ward way. But enough; and with such examples before the mind, let mothers realise their position; let them know their own power for good or for ill, and appeal to the only wise God to make them mothers indeed-mothers to souls whom they are guiding to the Redeemer's fold.

You have a little one upon your knee-we speak as to a mother and he is the light of your eyes; you live two lives at once when he is near; and what do you design to make him —we mean his soul? Its destiny depends mainly upon you —is he, then, to be a blessing or a bane? Is he to be a child of destruction or an heir of glory? Be assured that in the little heart of what you call your "innocent,” there lie folded up, and ready to germinate, the seeds and elements of all sin. But you can nip them. Will you? You can administer the divine antidote. Will you do it, and look up for the blessing ?—or will you let your little one die among your hands of the uncured spiritual malady? Surely, never. Rather, you will live in communion with the great Teacher, and he will give success to your lessons, and shew that a prayerful spirit is a mother's panoply." We know that you cannot convert your child: that is in the hands of the allwise and sovereign Spirit. But, still, it is true regarding him, "His heart, now passive, yields to thy command, Secure it, then, the key is in thy hand."

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It is not more certain that his body is fearfully and wonderfully made, than that you can largely influence his soul and his eternity; and as the great God has been pleased to unite certain blessings with the believing use of certain means, you can cry for these blessings. Oh, do it then--and see two souls prospering-your own, and your child's. Neglect itand we see nothing before you but sorrow. Place your hand,

it has been said, over your little child's heart, and feel how rapidly it beats. Now, each beat is a development. It is hastening on unspeakable results. Will you guide, then, to blessedness, or let Satan mislead to woe?

Hitherto we have pointed to the duties of a father and a mother in their separate and peculiar spheres, but let us now consider them in the exercise of a combined influence, where two are only one, but one with a moral power second only to that of the transforming Spirit.

HELPMATES.

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CHAPTER VIII.

HELPMATES AT HOME.

Husband and Wife-Man's Position at Home-Woman's-Eden-The Family Constitution-Its Violation-Ezra's Complaint-Malachi's-National DistemperThe Converse-The Saviour and the Church-The Model and the Law of Obedience-The Weakest the most cared for-Light in the Dwelling-Precedence-The Sun and Moon-Family Separations-"The Graves of a Household"-Consolation-The Cataract of Velino-Examples-The Judsons-Rowland Hill-Mrs Hemans.

THERE is frequently a valuable moral lesson conveyed in the meaning of a single word. Husband, for example, is Houseband, for he binds or unites the family into one: his dissolution often breaks up the whole. Wife, again, is connected with the words weave, and weft, and speaks of thrift and careful housewifery. In this manner the Saxon forefathers, who gave us our manly language as well as many other blessings, tell us in general of the duties of husband and wife. It is his to watch over all as their guardian under God; it is hers by painstaking to look well to the inner condition of her household,

"That like some gentle planet, she may run
Along the silent course of duty's round."

But more than this. Poetry, at once the most lofty and the most lowly, delights to expatiate upon these relations. With the single exception of war and its ravages, more, perhaps, has been written upon subjects connected with Home, its joys and its sorrows, than upon any topic which

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could be named.

ADAM-EVE-EDEN.

In a single line, Milton has told the whole truth regarding the relation between the two whom God has made one.

"He for God only, she for God in him,"

is the human form of expressing the inspired sentiment"The husband is the head of the wife, as Christ is the head of the Church."

And this truth comes out in all its vividness in the earliest records of our race, for Adam was not complete till Eve was created. Eden was less than Eden needed to be, while it contained only one rational and living occupant; and He who has the residue of the Spirit accordingly formed the second as the complement of the first. Co-operation, or sympathy, was needed ere the social being, man, could find his whole nature responded to and hence the family constitution arose. According to it, the two made one are to regulate all their proceedings in perfect harmony with each other, because in perfect harmony with the mind of God. There is to be no counteracting or counterplotting within the sacred precincts of Home. In rearing a godly offspring, the two are to be the foster parents of the children of God.* Precept and example are to be in unison. The pair are to be both mutually consistent and self-consistent. They are, in truth, the right hand and the left of that social system of which Jehovah is the Head, and with one heart and one soul they are to carry out the purposes of Him in whom they have their being. Just as the first woman was formed from the first man, so that their frames were identical in substance, their minds are to be one in aim, because in unison with the will of God over all. Their Home is thus

*Mal. ii. 15.

NURSERIES OF FRAUD.

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to be the Eden of Eden, the brightest and most beauteous spot among the scenes whose very name means "Delights." The first pair occupied the Holy of Holies in God's august temple the globe, but, alas! how different the style of man's home soon became from the Great Architect's type!

For mark the misery which has followed in the wake of sin. By God's grace, there are happy homes. His truth is enthroned by some helpmates; and families love not merely as earthly kindred, but as sustaining a more permanent relation-they are all " one in Christ." In many a home its inmates can mutually say—

"Round my heart I will assemble

Things and thoughts beloved of thee,
Till each wish and taste resemble
Those that in thy bosom be."

But, on the other hand, the sight is sad and sickening when one parent trains the child to disobey the other—when the one inculcates what the other erases—or when the passion of the father is counteracted only by the fond and the blind partiality of the mother. The spirit which sprang up in Adam's home, and which led to the first murder, the first fratricide, the first martyrdom, all in one, is thus perpetuated, and instead of being helpmates amid "the charm of musicladen hours," such pairs are mutually sources of sorrow. Home becomes the abode of tumult, not of peace. Faults are unwisely concealed, or sinfully denied, or boldly defended—and a nursery of fraud and deception is often found where the nurture and admonition of the Lord should be regulating all.

Nor need we wonder at such results. The Saviour obviously designed the family constitution to be a grand moving