The reflections of pious parents, who have been faithful in the observance of this family rite, must be pleasant, when their children leave home to engage in the pursuits of life. Providence sooner or later breaks up these household connections, so far as to scatter the children abroad upon the various errands of worldly duty. Their hearts may be unrenewed, but they go forth with all the influences of prayer, which God can make powerful to reform, impressing their hearts. They may mingle in socialities and friendships where sin abounds, and temptation is fearful in power, but the sound of a father's voice in supplication has not yet died away upon the ear. One may toil in the marts of trade, in the midst of fraud and chicanery; is not hope inspired by the thought that he was reared where the great God had an altar? Another may move in a circle where the arts of fashion and pleasure tend to allure from the path of virtue; will there be no power in the recollection of a beloved parent wrestling with God for his moral safety? And yet another may make the home of his manhood upon the seas, exposed to the moral perils of the sailor's life, corrupt associations on ship-board and vices of every kind in port; what parent would not rejoice to have his son go to an ocean-life with the memory of family prayer abiding in his heart?

These thoughts run onward to the future. The time will come, according to the "sure word of prophecy," when the knowledge of God will fill the earth, and family altars will be reared in the habitations of every tribe and people. The voice of prayer may not be heard in every dwelling, but the habitations unhallowed by its utterance will constitute the exceptions to a general rule. Language cannot describe, nor imagination conceive the grandeur of that scene when families dwelling in every clime, and voyaging on every sea, will bow as suppliants to a common father; - when, instead of the strife and feuds, the heart-burnings and alienations,

the vices and frivolities, the thoughtlessness and gross sins of households, they shall gather in the exercise of love and gratitude around the altar, and there shall be one worldwide, universal concert of prayer, "OUR FATHER WHICH ART IN HEAVEN," as if the earth were a single dwelling, and mankind a single family, and God the glorious Head.

SAD are the associations as we stand within a dwelling

where lie the dead!

The once unbroken circle has now a

The tomb-like silence that

that a solemn crisis is

vacant chair and an awful void. reigns through each apartment tells reached in the household history. Earthly ties are severed, and "love lies bleeding." The room in which the sacred relics repose, awaiting the hour of burial, is a kind of "Holy of Holies." Though the spirit is not there, yet the human form in which it tabernacled is dear even when dissolving back to dust. Softly we tread, as if our step would disturb the peaceful sleeper. And long after the remains have been laid in the " narrow house," the apartment is hallowed by the vivid associations that come thronging there. This is emphatically a FAMILY SCENE. It will occur in every household. It will destroy these numerous intimacies; for "the land shall mourn every family apart."

Few realize the dread uncertainty of life. Even the lamented Heber, who wrote the beautiful lines, —

did not realize that himself should illustrate their fearful import. Yet he entered the bath-room at Trichonopoly in perfect health, and was brought out a lifeless corpse. By a tie so frail are the joys of the family relation held on earth. It is true that "death rides on every passing breeze." A needle destroyed Lucia, the sister of Aurelius, while playing with her little son. A grape choked Anacreon, the sweet bard of ancient Ionia. A hair terminated the life of Fabrius, once a Roman consul. And a fly killed Pope Adrian IV. It is not alone in the wild tornado, or the raging pestilence that death sunders the ties of kindred. It is confined to no boundaries or seasons.

"Leaves have their times to fall,

And flowers to wither at the north-wind's breath,
And stars to set-but all,

Thou hast all seasons for thine own, O death!"*

The emperor Mervanes had this motto engraved upon his seal; "Remember thou must die!" God engraves the warning upon the foreheads of dying men. Philip, king of Macedon, ordered his page to address him every morning in these words; "Remember, O king, thou art mortal!" God addresses not only kings, but every member of every family, and not only every morning, but every evening and every hour, "Ye know not what shall be on the morrow."

The history of families speaks of little else than death. One-fourth of all the members die before they pass the age of a single year, and only two-fifths attain to six years of age. THIRTY MILLIONS of our race die annually; about eighty thousand daily; more than three thousand hourly, more than fifty every minute; almost one every second. What havoc is here in earth's countless families! What

*Mrs. Hemans.

disappointments, blasted hopes, and repining love! While I write, what severing of ties, what grief, what lamentation! The earth is little else than a vast cemetery, and the sounds that are wafted to our ears are mostly the voices of the dead. For every moment some one of the human family is consigned to the dust, and the knell of death mingles its dolorous notes with the sighing of the bereaved. We wonder not that the ancient Egyptians were accumstomed to carry their coffins to festivals in order to keep reminded of mortality, nor that the Chinese kept them in their private dormitories.

In the afflictions of families death is presented under various forms, involving much that is dark and incomprehensible; and these hidden ways of the Lord are often called the MYSTERIES OF PROVIDENCE. A few facts will illustrate.

In the land of Moab, thirteen centuries before the birth of Christ, a poor but pious woman, named Naomi, took up her residence. Driven by relentless famine, she came with her husband and children from Bethlehem-Judah- -a place distant by the space of one hundred and twenty miles, over a mountainous region, and since honored by the angelic heral-dry descending to announce the Savior's birth to the watching shepherds. She came unwittingly to bury her husband and children in this heathen country, far away from the land of their birth, and the dust of their fathers. She came to

learn a sad lesson of sorrow in a fatherless, husbandless, and childless home to see whither the widow's heart will turn in her bereavement and haggard want, but to the widow's God. What a complication of wo! Driven by famine from her early home to a land of heathen strangers, bereft of all her family in so brief a period, left penniless and alone to survive as best she could upon the scanty fare of penury! Child of Providence! The hand of God is: laid heavily upon thee, and thou art ready to exclaim, "Thy way is in the sea, and thy path in the great waters, and thy