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and yet there can be no doubt that the essential elements of that code are of divine origin and perpetual force, Hence we may consider this as an argument in point, and illustrated by. cases which are no more practical than painful.

Profaneness is not only one of the most foolish and useless of vices, but one most displeasing to God. So long as a child or servant is in a family, the head of that family is responsible for his observance of the third commandment, What possible right has any father to permit his son, unrebuked, to take the name of God in vain? What right has any householder to. permit a laborer in his employ to breathe out blasphemy against Jehovah? In the twenty-fourth chapter of Leviticus this very sin is specified, and the stranger is placed on the same footing as the son. I will go farther and ask, where is the right of any head of a household to confine himself to mere remonstrances in his attempts to check this evil in those under his control?

By the same plain rule we may judge the conduct of house. holds in regard to the Sabbath. The fourth commandment settles this question beyond dispute. We have no warrant to allow our sons or dependents to travel on the Sabbath, or otherwise trespass on holy time, without such excuse as shall be valid at the bar of God. It is needless to say that this embraces improper recreations and pursuits, and conduct in the house of God. The heads of households are held responsible for a proper outward respect to all the public as well as social duties of religion.

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Perhaps facts will sustain me in the assertion, that a most urgent want of the community is here developed. The cor ruption of morals and manners, the growth of ruinous vices, and the destruction of souls, are progressing with the fatality of an epidemic, because this plain scriptural principle, this essential element of the household institution, has been so extensively forsaken. I appeal to the heads of households to restore this principle, which is as scriptural as it is safe, and admirable as it is necessary to the prominence and power with which God, who created man, has dignified it. He who walks according to its divine directions in the control of his family, will receive the reward of Abraham, whilst the one who either neglects or willfully disobeys it, will bring on himself and his house the curse of God on every Eli whose children make themselves vile, and he restrains them not.

The same rule applies to all the external conduct of a household: attendance on improper amusements, frequenting places where vicious habits are likely to be contracted. Sufficient is a word to the wise.

But I must hasten to consider the nature of this obligation in a second aspect.

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2. It enjoins on the heads of households the diligent use of

all scriptural means to bring those under their care to a saving knowledge of the truth as it is in Christ.

And here it is proper to state a cardinal doctrine, not for the purpose of argument, but to guard against misapprehension. The regeneration of the heart is the work of the Holy Spirit. To present and urge the duty of parents, guardians, and masters, is not to question in the slightest degree this truth, which is affirmed by Scripture and facts.

No one in so many words questions the propriety of a religious education in the household; but the danger is, that in this age of cheap religious books, of Sabbth-schools, and other means of religious instruction, we shall depart from the plan of God, ordained as of perpetual force. We are liable, in our practice to place the plan of Raikes above the plan of God, and to commit to other teachers the work which belongs to the head of the family. This is just as radically a departure from the right way, as would be a benevolent plan to intrust the clothing and feeding of our families to a few kindly-disposed persons. This feeding and clothing of children in the wholesale way proposed by some modern philanthropists, is just as rational as to commit the religious training of a household solely to Sabbath-school teachers and preachers of the gospel. In its proper place and relations, each of these instrumentalities is vastly important; but when either of them supplants the home instruction, its results are evil, with slight mitigation. Jehovah is perfect, and he knew the wants of man as well when he gave his commandments to Moses, as he knows them now. He did not commission his servant to organize Sabbath-schools in which the young might learn the dealings of God with their fathers. Such a course would have sunk the nation into a horde of ignorant and unfeeling barbarians, out of whose minds, in a few generations, the recollections of those stirring events should have died. Jehovah understood the nature of man when he organized the means of keeping the Exodus fresh in the minds of his people. Accordingly, he constituted each head of a household an oracle to answer the inquiries of the thoughtful, and to impart religious instruction to all.

Here is the institution, the home-school, as it came from the forming hand of perfect wisdom. "Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God is one Lord; and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might. And these words which I command thee this day shalt be in thine heart: and thou shalt teach diligently to thy child, ren, and shall talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes. And thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house,

and upon thy gates." (Deut. vi. 4-9.) Here are words which are redolent of honor. They savor altogether of honor. The father is the teacher, and his business is not to be given into the hands of an hireling, or even some benevolent friend. How lifeless any school compared with this, in which the living realities of truth perfume the atmosphere, and lend a savor alike grateful and efficient! We cannot too much admire the wisdom of this arrangement, nor too closely imitate it in the religious education of our families.

"Would God" this sacred institution were revived into its ancient dignity and power; when religion should be taught at home when the first lessons of truth should be blended with the fondlings of our fancy, and the more sedate endearments of youth, when the secret courtesies of life should become a gentle but mighty instrumentality in preserving the feet of children from the ways of sin. But how often is it, that fathers are more ready to talk of God and heaven to strangers than to their children! How often does family worship become either a formal, or else tedious exercise, the influence of which is to chill, and not to warm the hearts of the young! How often whole families grow up and leave the fire-side of home, without having enjoyed any systematic means put forth for their salvation! The Sabbath school, the Bible class, the pulpit, and the casual visit of the pastor, become practically the supplanters of home, or rather the meagre resorts to which we are compelled to fly, instead of being what they ought to be, the potent auxiliaries of the more potent influences of home.

Oh could we know that all parents in the church are in faith, seeking to answer this home responsibility, many anxieties about the future condition of the church would be spared: many parents would not be mourning over their unregenerate offspring who have reached mature years; many heads of households would not look with shuddering apprehension back at those once in their employ or under their care, who have not only left their families unconverted, but without any wellordered effort on their part to that end.

The nature of this responsibility, plainly then, is such, that every head of a household is bound to employ at home all proper means to lead one committed to his care, to Christ, whether he be a heathen, a Romanist, an infidel, his own child, or a stranger sojourning within his gates. The head of the family is the shepherd of the flock, and a heavy woe shall overtake the shepherd through whose unfaithfulness any member of that flock perishes.

Let fathers pray, teach, and act at home, as though they stood at the very sources of power, and held the keys of heav en. They may be grateful for the instructions of the Sanctuary and the Sabbath-school, but they are not to commit their jewels altogether to other workmen, however skilful. None

can feel for them as parents ought to feel, nor labor as they ought to labor, that these jewels may shine in the diadem of Christ. Let strangers manage your property, Christian parents, for even though they rob you of it all, the loss can be repaired or endured, but over these immortal souls which God has entrusted to you, hold the power yourselves, and see that the Lord of Glory is honored in their salvation, by your faithful fulfilment of those conditions which are necessary to secure the efficient workings of the Holy Spirit. Begin with your lisping infants, cause light to dawn on their hearts early, and gently draw them to Christ. Secure the might of prayer, remembering how infinitely willing God is to grant his Holy Spirit. Work early and late, and dilligently in this enterprise, and prove God herewith, if he will not grant you the desires of your heart in the conversion of each member of your household.

From these trains of thought we may infer,

1. The immense responsibility of being the head of a household. The relation is connected with all that is good and excellent in this world, and desirable in the world to come. Every child, every servant, every dependent, augments the responsibility, until every such person may well cry out, "Who is sufficient for these things?" Let every head of a family enjoin it upon himself, to ponder this responsibility in all its greatness, its issues of eternal life and death, and set himself, with earnestness and prayer, to the work assigned him, as one who must give account to God for one of the most momentous trusts ever committed to a sinful, fallible, and weak steward.

2. The importance of the household institution. It is God's ordained school for the religious education of our race. And in that school, some of the greatest and most useful of men have been trained to fill high stations. Moses, the adopted son of a princess, was not educated without the aid of his pious mother-God plainly indicatiug by this, that "all the learning of the Egyptians" could not compensate the loss of this influence. Samuel was the child of prayer, whose heart was regenerated while he was yet a babe; and Timothy could bear witness to the faith of his "grandmother Lois and his mother Eunice." And as it were to impress this magnificent truth most deeply on the head of every household, to show in what esteem God holds the family school, the child Jesus was educated in it, and went forth from its sacred precincts to do the will of his Father, and to make an atonement for the sins of the world. If parents wish their sons to resemble a Samuel, a Timothy, or an Edwards, they must lay the foundation of that resemblence in the nursery; they must be according to Divine appointment, God's magistrate to restrain the waywardness of childhood, and God's teacher in justice and judgment; they must be God's ambassador, to bear with tearful earnestness the

messages of dying love from the Redeemer; they must be like the importunate wrestler with the angel of the covenant, crying out with holy energy. "I will not let thee go, except thou bless me" in the salvation of these immortal souls! Oh, be faithful at home, and God will honor you as he did Abraham, and not curse you as he did Eli. You shall perpetuate the blessings of redemption to other generations, instead of sending on your posterity such withering curses as fell on the descendants of Eli.

3. The neglect of this principle is the undoubted cause of ruin to many children of pious parents. Hophni and Phinehas, with their posterity, were the victims who perished in consequence of this, and it is to be feared that many since their day and for the same reason have raised fruitless lamentations in the world of despair. And now, let me earnestly inquire, has this congregation no Eli, with children doomed to eternal darkness, because their parents restrain them not when they make themselves vile? Say, fathers, shall any of your children be cursed with a curse, a withering curse, an ever-abiding curse, because their father was an Eli?

4. We see also wherein consists the true hope of the church, It is in the right education of children at home. By this I do not say it would not be a cause of joy here, as well as in heaven, if the adults were converted. Would it might be done speedily! And yet were a whole generation of such brought into the Church, what a vast difference would there be between them and a generation indoctrinated in infancy, and so trained that the Holy Spirit might consistently implant true grace in their hearts, and thus, from the first, piety become the habit of heart and life? our true hope is found in coming back to the Scriptural plan of religious education. The hearts of children must be moulded, and their habits formed. We must fulfill the conditions rendering it consistent for the Holy Spirit to engraft true religion on their hearts, so that manhood shall find them like holy plants in the Church, bending under the delicious fruits of holiness, rather than as trees grown up to maturity of evil, whose wide-spreading branches must be cut away in order to graft in the scions of piety and holiness, or else to be cut down as cubmerers of the ground, and burned with unquenchable fire.

Mothers, I beseech you to impress piety on the babes in your arms, and the children at your side. Fathers, I beseech you to breathe religion into these young hearts, which daily are drinking in lessons of some kind from your eyes, your lips, and your actions. Oh, parents, suffer not your children to depart from the fire-side altar without knowing, as Hannah did, that they are growing before the Lord. With the divine assist ance, so freely promised, and so faithfully given, you can accomplish much. Work, then, "while it is called to-day, for the night cometh, in which no man can work."