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Say, would'st thou ask, where shall that spot be found?
Art thou a man-a patriot-look around;

Still shalt thou find, where'er thy footsteps roam,

That land thy country, and that spot thy home!"

And it nestles in the love of wife and child-that best of temperance pledges-the love of wife and child, which will not et you play the truant from your own fireside.

I have urged upon husbands a spirit of tenderness towards their wives-let me conclude this plain address by pressing upon fathers a spirit of love for their children. It is not impossible that there may be some one here who sometimes spends that time and money in the tap-room which he knows he ought to spend at home. My friend, have you a daughter, upon whose face you smiled when she hung upon her mother's breast? A daughter who is rising into life, and putting forth charms which can enslave the heart of man. Guard that daughter as you would guard your life, cherish her honour more dearly than your own heart's blood. Woman is beautiful (I speak feelingly, as a young man)-but if the jewel, virtue, be taken from the casket, it matters not how rarely chaste the casket in itself may be. Think of how a tippler's example must operate on that daughter's mind. She grew up in innocence; she loved her father and her mother with a grateful love; but she sees the father sometimes come home drunk, and strike the mother whom she loves. She used to keep the cottage neat and clean, and anticipate her father's comforts; but the tie is broken, his coarse and sullen thanklessness disgusts her, and in rebellious anger she quits the home she once adorned, to escape the presence of a cruel parent. She goes forth into this giddy world, with all its snares and dangers, unprotected. The glance of lustful admiration, and the bold or the insidious word of flattery, are aimed at her, and the web of ruin is twisted round her feet, and like a foundering vessel, or a setting sun, she sinks beneath the waves. Now, whose fault is it, yours, or her own ? At whose hands will God require her blood, at the great trying day? How could you expect obedience and respect after you had not only ceased to be a father, but become a mere beast in your daughter's eyes. When men are drunk, they turn dreams into realities, and realities into dreams. If there is a drinking father here, it is not such a wild improbability to suppose that some sad day he may have some dream like this-as he comes reeling home from his sottish revcls-a dream in which he shall behold his daughter rushing wildly through the streets-her hair dishevelled, and despair blazing with hellish lustre from her eyes; a dream

in which a thousand weird and dreadful voices shall urge him in his staggering horror to follow in her track; a dream which shows him his child still speeding onward to some dreadful bourne, and which still drags him onward in drunken but alarmed pursuit-a dream where he shall see her pause an instant on the dark stone bridge, and then descend the steps to the water's brink-yes-to the river! to the deep rolling riverswift and dim-where the winter night sat brooding like the last dark thoughts of many who had sought a refuge there before her. To the river-where scattered lights upon the banks gleamed sullen, red, and dull, as torches that were burning there, to show the way to death. To the river-where no abode of living people cast its shadow on the deep, impenetrable, melancholy shade. To the river! To that portal of eternity, her desperate footsteps tend with the swiftness of its rapid current running to the sea. The drunken father tries to clutch her by the dress as she goes down to the dark margin, but the wild distemper, and the fierce despair, which has left all human check or hold behind, sweeps by him like the wind. He staggers after her. She halts an instant on the brink-then with a dismal cry she takes the dreadful plunge-he stretches out his quivering hand to hold her back, but he is too drunk to help her, and her dying glance as her glassy eyeballs glare upon him as she sinks before his face shall haunt him to the grave, and torture him in hell!

O! my friend, wherever you may be, or whatever may be your lot, light up your home with sobriety and love, and prayer; your board may be scanty, and there may be little food to eat, but bless God for every crumb, as a blessing you have not deserved. Trust Him who fed the five thousand with two fishes and four loaves, to care for your temporal good. I don't mean

to say that bread, and cheese, and bacon will be tumbled down from heaven in answer to your prayers, or that God will rain down Bass's bitter ale in imperial pints, as a return for your petitions; but I do say that He will not leave the man who freely trusts Him to perish for the lack of food. Light up your home with prayer, and no poverty shall ever make it desolate. However much privation you may suffer here, remember this world is not our lasting home, and that there is a home preparing for us where we shall all be equals, for we shall be kings and priests to God. Sooner or later we must all of us flit from our present abodes; the monarch must leave the throne, and the beggar must leave the cottage; the preacher must leave his parsonage, and the workman and employer must quit the factory.

Our common landlord, at whose pleasure we all hold possession, will soon give us notice to quit, and pack us off bag and baggage. We need not take our furniture with us, for if we have confidence in Christ we shall find that He has prepared a place for us. Trust Him, then, my brethren, for He died for you. Trust Him, for He lives and pleads for you now; and if your wife and all your children die before you-if you have accepted Christ's salvation, and thereby made your earthly home a house of prayer-you shall, as you lie at last upon your own deathbed, feel as if even then you were but going home. And while from heaven's gate you hear the voices of the Spirit and the bride while from angel-harps you hear a thousand chords of welcome-while from Christ's own lips you hear the benison of love and commendation, from amongst the voices of the fair troop of shining ones who are waiting for the loosing of the silver cord, one well-known accent shall salute your listening ear— deaf though it be to every earthly sound-and with your eyes glowing in death with lustre from the Ineffable, whose radiance floods your struggling spirit, you shall behold the countenance of that dear wife who gladdened with her presence your cottage upon earth; and as she points her finger to the starry seats above, where your children are seated near the King of Kings, pillowed on His shining robe, and bosomed on His beating heart, her lips shall once more warble in your ears, as life and immortality are brought to light-" Come Home to thy childer an' me."

Cross-Roads;

A LECTURE

BY THE REV. A. MURSELL,

IN THE

FREE TRADE HALL, DECEMBER 20TH, 1857.

THERE's a right way and a wrong way of doing everything; or rather, perhaps, we ought to say, there's one right way and a thousand wrong ways of doing most things. And there's one right way, and generally scores of wrong ways of arriving at every place. There are some people who seem destined always to get lost, whenever they wander half a mile from their own doors. For instance, you seldom hear of an old lady from the country inquiring the way from London Bridge to Charing Cross, butdirectly she has been told to turn to the left, and go straight down King William Street till she gets to Cheapside, and then inquire again she is certain to turn immediately to the right, and wander about at the back of Monument Yard, until at last she finds herself in the arms of a Billingsgate fish-wife, or shrinking under the bold gaze of a corpulent beef-eater on Tower Hill. Or, to take an illustration nearer home, it is not an unusual sight to see a young gentleman from the south, with fair hair and green spectacles, and with a sweetheart at Old Trafford, standing amongst the omnibuses at the Exchange, and -having been civilly directed by the "bobby" (No. 17 of the A division), to get into a Stretford Road conveyance-to see him in his love-lorn delirium, leaping headlong into one of Mr. Greenwood's Pendleton leviathans, and dreaming, as he rumbles over the pavement of Deansgate-under the firm impression that he is in Mosley Street-of the blue eyes and ruby lips of her he trusts ere long to be clasping to his heart—until he is pleasingly relieved from his reverie, and recalled to a consciousness of the storn realities of life, by being set down at Peel Park gates.

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