Their first obvious duty is that of due consideration for each other. They are to consider each other's circumstances, needs, trials, dispositions, opportunities, and never allow selfishness or indifference to blind them to what belongs to them in common. Does this need to be said of persons who are so near, as of necessity to be always in each other's thoughts? Ah, what is more frequent and obvious, than that familiarity tempts indifference, and that our very primal duties, like the stars which are their emblems, are easily forgotten because they may at any time be seen? The things most significant are likely to be near at hand, and religion, like philosophy, finds its chief triumphs in opening the meaning of what God has brought to our very door. A part of the power of absence from home lies in breaking the spell of familiarity, and leading the absent one to look impartially upon the familiar circle, and upon his own place and conduct there. Many a youth or maiden has returned from a journey or voyage wiser far in sense of home duties than proud of the accomplishments of travel. True consideration will not need absence to teach this lesson, but from its calm point of view the absent one will survey the common spheres of life, and try to live for others as under the eye of God. In each family there will be decided need for mutual consideration, and there must be strife, unless there is mutual deference. All cannot have all the favors, and the division of them may embroil a household as bitterly as the division of an empire has embroiled rival heirs of thrones. Where means are limited, mutual sacrifices not always easy must be made, and few families pass many years without feeling the power of consideration, or of selfishness in meeting the privations that must go round their circle. When means are abundant, and every wish has ready wealth at its command, the form of forbearance may change, but its essential spirit is none the less needed. There will still be differences of talent, looks, manners, opportunities, health, experience, that require in the most prosperous household the same virtues, that give the humblest cottage its dignity and peace. In every family, there will be some call for peculiar consideration or regard to some member of it, according as sickness, infirmity, youth, age, deficient or extraordinary ability, may call upon the stronger to serve the weaker. What wretchedness when the call is slighted, even by one! Who can calculate the mischief wrought by a sensual or reckless brother, who makes every thing secondary to his own passions and pleasures, or by a frivolous and heartless sister, who makes a god of fashion and enslaves the whole house to her monstrous vanity! Who, too, can calculate the influence of a high-minded brother in guiding and cheering the younger members of the family, or of a devoted and judicious sister in soothing every impatient humor with a face in which