agement of the mother, may be forming moral habits which will make every care for their fortunes worse than thrown away. The mother has it in her power to form the moral sentiments of her children, and thus to make them either the ornaments or the scourges of society. Unless she co-operates, all that is done by others is to no purpose. The father may hire instructers for his children, but if the mother, instead of aiding them in their tasks, and exacting a scrupulous attention to their studies, is indifferent or negligent, his money is in a great measure thrown away. It is in vain that the father tries to keep them out of bad company, if as soon as he is out of the way, the mother listens to their tears and entreaties, and suffers them to go where they please. It is in vain that he would train them to energy, industry and self-denial, if she persists in indulging them in idleness, sloth, and effeminacy. And if, through a weak fondness and want of decision, she supplies them with money against their father's wishes, their ruin is sealed. Nothing more is wanted to make them profligates and vagabonds.

One of the strongest evidences of the goodness of the Author of our being is the

guardianship he has prepared for us in a mother's heart. There could no other bond be given so strong of our well being. No where could our young and helpless existence nestle so safely as upon a mother's breast. The first we know of life is that we are watched over by the most untiring and sleepless care. The cradle nook from which we first look forth upon the world, has been prepared for us by the most disinterested affection. The first tones to which we listen are those of unutterable love. Thus provision has been made, that the heart should receive the earliest culture. The affections are exercised before the understanding is at all developed. The angel of prayer hovers over its slumbers before one temptation has been permitted to approach. What deep and infinite emotions rush through the heart at the sight of sleeping infancy! What a shrine of tenderness! What a prophecy of the future! What a symbol of hope! What a crowd of anticipations cluster around the young heir of the world! What a vision of joys and sorrows rises up before the mind as it penetrates the dim vista of coming years, which wait to receive this inheritor of the lot of humanity! Those little hands, how elo

quently do they gesticulate in their ceaseless graspings, the old and irrevocable sentence of toil! On that miniature brow, Thought and Care already perch beside the Majesty of Reason. In that bosom the lion and the lamb are still slumbering together in utter unconsciousness. Those alternate smiles and tears, how emblematic of the storms and sunshine of coming life! That feeble wail, how does it chime in with the undertone of sadness which is heard in all the music of this life. Those little feet, what path shall they tread,where shall they wander, and where shall they find their final rest?

Such are the thoughts, which must often pass through the mind of a mother. Such are the musings to which she must be often led when she watches in solitude over the child of her hopes and affections. But let her know, while these thousand conflicting emotions are agitating her bosom, that it depends on her more than any other human being to say, whether her hopes or her fears Ishall be realized.

Among the thoughts, which send a pang into a mother's heart, as she gazes upon her babe, is the slender hold by which she pos

sesses her precious treasure. She knows that one half of these beautiful buds wither and fall before they come to maturity. She feels that her watching and toils may all be in vain. But not in vain, another instinct assures her. There is an instinct within her, deeper and surer than any written revelation, that not one of these little ones is forgotten before God. She feels, that if the child of her affections is early torn from her embrace, it is only to be laid in the bosom of Infinite Love. She reasons, that if God provided such a circle of warm hearts to receive it at its advent into this world, merely because it is the creature of his forming hand, much more should he prepare a ministry of kind affections to welcome it into that world, where it has already a representing angel before the throne of God.

The impress of our heavenly origin and destination is brightest and freshest upon us in our earliest years. A beautiful child or infant seems more like a celestial inhabitant lent to us for a while, than one of the creatures of this earth, which sin soon tarnishes, and suffering disfigures. As a living poet has well described our natural feelings with regard to

the connection of the young with an invisible world:

"Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:

The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star, Hath had elsewhere its setting,

And cometh from afar:

Not in entire forgetfulness,

And not in utter nakedness,

But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:

Heaven lies about us in our infancy!

Shades of the prison-house begin to close

Upon the growing Boy,

But He beholds the light, and whence it flows,

He sees it in his joy;

The Youth, who daily farther from the East
Must travel, still is Nature's Priest,

And by the vision splendid

Is on his way attended;

At length the Man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day."

No human being has so much power to preserve this primeval image of heaven in the soul as the mother. Peculiarly susceptible of religious emotion herself, she can communicate it more effectually than any other instructer. The lessons she teaches are never forgotten. They will recur with the softened image of