DEAR mother, when the crowd exert

Their powers in loud dispute, Each eager to deny, assert,

Doubt, censure, or confute; While some their wavering faith reveal,

Some weak and trembling prove, And some, alas! Iet christian zeal

Prevail o'er christian love:
Seek not their busy ranks to join;

Avoid their troubled way;
A purer, humbler path be thine,

Mother, believe and pray.

The riches do not lack increase
Of which thou art possest,
The secret of perpetual peace

Is lock'd within thy breast; Thou need'st not at vain shadows start,

Nor cling to human props, The Holy Spirit fills thy heart

With sure and certain hopes; Let not the sounds of jarring strife

Profane its holy sway, Heed not the fleeting pomps of life, Mother, believe and pray.

Belief shall give thee spirit-wings,

And lift thee up on high,

In part to view the glorious things

Stored in the mystic sky; [snares And Prayer shall keep all hurtful

Far from thy calm abode; Bidding thee cast thy sins and cares

Before the throne of God; Though foes thy safety may assail, Though friends thy trust betray, Not long thy trial shall prevail, Mother, believe and pray.

And when thou shalt be call'd to tread Death's darksome vale of night, Feeling a lingering, shuddering dread If thou hast lived aright,

A mighty friend, a heavenly guide, Shall still to thee be near,

The Saviour, who for thee hath died,

Shall free thy soul from fear: Soon thou may'st hear that voice divine,

Soon need that blessed stay; Oh! then, while life and strength be thine,

Mother, BELIEVE AND PRAY.
Englishwoman's Magazine.

YOUTHFUL DEVOTEDNESS; or, the Youth of the Church Instructed in the Duties of Practical Religion. By THOMAS HOUSTON, D.D., Knockbraken; with Recommendatory Preface by PROFESSOR

SYMINGTON, D.D., Paisley. London: Houlston and Stoneman. Edinburgh: Johnston. Glasgow: Collins. 12mo. pp. 339.

This is a work of no common

character, and of great value to our rising youth. It comes in and fills a gap we have long felt in our religious literature for the young, and cannot fail, where rightly studied and attended to, to effect great good. Parents, ministers, and church officebearers owe much to the baptized youth amongst them, which, we regret to say, they take but little pains to discharge. "The children of the church" have claims upon us for instruction, guidance, and friendly counsel, beyond anything they in general receive. We baptize them, but there we too often leave them. As for any after instruction carrying out the privileges of their baptism, we seldom, if ever, provide for it. Yet, if infant baptism is anything more than an empty rite, or if it is to have any beneficial bearing on its subjects, we think some means of carrying it out by careful instruction and religious training should be found in every religious society.

Dr. Houston has felt the importance of all this, and his work is intended to do for our baptized youth what churches have been so loath to do-give them plain and practical instructions on their duties springing out of their early dedication to God; and by many kind, affectionate, and powerful arguments, pressing these duties on their notice. The work is very much to our mind, and eminently calculated to meet the ends designed.

The first chapter is on BAPTISM, and brings out the doctrines it exhibits, the privileges it involves, and the duties it imposes.

The second is on CONVERSION,

and dwells on its nature, necessity, means, and evidences.

The third is on PROFESSION, and developes its necessity, nature, and value, bringing out much important matter upon the Lord's supper.

The fourth is upon CHRISTIAN CHARACTER, and gives many wise counsels on the formation of early religious habits.

The fifth is on SOCIAL RELATIONS, and places the youth before us as selecting his companions, and acting as a son, a citizen, and friend of man.

The sixth is on PREPARATION FOR DEATH, and is most solemn and powerful in its varied appeals.

It is the very book for ministers, parents, and elders, to put into the hands of their youth who were early devoted to God in the rite of baptism. Most cordially do we thank its author for it, and pray that a large measure of the Spirit's influence may rest on its perusal by our youth.

LIVES OF ILLUSTRIOUS GREEKS. For Schools and Families. London: Religious Tract Society. 12mo. pp. 412.

"Selections from Plutarch's Parallel Lives in Greek, omitting some digressions which would be neither profitable nor interesting to the reader, and substituting for them such reflections as Plutarch might have made if he had been a Christian." Such is the description of the character of the book as given in the prefatory note to it. Here is then a work parents have long wished to see-the noble and wise of ancient

Greece brought out as patterns for our youth in much that was great and excellent; but with prudent discrimination, carefully pointing out whatever was faulty in their characters, and accompanying the whole with such remarks as may show what they might have been under a better and a christian dispensation. The work is one of no small merit, and deserving a place in every family and young man's library.

THE LORD'S DAY IN LONDON, withheld from the Working Man by God's People and others. By J. M. JONES. Price Twopence. This is a very stirring pamphlet, coming at a very seasonable time.

We have long felt that there was great thoughtlessness in the religious public as to their desecration of the sabbath day. The employment of cabmen, the use of railways, and the undue working of domestic servants, are amongst the forms of sabbath desecration by religious people. The pamphlet before us exposes them all, and by an appeal to the various reports and statements of such societies as the City Mission, the Christian Instruction, and the Sunday School Union, endeavours to stir up the attention here. It is a very earnest churches and their pastors to greater and sensible book, and we only pray that it may be extensively read, and it must then become extensively useful.

66 WE ALL DO FADE AS A LEAF." You have seen the leaf upon the tree in summer, green, spreading out, strong. The stalk holds it firmly to the branch; the winds cannot blow it off. You have seen that leaf in autumn, brown, shrivelled up. The stalk is weak; a little breeze comes, the stalk breaks; the withered leaf is tossed about in the air-soon it lies on the damp ground. You have passed through a place where the faded leaves lie, and you have kicked them about, and trampled them under foot.

I have seen a little child playing in the wind, strong and ruddy, like any of you. I heard his loud and

cheerful voice. Next day he was

taken ill. I saw him pale, thin, weak, not able to lift his hand; his eye had lost its light; he could only speak in a whisper. Soon he died. I saw the funeral go along the street. His body was laid in the grave, and worms fed on it.

That little child was once like the leaf on the tree. It spread itself out; it was green and strong, and the winds could not blow it off. But soon the little boy was ill, and pale, and weak. Then he was like the leaf when it grew brown and shrivelled. Soon he died, and was buried. That was like the leaf when the wind came, and it fell, and you trampled it under feet. "We all do fade as a leaf."

MORAL DAGUERREOTYPES. One is struck with amazement at the endless variety of expression fixed by the sun, and every instant there may be a new one. Now, there is a moral in all this. It shows what a record there may be, when we little think of it, of what we do, and what we are.

The sun takes our likenesses by the process of the Daguerreotype. No matter what the expression may be, there it is. There is neither concealment nor flattery. The sun takes exactly what he finds. If it be beauty or deformity, a noble emotion or a vile one, it is all the same to this impartial painter. He will

not heighten the one nor diminish the other, but brings out every feature, with every touch of character. All this without our intervention, at least without our will. There needs but to be given a face, and the sun will take it.

And what if this process were going on, invisibly to us, through some medium interfused in all nature? What if every play of emotion, every attitude, every design revealed in the countenance, every revelation, in fine, of the character in the face and deportment, were thus unalterably taken down, to be reproduced before us? What if every image of ourselves is kept, a copy of it, for the judgment? Suppose that a man could have his past being thus laid before himself in a suc

cession of impressions, from childhood to manhood, and from manhood to old age, would any one find any difficulty in deciphering the whole character from such marks?

Nay, sometimes a man would need to have only a single expression of countenance brought before him, a single attitude, in order to wake up conscience, and throw open the door to a whole gallery of evil doings and feelings in his past existence. But such a series of Daguerreotypes will doubtless be among the materials in the book of judgment at the last day; and with more accuracy than that with which the most perfect series of maps or views present the face and scenery of a country, men will find their whole past being reproduced before them.-Dr. Cheever.