religious fidelity, answer to a still higher degree the same end, and make beautiful the hours as they shall come. How seldom do we realize our ideas of a Christian home? There are young and old, parents and children, in constant intercourse, with their labors, their amusements, their mutual confidence, affection, and aid, all leaning on one another, all looking up to a common Father, sanctifying their earthly union by kneeling at the same altar, cherishing the same hopes, and looking forward to that home where the deepest wants and yearnings of their hearts shall be met, where the coldness that now sometimes intervenes shall be melted away, where the misunderstandings that now grow out of our imperfect physical organization shall disappear, and where all tears shall be wiped away from all eyes. Here is our ideal of a Christian home. It is not free from earthly vicissitudes, or the imperfections and weaknesses which grow out of our mortal condition. There children are born into life. There the first opening affections are taught to rise from an earthly to a heavenly Father, that all which is most beautiful and endearing to the child may connect him with God, and be a perpetual bond of love and duty between him and his maker. There are the first breathings of a mother's heart burdened with tenderness for her child, and calling down God's sheltering mercies to guard its helplessness. There the thoughtless minds of the young, their turbulent and impetuous spirits, their unfledged aspirations, their unformed characters and virtues, are to be nurtured for the contests of the world, and filled out with the hopes of heaven. There the most sacred tie that can connect one human being to another is formed. There all the delicate relations growing out of it spring up, the hopes, the affections, the joys, the disappointments, the trials of temper and character, the mutual disinterestedness and confidence, the watchfulness lest even the smallest beginnings should give present pain and lead to unhappy results, the cementing influence of hearts, not only pledged to one another through their earthly affections, but bound still more closely by common prayers and a common faith.

There, too, in an earthly home, are all the most important changes. There the hours come clothed in their most beautiful hopes and affections, there they come with their heaviest tidings, and perform the saddest offices which God's agents ever perform on earth. One perhaps of the family circle is unfaithful to his trust, and his unfaithfulness strikes, like a knife, through the hearts of all. One is weak, and becomes an object of anxiety to all the rest. One is peculiarly liable to depression of spirit, another to violence of temper; and all the rest must be on their guard to cure or at least not to aggravate the infirmity. There are differences of taste, and so the need of mutual forbearance. Sickness calls for offices of peculiar delicacy and devotedness, and makes all feel with tenfold power their absolute and entire dependence. There they gather round the dying bed, and see how peacefully a soul religiously trained in a Christian home can pass on from its earthly toils to its heavenly

crown.

So again in our social relations, through which a neighborhood may become in fact only a more extended family, all the members of which perform for each other, to some extent, the same offices of kindness which they experience in their own homes. In our reverses and sicknesses, in loneliness and sorrow, how beautiful are the feet of those who come with words of tenderness, with sympathizing hearts and hands, ready to do what they can for our relief. These are what take away the hard and selfish aspects of life and bring us near to one another. And none in our heaviest reverses and trials can do so much to cheer and comfort us as they who come with a sympathy made cheerful through the living power of a religious faith.

Thus religion must run through all our lives, or the future will fail to fulfill the joyous anticipation which it excites. It is so even in our secular and worldly pursuits. But most of all must it be so in our professedly religious services. The church should be the home of our purest and best affections. It should strengthen our faith and quicken our devotions.

They who are united in the same Christian society should feel the sacred purposes for which they are united. If the business of the world, if the rivalships of society awaken jealousies and fan the flames of unkindness, here at least, where conscious of our sins we ask to be forgiven as we are ready to forgive - here at least we are to cherish no feelings but those of brotherly kindness. Here let the fervor and sincerity of our religious devotions melt away all feelings of ill-will, of jealousy and suspicion; and bind us together in a common worship.

By the sincerity of their devotions, by the purity and disinterestedness of their lives, by the strength of Christian faith which triumphs over the temptations of the world and sustains them in life and death, should the disciples of Jesus show that they indeed belong to a branch of the living and true Church.

The year lies before us. Few things are distinct. But all is in God's keeping, and must bring good tidings of good to us, if we only are faithful to him. May it be to all our readers a happy year. May they be blessed in their labors and their business, in their homes and their kindred, in their neighbors and their friends, and in all that is nearest to their hearts. But most of all may they be blessed in that which will sanctify and bless all the rest—in the happiness of faithful and devout hearts, of pure and heavenly affections, of a serene and holy trust.

We have sometimes at sunset looked towards the east till the whole scene before us had become indistinct, and a leaden dimness rested on the very clouds and sky. But as we turned towards the west there were clouds glowing with the sevenfold radiance of the sun, and the sky spreading out from the softest tints of an ethereal beauty to a glory too bright for the eyes to dwell upon. Such is the change from the past to the future, from the year that is gone to that which shall come. May the joy and gladness that open before us be something more than the momentary splendor of a setting sun - - rather let it be the rising on our souls of a

sun that shall never set the dawning of a hope which shall lead us on beyond the western hills - beyond the mountain peaks on which God's holy messengers now stand, to the throne of God, and the presence of an unspeakable and everlasting joy.

ROMANS XIII. 11-13.

"THIS Epistle was written at Corinth, which, both as a seat of local government, and because of its critical position on a strait between two seas, must have been garrisoned by a strong military force. The image which always rises before my mind when I read the passage is this: I fancy St. Paul after a day spent in hard work, partly in tent-making and partly in preaching and in visitation among his converts -writing far through the night to the Christians in Rome, and just at daybreak, when the sentinels are changing guard, and the morning light glances on their armor, · while at the same time the last sounds of debauched revelers in the street fall upon their ears, expressing himself in the now familiar words, 'The night is far spent, the day is at hand; let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armor of light; let us walk honestly as in the day, not in rioting and drunkenness.'

INVOCATION.

FATHER, thy love!
Give, that I may impart
Its blessed store!

When most it fills my heart,

Then most I long for more.

The Fountain thou,

My little urn I bring,
And pray thee still

From thine o'erflowing spring

Its emptiness to fill.

Father, thy light!

Send down a heavenly ray,

That I may see

With clearer sight the way

That leads, my God, to thee;

That I may know

What talents thou hast lent,

What duties given,

Nor idly rest content,

Nor waste the gifts of Heaven.

Father, thy strength!

Strength to uphold the weak,

To right the wrong;

The fitting word to speak,

In Christian meekness strong:

Strong in thy power

Life's hourly calls to meet,

Life's battles fight;

And still with onward feet

Ever pursue the right.

Father, thy peace!

The peace from victory won

O'er self and sin,

That still from duty done

New store shall gather in.

The peace of God,

Offspring of toil and faith,

And holy love:

Descend on me with heavenly breath, O thou annointing Dove!

M.