And grievously does that parent sin against God and the soul of the child God has committed to his care, if he neglects to enforce daily and habitually this great law of his child's social and moral welfare. Is it not a melancholy sight-indeed, does it not excite one's indignation and pity-when you see, as one often does see, a spoiled and petted child-the little tyrant of the family, governing and ruling both the father and the mother-subjecting them to its capricious will-making them the pitiable slaves of a foolish and mismanaged child-a four or five year old despot! How often do you see a child you could have loved, had it been left unspoiled in the innocence and childish simplicity of its nature, and trained to that teachableness, and obedience, which always mark an interesting and promising childhood. But sit half an hour in that family circle! See how concerned and timidly the mother puts forth her commands, fearful they shall be openly disobeyed and she be put to shame by her young child in the presence of strangers. And mark the egotistic teasing, selfish, obstinate, overbearings of the young one. By turns it is noisyby turns fretful and sullen-a being, which God gave as a blessing, a light, a very joy to that family home, has by the ill-timed indulgence and mismanagement of its parents, been changed and metamorphosed into a shame and a reproach, and a prophet of future evil to itself and others. Alas! how has the glorious image of God, stamped upon that young child's nature, been defaced by a bad and foolish home training! You can plainly see that instead of the seeds of kindness, gentleness, modesty, and self-control, cast by parental hands into that young soul before you, the dragon's teeth have been sown. You cannot smile upon such a child kindly. You cannot speak to such a child lovingly. Its frowardness and self-will repel you. And when you-when others-when patient and painstaking instructors of the young, all turn away with a moral aversion from this unhappy victim of parental mismanagement and folly, who will pity and help it? Who, indeed, will or can? Shall we hope that some kind angelsome unseen, unearthly one, from the realm of the blessed-some guardian genius, such as of old men did believe watched over children and folded around them the wings of protecting love, shall watch and wait, and find some period, some favorable hour, to throw over that young child's nature, the regenerating and renovating forces of a lovelier and more genial life? Shall we dare to hope, that that work which is the father's and mother's work, shall be done by any other than the father's and mother's own hands? Shall we expect the blessing of the God of Families upon that household where the father and the mother, instead of being the priest and priestess of the household, are its victimswhere, instead of keeping the yoke of a wise and gentle obedience around the necks of their children, they wear the yoke of a child tyrant around their own? Solemn, indeed, and heavy is the re

sponsibility of the office of the instructors and educators of the young. Oh! they do need wisdom, and patience, and Divinest sympathy to fit them and sustain them in their toilsome and difficult work. How much of authoritativeness and absolute command must be exercised in that small kingdom, a school-room, where twenty, thirty, forty, or a hundred active and inquisitive young minds are ever on the stretch to know or to do some new thing.

And here, too, the youth who has been trained to habits of docility and submission in the home government of the family, who has worn naturally, and gracefully, and reverently, the yoke of parental authority, is most likely to be benefitted by the efforts of an industrious and conscientious instructor. Oh! how unfit for the relative duties and business of life, is that young man or woman, who in the discipline of the family and the school has never been accustomed to wear the yoke of a dutiful and loving obedience! My young friends-you who are scholars and learners -you who now hear me, let me speak plainly and frankly to you. Is it not better and infinitely more becoming for a manly and noble boy, or a large-hearted and good girl, to say I will reverence and obey my parents; I will look up with respect and confidence to my teachers and parents, whose instructions and advice, if I heed them, can make me wiser and better. Is not this, I ask you, better than to be an obstinate, indocile, and unloveable girl, or a coarse, bold, bad and obstinate boy-the Anarch of the familygruff and coarse, and unmannerly, mistaking impudence for manliness, and a vulgar swaggering air for the deportment of a gentleman. It is a most common error, and a dangerous one it is, that schools and masters are the educators of our youth. Their instructors they are: but their educators in the high, and holy sense of the word they are not. The training of the feet, and of the hands, and of the eye, and the ear, by music masters, and dancing masters, and drawing masters, is not education. The knowledge of the ancient and modern languages, and the sciences and fine arts, as taught by the best and most accomplished instructors is not education. That is something which neither the schools, nor books, nor masters, can give. The body is trained, and in many cases trained well, and so is the intellect. It is plied with tasks, and books, and lectures, and made strong, and sharp, and wise, and fit for the all absorbing ends of life; that is, for buying and selling, and making merchandize, and the accumulation of material good. But where are the professors of benevolence, justice, truth, temperance, humanity, charity, and piety? Where are these accomplishments taught? Who studies them? What are the text books? Where are the institutions and professors of these, of al! ascomplishments the most exalted, because the divinest? You, my hearers, let me say to you respectfully, who are parents are these professors, and your homes the insti

tutions where piety, and justice, and benevolence, and humanity are to be taught, not from lectures, and homilies, and catechisms merely, but from the mystic book of your own daily lives. Not in colleges and halls of science, but in your households, you the father and the mother being the educators, and your lives and example the lessons.

But when the young have passed the period of training and tutelage in the family and in the school, have they then done with the yoke? Is it proper for them to cast off all obedience to restraint and authority? Far from it. There come yet harder lessons to be learned-there are severer rules to be obeyed-there is another yoke ready for the neck, and happy is the youth who is ready to bear it patiently and truly. It is the yoke of work, labor, industry-the burden which the occupations and professions of active life impose; and this yoke all must bear, as they value the peace, prosperity, and dignity of their future lives.

There are not, as some persons seem to think, a few favored children of the earth-the destined heirs of good fortune-the hereditary owners of such broad domains and ample resources, that they can afford to make life a long sunny day, an everlasting Saturday, a schoolboy's holiday. If any do have the vanity to live an easy, laborless life, without effort of any kind, without the application of their powers to some good and useful purpose, they soon fall into public contempt and personal littleness, no matter what their surroundings or position may be. Because a young man or a young woman is born to affluence, is that any good reason why he or she should be vain or idle? Is it not, indeed, the very strongest reason why they should strive by energy and perseverance in some noble line of endeavor to build up a personal character, in some degree commensurate with the outward fortunes which the good providence of God has given them to enjoy ?

No, my young friends, if you would be truly influential and respected, labor diligently, and with all your skill and might in whatever industrial employment or profession the good providence of God has called you to work. This is duty.* There is true honor and dignity in this. No employment is mean which is honestly and industriously pursued. When the enemies of Epaminondas, one of the most renowned men of his age, appointed him a street scavinger, "If my office," said he, "will not do me honor, I will do honor to my office." And so he did, by the

Alas! there is a most morbid dislike for work among all classes-and as morbid a wish to be gentlemen. I have seen it stated that recently in Boston, an advertisement for a young man to work in a store, had 18 applicants; while one for a gentleman to travel and play on the banjo received 409. I say work. It is honorable. There is true dignity in it.

conscientious and careful manner in which he discharged its appropriate but humble duties. An industrious man is usually a virtuous man. Hercules was an honest worker. His draining of marshes, and punishment of tyrants, and destruction of serpents and wild beasts, what are they, and the thousand and one fables told of him, but the fact that he was a true benefactor of his race, an improver of the social condition of men. The idler has never yet done any thing for the world's good; and in no one instance has his name, like to Vulcan's, or Hercules', or Orpheus', or Arachnes's been embalmed in mythus. It has rotted from among the memories of the ages. Bear the yoke of labor in your youth. Ours is a work-day world. Its only oasis is the Sabbath. Cherish that. But work. Work for yourself. Work for your family. Work for the world.

But you say, I do not know how to begin; I want capital; I want friends; I do not know how, or where, or when to set out, and make a beginning. Well then, these are embarassing difficulties to be sure. But I do not know that it is right to say it is a hard condition; for this is but another yoke which it is good for a young man to bear in his youth-the yoke of adverse and straitened circumstances and conditions of life, for it is nobler to achieve ones fortunes, with God's good providence aiding, than to inherit them--nobler to acquire energy, and strength, and self-reliance, and manly independence of character by a severe and close combat with the evils and disadvantages of outward social condition, than to run the risk of being enervated and personally insignificant by entire reliance upon friends and influence, and capital which others have accumulated for you.

But when the young have learned the great laws of obedience and industry, is that all? Must the neck still bow itself to receive other yokes or restraints? It must. For men are not only members of families, and workers, and producers, in this great world-hive; but as youth merges into nanhood, they become members of states and of civil communities, they become citizens. And now the yoke of subjection to civil authority must be borne with a self-sacrificing and patriotic spirit. But when the family and the school have done their proper and legitimate work, the state finds the majority of her subjects order-loving, obedient, and willing and ready to come up to to her help, in maintaining law and order, and the mercantile blessings of peace and good gov ernment. But from whence come her outlawed and disobedient children, who crowd her prisons, her jails, and poor-houses, and penitentiaries? Do they not come from disorderly, ill-governed, and mismanaged households-from dwellings where the Sabbath was a weariness, where religion was turned out of doors, where all their members lived as seemed to them best in their own eyes, and their youths were lords of themselves?

But, finally, is this all? Does obedience to parents-respect to instructors-diligence in some honest and useful calling, and loyalty to the State comprehend the whole of our duties as men? Are there no other yokes? Is there any other yoke, the assumption and bearing of which will not afflict and constrain, ut set the young man free and lift him up into the full and joyful consciousness of entire personal freedom--perfect emancipation from the power and thraldom of all that is gross, or degrading, or evil in the tendencies of his nature, a perfect freedom to will and to do that which is right, and well-pleasing before God? Yes, there is such a yoke-a yoke worn by devout and good men without irritation, and without constraint-a yoke which is easy, and a burden which is light. It is the yoke of Christ. It is the yoke Christ offers to all his true and willing disciples through all the ages. Wear but that yoke, now, and heaven will be all around you. It is because men do not wear that yoke, that earth is earth -a low, dark, world of sin and suffering. Oh! glorious, indeed, would this house of our human life be, did we all but live as the children of God; obedient, trustful, fraternal, loving children of the same great household of human souls, bound each to each, and all to God our Father, by the blessed and everlasting bonds of faith and love! Did every man but wear this yoke, its redemption would be achieved. Order and peace, and the holy calm. of the holy worlds would fall upon the human race, and earth be but one of the majestic apartments-one of the glorious rooms in our Father's house of many mansions.

Do you ask me what is this yoke of Christ's? I answer. It is the life-the spirit--the temper--the love of Christ. It is humility; it is forbearance; it is faith; it is charity; it is meekness; it is forgivingness: in one word, it is self-consecrationthe consecration of your thoughts, your words, your bodies, your entire life unto God, a living sacrifice. This is what Christ your Redeemer, God manifest in the flesh, taught to his disciples and the world. It is the giving up of your will to him who "willed and all things were." It is the yielding up of your heart to that mighty heart of love, pulsating from the centre to the farthest verge of being; the God who made you, and the throbbings of whose love to you, you may hear in every beat of that heart of yours, and feel it in every generous and uplifting aspiration, that struggles in your soul for utterance and expression. Tell me, my young friend, when is a boy the loveliest? Is it not when confidingly and trustful he walks, hand in hand, unquestioningly beneath the care of a wise and loving father, his will resigned to his father's will, his father's smile his joy, his father's word the law of his conduct, his father's life the model of his own. Oh, how happy that boy is! Happy in his father's love, happy in his own obedient, loving spirit. Heaven is all around him, for the heaven of trust and love is within him. And so, too, will it be