The Christian church! Here the spirit of the guardian mother ought eminently to prevail. The church should be the mother of the young. Oh, how cold and dreary is the idea, deemed by many the essential of Protestant truth, the idea that the young, or at least, little children, can have no vital connection with the Church; but must wait for some preternatural visitation in maturer years to call them to the arms of the great spiritual mother, and make them feel themselves hers. How unsatisfactory the doctrine, that children are to grow up, as if outside of the church, with the prospect of one day being taken in. Be ours the cheering view, sanctioned, surely, by the analogies of revelation, the faith of centuries, and by the love of parents, that the child should be regarded as by birth and baptism admitted into the Christian kingdom, and to be nurtured from the very first in the principles and affections congenial with the government of God. Let this idea be accepted, and power and blessing would come in its train. Higher consecration would crown the home, better wisdom would guide the strength of father, and holier love fill the soul of mother, from their communion with the kingdom that claims parent and child for its own. The Christ-child should be remembered in the Christian Church. When remembered truly, he will save childhood from Herod's hands. This season is a time of anticipation and hope. It needs no very vivid imagination to bring before us the myriads of homes over Christendom, that ring with young mirth, and look cheerfully upon the opening age. Yet the grave question cannot but press itself upon us, What is in store for the generation, that is soon to stand in our places, and bear the burdens of life in our stead? Interesting, engrossing indeed are the fields of science, art, enterprise, enjoyment, now dawning upon us and promising a bright meridian to the new generation. Yet fearfully many dark spots in the horizon rise in the distance, and portend ill to many whose experience of the world is yet to come. The great want is of an earnest purpose, looking to an eternal aim, and enforced by a true plan of social life. The young host is ready, but needs better guidance. Muratori, the Italian historian, tells us, that in the twelfth century, in the contagion of the crusades, children caught the spirit, and an army of 30,000 was gathered from village and city, and marshalled by a child, started for the Holy Land and the Tomb of Christ. They marched on till they came to Marseilles, and the great sea stopped their fond dream. They wandered about distracted, and thousands miserably perished. Perhaps too romantic story for sober truth! But what a parallel to it in our age! A mighty host of youths starts on its way to a land of imagined holiness and peace. Vague aspirations, selfish passions, spiritual yearnings for the good and true, move their hearts. A child will lead them; the child who is to be the