Original.

NURTURE AND ADMONITION.

BY REV. J. N. DANFORTH

THE very idea of the FAMILY has been dignified and exalted by the fact that God, in his intercourse with men, so often assumes the endearing name of FATHER, even though he has to deal with so strange and rebellious a race as we are. "Is he not thy Father that bought thee?" With that profound grief and tenderness to which the parental bosom is no stranger, he says: "I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against me." That same heart warms with a holy emotion to those who fear and adore: "Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear Him." Here, then, we have the unchangeable perfection of a Father's character-the perpetual model for all who bear the sacred name of father in that earthly relation, which involves so many imperative obligations, and draws after it a train of such important consequences. After God had made man in his own beautiful image, he blessed the happy pair, and said unto them, "Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it." The construction of families was thus commenced under the august benediction of Heaven itself. No promise more cheered the hearts of the patriarchs than that which pledged to them a heaven-blessed posterity. Jacob speaks of his own as the "children whom God hath graciously given thy servant." All Israel was animated with the promise: "And he will love thee, and bless thee, and multiply thee." Children are pronounced the "heritage of the Lord." Precious legacy! All the treasures of earth are not to be compared in value with this. hold, oh! head of a family, under whose eye these remarks may fall-behold those olive-plants of immortality that cluster around your table. You now feel as if you could not let the winds of heaven sweep over them too roughly. Oh, guard with equal care and anxiety against the approach of the poisonous breath of the

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tempter. Water those plants with thy tears. Fence them round with thy prayers. Eradicate the first sprouting of those malignant weeds that would choke the growth of the healthful plant, and substitute deformity and barrenness for beauty and fertility. Remember the ductility of the youthful mind; the enduring strength of early impressions; the undecaying nature of the associations formed in the spring-time of life. Mute nature herself leaves the traces of her power on our memories. Who cannot call to mind the sweet rural walk, the crystal well, the little streamlet that gurgled along, "kissing each sedge," and making soft music as it flowed between its green banks; the solemn groves, vocal with the praises of the sweet warblers of the air; the pure, invigorating atmosphere of the "country" which "God made;" the very dew of the morning brushed away by the light and careless footsteps of youth? Moral recollections, too, are often embalmed with equal freshness and conservativeness in the mind. Your children are now treasuring them, insensibly to yourself, but with a certainty that will hereafter rise to greet you with a grateful reward, or meet you with painful retribution.

PROTECTION and PROVISION being among the leading elements of parental obligation, we should guard against the danger of limiting these duties to the natural wants of those dependent on us. It is not ordinarily necessary to exhort parents to take care of the body. Most parents live as if this was their chief business. The necessities of time and life seem to exhaust whatever of thought, care, and provision, they spend on their children. They do not rise to the contemplation of the higher wants, the more urgent demands of the soul. Yet what requires more incessant vigilance than the forming mind of a child? Wherever it is, it is always at school, always learning something. The rich soil beneath our feet is not so vital, so vegetative, so teeming with the activity of seminal life, as the young, tender, opening mind, instinct with the consciousness of immortality. The mind will as certainly find an educator, as the plant in your parlor will seck the light, or as the heliotrope will turn its face toward the sun. And it will more naturally turn toward the lurid light of infidelity than the clear and holy beams of Christianity. Hence it should be protected.

For the want of this moral guardianship, how many buds of promise have been irretrievably blasted! how many first trembling steps in the path of error have been taken, which have led finally to the box of the convicted felon, and the dungeon of the condemned criminal! Next to the heaven-instructed philanthropist, who rushes to the rescue of the youthful transgressor, and places him in some house of refuge and industry, where he may retrace his steps, and even find the gate of heaven, I know of no greater benefactor to his species than the parent who preoccupies the mind of his child with good principles, trains it under the influences of Christianity, and gives to society a useful member, perhaps to the world an inestimable blessing. The names of Edwards, Doddridge, Dwight, may serve to indicate how great a gift an humble, retired, individual mother may bestow not only on her own, but on succeeding generations. In the history of states and nations, the names of Alfred and Washington are richly suggestive, as connected with this subject. Why did they so revere the persons, the presence, the memory, of their mothers? Because of the deep impressions those mothers had made on their minds, and consequently on their characters. There is a sanctity about the companionship of the maternal home, on which the profane must never dare to intrude. How much does the business man, incessantly engaged from morning till night, do for the intellectual, moral, and spiritual welfare of his children? What is to become of the children of members of Congress, of army and navy officers, of engineers, of judges on their circuits, of California fortunehunters, and numerous other fathers, who are absent from their families a part or the whole of the year, unless the mothers of these growing ones redouble their diligence, patience, and prayers, for the dear objects of their affection? The mother of Dwight (and she was a mother at eighteen) "found time, without neglecting the ordinary cares of her family, to devote herself, with the most assiduous attention, to the instruction of her son, and other numerous children, as they successively claimed her regard." She laboriously fitted herself for this work. That Mary Dwight should give herself to the nurture and education of her children was imperatively necessary, because her husband" was so exten

tempter. Water those plants with thy tears. Fence them round with thy prayers. Eradicate the first sprouting of those malignant weeds that would choke the growth of the healthful plant, and substitute deformity and barrenness for beauty and fertility. Remember the ductility of the youthful mind; the enduring strength of early impressions; the undecaying nature of the associations formed in the spring-time of life. Mute nature herself leaves the traces of her power on our memories. Who cannot call to mind the sweet rural walk, the crystal well, the little streamlet that gurgled along, "kissing each sedge," and making soft music as it flowed between its green banks; the solemn groves, vocal with the praises of the sweet warblers of the air; the pure, invigorating atmosphere of the "country" which "God made;" the very dew of the morning brushed away by the light and careless footsteps of youth? Moral recollections, too, are often embalmed with equal freshness and conservativeness in the mind. Your children are now treasuring them, insensibly to yourself, but with a certainty that will hereafter rise to greet you with a grateful reward, or meet you with painful retribution.

PROTECTION and PROVISION being among the leading elements of parental obligation, we should guard against the danger of limiting these duties to the natural wants of those dependent on us. It is not ordinarily necessary to exhort parents to take care of the body. Most parents live as if this was their chief business. The necessities of time and life seem to exhaust whatever of thought, care, and provision, they spend on their children. They do not rise to the contemplation of the higher wants, the more urgent demands of the soul. Yet what requires more incessant vigilance than the forming mind of a child? Wherever it is, it is always at school, always learning something. The rich soil beneath our feet is not so vital, so vegetative, so teeming with the activity of seminal life, as the young, tender, opening mind, instinct with the consciousness of immortality. The mind will as certainly find an educator, as the plant in your parlor will seck the light, or as the heliotrope will turn its face toward the sun. And it will more naturally turn toward the lurid light of infidelity than the clear and holy beams of Christianity. Hence it should be protected.

For the want of this moral guardianship, how many buds of promise have been irretrievably blasted! how many first trembling steps in the path of error have been taken, which have led finally to the box of the convicted felon, and the dungeon of the condemned criminal! Next to the heaven-instructed philanthropist, who rushes to the rescue of the youthful transgressor, and places him in some house of refuge and industry, where he may retrace his steps, and even find the gate of heaven, I know of no greater benefactor to his species than the parent who preoccupies the mind of his child with good principles, trains it under the influences of Christianity, and gives to society a useful member, perhaps to the world an inestimable blessing. The names of Edwards, Doddridge, Dwight, may serve to indicate how great a gift an humble, retired, individual mother may bestow not only on her own, but on succeeding generations. In the history of states and nations, the names of Alfred and Washington are richly suggestive, as connected with this subject. Why did they so revere the persons, the presence, the memory, of their mothers? Because of the deep impressions those mothers had made on their minds, and consequently on their characters. There is a sanctity about the companionship of the maternal home, on which the profane must never dare to intrude. How much does the business man, incessantly engaged from morning till night, do for the intellectual, moral, and spiritual welfare of his children? What is to become of the children of members of Congress, of army and navy officers, of engineers, of judges on their circuits, of California fortunehunters, and numerous other fathers, who are absent from their families a part or the whole of the year, unless the mothers of these growing ones redouble their diligence, patience, and prayers, for the dear objects of their affection? The mother of Dwight (and she was a mother at eighteen) "found time, without neglecting the ordinary cares of her family, to devote herself, with the most assiduous attention, to the instruction of her son, and other numerous children, as they successively claimed her regard." She laboriously fitted herself for this work. That Mary Dwight should give herself to the nurture and education of her children was imperatively necessary, because her husband "was so exten