incense. It is not too much to say that in this way family worship becomes the means of everlasting salvation to multitudes."

The family covenant here offers itself again so attractively that with the suggestions of our author before us, we cannot divorce it from our thoughts. "Nowhere (p. 63) is the Christian father so venerable as when he leads his house in prayer. The tenderness of love is hallowed by the sanctity of reverence. chastened awe is thrown about the familiar form, and parental dignity assumes a new and sacred aspect. There is surely nothing unnatural in the supposition, that a froward child shall find it less easy to rebel against the rule of one whom he daily contemplates in an act of devotion."

Nothing, surely. And especially if in connection with these acts of devotion, there is felt, by the intelligent minds of the family, the natural power of the doctrine of the household covenant. Though the conception of this as a doctrine of theology be not indispensable to a participation in many of the promised benefits; yet the zest it must diffuse through the family devotion, the sacredness it must add to the spiritual relation of the members to the head, and the solemn aspect it must give the household state, will vastly invigorate the domestic bonds and exercises, as means of religious improvement. "Honour thy father and thy mother." And what children must not honour a father, in whose hands they see, for the time, the title and deed of their everlasting inheritance; or a mother, whose more retiring, but not less valid claim, draws with his upon the covenant deposit in behalf of the common offspring. "Children obey your parents in the Lord." And what children will not yield pious obedience to the parents, from whose lips they daily hear the special pleadings of the gracious covenant in their behalf; by whom they are daily led in the thankful celebration of benefits already received; and by whose faith and prayer, they have the incitements of faith and the nurture of hope in exceeding great and precious promises? What children can slight the Christian commands of parents by whose hands they have been led into the ark, for whose sake they are kept in it, and by whose hold on the covenant of promise they are saved from sinking in the flood?

Here, as it seems to us, is the corner-stone in the foundation

of parental control. Not only does it sustain the parental authority in its prerogative of moulding the entire character of the child, but partakes most efficiently in the process. The family of Noah is an example. It matters little as to practice whether we take the mutual fidelity of parents and children as a condition or as a consequence of the covenant promise; and it may be difficult to show of which character it most partakes. But it undeniably belongs in some way with the fulfilment of the promise. And in Noah and his family we have both the control on the one hand and the submission on the other. By means of his authority and instruction, his children agreed in their views of truth and duty with him, and not with the rest of the world. They assented to their father's faith in relation to the flood; and as God warned him, and he believed God, so he warned them, and they believed him. He was not so fearful lest his children should not be free and rational in adopting their opinions, that he dare not teach them his own; but, sure that opinions which were safe for himself would be safe for them, he did not hesitate to instil his doctrines into their minds.

Shall children be taught truth no faster than they can comprehend the evidences of it? Shall children have no fixed impressions of God, till they can form a conclusive argument for his being and attributes? And is there no religious truth sufficiently fixed and certain for a child to receive and act upon under a parent's direction? The Bible presumes that there is. The laws of nature, which dictate the parental relations and duties presume that there is; and these all bind the parent to find out truth for his children, and teach it diligently to them. The parent can teach with authority; and he is the only human teacher who can; and if by skill in government and in guiding early thought, he can succeed in forming the opinions of his children according to his own pleasure, he not only exercises his own right, but fulfils an unquestionable duty. He must command in the proper way, the religious opinions of his children. He is the first judge of their duty. To facilitate this parental prerogative, the children are cast, at birth, upon his care. They have, at first, no more of opinion or of knowledge, except what they receive from him, than they have of property or liberty. At this age of impressions, the children are under a parental power almost absolute. No power of one finite mind over

another can be more complete. Such command of the parent over the opinions and conduct of his children makes it altogether reasonable to hold him as accountable for their early faith and practice as for his own. And if in their early faith and practice they are properly established and trained, when they are old they will not depart from them. The family of Noah, in the maturity of their life, honoured their father's faith, and followed his direction. During those long hundred and twenty years, while their father was spending his time and substance, on that immense ark, while all the changes of nature went quietly on, and all things remained as they had been from the foundation of the world, his family clave to his interest and shared in his reproach; and amidst the scoffs of an ungodly generation, they all followed him into the ark under as bright a sun as ever shone. Alas, for those children whose parents have no word of God for them; no covenant favour to plead for them; no pious faith to commend to them; and no hold upon their religious nature by which to establish them in practices of domestic religion, and offer them daily unto God, with their own consent, as a reasonable service.

The fifth chapter of our author is the outflowing of a lively and intelligent Christian philanthropy towards those members of the household, who according to "a different and more old fashioned school," pass under the name of servants. We do not take the remarks on p. 71 as an oblique lamentation over the progress of public sentiment against slavery; although (pp. 74, 75) the author from "having been born and having lived and laboured among slaves, feels impelled to utter thoughts which will meet a response in the hearts of brethren at the south;" and although, for the same reasons, he may be supposed, as well to regard slavery in the concrete as to reason about it in the abstract, with more lenity, and even apparent complacency, than those can do who never felt the peculiar, and possibly the noble and holy attachment between a kind master and a faithful slave. The truth is the "thoughts" of Dr. Alexander on this subject will "meet a response in the hearts of brethren" as well in the north as in the south. We are sorry if anywhere in the land, there are thinking and honest people who cannot see that such "thoughts" indicate the true way both to hasten the abolition of slavery, and to make it a blessing when it comes.

But to take the hints of our author in their permanent bearings. The religious instruction of domestics, even in those families where the children are conscientiously trained is greatly neglected. The failure, in religious and well ordered families, chiefly originates in the transient connexion of the domestics with the family; and how and when this hindrance to their improvement is to be removed, does not now appear from any providential indications. The condition of the better families of the land in regard to "help," were it for the foreigners who seek such place, gives no very hopeful view of the tendency of these matters under our civil institutions, our social theories and habits, and the industrial system of our country. With an "area of freedom" indefinitely expansible to accommodate independence and foster the disposition to hold "service" in disrepute; with a system of productive industry captivating by its magnificence, lucrative beyond the domestic rates, and threatening for years to want all the "hands" it can get; with a levelling tendency inherent in our political life, and with maxims and measures of universal culture which will long be temptations to confound equality of natural worthiness with equality of external conditions, we seem about to meet the alternative of making equals of servants or serving ourselves.

But under whatever name or conditions any may fill the place of domestics, they constitute an interesting portion of the convocation for family worship; perhaps even none the less so, for being transient, and having an eye to other relations in life. In the spirit of Dr. Alexander's remarks we can testify, how large an addition to the interest of family worship we have witnessed in households where domestics in considerable numbers were in punctual and solemn attendance. Beyond any other domestic occurrence, it embraces them in the circle of family sympathy. It carries to them whatever of organic circulation or of covenant influence, their relation to the household may qualify them to receive. The rich and suggestive remarks of our author concerning the welfare of servants, the bond and the free, and the various methods of doing them good in family worship, are worthy of the Christian minister who has so honourably associated his name, both in the south and the north, with personal labours for the religious benefit of that class of people.

The chapters on family worship as a means of intellectual

improvement, and of promoting domestic harmony and love, the admirable chapter on the benefits of family worship to a household in affliction, the two on its influence upon guests and neighbours, and in perpetuating sound doctrine; full of graceful, luminous, and moving hints, we cannot dwell upon in detail.

The next three chapters beginning with the eleventh, exhibit the influence of family worship on the Church, the Commonwealth, and Posterity. Here we approach the triune receptacle and reservoir of the benefits granted as individual and family mercies. In these is collected from countless fountains, an ocean fulness to be distributed again in shadowy and cooling vapours, in brightening dews, and in the early and the latter rains, in a ceaseless and life-giving circulation. It accommodated the purpose of the author to distribute his thoughts under the three heads of these chapters; it accommodates ours to blend them.

It is a consideration of signal value to Dr. Alexander in giving his "thoughts" on this subject, and to us in expatiating on them, that the church, the commonwealth and posterity have their being in the family. Not only was the domestic organization first in the order of time but also first in the order of nature. Rather the first family is itself both church and state; and so it remains until another family rises out of it. Thus the natural commonwealth grows not by accretion, but by development through organization; enlargement by the law of an inward life. The family properties come into church and state, not by absorption from without; not by external application in the way of impulse or example, but by diffluence through the channels of vital circulation.

We discover here the economic reason why the covenant should have its gracious application to the family. It is dispensing grace through providential channels; rearing on the roots of nature, by the superadded agency of grace, a spiritual seed. Where else should the promise, and the grace itself, be applied? "Either make the tree good, and its fruit good, or else make the tree corrupt, and its fruit corrupt." And when thus inserted by a divine skill, why should not the heavenly principle pervade the system? Why should it not impart strength to the stem, expansion and verdure to the leaf, tints and fragrance to the flower, and richness to the fruit. If we fail to discern this feature of the wisdom of God, we are liable to hinder the