and many a winter's blast shall have raged and gone to rest; but the hour will come when it shall burst forth with rich luxuriance, and be productive of a copious harvest. Many an instance might be quoted in support of the truth of this remark. "For nine years," says Father Augustine," while I was rolling in the filth of sin, did my mother, with vigorous hope, persist in incessant prayer;" and this devoted Christian mother lived to see the answer of her prayers in the conversion of her son. Bishop Hall thus speaks of his mother: "How often have I blessed the memory of those divine passages of experimental divinity which I have heard from her mouth! What day did she pass without a large task of private devotion, whence she would still come forth with a countenance of undissembled mortification! Never have any lips read to me such feeling lectures of piety, neither have I known any soul that more accurately practised them." "The pious admonitions of his mother," says the biographer of Cecil, “fixed themselves in his heart like a barbed arrow, and though the effects were for a time concealed from her observation, yet the tears would fall from his eyes as he passed along the streets, from the impression she had made on his mind." "I should have been an atheist," says the late John Randolph, an American statesman, "had it not been for one recollection, and that was the memory of the time when my departed mother used to take my little hands in hers, and cause me, on my knees, to say, 'Our Father which art in heaven.'" What striking exemplifications are these of the wisdom of Solomon's exhortation, “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it." Now it is

from the lips of woman that the child, in the very outset of life, receives its first and most powerful impressions; and unless these be of a religious and sanctified nature, the prospect for the future history of the young immortal is dark and cheerless. Multitudes have lived to lament that they were sprung of prayerless and irreligious mothers; and there are multitudes more who, on the great day, will, with truth, attribute a lost eternity to a neglected childhood. We are told, to the praise of the mother of Timothy, that " from a child he had known the Holy Scriptures;" and of the mother of Samuel it is recorded, "that she took him up with her, and brought him to the house of the Lord, saying, As long as he liveth, he shall be lent to the Lord."

The feelings of a Christian mother towards her child are of a deep and holy kind. She looks upon him as an immortal being committed to her care, and she strives and prays that her child may be a child of God and an heir of glory. The highest honour which she can claim for him, is, that his name may be written in the Lamb's book of life. Nor is this a mere empty wish; it is the prayer of her heart and the aim of her life. Over the earliest dawnings of reason, therefore, she carefully watches, that she may infuse into his infant mind the first elements of that knowledge which maketh wise unto salvation. Her great, her unwearied anxiety is, to nurse him for the skies, that whether he be cut off in the tender years of childhood, or spared to maturer age, he may at last be a jewel in the Redeemer's crown; and that it may be her privilege to say to her redeeming God and Father, "Here am I, and the child whom thou hast given me "

Not only, however, does the Christian mother train her children by imparting direct religious instruction. This, in the case of the young, is often no very easy task. The difficulty of conveying, to a child, clear and adequate notions of the real nature of the truths of Christianity has been often felt and acknowledged. But how often has it been seen, that, by a thousand indirect influences, emanating from the sanctified heart of the parent, the child has been gradually won to God! The whole aspect and demeanour of a mother whose soul is imbued with pious feeling, convey a powerful influence to her offspring. The child insensibly breathes, as it were, a holy atmosphere, and he grows up prepossessed in favour of those principles, on the side of which have been enlisted all his best and most effective sympathies. We are told of a young man who, at one period of his life, had been nearly betrayed into the snares of infidelity: "But," said he, "there was one argument in favour of Christianity which I could never refute the consistent conduct of my own father!" It is this impression of the heart which the child of a pious parent finds it at all times difficult to resist. It cleaves to him amid all his wanderings and distressing deviations from the paths of righteousness. "Though, in process of time," says Mr. Newton, "I sinned away all the advantages of my early impressions, yet they were for a great while a restraint upon me; they returned again and again, and it was very long before I could shake them off." If such, then, be the power which the direct and indirect influence of the pious female exerts over the mind of the young, how important is it that that influence should be all on the side of religion! Christian principles and Christian feel

ings, indeed. can never be widely prevalent in families, until a heart-felt interest in the concerns of the soul shall animate mothers and daughters to exert their allpowerful influence in recommending the religion of Christ by their conversation and example to all around them. This, and this alone, can insure domestic comfort, and happiness, and peace.

To direct the undisputed influence of woman into its right channel, piety must be a deep-seated principle in her bosom. It must not be a mere adherence to certain tenets, however orthodox and scriptural, but a living, active power, ever prompting to the exercise of holy feeling, and the exhibition of a consistent deportment. Imbued with the spirit of vital Christianity, animated with an ardent desire to evince in her whole character and conduct the sanctifying efficacy of the truth as it is in Jesus, the sincerely pious female will shine as a light in the world, habitually holding forth the Word of Life. She will stand prominently out from a polluted and ungodly world, exhibiting a pattern of every good word and work. Her whole talents, and time, and influence, will be exerted in leading others to the admiration and acceptance of that Saviour who is all her salvation and all her desire. She will seek to walk before her family as an Israelite indeed, in whom there is no guile; and by her singleness of heart, and simplicity of aim, she will strive to live as becometh the Gospel of Christ. Thus it is, that, blessed in herself, she will prove a blessing to the household with which she is connected. Her prayers, her counsels, her warnings, but above all, her holy life, will operate powerfully upon the minds of all within the range of her influence.

But although the peculiar sphere of a pious female's activity and usefulness is undoubtedly her family, it i right that she should be duly impressed with the high importance of that authority and influence which, within this narrow field, she is privileged to exercise. Her responsibility is greater and more impressive than at first view she may be apt to imagine. The first impulse of her influence, no doubt, begins to be felt by the members of her family; these, however, each of them, form to themselves circles of influence in the world; and, contemplating the matter in this enlarged and constantly extending view, the influence of the pious female is felt by society at large. The problem of human responsibility, in any case, is too vast and too intricate for our finite understandings to solve. He alone, who is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the ending, will look along the whole series of human beings who have inhabited our globe from the creation to the consummation of all things, and ascertain, with unerring certainty, the actual condition of each one in point of responsibility and influence.

When we leave the domestic circle, the more immediate province of the female, and issue forth into the general intercourse of the world at large, the peculiar beauty and excellence of female piety is almost universally admitted. It is stated in the "Life of Dr. Beattie," by Sir W. Forbes, that Mr. Hume, the infidel, was one day boasting to Dr. Gregory, that among his disciples he had the honour to reckon many of the fair sex. "Now, tell me," said the Doctor, "whether, if you had a wife or a daughter, you would wish them to be your disciples? Think well before you answer me; for