BIEB 19 FEB 36

"BUT look at him.

BY REV. H. B. HOOKER.

He is restless as the wind. Full of glee, he gambols like a young kid, and the air resounds with his loud merriment. He will not stop to hear you. Let him prattle and rattle on. Wait for other and more sober days." Let him rattle and prattle, and gallop and gambol upon the green earth as he will, and be it that few of his thoughts break the circle of present scenes. Yet he can think, as well as laugh,— he can reason, child as he is, as well as leap and run and shout in joyous merriment. Beside muscular powers he has moral sensibilities. He, who bade him exist, gave him the power of thought and of emotion, in reference. to the sublimest themes that can address a rational mind. There is locked up in that little breast, heaving and panting now in the excitement of childish sports, faculties and capacities suited, by their relation to weal or woe, to fill us with solemn awe! Eternity is to be the mighty sphere of that little mind that sparkles through those eyes, and laughs through those ruby lips. The little fellow is perfectly unconscious of so momentous a fact. He is yet to wake up to the full vision of the value of an immortal soul.

Some flash of truth will do it. There shall enter that mind

the idea of its actual value in the scale of being. I will speak to that child. And on this very point I will speak. Eternity has power to awaken emotion to awaken it in a child

in that child.

mind.

The God of eternity is the Creator of that He made the one for the other. Let us bring them together. Let me throw a thought about eternity into that mind. Who dares say there is in a whirl of merriment.

shall be no result? That child

But let me try. With a cry for

grace to help, and a tender sense of the soul's priceless value, I do it.

My voice falls on his ear. He checks his impetuous merriment. While one thought and another about eternity, in simplest language, reaches his mind, his smiling countenance puts on a serious and pensive aspect. The depths of the soul are stirred. He thinks. Emotion - slight perhaps but emotion is there. A flush over his countenance tells me that a thinking being is thinking about what ought to occupy the attention of such a being.

But gayety and merriment in a moment resume their sway, and the giddy boy bounds away to his pleasures. There has been but the slightest ripple upon the current, and joyous life rolls on again, as though nothing had occurred. Has it been

in vain ?

Years have fled. The child is the man. The man, a bold servant of God. Country, home, kindred, all alluring worldly prospects are left. He treads a pagan shore. He has plunged into the darkest realms of the region and shadow of death. He blows the gospel trumpet with startling power. He pours forth the awful truths of inspiration as hail-stones and coals of fire. He sounds the depths of pagan minds, by words that break up the long, deep midnight of delusion and guilt. Men tremble as he reasons of righteousness and temperance, and a judgment to come. And they weep and repent, and love and obey, as Christ crucified is set before them, the only hope of glory. That bold soldier of the cross is doing battle valiantly in the very camp of Satan, while, by the sword of the Spirit, he sunders the bands of the captives of

sin, and they rejoice in the freedom of the sons of God. The angels envy him. The seraphs would leap with exultation, into the conflict he is so nobly sustaining. He is acting for good on minds which will owe their everlasting home in heaven, to his pity, love and faithfulness.

But how came he in such a work? Amid the victories of his faith he pauses, at times, for a little repose, and ponders on the past. He counts up the links of the chain of his eventful life. Dimly in the distance of long gone years, is seen the period of childish life. He remembers that in a scene of thoughtless merriment, a strange, kind voice reached his ear. The words were few, but the thoughts were weighty. They were forgotten in a moment, yet they came up again. Again forgotten, yet again they came back. They were repelled, but they would return. All the intoxication of youthful pleasures could not drown them. All the glee, and merriment, and vanity of childish life could not destroy their power. He was hurt of the Archer, and the wounds were not healed till the Great Physician was called in.

That veteran in the sacramental host, that pillar of fire amid the darkness of heathenism, that mighty man of valor, who is shaking the foundations of Satan's kingdom, was the little child whose giddy merriment was interrupted to give him a thought about eternity.

May it not be well to speak about such a matter to a little child?

Falmouth, Mass., Jan., 1850.

ENVY.

EVERY thing contains within itself
The seeds and sources of its own corruption;
The cankering rust corrodes the brightest steel;
The moth frets out your garment, and the worm
Eats its slow way into the solid oak;
But Envy, of all evil things the worst,
The same to-day, to-morrow, and forever,
Saps and consumes the heart in which it works.

Cumberland's Menander.

Written for the Mother's Assistant.

THE FATE OF NATIONS DEPENDENT ON MOTHERS.

BY REV. GEO. C. BECKWITH.

THE destiny of a nation is shaped by its character; and that character, the aggregate character of all its individual citizens, will ever be found to be moulded chiefly by maternal hands. Each mother may seem to do very little toward such a result; but the millions of mothers in a whole country must, with inevitable certainty, leave their own impress upon its general character and destiny.

I remember hearing, more than ten years ago, an anecdote quite in point, which strongly impressed this truth on my mind. We all know too well the comparatively ill success of the republics at the south of us. From one of these republics in the northern part of South America, a gentleman of high social and political standing there, a sagacious statesman, and a thoughtful, anxious patriot, who mourned over the bad results of the experiment made by his own country in the work of self-government, came to ours, for the purpose of leisurely examining our institutions, and of ascertaining, if possible, the true secret of their success, and of our great national prosperity.

My informant reported to me the result of this gentleman's observations in two cases. He attended one of our militia musters; and, on witnessing the general spirit of the scene as indicative of a popular passion for arms, and especially the eager, enthusiastic interest of the young in the passing pageantry, he turned to his companion, and very emphatically said: "That, Sir, will ruin you. It is the passion of the people for war, and their reliance on the sword to carry their points, which has been our bane and ruin in South America; and, unless you check it in season, it will prove your ruin. too." He knew not the counteracting influences silently at work through the land; but he soon had an opportunity to catch a passing glimpse of them.