But there are no two the same. Each differs so widely in taste, disposition, and habits, that it necessitates as many modes of management as there are children in the family. One is loving and gentle. The parents need but express a wish, and, through the affections, the child finds its greatest pleasure in yielding its own wishes to secure theirs. Another is timid and sensitive to the last degree. A sharp “word at random spoken,” or ill-advised censure, may have “eternal power through life to wound,” because this very timidity induces a habit of reticence and concealment; the child preferring to endure the pain, rather than go through the ordeal of an explanation or justification; and the next one may be too proud to attempt it, both coming to the same results through widely different peculiarities. One is bold and outspoken; another carelessly, recklessly happy, forgetting or neglecting all the rules of home in the overflowing joyousness of living; another is so under the influence of approbativeness, that to please and be approved, crowd independent, manly action out of sight; and the mother is too happy, if the power of this peculiarity does not too often draw the child beyond the bounds of strict honor and truthfulness. And so through a large family you may look in vain for two so similar in character that, by taking that course which proves best for one, you may safely guide the other by it. A mother of eight children, whose faith is wellnigh exhausted, who is cast down and wholly discouraged, thinks she would gladly die to escape the great responsibility of managing them; and this responsibility is growing greater and greater each year, as her boys and girls are leaving babyhood behind, and rapidly springing up toward manhood and womanhood. While they were little she enjoyed every moment, never feeling the care a burden. By and by one was taken from her, and for a while she refused to be comforted, till the Saviour spake and drew her to him. But while she has evidently learned to _believe_ in Jesus, we think she has not yet learned to _trust_. After her conversion, the sense of her obligations to lead her children by the strait and narrow road has, we think, pressed very heavily upon her, and she is in danger, not only of hedging the path so closely as to render it distasteful, and to drive them from it, but is also depriving herself of all the joy she might possess by their true and loving companionship. She becomes alarmed at every act which teaches her that her children are but mortal, and sees in it evidence conclusive that they are rapidly going to destruction.