wound and fell to the earth, he leaped over the dead body, and with his shield protected it from insult and plunder. He was sadly wounded in the undertaking, but would not retreat until his friends had borne the corpse to a place of safety. We would not join the multitude to swell the cry, brave Timolean! but, with a consistent posterity, we would do honor to his name, by joining the acclamation, EVERFAITHFUL Timolean! Youthful reader, if any truth is learned from the history of the past, it is that men will honor those who honor the fraternal relation!

A word to brothers and sisters in age! Time multiplies changes in the household group, and after a few years of earthly intercourse the parents pass away, while the children are married and become the heads of rising families. All the ties that remain of the original family are the fraternal. How proper that brothers and sisters, though living in different quarters of the earth, and having families of their own, should still maintain the same strong attachment to each other! How fit that the same kind expressions and offices. of love should characterize their intercourse, and show a devotion which time nor age can obliterate! Darius, king of Persia, passed sentence of death upon Intaphemes, together with all his children and his wife's brother. His wife subsequently appeared before the royal palace, exhibiting every mark of inconsolable grief. Her repeated visits, from day to day, awakened the sympathy of Darius, who thus addressed her, in the person of his messenger: " Wo-man, king Darius offers you the liberty of any individual of your family whom you may most desire to preserve." To this. she replied: "If the king will grant me the life of any one of my family, I choose my brother in preference to the rest." The king was so astonished at this announcement that he sent a second message to her as follows: "The king desires to know why you have thought proper to pass over your children and your husband, and to preserve your brother,

who is certainly a more remote connection than your children, and cannot be so dear to you as your husband." She answered thus: "O king! if it please the Deity, I may have another husband: and if I be deprived of these, may have other children; but as my parents are both of them dead, it is certain that I can have no other brother." The sentiment commended itself to the king, as it does to every adult reader embraced in the family circle.

In conclusion, God will be more likely to honor the fraternal relation by a spiritual blessing, when its important claims are observed with fidelity. In such a family Christ will find His trophies. When clothed in flesh, and executing His merciful errand on earth, our Savior honored an humble, but united family of Bethany with a visit. And, probably, in all the land, there was not another family, in which the fraternal duties were more faithfully discharged, than in that same family, consisting of Martha and Mary with their brother Lazarus. May we not regard the incident in the light of a sacred symbol, pointing brothers and sisters to those spiritual visits which the Savior now vouchsafes to make them, when their attachments are strong, and their harmony unbroken?

"Hail, Sabbath! thee I hail, the poor man's day:
On other days the man of toil is doomed

To eat his joyless bread, lonely - the ground

Both seat and board-screen'd from the winter's cold
And summer's heat, by neighboring hedge or tree;
But on this day, embosom'd in his home,

He shares the frugal meal with those he loves."

GRAHAME.

MARRIAGE was the first fundamental institution which God ordained in Paradise - the union of two hearts and destinies as the basis of the family relation. The second was the glorious SABBATH of rest one-seventh portion of time to be sacredly redeemed from worldly cares and pursuits, and devoted to the worship of God. The fact is pregnant with meaning. That God should ordain the SABBATH immediately after the institution of MARRIAGE, implies a connection between the two, which may suggest its importance to the weal of the family. SIX DAYS OF SPECIAL

TOIL FOR THE HOUSEHOLD-THE SEVENTH A DAY OF REST

AND DEVOTION! If He, who created all things, has wisely adapted each object and ordinance to the place it occupies, then we must hail the SABBATH as the harbinger of timely good to the family.

Some of the delightful appellations which human genius has applied to this day are as follows" Help meet for the Family"-"Torch of Time"-"Light of the week" “The poor man's Friend" "Heaven's Antidote" "Pearl of Days." They are not the epithets of extrava

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gant rhetoric. They are fit appellations. The SABBATH, as we shall see, is "an help meet " in all the cares and duties that pertain to domestic life. It is the "Light,” kindled at the altar of truth, which irradiates the scenes of the week. It is time's Torch," flashing high above a world that is wrapped in moral darkness. It is the poor man's " Friend,” beckoning him home after the toil and "sweat" of six wearisome days, to drown his lassitude in the communion of loving hearts. Of all the days in the string of seven, it is the priceless "Pearl"—the fairest, purest, brightest, that hangs upon the neck of time. It comes not too often, nor delays too long. It demands not too much of our time, nor takes too little. For it, fifty-two times in a year, the morning lifts her golden gates, and it comes to the waiting family with "refreshment for the body, and improvement for the soul." Fifty-two glowing prefaces to as many chapters in a household's annual history! Fifty-two oases gladdening their hearts annually in their journey through this wilderness of sin! Fifty-two precious stones adorning the bosom of a year, all to be appropriated to the family's spiritual wealth!

A view of the Sabbath, as it is now regarded by many of mankind, shows that its peculiar blessings are not generally appropriated to family improvement. Saturday night does not return all the heads of earth's scattered households, who might quit their secular pursuits, nor even fold all the lambs, which have wandered from the flock. True, the din of traffic is hushed in the streets, and the sound of axe is not heard in the woods, nor hammer at the forge; but it is not wholly that a Sabbath blessing may be shared in the family circle. Human depravity takes advantage of the liberty of the day, to riot wantonly in the abodes of vice. Pleasure marshals her teeming hosts for outrage upon holy ordinances and for scenes of wild excitement. Profligacy makes it a gala-day, to pander to debasing passions, and wallow in the

mire of a beastlier beastiality. Hosts of pining wives and mothers dread the coming of the sacred day, because husbands and sons rest from their labors only to lounge in idleness, or revel in bacchanalian sports. Stages thunder along the highways; steamboats, crowded with the gay "lovers of pleasure," plough the lakes and rivers: and trains of rattling cars rush across the land; all bearing the members of numerous families upon errands of business or amusement far away from the peaceful home where the Divine benediction might fall. And thus, wealthy corporations compel hundreds of fathers and sons to violate the Fourth Commandment, or sacrifice the means of a livelihood if they insist upon the observance of God's Sabbath in their families. Want, on the one hand, and heartless tyranny, on the other, suppresses the gushing tenderness of many noble hearts, longing to tarry one day in seven at home. Then, tɔo, what slothfulness, what indolence, what bargains, what bookposting, what letter-writing, what ramblings, what plannings, what visitings, what "sunday sicknesses," to sacrifice the blessing to the household, and trample upon the command, "Six days shalt thou labor, and do all thy work: But the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy man-servant, nor thy maid-servant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates." This is Jehovah's counsel for His SABBATH IN THE FAMILY.

This day ought to be greatly magnified in importance to all parents, since it has much to do with the felicity of their households. Even if there were no judgment-seat, nor fearful retribution to meet hereafter, it comes, ladened with temporal blessings, to every member, from the oldest to the youngest. If the family in its little community of interests, were to pass away with the extinction of terrestrial objects, the Sabbath, in its socializing and elevating tendency, would.