the Son, and the Holy Ghost, named upon him. This dedication, we trust, was made in faith, and we felt that God accepted it; and we believed, when he called our little one away from earth, he took him to dwell with Him in heaven.

While the babe was lying ill, his countenance assuming each moment a more deathlike appearance and his breath becoming shorter and more laboured, the scenes connected with Willie's death came more forcibly to remembrance. Oh, how vividly could we see his glazed eye and convulsed frame, and hear the low plaintive moan, and finally behold the death-struggle! Then we thought of heaven, and his glorious rest there. Six years in heaven! He was but a babe when he left us. Now his intellect has expanded; his capabilities of enjoyment have increased; his powers are infinitely enlarged; for he has been an angel in heaven for six long years! We cannot comprehend the full meaning and extent of these ideas, nor ever will be able to, while we see through a glass darkly. But when we arrive at the paradise of God, and see as we are seen and know as we are known, we will be able to form some adequate conception of the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.

While watching our little one, apparently breathing his feeble life away, the chamber was a solemn place, and seemed mysteriously sacred; for in imagination an angel was hovering over it. It was a heavenly spirit, too, in whom we felt no ordinary interest; for we thought it not inconsistent with reason or revelation that our angel Willie might have been sent to earth to bear the spirit of his babybrother to the skies. Is this visionary and improbable? We think not. We feel that the word of God authorizes the belief in ministering spirits; and why should not these ministering ones be the spirits of our departed friends-those who loved us when on earth, and whom we loved, and in whom we took a deep and tender interest?

How comforting, how precious, are the truths of the gospel and the consolations of religion! How can those be supported in the hour of affliction and adversity who repudiate these truths and lightly esteem these consolations? Blessed be God for a Saviour, the Bible, and the comforts of grace!

These reflections have not been unprofitable; and we trust, too, that the providence which removed our cherished Charlie from our embrace has proved, by the blessing of God, wholesome discipline, to wean us from earth and draw our thoughts and affections to heaven, where we can now by faith contemplate two cherub children. The bud was bitter; but we think the fruit has been sweet, and that we can say, in confidence and submissive love, "It is the Lord let him do what seemeth him good."

We are all rapidly passing away. Soon, all of us will have finished our course, and gone to account to God, our judge, for the deeds done in the body. May we so live that death may not sur

prise us, when commissioned to remove us from earth, but may find us ready, and waiting our summons, having our loins girt about with faith, and our lamps trimmed and burning!

Perhaps some loved departed one is already on the wing to attend us to our heavenly home. Our child, our parent, our partner, our brother or sister, may be sent as a ministering spirit to introduce us to the presence of our God and Saviour and to the glorious company of saints and martyrs who surround the throne, and who cease not, day or night, to ascribe glory, and might, and thanksgiving, and praise, to Him that sitteth on the throne, and unto the Lamb, forever and ever. R. M. E.

PHILADELPHIA, Nov. 26, 1855.

THE TRAINING OF CHILDREN.

OUR present object is to throw out some general thoughts involved in the idea of training.

1. In the first place, there is danger of our children becoming perverse and crooked. The Bible very clearly affirms this tendency, and also gives a sufficient and satisfactory reason for it. As to the tendency, its statement is "The wicked are estranged from the womb: they go astray as soon as they be born, speaking lies." Ps. liii. 3. The inspired explanation of this is thus presented: "Behold, I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me." Ps. li. 5. If this be so, then verily the earliest moments of being are commenced with the principles of perversity and wrong within us. So says "the wise man:" "Foolishness is bound in the heart of a child." Here foolishness, as in almost all his writings, means sin, or a wicked perversity in view of the divine law. And the statement, too, is made very comprehensive and general:-"a child," i. e. any child. Now, notwithstanding all the theories which have been formed concerning the purity and innocence of infancy, it is far better, because it is safer, to take this inspired and divine testimony for our guide and warning, and, in accordance with it, to believe that the seeds of waywardness and wrong are within the child-all children,—and, therefore, within our own children, or those from time to time brought under our influence. For they who believe that the elementary principles of wrong are there, surely, more deeply and anxiously than others, must feel that there is danger not only of their proving finally ruinous to the soul, but also of being acted out in a corrupt and corrupting life.

But even those who might be disposed to differ here, and theorize in the face of these teachings of revelation, must agree, as to the outward exhibitions in real life, that there is manifested an earlyvery early-proneness to wrong, and that the dispositions and steps of childhood are very early and very often out of the way. If

this be acknowledged, then, whatever may be regarded its origin, we are still at one on this point,-that there is danger. To awaken this feeling is, at present, all my aim; though, in fact, it is not all the truth. The Bible, as we have seen, says the root of the evil exists and is to be sought in the heart of the youngest child. "Its nature is corrupt." John iii. 6. "By nature it is a child of wrath." Eph. ii. 3.

But if any would yet demur, then together we will bear in mind that the tender herb may be swerved and bent by blasts from without. The long howling storms of winter, or sudden fierce tornadoes of the summer, especially as there is power enough in them to twist and fell the mightiest oak, may be far too much for the sapling of days. Just so there are storms and tornadoes in the moral world of a most desolating nature. And where is that community, in city or country, in which the child can go forth wholly unexposed? These moral tornadoes appear in the form of idleness and dishonesty, profanity and Sabbath-breaking, indulgence of sundry gross and angry appetites and passions. They sweep along our public streets, penetrate the sacred enclosure of the school-room or the spot designed and set apart for childish sports; and, after all our care and effort, we sometimes find them howling within the doors and windows of the child's best and surest retreat,the parents' home. And hence it follows, as a truth, that there is no child who, unaided and exposed, can escape from harm. Continued neglect and want of assistance may alone terminate in disgraceful and hopeless ruin.

2. Training implies watchfulness.

The design of watchfulness will be to detect any deviation from the course we would have the child pursue. The man who would have his vine or sapling grow in a direction according to his mind must not be satisfied with merely passing it at distant intervals, according as business or pleasure may call him by that way, or with occasional reports concerning it from those who may chance to see it. Just in proportion to his interest in the matter will be the frequency of going himself, and going designedly and on purpose, to see if all is right. So, also, just as he may be more or less impressed with a sense of its danger from the many and powerful influences to which it stands exposed will be his anxiety to watch, protect, and assist it.

Should school, or other cause, require the absence of their children for a season, anxious and faithful parents will avail themselves of the first opportunity, and of such methods as their judgments and duty shall point out, to ascertain what, if any, evil has followed from their intercourse and associations abroad. This end will not and cannot be gained by assuming that all is well, nor by deciding that it is so from a distant prospect. The twig may seem straight from afar, while closer inspection discloses many a curve. So may it be with a child, especially if thrown much with others. He may

learn the wrong, and, at the same time, knowing that it is wrong, in a parent's presence and hearing may forbear thus to speak or act. Hence, it will require a nearer approach-by familiar conversation, or otherwise-to ascertain his views, and, if wrong, to strive to set him right.

3. Training implies that the time necessarily required for the work must and will be taken.

Such a suggestion assumes that this training, if truly and regularly carried on, will necessarily be at the expense of time particularly and exclusively devoted to it; hence, that, with the responsibility of the training of children upon us, we must not allow ourselves to be so involved in business of a different kind that want of time shall regularly be urged as an apology for neglecting this. And yet who has not often heard this plea presented? Many are the instances, both within and out of the church, in which even parents are heard to confess that their children are running at random through neglect, and that they are not at all brought up in accordance with the rule and care which they themselves admit to be true and right. But what forbids following out these convictions of what is true and right? Ever and anon you hear, as an excuse and kind of palliative to conscience, "We have not time to attend to these children, who, on account of the pressure of our engagements, are thus left so wholly to themselves and to the influences which others may exert upon them." Do not some professors of religion at times-yea, often-so excuse themselves?

Now, what can be the reason that any parent is unable to command the time needful for a work at once so important and so delightful? Is it because of certain relations that he sustains to the community? i. e. because his relations abroad conflict with those at home? But suppose such conflict of claims actually to exist. Manifestly, one of the two must yield. The case, therefore, resolves itself into this simple inquiry:- Which claim is first in nature and in strength? In the order that God has established, and to which our own natures heartily respond, which, oh, which ought to prove the stronger and prevail?-claims from our relations to our beloved children, or to strangers? And yet how sadly true that time which was due and ought to have been devoted to "The Little Ones at Home" is regularly dissipated among the thousand calls which society is urging! And, while such are gone upon these social errands, unmindful that the vine, through mere neglect-much more if exposed to harm-falls, becomes worthless, and dies, they imagine that all is well if children only play, or sleep, or are confined to the care and influence of some workinggirl "with whom they are not afraid to leave them."

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Is the apology offered based upon the toil needful not only for their support, but to have them live in comfort and to receive" portion" when left as orphans? Diligence and care to provide for his family undoubtedly are due from each that stands at its head.

But who sincerely believes that the feeding and clothing of the body exhausts the idea of the care and provision due from a parent to a child? Who does not admit that the mental and moral, no less than the physical, call for a share in this care and provision? Hence, to plead that our labour for the physical (which is the very essence of the excuse when urged) precludes the possibility of attending to the others, is, again, to affirm the existence of conflicting claims upon our time. But even if this were granted,-which, to a certain and proper degree, must be denied,-yet, for the present, granting it as a real difficulty, as before, so now we have only to inquire and to decide which of the two stands first? Which, oh, which, is of more importance to those children?-nourished bodies and means for gentility and outward show in society, or what is conceded to be proper training as to intellect and morality? And yet are there not mothers, even, who habitually plead their toil in "the care of the family" as their only and sufficient reason for having no time familiarly to instruct and cheer their children, fully to meet the wants of their expanding, inquiring minds, or patiently, regularly, and decidedly to subdue their insubordination and correct their wanderings? Alas for those children who have been intrusted to parents that are capable of making parental ties yield to every other, or duties, avowedly the greater, constantly to give place to those which are less! Surely they are deserving of sympathy, and swell the number who need "to be looked up" for the Sabbath-school or other kind and pious care. Parents who can urge such a plea for their failure in this service must have most unworthy views of the relation they sustain, or most sordid views of worldly estimation and worldly gain.

In all this it is not specified how much time is essential for this work. The whole idea now presented may be summed up by saying that whatever time enlightened and anxious parents see and feel to be necessary for the proper training of their children must be given up to this great work, and that there is no relation of life that has a more imperative claim upon time. To say that we have no time for this service is only equivalent to saying that we have not time to answer the great design of God in constituting families and putting us into that relation. Just observe how he has subdivided and apportioned all the children of the world into little groups-probably not exceeding an average of three or four,-in order that all might be trained for usefulness here and happiness hereafter, and yet none burdened with the work of training! To neglect or excuse ourselves from this work, therefore, is, most cer-. tainly, to neglect or excuse ourselves from a duty which grows out of the very design of the family relation.

L. H. C.