ments which have hitherto been too much the bane, not only of "the world of the ungodly " without, but also of what is too significantly called the religious world within the pale of the professing church! To view woman in the true light of her high destiny-to see what constitutes her true glory and distinction, and invests her with an almost sacred character, when raised to her proper elevation as the first teacher, and therefore the real trainer of the future race-has been hitherto the rare and extraordinary attainment

a few enlightened and highlygifted minds. Could effectual measures be adopted to elevate the general standard of female education, and to render its character solid and substantial, rather than merely external and ornamental, a most important service would be rendered both to society and to the church of Christ.-J. Wilson, Esq.

"We want more mothers," said Napoleon; "they are the most influential teachers: with them rests the tuition of the heart, so much more influential than that of the head."

"I am a missionary in my own nursery," once observed a Christian mother. "Six pairs of little eyes are daily watching mamma's looks, as well as listening to her words; and I wish my children never to see in me that which they may not imitate."

A LETTER TO A PARENT. THE late excellent Henry Venn, in a letter to a relative on the birth of his first child, thus writes:

"I write now to congratulate you

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on the birth of your child. Christian will receive it as a charge of inestimable worth; and, at the same time, as a patient, whose innate depravity must be guarded against, and its cure begun even from very infancy. The child is, at first, little more than an animal; afterwards, in a small degree, rational; and for some years, in general, is capable of being treated as spiritual. Wisdom, love, and mercy call upon us to begin very early with our offspring, to oppose and subdue selfwill-the plague of man, and the enemy of God! And early and steadfastly opposed, it is, in most cases, very soon conquered, though not extirpated.

"No object is more pleasing than a meek, obedient child. It reflects honour upon its parents, for their wise management. It enjoys much ease and pleasure, to the utmost limit of what is fit. It promises excellency and usefulness-to be, when age has matured the human understanding, a willing subject in all things to the will of God. No object, on the contrary, is more shocking than a child under no management! We pity orphans, who have neither father nor mother to care for them. A child indulged is more to be pitied: it has no parent; it is its own master-peevish, froward, headstrong, blind;-born to a double portion of trouble and sorrow, above what fallen man is heir to ;not only miserable itself, but worthless, and a plague to all that in future will be connected with it. What bad sons, husbands, masters, fathers,daughters, wives and mothers, are the offspring of fond indulgence

shown to little masters and inisses, almost from the cradle! Wise discipline gives thought and firmness to the mind; and makes us useful here, and fit for the world of perfect subordination above."

Read Gen, xviii, 19; Lev. xix. 3; Josh. xxiv. 15; 1 Sam. iii. 13; Eph. vi. 1-4; Prov. xiii. 24; xix. 18; xxii. 6, 15; xxiii, 13, 14; 1 Tim. iii. 4.

PARENTAL TRAINING. THE parent should be to the child the cheerful, the radiant, the easily accessible one, that speaks of things mirthfully where mirth is proper. The child should look upon father and mother as model philosopher, and priest, and friend-as patterns of manhood and womanhood; and that being so, I tell you there is a great deal of education necessary before we are fit to be fathers and mothers. The most important thing in this world, next to the soul's salvation, is the taking care of children; and yet there is no subject on which there is so much ignorance as on this. Men and women assume the relation of parents without the least knowledge of the duties that belong to that relation. By the time their children have grown up, and passed beyond their control and influence, they begin to say, "I believe, if I could turn round and bring up my children again, I could do it more wisely.".... We must learn how to carry ourselves before we can learn how rightly to take care of children. But we may certainly learn to do this-to make our leisure hours not hours of tattling, certainly not hours of backbiting or scandal, bu

hours of edifying. Let us do what we do for edification. It will make our lives sweeter and happier. Let us be continually actuated by this thought: How shall I build myself up in a Christian manhood? How shall I exercise my rights and liberties so that wherever I go I shall build men up in such a way as to make them better? May God give us instruction so to build. And when at last we appear in Zion and before. God, may we be able to render an account of our stewardship, such that we shall not be ashamed to be called labourers, and such that God shall not be ashamed to call us labourers together with Him! (Gen. xviii. 19; Prov. xxii. 6.)Henry Ward Beecher.

EARLY IMPRESSIONS. THE character of most men is formed and fixed before it is apprehended that they have, or can have, any eharacter at all. Many vainly and fatally imagine that the first few years of life may be disposed of as you please, that a little neglect may easily be repaired, that a little irregularity may easily be rectified. This is saying, in other words, "Never regard the morning-sleep it,trifle it, riot it away; a little closer application at noon will recover the loss. The spring returns, the flowers appear upon the earth, the time of the singing of birds has come. No matter; it is soon enough to think of the labours of spring. Sing with the birds, skip with the fawn, the diligence of a more advanced, more propitious season will bring everything round, and the year shall be

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crowned with the horn of plenty." A single ray of reason is sufficient to detect and expose such absurdity; yet human conduct exhibits it in almost universal prevalence. Infancy and childhood are vilely cast away; the morning is lost, the seedtime neglected, and what is the consequence? A life full of confusion and an old age full of regret; a day of unnecessary toil and a night of vexation; a hurried summer, meagre autumn, a comfortless winter. An eminent writer of the present day has observed that "from the hour that the child becomes capable of noticing what is passing around him he receives impressions from example, and circumstances, and situation. So powerful, indeed, are the gradual and unnoticed influences of these early days, that we not unfrequently see the indulged and humoured infant a petty tyrant before a year old, at two years of age a discontented irritable thing,causing every one but its mother to turn away from it with disgust. At this period of life the child is making observations, forming opinions, and acquiring habits. Notions, right or wrong, are now becoming so completely a part of his character that they can never be eradicated."

FAITH.-When Charles V. imperiously required the Confession of Augsburg to be abandoned, and gave the Protestant leaders only six months more in which to make up their minds finally, the cause of the Reformation was thought hopeless. But Luther exclaimed, "I saw a sign in the heavens, out of my window at night; the stars, the hosts of

"I think I may say," remarks the celebrated Locke, "that of all the men we meet with, nine parts of ten are what they are, good or evil, useful or not, by their education. It is that which makes the great difference in mankind. The little or almost insensible impressions on our tender infancies have very important consequences. There it is as in the fountains of rivers, where a gentle application of the hand turns the flexible waters into channels that make them take quite contrary courses; and by this little direction, given them at first in the source, they receive different tendencies, and arrive at last at very remote and distant places. Imagine the minds of children as easily turned, this way or that, as water itself."

Mothers, who can say how much depends on your instructions to your little ones! "I have long felt," ob serves Lord Shaftesbury, "that until the fathers and mothers are better men and better women, our schools can accomplish comparatively little. I believe that any improvement that could be brought to bear on the MOTHERS, more especially, would effect a greater amount of good than anything that has yet been done."

heaven, held up in a vault above me; and yet I could see no pillars on which the Master had made it to rest. But I had no fear it would fall. Some men look about for the pillars, and would fain touch them with their hands, as if afraid the sky would fall. Poor souls! Is not God always there ?" - Dr. Gill.

We advise all young people to acquire, in early life, the habit of using good language, both in speaking and writing, and to abandon, as early as possible, any use of slang words and phrases. The longer they live, the more difficult the acquisition of correct language will be; and if the golden age of youth, the proper season for the acquisition of language, be passed in its abuse, the unfortunate victim of neglected education is, very properly, doomed to talk slang for life. Money is not necessary to procure this education. Every man has it in his power. He has merely to use the language which he reads, instead of the slang which he hears; to form his taste from the best speakers and poets of the country, to treasure up choice phrases in his memory, and habituate himself to their use, avoiding, at the same time, that pedantic precision and bombast which show rather the weakness of a vain ambition than the polish of an educated mind.

THE END OF READING. FOR what purpose-with what intent do we read? We read not for the sake of reading, but we read to the end that we may think. Reading is valuable only as it may supply to us the materials which the mind itself elaborates. As it is not the largest quantity of any kind of food taken into the stomach that conduces to health, but such a quantity of such

a kind as can be best digested, so it is not the greatest complement of any kind of information that improves the mind, but such a quantity of such a kind as determines the intellect to most vigorous energy. The only profitable reading is that in which we are compelled to think, and think intensely; whereas that reading which serves only to dissipate and divert our thought, is either positively hurtful, or useful only as an occasional relaxation from severe exertion. But the amount of vigorous thinking is usually in the inverse ratio of multifarious reading. Multifarious reading is agreeable; but as a habit, it is in its way as destructive to the mental as dramdrinking is to the bodily health.Sir Wm. Hamilton's Lectures on Logic.

GIVE HIM A TRADE. THE advice of Franklin, to give every child a trade by which he can earn a living, if necessary, comes of a human experience older than the sage of the New World. In some countries this has been the law; in others a common custom. St. Paul, though educated in the law, at the feet of Gamaliel, also acquired the important oriental handicraft of a tent-maker, by which he was able to earn his living while prosecuting his mission.

It is a good and wise thing to do. You may be able to leave your chil

dren fortunes; but "riches take to themselves wings." You may give to them finished educations, and they may be gifted with extraordinary genius; but they may be placed in situations where no education and no talent may be so available as some humble, honest trade, by which they can get their living and be useful to others.

It need not take seven years. Several months of earnest work are, in some cases, sufficient to learn an ordinary business. If every young person, male and female, were obliged,

in the intervals of study, preparatory or professional, to learn farming, gardening, shoemaking, tailoring, blacksmithing; or, if ladies, millinery or dress-making, or one of twenty kinds of work or business, it would always give them a feeling of security and independence. It is well for every one to have something to fall back upon. We do not know what revolutions may come in our time. We do not know what misfortunes may come to us individually. There is no harm in being able to take care of ourselves in any possible emergency.

LOUISA JENKINS was the only surviving daughter of the Rev. E. Č. Jenkins, of Salem and Moriah Chapels, Monmouthshire. She was born on the 25th of August, 1840.

In her childhood she was dutiful, engaging, amiable, obedient, and trustworthy. She was admitted to the fellowship of the church at Salem Independent Chapel in the sixteenth year of her age, May 4th, 1856. Young, but well taught in the principles of our holy religion by her worthy parents,-deeply impressed by the concerns of her soul -she was strongly attached to our adorable Jesus, and His people, as her consistent behaviour fully evinced, in health and in sickness, in life and in death. When she was in the charming bloom of life she was unexpectedly taken alarmingly ill. The days of her illness were long and many. She was confined to her house a year and nine months, and the last nine days to her bed. During this long illness she would improve at intervals so as to give flattering indications of her recovery; but she was prepared for the worst,

and resigned to the will of God. In the house she felt herself a prisoner, especially on the Sabbath, when her heart was in the house of God, to join the saints in public worship, and to adorn her class in the Sabbath school with the blessings of her lips. Often I pictured her in my mind like a ship at anchor in a wind-bound condition, longing to sail to the haven of eternal rest. On December the 6th, 1861, she fell asleep in Christ.

Knowing she was fast drawing to the portals of death, she calmly arranged all things respecting her funeral. Giving her parting kiss to her mother, and farewell to her weeping father and brothers, she resigned her soul to the tender hands of her beloved Saviour, and found Him to be "a Friend that sticketh closer than a brother."

The storm blew and spent itself; and the calm ensued, which to her will no more be interrupted.

On Monday following, December 9th, the funeral took place, on which occasion a large multitude of sympathizing friends came together to