not be cruel nor unkind. A kind and tender child is more beautiful than a flower or a picture. How often have I seen cruel children; and how unhappy they made their homes and associates! No cruel child can honor its parents. They love it; it must love them to honor them.

IV. Again; the Christian child must be honest. Children are naturally honest; they have to learn to deceive. One of the principles of Christ is honesty. Honesty is a beautiful ornament to any character; in a child, O, how beautiful! All men admire honesty, and love honest children. When children exhibit this virtue, what blessings they are to their parents! You have all, perhaps, read the accounts of Knud Iverson, the brave and honest little boy who would not steal fruit for his wicked companions. They ducked him in the water, to make him do it, till they drowned him. What a blessing was he to his parents; what a blessing to his family, his school and his church,- for he belonged to a church, though only ten years old,such a beautiful Christian character had he exhibited; and how that character shines through the world! Fathers and mothers all over Christendom have read the story of his beautiful life and tragic death, and wept; and have felt a renewal of Christian strength within them. Strangers are about to erect a costly monument to his memory. He is a Christian hero and martyr; his name stands where it should stand among the beautiful departed. Though a child, he

was a Christian; a blessing to the parents who bore and nurtured him, and an ornament to the world he has left. Let all children see in him how beautiful is honesty, how lovely is a Christian life.

V. Children should have faith and trust in God; they should learn this from their confidence in their parents. I know a little girl who has such confidence in her father, that she will jump from any height where he may place her, when he stands below to catch her. She has not the first fear that he will fail; she confides in his love and strength. So should children confide in their Father in heaven. He is good, and strong, and ever loves and cares for them. They should think much of his goodness, thank him often for his care, and love him always with fervent hearts. It was God who gave them being, who formed their elastic bodies, and conferred their subtle and artful minds. He made the beautiful earth, and stretched around it the starry firmament. Day and night, summer and winter, life and death, come by his wise appointment. How proper it is that children should love and trust him; that they should pray to him and have faith in Christ, who teaches and has shown by his resurrection that God has prepared for all a life and home beyond the shadow of death!

I should like to write a word, ere I close, of Sabbath-schools, as an efficient means of imbuing children's minds with Christian principles. Children learn by the little, like the constant dropping that

wears the stone. They do not grasp a great principle, and from that draw deductions that lead into the great field of general truth. They get as they go; and, to have them grow to be Christian men and women, they should go as much as possible in the way of Christian influences. No place is more rich in such influences to them than the Sabbath-school. It is their school, their place and mode of worship, their way of doing religious duty; and hence it is dear to them. The worship, the books, the instructions, are adapted to their capacities, and they soon get interested in them. If the day-school is the most efficient place to train their minds in science and develop their capacities for thought, then is the Sunday-school the best place to train their minds in religion and develop within them the spirit of piety and morality. It is the constant dropping of sacred influence here that blesses them chiefly. The instruction is all of love and duty, and all given in love. The lessons are all bearing upon the conscience and affections; the books appeal all the time to some good feeling or principle; and every thought of the Sabbath-school is a check against waywardness, and an inspiration for good.

Let all children be faithful Sabbath-school scholars from the age of four years to twenty-one, and crime will be scarcely known, and unchristian men and women few indeed. They would, during that whole period, be drinking in the sweet waters of Christian truth and love, and growing more and more into the

spirit of our divine religion. If this were so, how many children would grow up in Christianity as a birthright, grow up in the true spiritual church without remembering the time when they were not in it. They would then grow into religion as naturally as into manhood; and, at home and abroad, in private and in public life, live and breathe its spirit. Then, indeed, would religion become a life, and children be rich blessings and efficient helps in a Christian home. O! if the power were mine I would speak every child in this great world into the Sunday-school, and have them there every Sunday till manhood was put on, and then I would keep them there as teachers till their souls were full of Christ. Thus would the world be filled with Christ by that natural, rational and easy process by which the mind grows to perfection, and the soul to the divine image. Then would children honor their parents and make every household an altar, around which would be gathered the dear children of our Father, and from which would ascend the precious incense of devotion and love.

CHAPTER VII.

THE CHRISTIAN BROTHER.

Of all the associations formed among men by divine authority, the family stands first, and most important. This is not simply a gregarious association. Men do not form families as birds form flocks, or as sheep form herds, simply for company. They do it in answer to a spiritual want; in compliance with a divine law. It is on the ground of mutual esteem and benefit. It originates in spiritual affinity. The family is the first and natural compound of these elements. The union is what philosophy calls a chemical union. Gregarious associations are "chemical mixtures;" family associations are "chemical unions." Families thus become the little fountains on the hill-tops and mountain-sides of the human world, pouring out, with a steady profusion, the rivulets of life, to increase by new unions and little tributaries, till the great streams of humanity are formed to bear their floods on, and ever on, to the bosom of the eternal ocean.

In the family are formed the domestic relations ; among the first of these is fraternity. Brotherhood