There is growing up a cowardly disposition to shirk trouble and responsibility in this matter. "I don't feel competent to bring up a family of children." Who does? It is a part of your education to acquire competence for this work. "But I don't feel like assuming such a responsibility." That responsibility is precisely what you need to keep you in the path you ought to walk in. "But I can't afford it." Are there two pairs of hands between you, and not sufficient patience, courage, and enterprise to do the duties of life? "But 1 am afraid that I should lose my children. They are liable to so many accidents that it would be very strange if I should be able to raise a family without losing one or two." The sweetest and truest couplet that the Queen's laureate ever wrote tells the story upon this point:

""Tis better to have loved and lost

Than never to have loved at all."

Ask the father and the mother, weeping over the coffin of their first-born and only child, whether they regret that the child was born. Ask them the same question in after years, when that little life has come to be a thread of gold running through all their experiences. If they give an affirmative answer, I will be silent. No, my married friends-you who shrink from

accepting the choicest privilege bestowed upon youyou are all wrong; and if you live, you will arrive at a period where you will see that there are rewards and punishments attached to this thing. What is to sustain you when, in old age-the charms of youth all past, desire extinguished, and the grasshopper a burden -you sit at your lonely board, and think of the strangers who are to enjoy the fruit of your most fruitless life? Who are to feed the deadening affections of your heart and keep life bright and desirable to its close, but the little ones whom you rear to manhood and womanhood? What is to reward you for the toils of life if you do not feel that you-your thoughts, your blood, your influence-are to be continued into the future? Do you like the idea of having hirelings, or those who are anxious to get rid of you, about your dying bed? Is it not worth something to have a family of children whom you have reared, lingering about your grave, with tears on their cheeks and blessings on their lipstears for a great loss, and blessings on the hallowed. influence which has trained them in the path of duty, and directed them to life's noblest ends?

This is a subject which has not been talked about much publicly, but it is a very serious thing with me, and it ought to be with you. I love the family life. I esteem a Christian family-the more numerous the bet

ter-one of the most beautiful subjects of contemplation the earth affords. A father, thoroughly chastened and warmed in all his affections, and a mother overflowing with love for the dear children God has given her, devoted to their welfare, and guiding them by her tender counsels, sitting at their board with the sprightly forms and bright eyes of childhood around the table, or all kneeling at the family altar, form a sight more nearly allied to heaven than any other which the world presents. Do you suppose such a father would be what he is but for his children? Do you believe such a mother would be the blessed being she is but for the development which she receives in her maternal office? No, you know that both have been chastened, elevated, purified, made strong, and essentially glorified, by a relation as sanctifying as it is sacred.

So I say, in closing, that you can never realize the very choicest and richest blessings that Heaven intends for

you, in your relations as husband and wife, without children. Whom God deprives of these, he has other thought for, and I have nothing to say to them; but to the multitude, I say, give welcome to each new comer whom God has lighted with a spark of his own divinity, to grow in glory till it shall outshine the star beneath which it entered existence, such greeting as you would give an angel. Clothe him in white, bear him to the

baptismal font, rejoice over him as a testimonial that God remembers you, and celebrate the day when he was given to your arms in such a manner that he shall know that it is a blessed thing to be born. Sing to him plea sant songs, and scatter roses upon his cradle.

"Of such

is the kingdom of heaven," and in such the Saviour has given to you those to whose pure, simple, and innocent likeness he would have you conform your heart. You are to rear your boy to manhood, and educate him to be a man; and he, in turn, is to educate you to be a child, and protect your helpless years. It is an even thing, and a beautiful exhibition of that wonderful machinery by which all are made to Dear equal vurden in evolving the noblest life of the race.

LETTER V.

SEPARATION-FAMILY RELATIVES-SERVANTS.

Whate'er the uplooking soul admires,

Whate'er the senses' banquet be,

Fatigues, at last, with vain desires,

Or sickens by satiety.

But, truly, my delight was more
In her to whom I'm bound for aye
Yesterday than the day before,

And more to-day than yesterday!

THE ANGEL IN THE HOUSE.

HERE are so many subjects which call for notice

in my letters to you that one letter, at least, must be a piece of patchwork. I propose that this one shall bear such a character.

It is doubtless a general experience that a husband and wife, after living together for a time, become in a