THE MISSION OF MOTHERS.

REV. E. P. DYER.

MOTHERS, yours is a holy mission. How often has this been said, yet how seldom has it been realized!

God has ordained you to fill, in a certain sense, the highest and most important of human offices. You are not expected to occupy seats in the halls of legislation, nor to ascend the pulpit, nor to follow the plough, nor to guide the steam-car, nor to navigate the ocean. Yet, in all these departments of labor, responsibility and trust, your influence must and will be felt.

You have given birth to those, who, if their lives are spared, are to exert an influence which will be felt through eternal ages. Whether that influence will be for good or for evil, depends, under God, very much on the mark you impress on their tender minds and hearts, while they totter about your dwellings, and while you sing to them in the cradle. Every word you utter, every passion you exhibit, every act you perform, every expression of your look in their presence, are helping imperceptibly to mould their characters and to shape their destinies. From morning till evening, during all their waking hours, their little eyes are riveted upon you; and even when they are most absorbed in their own simple amusements, their little ears are perpetually open to your songs or your complaints. You may imagine that they do not see, or that they do not hear. But remember they have nothing else to do. They have no business and no pleasure which so fix their attention, which they cannot and will not immediately surrender, if they see you biting an apple, to ask where you got it, and if they may have a share. You cannot bring out your patch-work and set your basket-full of gaudy colors down on the floor, but their little fingers are presently picking out the red, the blue, the green or the yellow, and exhibiting them to each other, or strewing them in showy confusion on the floor. Their curiosity is awake. Their minds are impressible. They thirst to know. They ply you with a thousand questions, and insist upon an answer, and demand its repetition till they think they comprehend. You may sometimes deceive them by equivocation or evasive answers; but you do it at your peril, for they will remember, and when they

are older, they will call up some long past inquiry and your answer, and will stamp the whole on their own memories afresh to furnish a topic for meditation, or an example for imitation, when they themselves come to be parents.

I remember, to this hour, some strange stories which were told me when I lay in my cradle. I remember, with vivid distinctness, the emotions they excited. In every period of my life, from that hour to this, there have been seasons when those nursery stories have furnished the theme of my meditations. I have sometimes been able to trace their influence on my habits of mind and heart with great distinctness; and I cannot doubt that others, which I heard in that most susceptible stage of my being, have exerted, and still exert, their influence upon my thoughts, though I am not able so distinctly to

trace it.

If this is the case with one, it may be so with all. Almost all which any of us know is made up of thoughts, ideas, suggestions, impressions, &c., received from others. These are so incorporated with our own mental, exercises, that, strange as it may seem, we scarcely ever wholly originate an idea in a lifetime.

The character of that intellectual Babel of thoughts, ideas, impressions and suggestions, which, in process of time, is reared in our minds, which singly we call acquisitions, and when combined dignify with the name of knowledge, depends on the scenes of life through which we pass. The astronomer's pile of thoughts is a widely-different affair from that which constitutes the intellectual treasure of the historian, the geologist, or the student of botany. The mental treasures of the good man differ essentially from those of the murderer and the thief, the counterfeiter and the gambler; for it is written, "He that walketh with wise men shall be wise." His mind will be subject to influences and will receive impressions, utterly unlike those impressed on the heart of him who is "a companion of fools."

To mark out the future pathways of your children is no light task. Yet through what scenes they will pass, on their way to eternity, will depend, in a great measure, on the influences to which they are subject while around the mother's knees. God has so ordained it. He has lodged with the mother an amazing responsibility. He has endowed her with maternal fondness and love, with patience and perseverance, with a vigilance almost ceaseless, with a

tender heart, a loving eye and a gentle voice, that she may move among her children like a guardian angel, and guide their little feet. in the way to a blessed immortality.

We say, then, mothers, once again, yours is a holy mission. Ordained of God to stand by the very threshold of human existence, and direct the first footsteps of infancy, you cannot be too fully aware of the responsibility of your position, or of the sacredness of the high trusts committed to your keeping. Nor can you be too sensible of your own weakness and your need of depending every hour on divine aid, to strengthen your hearts and bless your efforts. In all your endeavors to establish and build up your family, you must never for a moment forget, that " except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it." Yet, of the crowning blessing of Almighty God, on your humble, patient, faithful, prayerful efforts in your families, as mothers, you have the fullest assurance. You may read it every day in that inspired declaration, "Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it."

THE GOOD WE MIGHT DO.

WE all might do good

In a thousand small ways;

In forbearing to flatter,
Yet yielding due praise;
In spurning ill-humor,
Reproving wrong done,
And treating but kindly

Each heart we have won.

We all might do good,

Whether lowly or great,

For the deed is not gauged

By the purse or estate;

If it be but a cup

Of cold water that 's given,
Like the "widow's two mites,"

It is something for heaven.

"DID YOU EVER TAKE ME IN YOUR ARMS TO CHRIST?"1

BY REV. P. C. HEADLY.

MR. S sat, in the solemn twilight of Sabbath evening, with his lovely boy at his knee, who was listening with beaming eye to the story of Christ blessing the children. When the father dwelt touchingly upon the scene, and spoke of the Saviour's willingness to bless, the child, who could just articulate simple expressions, looked up with sudden earnestness, and said, "Pa, did you ever take me in your arms to Christ?" Tears were the answer of a heart too full

for utterance.

This little incident led my mind to contemplate the ways in which parents prevent the early conversion of their children. They hinder them from coming to Christ, by not making an entire consecration of them to God. Hannah, before and after the birth of Samuel, laid him, by unconditional surrender to the Lord, on the altar of prayer. She expected his early sanctification, and was not disappointed. Those, since her day, who have believed the unrepealed promise of Jehovah, to be a God to his people and their seed after them, and practically reposed upon the covenant, have not been bereaved of their offspring for eternity.

Again; parents interpose a barrier between their children and the Saviour, by neglecting, in misapplied kindness, to subdue the will, with judicious, effectual discipline. The will is the great wall of separation which keeps the sinner from God; and if unsubdued in childhood to parental control, it braces itself with resolute obstinacy against the higher authority of the Infinite One.

Children are also kept away from the Saviour when not properly restrained. Counsel and prayer are powerless, in the absence of vigilant oversight and guidance of the juvenile habits and associations. Eli, of ancient time, failed in this respect, and his sons were slain in their sins, leaving him to die fearfully with a broken heart.

Parents also hinder their little ones from seeking the Lord Jesus, more decisively than in any other form of infidelity, by an unholy example. It is not necessary to be neglecters of the family altar, or openly irreligious, to secure this fatal influence. A child at four or five of age, knows very well whether a parent's treasure is

years

on earth or in heaven; whether success in the world or salvation and godliness be regarded as the greater gain. The infant heart cannot be deceived in this serious concern. Consistent piety, illustrating instruction and the closet, will result invariably in the conversion of children. We could give practical cases to the point, where mothers have lived to glorify God, and have died with a large family, all in the ark of atonement. "She hath done what she could," was said of a devout woman; and parents who shall merit the eulogy, will also say in the judgment, "Here am I and the children thou hast given me."

ANGRY WORDS.

ANGRY words are lightly spoken
In a rash and thoughtless hour;
Brightest links of life are broken
By their deep insidious power.
Hearts inspired by warmest feeling,
Ne'er before by anger stirred,
Oft are rent, past human healing,
By a single angry word.

Poison-drops of care and sorrow,
Bitter poison-drops are they,
Weaving for the coming morrow
Saddest memories of to-day.
Angry words! O, let them never

From the tongue unbridled slip;
May the heart's best impulse ever
Check them, ere they soil the lip!

Love is much too pure and holy,
Friendship is too sacred far,
For a moment's reckless folly

Thus to desolate and mar.
Angry words are lightly spoken ;

Bitterest thoughts are rashly stirred;

Brightest links of life are broken

By a single angry word.