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in this city." He does not mean by this that he had many elect there; but that there were many Jews there; these were His covevanted people, and to these He wished Paul first to attend. "Let the children first be filled." So valuable are the blessings which God perpetuates from pious parents to their children, and so faithful is God to remember His covenant and His promises.

So effectual is this promise, that if only one of the parents is pious, grace and mercy shall predominate in the family, and the children shall be heirs of the covenant blessings. "And the woman which hath an husband that believeth not, and if he be pleased to dwell with her, let her not leave him. For the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified by the husband: else were your children unclean: but now are they holy." (1 Cor. 7: 13, 14.) If the one parent be in covenant, then grace shall prevail-the blessing shall descend from the pious parent to the child, and not the curse from the unbelieving one. Thus where sin abounds, grace docs much more abound. God's ways lean on mercy's side! This shows how powerful is that law of mercy and love, by which God shows mercy to the children of pious parents. We see also that this law is recognized in the New Dispensation. Thanks be to God for this unspeakable gift!

This great blessing, promised in the second commandment, is only to those who abide in the true worship, and do not go after idols or images. The simple act of circumcision designated the faithful and sealed to them this grace. He that neglected the rite forfeits the grace. (Gen. 17: 14.)

In the New Testament, to be "buried with Christ in baptism," is "the circumcision of Christ." (Col. 2: 11.) This is the sign and the seal of this spiritually hereditary grace. This designates those who are the true successors of God's faithful people. Those who neglect it are cut off from His people themselves, and have no promises for their children. Breaking away from this holy enclosure, puts them out into the world, where the promise, and the blessing, do not follow them. Oh, what a daring sin it is for parents to despise God's ordinances, and thus to sever themselves, and their offspring, from God-and thus to deny to their children, through many generations, the inheritance of God's covenant with its untold blessings!

Such is God's gracious promise. Such is the order which He has ordained for the perpetuation of grace! Is it not gloriously adapted to the constitution and wants of families; and have we not all seen blessed instances in which its gracious power has been perpetuated from parents to children, and from generation to generation?

How can it be otherwise? Those plants which are put into a good soil, and then well fenced, well watered, and well attended, will grow and bring forth much fruit. The pious family may be compared to good soil, the children to thriving plants in that soil. This soil is not dead; but God has put into it his own begetting promise. This promise, in the family, gives energy to all its activities.

What should hinder it from answering its end-namely, to transmit its own life of piety to posterity? The scion, springing out of the parent tree, nurtured in the same soil, will be as the tree itself. So in families

If pure and holy be the root,

Such are the branches too,

An improper, or defective Christian nurture may, of course, thwart and cripple the regular progress of this living promise in the way of its glorious fulfillment. The fruitful soil, and the good seed may be made of none effect by a negligent, careless, or ignorant gardener. So it may be here. A man may commit suicide, and thus cut off a generation from him; so he may spiritually destroy himself, and thus break the life stream of hereditary gracious succession. Family training is, of course, one important condition, on which the gracious vital perpetuation depends. But the promise itself, with its ever ready grace, is sure-where the means are used, the end will be secured. This grace, like any other, may be received in vain. If, however, the sluggard do not reap in harvest, it does not change the truth of the promise: "Harvest shall not fail." (Gen. 8: 22)

The glorious and vital truth we have exhibited is, we apprehend, at the present time left too much in the back-ground even by those who profess to believe in the power and grace of the covenant. By many it is flatly denied, or explained away. Individualistic ideas prevail. It is forgotten, that God "hath set the solitary in famifies ;" and that no where are persons found in that individualistic condition, in which they are placed by that theology which would set each person in a purely isolated and individual relation to God and His grace. All human beings are in families-their first and most impressible years are spent in that relation-they are there biased in some direction, and there is no way of avoiding it. Yet we are told, that their location in families does not bring them any such warrant, advantage and grace as makes the organism in which they thus stand the means and medium of its transmission! This view of human life could not be true, even if there were nothing in God's word to declare it. The very constitution and fundamental organization of human life declares it to be false.

The failures of members of pious families to realize the hopes warranted by this view of grace, are referred to as proofs that the view itself is not well founded. Many good grounds for such failures could easily be presented. Such as the freedom of the human will-existing defects in the family life-a local defective state in the Church-peculiar adverse surroundings; we prefer merely to ask whether it is not strange, that men are found more ready to charge such failures upon God than upon men, and to take them as evidences that God is not true and faithful, rather than as evidences of lack of faithfulness on the part of those, to whom the promises have been made and the grace warranted! How appropriate here are the words of St. Paul, (Rom. 3: 1-4,) when answering this

very cavil: "What advantage then hath the Jew? or what profit is there of circumcision? Much every way: Chiefly because that unto them were committed the oracles of God. For what if some did not believe? Shall their unbelief make the faith of God without effect! God forbid: Yea, let God be true, but every man a liar."

LINES TO EDDIE.

WRITTEN AT MT. WASHINGTON COLLEGE, DURING VACATION, 1858.

BY P. S. D.

I am sitting in the study, Ed, where you are wont to play,
And I cannot bring myself to think that you are far away;
The house is very empty, Ed; the parlors and the halls
Are silent as the shadows that are playing on the walls.

The girls have all vacation, Ed; they're scattered far and wide,
But still 'twould not be lonely here if you were by my side;
We'd have just such a frolic, Ed, as we once had of yore;
'Twas broken by your papa's tread right near the study door.

We'd play 'roll off the sofa', Ed; we'd use the sand and paste,
Till your pa would lose a fortune in the paper we would waste:
We'd build a house of books, Ed, and leave them in a muss;
For we'd have no one about us now to kick up any fuss.

We'd play just like two horses, Ed, 'till tired out with that,
We'd bark just like two dogs would bark, and then we'd have a chat;
We'd talk of all your doings, Ed, when you are fully grown,
And have a handsome buggy and two horses of your own.

We'd talk of the Great Father, Ed, and of the angels bright,

Who stand before the golden throne all dress'd in purest white;

You'd ask me many questions, Ed, about the happy bands,

Where crowns are on their foreheads and whose harps are in their hands.

But you are far away, Ed, and I am here alone,

And the silence is oppressive when the daily work is done;

Yet ever and anon, dear Ed, your image will arise,

And though distant you perplex me with your wherefores and your whys.

Ah well you know I love you, Ed, not simply that you're fair,
Not simply for your boyish grace, nor for your golden hair;
Not simply for your eyes, Ed, so beautiful and blue,

Though these have many charms, my boy, to bind me fast to you.

I love your beauteous form, Ed; 'tis exquisitely wrought,
And I love to see upon your brow the jewelry of thought;
But the holy tie that binds us, Ed, and makes us truly one,
Is communion through the Church's life with God's eternal Son..

THE CHILD'S LITTLE EVENING PRAYER.

BY THE EDITOR.

"Now I lay me down to sleep,

I pray the Lord my soul to keep;
It I should die before I wake,
I pray the Lord my soul to take."

VII.

THE LITTLE CHILD'S LAST PRAYER.

In a public religious meeting lately a gentleman arose, and said he knew there was a great deal of practical unbelief on the subject of the conversion of little children. He alluded to the common custom of fathers to throw all the religious instruction of children upon their mothers. The father rises early, eats a hurried meal, and runs to his business, and comes home late at night-too late to even kiss his dear little children good night-and the next day repeats the same. And so life is spent, and children see and hear nothing from their fathers in leading them to Jesus Christ.

He said he had lost three darling little children by diptheria lately. It was a consolation that those children were consecrated to Jesus as soon as they were born. They had instruction accordingly. The eldest, only nine years old, got the strong impression that he was to be a foreign missionary. He was always talking about his future work. And he began even now and here. He would get bis little companions together, and read and expound the Scriptures to them, and you would be surprised to hear what that boy would say.

When he was taken sick, he said, "Father, I know I shall die. I am going to be with Jesus. I want to go. Don't give me any medicine. Don't try to keep me. Let me go I want to go." Much of his time was spent in prayer. He would say: "Oh! Lord Jesus! come and take me! I want to go." He died praying.

The second was only three years old, and seemed to have the same blessed spirit of love to Jesus. When he was dying, and the death-rattle was in his throat, so that he could scarcely say a word, he told his mother that he wanted to say his prayers. He was laying on her lap. She told him to say his prayers.

"Oh! not so," said the dear child; "I want to say them on my knees."

She raised him on his knees on her lap. around her neck, and with great difficulty of that sweet prayer:

"Now I lay me down to sleep,

I pray the Lord my soul to keep,
If I should die before I wake,
I pray the Lord my soul to take."

He put his little arms articulated each word

She laid him down, and he was gone-fallen asleep in Jesusgone to be

"Forever with the Lord."

You cannot make me believe those children are lost.

VIII.

THE LITTLE PRAYER AMONG THE POETS.

In 1861, when the Fifth Pennsylvania Regiment entered Alexandria, Va., they found a forsaken printing office, of which they took possession, and began immediately to issue a paper, which they named "The Pennsylvania Fifth." The second number,

dated "Camp M'Dowell, Alexandria, June 17th, 1861," is before us. The brave boys had left a childhood, and mothers behind them, but had carried along with them their sacred and pleasant memories. It is creditable to their minds and hearts, that what we here quote, is among the most prominent of their selections.

"Who, that has lived through years of careless gayety, or sorrow, or crime, has forgotten that little prayer so often murmured at the mother's knee:

"Now I lay me down to sleep,

I pray the Lord my soul to keep,
If I should die before I wake,
I pray the Lord my soul to take."

The origin of this stanza it is difficult to trace. It appeared in the "New England Primer" more than four score years ago, and was probably then as many years older, although some have ascribed it to Dr. Watts. Mr Tower, in his "Pictoral Reader," mentions as a fact related of J. Q. Adams, that during his long life, he never retired to bed without repeating the above prayer of his childhood, which, learned from a mother's lips, he had been early taught to lisp. The prevailing sentiment, so sublimely simple, however childishly expressed, so affected some poet of later days, as to originate one of the most touching little poems in our language. The name of the author is not now remembered; but his beautiful production ought to be immortalized by general re-publication every year:

The dreamy night draws nigh;

Soft airs delicious breathe of mingled flowers,
And on the wings of slumber creep the hours!
The moon is high:

See yonder tiny cot,

The lattice decked with vines-a tremulous ray
Steals out to where the silver moonbeams lay,
Yet pales them not!

Within, two holy eyes,

Two little hands clasped softly, and a brow
Where thought sits busy, weaving garlands now
Of joys and sighs

For the swift coming years!

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