You make your home uncomfortable by your crossness, by your curses, by your slovenly, untidy habits. Your children, from their earliest infancy, take to the street. They hear impurity, blasphemy, and cursing. They hear words and see sights which are not fit to be mentioned here on God's altar. They keep what company they like. They learn infamous and immoral habits that destroy both body and soul. Oh! for God's sake beware, beware! Do you think they will ever be full of wisdom or have the grace of God in their hearts? {58} Again, you are anxious enough that they shall learn to read and write, to keep books and be quick at figures, but are you sure they know their catechism or can tell a priest all they ought to know of Jesus Christ, their Saviour, or how many sacraments and commandments there are? Where are they on Sundays? Where are they when confession day comes around? Oh! these are vital questions, if you want them to be full of grace and wisdom. Some boys and girls of our day, brethren, have lost a great deal of their freshness. They smoke, they chew tobacco, they flirt, they act like little men and women. There is no innocence about them. They are revolting spectacles to men and angels. Wisdom, forsooth! They have none. Grace of God? It is destroyed. Their childhood is more like the childhood of an incarnate devil than of an incarnate God. Look, then, carefully to your children. Look to the little ones; correct them when they are babies. Don't wait till a child is in its teens; then it will be too late. Set them a good example. You know the story of the old crab, who said to her little ones, "Why do you walk sideways?" "Suppose, mother," they said, "_you_ show us how to walk straight." Yes, if you are wicked, foolish, and sinful, your children will be like you. "Like father, like son," says the proverb. Oh! then you parents, be pure as Mary, be industrious, modest, patient like St. Joseph; then your children, like Jesus, will grow and wax strong, full of wisdom and of the grace of God. Rev. Algernon A. Brown. ----------------- {59} Sermon XIV. _This Child is set for the fall, and for the resurrection of many in Israel._ --St. Luke ii. 34. These words of to-day's Gospel, my dear brethren, have, perhaps, a strange sound to us at this joyful Christmas season. It seems strange that holy Simeon should have said that the blessed Infant whom he held in his arms, and who had come to save the world, should have been set for the fall of many of even his own chosen people.