good child to long-expecting hearts and arms. We said one to another around her dying bed,--yes, we had composure to say, as we watched that parting scene, that fading cloud, that sinking gale, that dying wave, that shutting eye of day,--"Think of such a poor, helpless, dying creature, if, in the sense intended by those words, she should 'fall into the hands of the living God.'" And we glorified God in her. Never did I see and feel more deeply, by contrast, the folly of trusting to a death-bed repentance, to repair the errors of a wasted life. It is a deliberate attempt at fraud upon the Most High; it is folly; for the risk is fearful, and could we obtain salvation, how mercenarily!--and what a memorial would it be in heaven of loss, instead of being "a crown of righteousness!" They who are all their lifetime ignorant, being unfortunately deprived of opportunity for religious instruction, may with wonder and joy accept the surprising news of pardon, through Christ, on a dying bed, and soar to the same heights with apostles in their praises of redeeming love. But if we hear of salvation by Christ all our life long, and know our duty, but prefer the pleasures of sin for a season, and think that in the swellings of Jordan we shall find peace and safety, our conduct deserves all the opprobrious names which are heaped upon it by inspired tongues and pens. We who are parents must teach our children that religion does not consist merely in being pardoned, and, if pardoned, no matter whether early or late; but that it is the first, the constant, the all-pervading rule of life, God and his service the chief end of man, and that the pleasures of religion are the sweetest pleasures, hallowing all others which are innocent, and leading us to reject those, and only those, which would be unsuitable or injurious, even if religious custom did not forbid them. We must know this, and practise upon it, ourselves; else, how can we expect the children to believe it?