THE MOTHERS IN ISRAEL.

Thrice blessed Covenant of Christ's loving Word!
Mothers in Israel! 'Tis your right of birth,

The birthright given when Jesus breathed on earth; The birthright left when from the grave our Lord, The Resurrection and the Life, arose,

The Life of Faith, the terror of his foes.

To you the glory of his Life is given,
To train a race of mortals up for Heaven;
To do what potentates and princedoms fail,
As at the teachings of God's Word they rail;
Affirm the Eternal Sovereign's right divine,
I only am your God! ALL SOULS ARE MINE.

Thus, O ye blessed Pilgrims, know your Friend,

The Way, the Truth, the Life, when, all unknown,
He sought you, taught you, claimed you, as his own;

And having loved you, loves you to the end!

Now from his Presence in the Mount go down,
No more the servants of men's praise or frown.

For the whole duty of your life shall be,
From every hindrance of his love set free,
To keep his latest blessing, Follow Me!
To seek and find the lost, as He found thee;
And set new stars in his immortal Crown;
That so,
Love's image might in Christ be known,
And its reflection of your Saviour shown.

For this, the Lord of Heaven became a child,
The first-born babe of Bethlehem's Mother mild:
If each beholding household would receive

The supernatural charm, and by it live,

Its growing likeness God's own grace would keep, In lines and colorings so divine and deep,

Engraved by pencil of the Mother's faith,
In love divine, beyond the power of death,
That to the latest age none should erase
Such blessed testaments of Jesus' grace,
The dear handwriting of a Saviour's blood,

The Seal of Dying Love, to keep the soul for God!

Such wondrous privilege your Lord hath given,
To guard the spirits loaned you from above;
To lead them daily in God's path of love;
Making each hour of intercourse with Heaven,

A cloud of angels, at divine command,

Till thou with them in Christ's dear presence stand.

O what immortal bliss to parents given,

To train on earth their little ones for Heaven!
And this God's covenant is, if thou but place
Before the infant mind, Christ's loving face;
His everlasting grace, his dying love,
Shall be their new creation from above.

But O the grace! when thou amazed, shalt see
This all transporting bliss ascribed to thee!
Because on earth thou didst for them fulfil
The dying testament of Jesus' Will;
The mother of thy Lord beholding there,
The sure fulfilment of old Simeon's prayer,
The dear reward of your maternal care,
Christ's precious lambs for glory to prepare,
And save whole generations from despair!

CHAPTER VI.

THE EXAMPLES OF NIEBUHR AND FRANKLIN, RELIGIOUSLY AND POLITICALLY, FOR OUR OWN COUNTRY. NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT IMPOSSIBLE WITHOUT THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION AND A CONSCIENCE TOWARDS GOD IN THE EDUCATION OF EACH SUCCESSIVE GENERATION. ALL TRUE FREEDOM FOR THE STATE DEPENDENT ON SUCH AN EDUCATION IN RELIANCE UPON GOD. THE LESSONS FROM HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY IN EVERY AGE ON THIS SUBJECT. THE DANGER OF RUIN FROM IGNORANCE OF THE SCRIPTURES, AND THE CONSEQUENT HABIT OF SCEPTICISM AND UNBELIEF FROM CHILDHOOD.

OH, that we knew what gifts of grace are ours,
Endowed in time with such celestial powers!
The child may now be living that will see
Four hundred million souls enlightened, free,
To choose their pathway to eternity,

As thou mayst give the light conferred on thee.
Oh, awful charge, on each successive race,
The heritage of heaven or hell to trace,
And read the testamental scroll made known,
With each result, before the eternal throne!

One question asked, How didst thou treat the child?

With worldly gifts and promises beguiled?

Or by the Pilgrim's Heavenly Progress taught,
Each to the loving care of Jesus brought,
By the Great Shepherd of God's flock to be
Folded in glory through eternity!

What soul can stand the judgments of that day,
That never taught the child to praise or pray,
But left him wandering on the world's highway,
Sure from the path of life divine to stray!

HE importance of a right education for our

THE

children is so infinite in extent and grandeur, both for this world and the next, that there can

be no excuse for neglecting or excluding it from the constant and careful consideration of every member of the community.

We have some of the most instructive lessons on this subject ever given in human society, by the experience of such men as Franklin in America, Niebuhr in Germany, Coleridge and Wordsworth and De Quincey and Ruskin in England, and by the whole history of the Reformation in the Middle and Modern Ages of the World. Nothing can be more conclusive and instructive than the lessons given by such men as Pascal, Latimer, Luther, Hooper, Butler, Baxter, Newton, Bunyan, and every other lover of the Scriptures of God.

The habit of doubt from childhood is scrofulous, poisonous; and some of the noblest natures in Germany and England have nearly perished by it. It fills the whole spiritual system with germs of deadly disease. We could multiply examples profoundly impressive and instructive, from

before and after the revival of learning and the Reformation. The most conclusive and satisfactory of all instances is that of the profound and candid German scholar and statesman, Barthold Niebuhr. His views of education, which he regarded as being valuable only so far as it is the approximation to a true spiritual life, he carried out in the careful training of his son Marcus.

Lamenting his own tendency to scepticism, and his want of a childlike faith in the Word of God, Niebuhr records his determination that his beloved child Marcus shall be protected and preserved from such an evil, "by the fostering of the habit of faith from early childhood, by the discipline of faith in God and his Word as a FACULTY OF MIND AND HEART, beginning in the groundwork of the soul;" even as the book of Ecclesiastes affirms, that God hath set eternity in the hearts of men from infancy. All other treatment

of the child's mind is only savage cruelty. But the teaching of God's love, by the parent to the child, becomes the sacred germ of a living faith in the love of the Heavenly Father, that by the fostering Divine Spirit shall be proof against all infidelity.

"I am thinking a great deal about my son's