the minds of those whom they may have to train to fill these relations. These are the duties which the Bible enforces, and for the neglect of which, with all the accumulated miseries in its train, they must assuredly hereafter render an account. Happy those families, those husbands, and fathers, where such retired and domestic habits in their female associates are founded on principle; so that to the enquiry, Where is thy wife?' where is thy daughter?' they can generally reply,' She is within the tent.'

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Considered in this light, the privileges of the Christian rise above our power to estimate. He especially enjoys the company, the counsel, the prayers of his own people; of the religious society to which he is attached; and of the pastor who presides over them as their spiritual guide and director, and whose access to the Divine Majesty, to the court of heaven, (if the prayers of a righteous man avail much) may bring down blessings on a people - spiritual blessings, in value in

finitely above what any earthly monarch, or all earthly potentates united, could dispense. Nor would the poorest pilgrim we meet, labouring along the barren tracks of this wilderness, if once sensible of their value, barter these his privileges, for any thing that could be offered him. To whatever would seduce them, those who can reply with genuine contentment, whether as members of a family or of a Christian community, We dwell among our own people,' are privileged with the purest and the best (because the most natural) of all enjoyments; as those can witness, who are travelling towards yon heavenly land. What renders it so attractive, but that it is their father's house-their home? There their kindred dwell; there will all their wanderings be terminated: the restlessness of their desires will be at an end. In that home they will ever remain, without a wish to go any more out: it will be the height of happiness there, to say, 'I dwell among mine own people.'

No. XVII.

By faith, Noah, being warned of God of things not seen as yet, moved with fear, prepared an ark to the saving of his house; by the which he condemned the world, and became heir of the righteousness which is by faith. HEBREWS, xi, ver. 7.

Of all the vicissitudes experienced by travellers in this wilderness, none can compare with those which are recorded of this eminent servant of God. Many make their boast of an extensive knowledge of the world; but he saw two worlds; - a world expiring, a world reviving, and commencing a new existence. He witnessed the end of all flesh; and again, he witnessed the commencement of a new state of society. He had found the wickedness of mankind to be great, when

they were many and spread abroad in all directions over the face of the earth; and he presently found that the same corrupt principle still existed when they were few, and that the heart of man is only evil, and that continually; that neither the most awful judgments, nor the most signal mercies, are in themselves sufficient to change its evil bias, and give it holy propensities all these things he saw; and as he was a just man, and perfect in his generation,' those impressive lessons produced their proper effect, and prepared him to be a fit inhabitant of that land, where vicissitudes and perils are unknown.

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As neither the mighty waters of the Deluge, nor the subsequent revolutions of so many ages, have been able to obliterate the print of his footsteps, let us, fellow-traveller, in our contemplations, endeavour to follow the track, that something, if possible, may be collected therefrom, to direct our own dubious steps along the journey of life through the same

desert that he travelled so long, and on which he was safely landed, after a catastrophe more dire in its consequences than has ever been witnessed by any of his countless posterity.

The first circumstance on record of this eminent character is, that he lived in the midst of those whose manners were utterly depraved, and their conduct flagitiously wicked. Had there been a neighbour or friend of congenial principles and habits, he would have found in the hospitable ark an asylum: but what piety existed in the world was exclusively confined to this one family; and surrounded as they were by examples of the most flagrant wickedness, it reflects no little honour upon those of the younger branches of it, on whom the prophetic blessing was afterwards bestowed: a circumstance from which a profitable lesson may be derived by those who are ill disposed to receive parental instruction, and who, while enjoying the means best adapted to promote their highest interests, still re