objects that rush across the mind when war threatens a land. Wives, children, brothers, sisters, parents, the thought of their being exposed to the violence and lust of a victorious. foe nerves them for deeds of noble daring, and invests them with fortitude and power beyond the inspiration of fife and drum, or the glory of a conqueror's name. "Remember your wife and children," exclaimed a commander to his army, cowering before the teeming ranks of the enemy; "REMEM BER YOUR WIFE AND CHILDREN!" and with the celerity of light, the spirit of a dauntless heroism flew from heart to heart, and the army rushed to the conflict with renewed courage, and won the day.

It is doubted if there is recorded the instance of a person displaying a marked degree of patriotism in the time of our country's peril, who had not a family. We have had many noble examples of the love of country, but how much less noble they might have been without a previous love of the family! There is love of country, doubtless, in numerous instances, solely because there is love of home with its kindred.

There is one historical fact which serves to illustrate with considerable aptitude this part of the subject. At one period of Grecian history, family discipline was accounted of little value, and the Spartan lads were submitted to a public training as the children of the people. To all intents and purposes the influence of the household was set aside, or nullified, and the lads subjected to the best discipline that could be instituted to fit them for public service. But this, with many other plans of theirs, equally chimerical, proved a splendid failure; showing the absolute necessity of the family influence in forming character to be useful in the state, or any other sphere of human effort and responsibility.

THE RELATION OF THE FAMILY TO THE CHURCH. The domestic constitution appears exceedingly important when

we contemplate its relations, as above, to the commonwealth; i but it transcends this view of mere secular and political importance, and assumes a sacred character, when we regard its relations to the Church of Christ. The family is the nursery of the church. Within its pale there is going on a training through which the rising generation are made more friendly or hostile to the truth are the more hopeful candidates for Christ's Kingdom, or the less likely to be won. The next generation both of the friends and the enemics of Christ are now the children which are the pride and hope of carth's countless families. Whether they shall join the sacramental hosts, or scorn to respect the truth of God, depends very much upon the influences which mould character in childhood and youth. This sentiment finds a response in every christian heart. In every community there are families from whom the church do not expect to receive converts to their fellowship. If one does break away from the worldly interests which there concern him, he is regarded as having resisted, with manly independence, such influences as have secularized the hearts and destroyed the souls of thousands.

In the early history of mankind, the family was the only church of God, called the "Church in the House." Herewas the altar, the incense, the voice of prayer, and the song of praise. Here was all the religion, with its simple ordinances, which was found upon the earth. And over this constituted "Church in the louse," the man of God, not forgetful of his duties as husband and father, presided as the prophet and priest. Had not sin corrupted the source of human thought and feeling, and hatched its cocatrice's eggs. in human hearts, an organized christian church would have been unnecessary. Each family would have been a living church, as a city upon a hill. There God would have had his altar, his ordinances, and his "beloved." There truth would have lived, unchanged and unremoved by the march: of time. And there piety would have survived, in the pu

rity of its early faith, amid all the mutations of terrestrial. things.

Facts may be cited, almost indefinitely, to establish the connection of the family and church. In one town dur ing a revival-season, in 1812, seventy-nine persons were added to the church, and all but four were the members of pious families. In another town, as the fruits of a revival in 1811, one hundred were added to the church, eighty-eight of whom were from pious familics. In yet another town, four-fifths of the converts, during a revival in 1815, belonged to religious households. In another still, nine-tenths of all the conversions during a powerful work of grace, in 1831, were connected with pious families. And thus in nearly every work of grace which refreshes christendom from time to time, it will be found that very few are gathered from families in which the parents are not religious. The great mass of the additions to Christ's flock are from the families of the church. The history of every revival will prove this from accurate statistics.

Revivals occurred in Amherst College in 1827, '28, '31, '35, '39, 42, '46, in which some hundreds were converted, and in Wabash College in 1838, '41, '43, '46, '47, '48 and '49.with results equally encouraging. The forty years preceding 1848, Yale College was visited with twenty revivals, and the number of hopeful conversions in a single one was one hundred. Among the converts were Hopkins, Edwards, Dwight, Bellany, Evarts, Cornelius and Nevins. The first sixty-five years in the history of Dartmouth College witnessed nine extensive revivals, and during the first twentyfive of Middlebury College, every class but one shared in the outpouring of the .Spirit. How many hundreds were converted in all these revivals, we cannot say; but we can assert with confidence, that, be the number more or less, four fifths of them were the children of the church. It is recorded that of sixty-three admitted to the church in Yale College,

in 1802, all but eight of them were the sons of pious parents. The whole number, (twenty-two) who were received to the Communion in 1808, had either a christian father or mother, or both. And of seventy who professed religion, as the fruit of the revival of 1831, all but ten were the children of pious parents. Thirty students were hopefully converted in McKendree Coiiege, Illinois, in 1850, all but three of whom had praying mothers, and a large portion of them praying fathers also; and six of them were the sons of ministers of different denominations.

An inquiry was instituted not long since, with regard to the students connected with the Andover Theological Seminary, eighty in number; and it was found that only "four of the students were born of parents neither of whom was pious, that of six, the mother only was pious, and that of seventy the father and mother both were pious." In another Theological Seminary all but six of the members were reared in religious families. A similar inquiry instituted in relation to all the Theological Schools of the land, of evangelical principles, would, doubtless, present similar results.

Of the large number of devoted ministers, breaking the bread of life to the many saints in christendom, and the missionaries of the cross, bearing the glad news of salvation to the perishing, how very few are the offspring of parents neither of whom are devoted to the Lord! Probably ninety-nine hundredths of them came forth from households where one parental heart, at least, was in truc sympathy with Christ.

Such facts as these show that God has put his seal of approbation upon the religious family, and now points us to it as the agency, which, by grace, is to replenish his bloodbought church. Other families throng, with their godless members, the ranks of Christ's enemies and persecutors, and swell the number of the "tormented" to a fearful aggregate. But the families of the church, dear to God by the bonds of the everlasting covenant, are to furnish the mass of the

trained sons and daughters of salvation; so that the question: how fast the truth shall advance from land to land, and how soon the cross be planted upon every heathen shore? finds its truest answer in the character of the families which abide in christian countries.

Some months since the author listened to the interesting plea of an agent in behalf of perishing children, in which he argued that our efforts in the conversion of the world have been wrongly directed. The drift of his argument was somewhat as follows: "We have been laboring in the Lord's vineyard a great number of years, yet how few, comparatively, are converted! In many christian communities the admissions of converted sinners to the church scarcely keeps pace with the removals by "death's doings." Talents, learning, wealth, time, all are devoted to the salvation of men, Jet how slowly does the work of conversion advance! At this rate of progress how long a time will clapse before the world will be converted to God! There is error somewhere in this great and glorious enterprise. We believe it lies in our overlooking the salvation of children. We have commenced at the wrong place to convert the world. This great moral machinery is operating mainly upon adult minds, while childhood is almost wholly neglected. Men established in their sinful habits, with a cultivated hostility to the gospel, or blinded by gross superstition, are labored with, while children, so susceptible to religious impression, are left to harden by sin, and advance to maturity with increasing enmity to the truth, before they are made the special objects of christian regard. In this way, the young pass the scason which is most favorable to bring them to Christ, and are not wrought upon by the church until they are far less likely to be converted. May not the error be found here? Is it not the part of wisdom to convert the children, that, by and by, there may be no adults, comparatively, to be converted?

* Rev. Mr. Picrce of the American Sunday School Union.