remained, this venerable man felt that God had left him lonely and desolate in the world. And thus he writes:-"My worldly loss is perfect. Of the many good wives with whom God blesses men, not one, I am sure, is better than she was, which the Lord gave me fifty-three years affectionate, faithful, confidential, conscientious, guileless, discreet-making my home to me always the pleasantest spot in the world-just such a wife as the minister of the Gospel needs and should have. For the loss of such an associate, things secular and perishing have no compensation to offer. Consolation, therefore, is of course out of the question. But the precious promises of Christ may be realized and enjoyed in their blessed fulfillment." Aye, that is the way the Gospel goes to work in the soul of the Christian mourner. Christ comes into that soul, and lights it up with the smiles of his face. "I am consoled by the promises of the Gospel," adds this suffering saint. "How sweet are these words, 'I will never leave you. Lo, I am with you always." "

Christian parent! Has God recently made his waves and his billows to pass over you? Does the world seem more a wilderness than ever? Then do not endeavor, by withdrawing your mind from the cause of your sorrow, and diverting it into the channels where the worldly find pleasure, do not endeavor to wrest yourself from the influence of that sorrow. God designs that you should weep. He designs that you should be crushed in the dust. He will raise you up again, peradventure, in due time. But it were a protest, methinks, against his wise system of discipline, by illegitimate and forced means to render yourself insensible to this chastisement. God would "make you perfect through suffering." Then, shun not that suffering. Attempt not to flee from it. But while you suffer, and are willing to suffer, pray for the benign and holy influences of the wound that has been inflicted, rather than that the wound itself may speedily cease to give you pain.

THE chiefest properties of wisdom are, to be mindful of things past, careful of things present, and provident for things to come.

Original.

THE FRATERNAL DUTIES.

BY REV. ANSEL D. EDDY, D. D.'

HOME is never seen in its perfection till its excellence is reflected in the filial circle, and the interchange of kind offices and charity is secured among brothers and sisters. And next to the cultivation of the fraternal affections and efforts to promote each other's happiness, mutual respect should always be cherished and manifested. This is the second great duty we would seek to inculcate.

1. There should not be the formality of ceremonious intercourse, and yet there should be no approximation to vulgar and degrading address. While there should be freedom from the "cautious timidity of suspicion," the coarseness of indelicacy and rudeness, there should be the "politeness of good manners, blended with the tenderness of love."

2. Mutual obligation should be felt for each other's improvement, not in the follies of fashionable life, but in those engaging manners of modest and refined deportment-that intellectual richness, and resources of useful, knowledge, which raise and expand far above the gay throng of fashionable pleasures, and which give the pledge of substantial value and useful action, when the season of youthful gayety and dissipation shall pass away.

3. Kind attentions-those nameless offices and tokens of regard and affection, which, at the same time, manifest and solicit the best feelings of the soul-should never be forgotten.

Mark that young man with just suspicion, who is happier anywhere than at home, and who seems more joyous with others than his own sisters, and prefers any other to lean upon his arm than her whom, as an orphan daughter, he is bound to protect. The kind feelings of a brother are a stranger to his bosom; the nobler feelings of a man he never knew. And he who will cast, forgotten,

a sister from his kind regards and tender care, will as soon throw from his affections and support the wife of his youth.

And she, who finds no pleasure in the circle of home, nor in the smiles of paternal fondness, loves not a brother's company, may have the sprightliness and cheerfulness of virtuous affection, and may bloom in all the beauty of her sex, yet her bosom is as cold and sterile as the snow-drift, of every finer feeling, and her heart will be an eternal stranger to pure and permanent affection. She who cherishes not a sister's love, warm and active, has not the virtues that can be prized and trusted in a wife or mother.

There are duties peculiarly appropriate to brothers, which demand a special and distinct notice. You should remember that your sisters are frail, tender, and susceptible, and generally unsuspecting-and they are most happy because they are unsuspecting—and hence they are most exposed to danger. They are too affectionate and confiding to suspect, and too late in learning the meanness, the baseness, and duplicity, to which they are exposed, as well as the degrading and beastly passions with which our sex are often cursed. The first they know is often from a husband's lips, or a husband's baseness-known too late.

Shall we say, acquaint them with all that is low, impure, and profane, in the habits of men? To this we hardly know what to say. Should this be done, it would convulse many a splendid circle. And yet they should not be left wholly ignorant. They should be so far informed of all this as to guard against its influence.

It is the duty of brothers to stand aloof in personal purity and private worth, and to guard a sister's interest as their own, turning her eye, her every step, above all, her heart, from that society where virtue and purity are unknown.

You should spurn from your society those whom you know to be idle, and profane, and impure, and seek to rid the community of the invaders of innocence and worth. You are bound to drive them from you, as the wakeful guardians of a sister's safety. Those whom you invite to your home, your sisters must kindly receive, for your sake if not for theirs; and, in this necessary attention and respect, may open the way for ultimate and perpetual

evil. She who once adorned the highest circles of her sex, becomes disappointed, disheartened, and ruined, perhaps a wretched vagrant, forever lost! This is no suggestion of fancy, but the record of fact, repeated again and again.

Guard, then, your home, the pure circle of the paternal interest and affection, from the inroad of unprincipled young men. Give them no introduction to those whom you are bound to protect.

Go even beyond your own home. Think of the thousands who have been torn from the heights of society, early to die in disgrace. Above all things, do not compromise a brother's character by sustaining and countenancing those whose baseness prolongs that trade of robbery from the ranks of innocence and virtue, which, were it half told, would exceed the horrors of the slavetrade, for the number of its victims and the severity of its misery.

Study to make your sisters love home and useful recreations; and, to stimulate to the attainment of useful knowledge, become yourself the companion of their evening hours. Tell them of what you know-thus give them a love of learning—and, hand in hand with you, they will advance in the path of pleasure and duty. Hence will arise a refinement of feeling and elevation of enjoyment which no resort beside can give. Here the cares of more extended responsibility cannot intrude, while all so pure and ennobling, needs only the adornment of piety to give perfection. Thus shall your sisters become your equals and your pride, illustrating the wisdom and virtue of that fraternity that has blessed them.

These duties are attended with corresponding obligations on the part of sisters. To them we would say, be kind, amiable, and attentive to your brothers. Always welcome their return to your common home with unaffected pleasure. Let them see that their happiness is identified with yours-their prosperity and advancement your study and delight. Make them love modesty, intelligence, and virtue, by that deportment of retiring delicacy which ever gains control-that knowledge which instructs-that ster

ling virtue which frowns in silent dignity, and makes the lewd and lawless tremble and retire.

Make your brothers happy at home, without the aid of those blighting amusements which neither instruct nor improve. Cause your brothers to love the card-table of the drawing-room, and they will soon desert you for open and destructive gaming, and return no more but to reflect on your error and reveal their own degeneracy. Learn what recreations are safe at home, by the natural associations which they hold abroad, and avoid all that may impair, in their ultimate influence, the modesty and virtue which you prize in domestic life.

Show an interest in learning what your brothers may know, and thus increase the charm and usefulness of knowledge. Render their hours of recreation so pleasant and profitable that recreation shall endear your society to them, and give the charm of mutual refinement to mental and moral feeling. Be so virtuous, modest, amiable, and intelligent, with them, that they never can admire and love where these unsullied ornaments of your sex are unknown.

Be constant in your offices of kindness, and when your brothers are sick and afflicted, be near and more than kind. Thus you inspire their respect and love for yourself, and command their admiration for your sex; and thus, too, you throw around them restraints, and enchain them by an influence, which it is alike their interest and pleasure to regard.

As sisters, you are bound to treat young men with utter abhorrence, whom you know to be unworthy your brother's society, and hazardous to his character. Never oblige him to accommodate you with the society of such as may injure him.

When at home, let it be known that you prize a brother's society, and when abroad, that his company is the best; that you had rather lean upon his arm for protection than on a stranger's gallantry. And when he shall leave you, for his studies or his life, follow him still with expressions of a sister's grateful and affectionate remembrance. Let him know and feel that in his heart you have a treasure still, and in his new-found home more than