and amid the depths of his own sorrow, who would wonder had he overlooked the claims of earthly kindred? But at a little distance stood his mother. Near her, he beheld the youngest and best beloved of his disciples. Those earthly ties were about to be sundered, and he would not leave her without a support to her advancing years, nor the young disciple without a guide for his inexperienced youth. "Woman," said he to the first, "behold thy son!" To the latter, "Son, behold thy mother! And from that hour, that disciple took her to his own home."

The history of pagan nations is an instructive study, though it is little else than a narrative of crime. It teaches us how helpless man is to guide himself in the path of virtue and happiness by his own unaided powers. It teaches us how much we are indebted to the Bible; how much of our social advantages we owe to its pure spirit which has breathed over the chaos of nations, and brought order, light, beauty and fruitfulness from the shapeless void. It teaches us to be thankful that "the lines are fallen to us in pleasant places," where the endeared names of husband, wife, parent, child, speak with a tenderness to our hearts which we cannot appreciate, unless we