and push; place.

and your companions must take your What a blessed thing is life! What a merry time is childhood! How happy a land is ours! Children, how thankful ought you to be for the return of the seasons,-each month bringing with it not only fresh duties, but fresh pleasures too; and for health, without which you could have no enjoyment either in Spring or in Summer, in Autumn or in Winter; and for kind friends, who find as much gratification in looking upon your joyful faces when you are at play, as in observing your diligence and perseverance when you are at your tasks.

Now as we should all ever aim at the improvement of our minds, let us see whether the swing may not be made to teach us some important lesson.

In the first place, I think it may remind us of movement without progress. Those children yonder have spent a long afternoon and evening in the orchard. Some of them have been all the time in motion in the swing. Yet there hangs the swing, and there stand the children; they have not advanced a single inch. There has been continual movement, but no progress. That little girl's brother who called her from her play to kiss her and bid her good bye, has been moving too;. first he walked and then he mounted his pony and rode, and now he is twenty miles away standing on the beach and looking out on the sea. His, you perceive, was movement with progress.

I have known children whose movement has been like that of the swing; they have gone to school week after week, month after month, and there seemed to be no improvement; or, for hundreds of times they have read or listened to the history of the good, but have remained as unlike them

in their disposition and character at the end of the year as they were at the beginning. Others I have known, who, in the same time, and with the same opportunities, have made great improvement. They have increased in knowledge and wisdom and virtue and piety. Will my young readers think about the swing movement, and the pony movement, and be anxious that theirs should be the latter and not the former?

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There is another lesson which the swing may be made to teach us. Do you remember the first time you ventured into a swing? How timid you were! Gently," you cried, "not too high." By degrees however you overcame your fears; and now, the higher you can be made to go, the better you are pleased.

Let me remind you that as it is with swinging, so is it with almost everything besides. Your lessons may appear difficult; the habits your friends wish you to form may seem most difficult, but only Try, try, try again," and you will succeed ;-the lessons will be learned, and the habits acquired. As in the art of swinging, so it is with respect to most other things-" Practice makes perfect."

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But now it is time that I should close, and so, my young friends, I sincerely wish you a fine August, a long holiday, cheerful tempers, and a good swing.

ADOPTION.

РАРА.

PHARAOH's daughter, when she saw the little Hebrew infant crying, as he lay in the bulrushcradle, by the side of the river Nile, had compassion on him, and sent his sister, who was standing by, to find a woman who would take care of him. The person fetched was his own mother: she nursed him herself, and when the child grew, she carried

him to Pharaoh's daughter, who called him Moses -one drawn out of the water-and nourished him "for her own son.'

In the second chapter of Esther, we are told, "There was at Shushan the palace a certain Jew, whose name was Mordecai," and that he brought up Hadasser, or Esther, as she is generally called, his uncle's daughter; for she had neither father nor mother, and the maid was fair of countenance and beautiful of form, whom Mordecai, when her father and mother were dead, took for his own daughter. He loved her, and she was to him an affectionate and dutiful child.

Pharaoh's daughter adopted Moses, made him her son; and Mordecai adopted Esther; he looked upon her and loved her as his daughter.

There are many accounts in history of children being adopted by persons who were not really their fathers and mothers. Adopted children were received into the family, treated like the rest, called by the names of the persons who adopted them, and had their share of his property as heirs with his own children.

When Jesus Christ saw his mother sad and sorrowful before the cross, he pointed to his disciple John, while he said to her, Behold thy son; and then turning to John he said, Behold thy mother; and John tells us that from that day he took Mary home to his own house, and we may be sure she found him act well the part of a son to her.

Paul told the Galatians that God sent Jesus Christ to redeem them that they might receive the adoption of sons; and because they were sons, God had put into their hearts the spirit of his Son, so that they felt towards God as their father: that God himself had promised this, "I will receive you and be a father to you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord God Almighty." Paul

writing to the Romans, says also, "the Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirits, that we are the children of God; and if children, then heirs: heirs of God, and joint heirs with Christ."

Reader, are you one of God's children? He is ready to give you his Spirit, to adopt you into his family, and to make you an heir of his everlasting kingdom.

THE NEW BIRTH.

ONE night, rather more than 1800 years ago, there were two Jews speaking earnestly upon the subject of which Christians have often spoken since-"the new birth." One of them was a learned man, the other was He, of whom it was said that "never inan spake like this man." Nicodemus-for that was the learned Jewish ruler's name-being desirous to learn of one much wiser than himself-went to him, at night, most likely because he did not wish people to know it, but perhaps also because he could have a more quiet conversation at that time, as Jesus Christ, for it was he whom he visited, was seldom alone in the day-time.

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Let us pay great attention to what was said by Jesus to Nicodemus, and endeavour to understand the account given us in the third chapter of the Gospel written by John, of what then took place. Except a man be born again,” said Jesus, "he cannot see the kingdom of heaven." Now, Nicodemus was puzzled at this. "How can a man be born a second time," thought he. So Jesus began to explain what he meant, which was, that unless a man was made a new creature, or a different kind of person to what he was by nature, he could not belong to the kingdom of heaven, that is he could not be one of God's people. The kingdom of heaven means the reign of Jesus Christ. The Re