overlooked. The poor man had been lame from his mother's womb, and was placed daily at the beautiful gate of the Temple, to ask alms of the worshipers. Of silver and gold, Peter and · John had none; but they gave him something far better. In the name of the Lord Jesus, said they, rise up and walk. And immediately his feet and ankle bones received strength. And he, leaping up, stood, and entered with them into the temple, walking, and leaping, and praising God. The people, also, seeing what was done, hastened to Solomon's porch, greatly wondering. But the man that was healed, held Peter and John.

Was this the effect of apprehension? Did he imagine their influence was confined to their bodily presence, and that if he let them go, his lameness would return?

Or did this result from a wish to point them out to the multitude? "Are you looking after the wonderful men who have made you whole?" Eager and proud to proclaim them-" Here," says he, "here they are-these are they."

Was it not still more the expression of attachment? "O my deliverers and benefactors, let me attend upon you, and enjoy the happiness to serve you. Entreat me not to leave you, nor to return from following after you. Let me live-let me die with you." So it is in our spiritual cures. It is natural to feel a regard for those who have been the means of our recovery, and to keep hold of them. But let us remember, we may hold them too closely. And we do so, if we suffer them to draw us away from the God of all grace. For whoever are the instruments of doing us good, He is the agent, and he will have us know, that the excellence of the power is of Him, and not of them. Hence the reproof: "For while one saith, I am of Paul, and another, I am of Apollos; are ye not carnal? Who, then, is Paul, and who is Apollos, but ministers by whom ye believed, even as God gave to every man? I have planted; Apollos wa tered; but God gave the increase. So, then, neither is he that planteth any thing, neither he that watereth, but God that giveth the increase." They are something in the order of means, and a proper respect is due to them in this character; but they are nothing as to efficiency and success-these are entirely of God; and his glory will he not give to another. To idolize a minister is the way to have him removed from us, or rendered unprofitable to us-"not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, saith the Lord of hosts." We can never honor God so much as by dependence upon him. And them that honor him, he will honor; and they that despise him shall be lightly esteemed.-Happy Home.

"At the same time, saith the Lord, will I be the God of all the families of Irsael, and they shall be my people."-JEREMIAH XXXI. 1.

YEARS, and even ages, were to intervene between the utterance of this promise by the lips of the prophet and its actual fulfillment in the times of the restoration of the Jews from their captivity. Meanwhile they were to pass through great and violent changes and commotions which threatened their existence as a people. Yet, upon their return, the arrangement of the nation into families would be found entirely unaffected. And this thought, suggested by the text, is exceedingly note-worthy, and is found, too, universal in its bearings-that, however society may be rent by sudden and long-extended revolutions, seeming to reach to its very foundations, and producing chaos which only the hand of God can reduce to order, the family institution remains permanent, the immovable basis upon which all others are built. In our own times we have an illustration the most remarkable in man's history, where in the French nation over the Church swept destroying storms, and all civil government lay prostrate, but against all the attempts of evil men, “the family”

remained as a munition of rocks, upon which the government and the church are reared again, essentially unchanged. In this promise, too, God not only recognizes the permanence and importance of the family, but presents Himself under an aspect peculiarly attractive. He had from the first been the national God of the Jews, enthroned in clouds and darkness, shining forth to the worshipers from between the cherubim, and displaying His wrath against His enemies. But they have been afflicted, and return stricken and feeble to their land, and now he is the household God, coming as an inhabitant under the lowly roof, and throwing the light of His glory around all that circle with whom He has condescended to associate. For we cannot believe the promise has reference only to the families of Israel collectively, or to those families in the large sense, that is, the clans, somewhat smaller than the tribes; the preceding clause would teach otherwise, for, "Behold, saith the Lord, I will bring again the captivity of Jacob's tent, and have mercy on his dwellingplaces, and out of them shall proceed thanksgiving and the voice of them that make merry. I will also glorify them, and they shall not be small." Neither need we scruple to interpret this word in its fullest significance, as we remember that he who brought down to man the thoughts of the heart of God, and who sanctified human dwelling-places by His presence, said, “If any man will keep my word, my Father will love him, and we will come and take up our abode with him." This great promise belongs to the church, and to the church of all times, for God does not recede in his purposes of grace, and God is now an inhabitant of the Christian house, claiming to regulate its affairs, guarding its interests, providing daily bread for its members, comforting in sorrow, and when death dissolves the consecrated community gathering it again in fairer realms.

This is the true ideal of the human family-that God is in it, the Sovereign, the Guardian, the Friend, the common bond of union; that it confesses His presence and recognizes His claims; that to Him each day the hearts of all go up in thankfulness, and the thank offering also be rendered. This is the promise, which shall be fulfilled in the approaching era of gladness and long-expected reign of Christ, when, in the countless habitations of cities and villages, altars of thank-offering shall be reared as in temples to God, and all the families of the earth shall be blessed. Believing that false estimates of this institution must be productive of lasting and fatal injury, and that such estimates most widely prevail, we shall ask your prayerful attention to some considerations which may serve to correct them. And to the end that each member of the family may discern his personal obligations in guarding and promoting household religion, we shall speak, in the first place, of the sacredness of the institution, and secondly, of its design under the divine government.

I. The sacredness of the family as a divine institution. It is the oldest of all earthly institutions, older than the church or the state, or even than the Sabbath, which "was made for man," and not man for it. The materials of creation finished, there in the formation of the first family in Eden, history, properly speaking, began. Imposing and significant was that first marriage ceremony, in which Adam must for a time return to unconsciousness, to the image of death from which he is raised to a new life, to new and strange relations, which, by a striking sign—even by a miracle wrought-are ordained to be permanent. The soul of the first man understood the meaning of God, when he said, "This is now bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh." It was the confession for all times, that separation would be as unnatural as it would be profane. And it also, you will recollect, allowed no cruelty, no misfortune, no external disgrace, not even insanity, to be a sufficient ground in the sight of God for divorce, signifying that it were better great calamities and wrongs should be suffered in single instances than that mankind should come to regard lightly the bonds of a divinely appointed institution. If we enter then the human household, and look upon it even in the light of nature, it is seen to be a kingdom ordained of God, with its own laws, interests, and responsibilities; in the earliest times, its patriarch, the eldest born, being its ruler and priest, to whom disobedience was a crime. But, in the light of revelation, is it seen a kingdom of such importance in the divine economy, that the King of heaven comes down to issue regulations for its administration. He leaves the state mainly to make its own laws, but He takes every member of the family under His own supervision, from the master of the house to the servant, and even the dumb animal that serves; the husband, the wife, the children, the man-servant, and maid-servant, and the cattle, whose treatment is also seen to have a mighty influence on the moral character of the whole household. In relation to all these, God as Governor of the world issues special edicts, and not only general principles of action but the minutest directions. And it was because He, who does nothing in vain, knew what the family was, and its indestructible influence for weal or woe upon every other relation of life, and would impress upon us that this institution was not an institution of man. Probably most of us could be astonished at the vast collection of laws for the family which would be made from the word of God, which is a statute for the household. And continually, as Christianity extends its influence, does the family become more sacred, and a grandeur is seen to invest it to which we are blind, only because sin has blinded us to all the real grandeur of life, and contracted our views to what is only paltry and sensual. Christianity will yet bring forth this holy institution, so long neglected, degraded, perverted, and debased, to its true position. Already the light is glimmering upon

some minds, and already is it seen, that with increase of knowledge and with moral elevation, the members of the household are bound in closer bonds, and that each member falling into his proper position is necessary to complete a symmetry of God's own devising. To every believer the family of the Christian ought to be sacred, because God has declared its members holy, and has ordered the sacred seal of baptism to be set upon them, even upon the infant, including all in one covenant of grace, and allowing the parent to exercise faith, and to plead promises for the child. And no Christian ought to forget that Jesus Christ was a member of the human family, and that His infant smile once answered to a mother's, as nature was weaving around Him the mysterious household ties, and that he knew filial reverence and brotherly affection. Neither when His soul expanded with the mighty thoughts of his mission, nor when the God-head shone out with power, nor when the earth was reeling under the great expiation for sin were those ties lessened. Looking down from the cross He sees His mother weeping, and near her the beloved disciple, and the affection of a son still speaks from amid the agonies of death, "Woman, behold thy son !" and to his disciple, "Behold thy mother!" and thus in the life of Jesus, which is the example for all generations, do we find proof that the family should be perpetual, and thus also forever in the eyes of the believer is the family consecrated.

There are also mysterious and unexplained bonds which unite the human family, and the oldest tragedies in the world are founded upon the dark woes of a household, scattered and suffering for the crime of one of its members. Everywhere the avenging power is upon their track. Ignorant of one another, even of their relationship, and flying from refuge to refuge, a relentless fate shuts them up to a common and terrible destiny. Even the darkened heathen mind in distant ages could see that families are bound by ties stronger than interest or affection, and with shuddering could see how a crime sent mysteriously its fatal influence through them all like the stroke of an axe through all the leaves and branches of the same tree, or, as a desecration polluted the whole temple, which from thenceforth was devoted to destruction. There was none to tell him the great lesson made known to us why death so relentlessly pursues us all, because we are the family of man. "By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin, and so death passed upon all men for that all have sinned;" neither for him was there any sanctuary from the destroying and invisible power.

The blindest can see that physical, intellectual and moral qualities come down in the family; the family resemblance reaching to the very soul, and the results of evil actions and of good ones descending to the third and fourth generations. God visits the iniquities of the fathers on the children, and when