wish, for the sake of personal gratification, to neglect the most important duty committed to her. The mother of a young family, who rightly estimates her great moral influence over her children, will spend, and will enjoy spending, her evenings at home. Her children claim her. The hour or two before their bedtime is often most valuable for religious instruction. Who should hear the simple prayer of childhood, and finally commend these lambs to the care of the Good Shepherd, if not the mother? To neglect this, to leave the unhappy children to amuse themselves, or do worse, while she, whom God has put in charge of them, is seeking amusement and winning admiration elsewhere, is a sad and shocking thing. No mother, no father, can be guilty of such neglect with impunity.

It is to a very different kind of training that we are indebted for men like the Henrys, and Doddridges, and others, who, both in earlier and in recent times, have "served their generation by the will of God." Save in rare and exceptional instances, we can usually connect a career of peculiar worth with a home distinguished by a sound and fervent piety, and made happy by its all-pervading peace. In the shelter of such homes, protected during their infancy and childhood from the grosser forms of worldliness and vice, daily nurtured by all gentle and holy influences, the best men of all times have been prepared for their work and warfare in the world. Their awakening intellects have been wisely guided. Their characters have been moulded after noble examples; their principles have been regulated by the word of God, the only standard of moral truth. Above all, they have breathed that atmosphere of loving piety

which, fresh and wholesome as the invigorating airs of heaven, has preserved a healthy tone of thought and feeling; and they have learned in a father's wise government, in a mother's gracious tenderness, to perceive and admire the supreme happiness of a truly religious life. "I have known those," says the biographer of Matthew Henry, of the household at Broad Oak, "that upon their first acquaintance there, were surprised to see so much beauty of holiness, and were ready to say, 'Surely the Lord is in this place! .

this is none other but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven!'" i

1 Gen. xxviii. 16, 17.

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CHAPTER V.

TEACHING AND TRAINING.

WHAT Christian parent has not often lingered prayerfully over the brief record of Timothy's childhood, and the picture thus presented of those pious women who early instructed him in the way of the Lord: '-the aged grandmother, resting at the end of life's journey, and gathering up the lessons of experience wherewith to enforce the truths of the Divine word upon the heart of the young listener: the mother, with all a mother's tenderness, and in the spirit of ancient Israel, endeavouring to fulfil the sacred injunction respecting the laws of the Lord, "Thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy childrer.""

This is a duty which early presents itself to the consideration of parents. As the child's intelligence begins to develop itself and how early that often is! -they are invested with new responsibilities. Here is mind to inform as well as character to mould. Here is the time and opportunity for conveying the knowledge of that truth which is able to make wise unto salvation, and of conveying it in such a way as that the memory of it shall never be lost.

All will admit that the early education of the child devolves upon its parents, and that they are peculiarly responsible for its religious education. How many have been indebted for almost all the Scriptural know

1 2 Tim. i. 5; iii. 15.

'Deut. vi. 7.

ledge they have possessed to early parental instruction! How many more have thus had the foundation laid for profound theological acquirements and aptitude as religious teachers! And how few of those who have not had these advantages, ever acquire in after life an accurate and familiar knowledge of the facts and words of Scripture !

This instruction cannot be commenced too early. Pictures will convey a knowledge of sacred facts long before the child is able to read for itself, and they will furnish abundant opportunity for making the memory familiar with the lessons they teach. A taste for drawing may thus be turned to good account, and the rough sketch, fresh from the pencil of the father or mother, will often be more effective than the purchased engraving. The stories, too, of the Old and New Testaments are, when rightly treated, as fascinating to children as fairy tales, and they will hear them over and over again with undiminished interest. They may thus be made familiar with the most important truths from the earliest period of consciousness. And as the reasoning faculties are developed, the practical truths, and even the doctrines of the Bible, may be made to " drop as the rain, and distil as the dew." The evil of sin, the obligations of God's holy law, the necessity of a Divine renewal of the heart and life, the love of God in the gift of his Son, salvation through Christ alone, a life of holiness as the inseparable accompaniment of pardon, the hopes of a blessed immortality, may thus be taught, in language which children will easily comprehend, and in a spirit which will at once attract and impress their minds.

1 Deut. xxxii. 2..

Crude as the child's conceptions will necessarily be, Gód, heaven, hell, sin, salvation, will thus become the subjects of his first independent mental operations. His memory, too, will be stored with narratives which the imagination will not fail to produce in vivid though perhaps rude pictures of the facts to which they relate. Who does not remember-though the remembrance may call up a smile now-the quaint reality with which Scripture scenes and incidents pictured themselves to the mind in childhood? And how tenacious is our hold of each childish conception! Christ, the tender Shepherd, gathering the lambs in his arms, or, with a look of ineffable love, putting his hands on little children, and blessing them; the histories of Paradise, and the fall; of Noah, Moses, David, Samuel, will, in a pious home, be among the earliest stories which a child will hear of that great world which lies beyond the narrow circle of his own little life. And who can trace the effects of this early teaching on his after history? The ways of sin may be trodden afterwards with unblushing face and a silenced conscience; errors of opinion may lead the bewildered heart of the once simple child far from its early rest; but yet these recollections of better things, these quaint and childish pictures, bright with all the colours of the morning of life, and still fresh with all its dews, will retain a cherished place in the memory, and may prove the strong but gentle influences by which the Father shall draw him for ever to himself.

It need hardly be added that religious instruction should never be made a painful task. "I reprobate," writes the Rev. J. A. James, "the practice as a most injurious one, of setting a long lesson of catechism or