God is Creator and Lord of nature. From him comes the plenty of our homes. Man does not create, he finds the bounties of his lot. His utmost industry and skill but find the blessings stored up for him. We may look upon the kingdom of nature from many points of view. We may consider the organism of the heavens, the great periods of the earth's apparent formation, the influence of climate and position upon the history of nations, and see God's hand in natural laws. But what view of the universe is more sublime, and at the same time more touching, than that from the home? The heavens themselves help in keeping it upon its foundation by the force of the great law of attraction, whilst every element and domain of the earth conspires to give it blessing. Tenderly indeed does the Lord of this great Cosmos care for the dwellings of men. His love looks down from the stars of heaven that shine into the casement, and is reflected from the little flower that blooms in the garden, or cheers the sick man's chamber. To God, Creator and Preserver, be our thanksgiving. God is in history, and to his hand we trace the peace of our homes. Our familiar social blessings are not the exhalations of a day, but the growth of ages. No clearer or more striking view of the development of the Divine plans in the course of events can be given than the domestic view. All that God has done for man as an individual soul or as a social being, thus is made to appear. There is a providence in the development of liberty, and so too in the progress of law, and in the combination of them both in a true social order. What better symbol of their combination and proof of providential guidance than the peaceful home? How vast the providential agencies instrumental in framing that statute-book which, next to the Bible, is the safeguard of the dwelling, and which bands the whole nation together in defence of every citizen's right,--the constitution of our country, to us the bequest of ages, guided by an arm mightier than man's, and to issues beyond his dream. In two grand lines of influence it brings to every household the co-ordinate powers which, from quarters once antagonistic, unite in a true civilization. It guarantees to every family the liberty so dearly prized by the old parent races of the Germanic North, whilst it gathers them into a great nation under the guidance of that law which was the bequest of the Roman empire to the world. These and all the leading lines of history meet in the home, and in them we own God's guiding hand. From the East with the Star of true empire, came the benign power that united these two mighty agencies of our civilization. Surely it was the religion of Jesus that wedded Roman law to Germanic liberty, and laid the foundations of constitutional freedom and domestic peace. Blessed indeed was that bridal, and the living Word that hallowed the union still dispenses the blessing, and calls the children of its