burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ," she does not even bear her own burdens. Every precept which enjoins the duty of parents, is lost upon her, because she has become so utterly selfish as to disregard even nature's holiest instinct. The very brutes testify against her; for they peril their own lives for the safety of their offspring. Let her learn a lesson from the pelican, which gives her blood for the support of her young.

No, she will not learn, even from the strong pleadings of nature's instinct. It costs her labor, her attention, her thought, her self-denial, her abstinence from fashionable pleasures; and she will not deny herself, even for the good of the being that owes to her its existence. Does she think she can guiltlessly throw this care and responsibility upon those to whom God never gave it ;— those who cannot be remunerated by the holy love that springs spontaneously in the heart of a mother toward her offspring, and enables her to perform with pleasure those offices which love alone makes light? Does she plead that she compensates her nurse for all these toils ?—that she is more than paid for all the care she throws upon her? Who gave the mother, when in health, a right to remunerate another for discharging those duties which God imposed alone on her? That money which she thus wastes is not her own. God never put it into her hands for such a purpose. He made her to become a mother, and fitted her to discharge that high and holy office; and think you He will receive a substitute, hired with money which he has entrusted to you for other purposes? Depend upon it, God holds every such mother to a high account. Woman, whoever you are, whatever your station, know that the voice of God, speaking to you in the strong language of nature's sacred tie, and in the more sacred words even of inspiration, may not be innocently disregarded.

He accepts no substitute for wasted powers. He gives none to be perverted. He will not suffer a mother to deny her heart the true joy of nurturing her offspring, nor seek her reward by making her child an idol altar, on which to offer incense to the shrine of vanity. Her pride and vanity, ministered to by the sacrifice of the highest interest of her own being, and that of her child, will inevitably recoil with fearful weight upon her own head.

Nor do they alone suffer. The race is degraded by it. Not her own sex alone, but the whole harmony of the moral world suffers from this infraction of God's law. God has a work for every soul. He has never given a single human energy that He did not design for high and ennobling purposes. That mother was made to take her offspring to her own bosom, to nurse it from the fount of love provided by an All-wise Being, that it might be bound to her by ties, strong as death, so that her spirit would, of right, mould it in the true moral likeness of an exalted race. It needs more the silent look of undying love to form in its soul the same pure fountain, than even the aliment which God has prepared for its physical strength. And especial care should be taken, that the body of the infant should be left "free to grow as God designed it. The swath bound tightly round the infant, does that do nothing? Are the internal organs left to their perfect development? Is the pressure on the liver nothing? How often do the helpless creatures throw off the healthy nourishment they have just swallowed? May not that be caused by the pressure on the stomach? have seen the liver of a woman, marked with a deep furrow plowed by the screw of the corset; cannot a similar mark be seen in the liver of the young child?”

I

While she refuses obedience to these laws of God, while she suffers her child to draw its nourishment from the bosom of one who owes it no maternal regard, whose

eye cannot look with the instinctive prophecy of a mother into its young heart, and discern the very depths of its infant spirit, how can she ask God to render it a pure and holy being, worthy of the ultimate destiny of a soul created in his moral likeness! She has suffered a stranger to impress her spirit upon the being which she alone had a right to mould, because God gave to her alone the power of love to do it rightly.

Think of this, O mothers, who dwell at ease and cast from you all the responsibilities of your station;-how will you answer in a coming day, when called upon to deliver up your account to God! The spirits which should have been moulded by you, in the image of perfect love and duty, have scarce received one ennobling impulse from you. From the moment of their birth, banished from your bosoms, and cast upon the "charity !" or the cupidity of strangers, recalled to your presence only that your vanity may be gratified by an exhibition of the finery with which you have hired others to deck them, or to occupy an idle moment; made orphans, without a right to the sympathy which we naturally bestow upon the motherless, how will you answer, not to God alone, but to them, and to the just demands of a sinruined world? How will you stand up before your nation, and say, Lo! my sons and my daughters, whom I have reared to be your lasting praise; I have enstamped upon their hearts the image of the highest love of our being,a sacrifice of self to the well-being of others!

Do you plead, in extenuation, that the burthens of a mother are too great for you to endure ?—that you cannot bear them, and at the same time be accounted respectable in society?-that you would, by so doing, subject yourself to the ridicule of all your acquaintance ? Let me say to you, with the voice of solemn admonition, God is greater than the world. His laws are more sacred

and binding than the dictates of all men and women combined. And He has said, "Be not conformed to this world; but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect will of God."

What transformation,-what renewing of the mind is here intended, that would not include a turning from the sin and disobedience in which women have indulged, to the same state of childlike subjection to God's law which our first parents exercised before the Fall? And think you that our mother Eve would have felt herself degraded by nursing her own offspring? Had it been a necessary degradation, God would have provided for her a servant, ready to receive the first-born into the "nursery," where her delicate sensibilities might not be pained with the "vulgar care."

But the thought is too solemn for irony. Mothers who thus disregard the requirements of their being, and love the praise of the world more than the approbation of their Maker, will feel the penalty of a violated law, both in this world and in that which is to come.

Again, let us inquire into the cause of this unnatural abandonment of their offspring by fashionable mothers. Is it that they may devote themselves to some more exalted calling, more ennobling pursuit? Let us follow them, and ascertain what philanthropy attests their selfdevotion. What labors of love call down upon them the blessings of the poor, the weak, the suffering, of earth? What orphaned hearts bless them for the kindly shelter, and the still more kindly love, that almost restores again the blessings of which they have been deprived? What oppressed ones lift up their unshackled hands, and declare, by the self-denying labors of these almost martyr-spirits we stand "redeemed-emancipated." What voices from lands long polluted by the horrid rites of idol worship,

through their prayers, and toils, and self-denial, unite in ascribing "glory, and honor, and salvation, to him that sitteth upon the throne, and to the Lamb, for ever and ever?" Surely, it ought to be a high devotion that should lead a mother to abandon to another's care and guidance the immortal being committed to her own trust.

Let us examine, and hear the answer her daily deeds send back in response to our inquiries. Truly "her feet abide not in her house ;" but it is not that they may become "feet to the lame." Her eyes wander abroad; but it is not that they may become "sight to the blind." The poor, that call at her door, are sometimes fed; but it is with the broken meat, that is deemed unfit again to be placed upon her table. They are sometimes clothed; but not at the expense of her own self-denial. The garb that is no longer fashionable, it costs give; for she never toiled to earn it. she may chance to bestow, either to agreeable importunities, or that she may seem generous, was never procured by her industry. It was earned by the sweat of others, and she is, in very truth, only a robber, instead of a benefactor. Her own pleasure is all she seeks.

her no sacrifice to The money which rid herself of dis

This may seem harsh to some, but it is nevertheless true. God has not given it to her to use in such a way. He has even declared by the mouth of an apostle (2 Thess. iii. 10—12), “ For even when we were with you, this we commanded you, that if any would not work, neither should he eat. For we hear that there are some which walk among you disorderly, working not at all, but are busy-bodies. Now, them that are such, we command and exhort, by our Lord Jesus Christ, that with quietness they work and eat their own bread."

We see here, that, so far from giving sanction to any man or woman to waste their property, by applying it