distinct, weighty, and immediate, on the circle of personal friendship and family relations.

This great law of reflected influence, and deciding the solemn destiny of character of souls, invests all social and moral relations with unwonted interest and solemnity, and pre-eminently clothes parental relations with responsibilities as fearful and solemn as they could possibly be made. Parents, interests and results of infinite magnitude cluster around your pathway, and twine themselves into every act and relation of the family circle. You may not, you do not realize this solemn fact as you ought. But, as if in the presence of God and encircled by your children, I affectionately and earnestly remind you of your unchanging responsibilities to realize the thrilling solemnity of your parental position. The well-being of your country, the purity and safety of society, the peace and comfort of your homes and hearts,― the future increase and prosperity of the Church of Christ,the honor, and usefulness, and eternal destiny of your precious children, all, all invoke, with more than an angel's eloquence, that you should take care how you educate and fix in types of unchanging colors, the moral elements which will decide the character and destiny of your children.

To aid you in surveying and realizing your tremendous and perilous responsibilities, consider,

1. The lasting and indelible impressions of childhood and youth.

wax.

In this budding season of life, the unformed character of your children may be aptly likened to a tablet of softened You can take any given object, and by impression trace, in perfect distinctness, the lineaments, proportion, and form of the object. This impression, by time and atmospheric influence, will indurate and fix itself into a durable and permanent form. Precisely thus, in regard to the sus1 ceptibility of your children, in receiving and retaining im

pressions on the tablet of their hearts. In the genial season of childhood, in the bright and impressible period of youth, you are capable of imprinting impressions never to be obli

terated. Then the soil of the heart is mellow, and the softened furrows are upturned to receive, kindly, the planting of the seed, which, in coming time, will continue to bear a moral harvest corresponding to the nature of the seed.

Childhood has been compared to a mirror catching the impression of every passing scene, or principle, or influence, and then radiating the same kind of influence and impression upon others: or, to a certain ink, which when put on paper, is scarcely discernible, but in a short time it becomes perceptible, and so permanent, that you may burn the paper on coals of fire, and the writing will be seen on the cinders. Such is the fixedness and durability of moral and religious impressions in childhood. Faint, or even imperceptible, at first, yet as durable as brass, as lasting as the mind itself. This result of the impressions of childhood is undoubted. The history of the world, the nature of moral principles and causes, and the pliable texture of childhood and youth, all attest the results of this great law, in mind, morals, and religion.

No, parents! You may trace on the sandy beach impressions distinct and multiform, but the next rolling wave will wash them out. The spots and stains of your earthly robes may be removed. The ravages of a storm that strips nature of its beauty and glory may be repaired. Time and culture may reclothe it with its former fertility and beauty;-but, oh, remember, and may it be written with a diamond impression on your soul, that the impressions of childhood, the principles which you trace and chisel down into the heart of your children, will, like letters graven on a rock, remain for ever. If they are in types of vice, nothing short of omnipotent divine grace can bleach them out. If, in the beauteous forms of virtue and piety, they will brighten and beautify in the sunlight of a heavenly eternal day. Well has Mrs. Sigour ney said, every trace that you grave upon your child, will stand forth at the Judgment day, when the "books are opened." Every waste place which you leave through ne

glect, will frown upon you, as an abyss, when the mountains fall, and the skies shrivel like a scroll.

2. Consider your parental responsibilities, in view of the power of first principles and impressions, in giving bias to the mind, and a fixed destiny to your children.

Your children are men in miniature. A few seasons come and go, and those who are in the nursery, or in the glee of childhood, are treading the theatre of the world, and mingling in the changing and solemn drama of life's eventful scenes! As the child passes through these flying periods, you are most generally able to see the future man. In conformity to early impressions, and the bias which the mind takes, so will the forming future character of the man grow and fix itself. This great law is found in the moral government of God, and its results proclaimed in terrible language by evil parental training and government. It is utterly impossible to prevent your children from being moulded in exact conformity to the bias and impressions you give them. These will govern, they will be masters. You cannot counteract their shaping moral power. If you imprint the lovely image of virtue, and the sweeter and lovelier impress of piety in childhood, so as to give the balancing power to character, you will see the same image, bold, beautiful, distinct, in the man. If you deform the character of childhood by vicious principles, and their results, you are able to determine, even in childhood, the full-grown man, his habits fixed, his character stereotyped, his destiny decided. Such is usually the power of first principles, in giving bias and formation to the ultimate man. Washington is an eminent and lovely illustration of this great principle. In childhood, his teachings and impressions were of the right stamp, and they moulded his character and decided his destiny. And what a sublime one it was! Napoleon, the terror of all Europe, is a terrible example of the opposite result. By the power of early impressions and associations, the destiny of that great captain and warrior was decided.

Oh, who can grapple and break the iron sinews and pow

ers of confirmed habits. In childhood, and youth, they may be like the attenuated fibres of the spider's web, easily broken; but let them grow into the moral constitution, and become solid by time, and like huge bars of steel, you can neither break nor bend them. You pass that little sapling

by the water-course. It moves and bends by the gentlest impression of the hand. Pass it in future years, it has grown to be the giant and majestic oak, the lofty king of the forest, and stands unmoved by the beatings of the fiercest storm. So, of evil confirmed habits. They strike their roots deep into the soul, and mould, by their power, the future destiny of the man. Well might the Prophet say, Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? then may ye also do good that are accustomed to do evil. Jer. xiii. 23. Or the Christian poet Cowper,

"Habits are soon assumed, but when we strive

To strip them off, 'tis being flayed alive.

Called to the temple of impure delight,

He that abstains, and he alone, does right.

Some dream that they can silence when they will

The storms of passion, and say peace, be still.

But thus far and no farther, when addressed

To the wild wave, or wilder human breast,
Implies authority that never can,

That never ought to be the lot of man."

Parents! in view of this undeniable result, between first impressions, in giving bias and power to character, in forming the future solid mason-work of the man, I appeal by motives of intense power, if your duty is not imperative, your responsibility weighty and solemn. If on you the result mainly depends, whether your children shall come up to manhood, clothed with the attractive vestments of virtue and piety, or covered with the polluted garments of vice; if Con you hangs the fearful question, whether your children shall be the Washingtons, the La Fayettes, the Howards, the Wesleys, the Martyns-or the Napoleons, the Robespierres, the Voltaires, the Tom Paines, or Joe Smiths of

future ages; how solemn the charge committed to your trust, and how faithful should you be to instil into their minds, and engrave on their hearts, the lessons of virtue, the high truths of our holy religion! See to it, that the genius of divine truth, the teachings of a philosophy, baptized into the pure waters of Christianity, engrave their heavenly power upon the opening and impressible character of our children.

3. Consider your responsibility as parents, in view of the part your children are to act in the great changes just before. us in the world and the church.

It cannot be doubted, that our world is on the eve of a vast, thorough, and interesting change. The signs are too many, and too significant and luminous for us to be mistak en. Old systems are waning and giving way, before the omnipotent power of Christian truth and right principles. The social elements are in ferment. The political world is heaving its mighty waves of commotion. The eternal and immutable principles of freedom and justice are shaking iron-ribbed systems of oppression, with more than volcanic power. The religious world is agitated by the earthquake storm. Ecclesiastical frame-works, and formal Christianity, are being lifted by Bible principles, and under the mighty power of a spiritual religion, all formalism as such, must fall. Pure Christianity, in the power, and form, and organization of a missionary enterprise, is making here powerful aggressive movements on the world, and guided by Zion's king, must, and soon will, redeem the earth, and proclaim the universal triumphs of the Gospel. These facts prove that an intellectual, moral, political, and religious revolution is hastening on, radical, thorough, universal. The elements will be harmonized. Society will become purer under the coming transformation. All governments will be modelled by the directing genius of free principles. A pure, universal, all-pervading, all-transforming, spiritual religion, the religion of Jesus, in its spiritual dress, will shed its heavenly influ ence and radiant light on a renovated and redeemed world. This joyful and long-prayed-for prophetic period is speedily