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of sin upon their youthful heads, he apprehended but some signal outbreak, or some disgraceful catastrophe to their unrestricted license. But why did not he control it then? Will it be asserted that a man, a father, cannot restrain the movements of his children not yet grown into womanhood? In fact, the witty, keen, sapient lawyer, the student, the counselor, was not yet a strong character; for, though capable of principles, he had not yet established himself in any. And being often fatigued with the press and hurry of professional business, and being, also, as we have said, regardless of the insidious approaches of sin under the venial guise of juvenile error, they were left much to themselves—and being three strong, which, as arrayed in opposition to their parents, means three wicked, they, by the arts of deception and prevarication, often got the better in the occasional discussions which took place in consequence of their self-assuming contumacy, and their departure from parental rule. As for the wife and the mother, she had been fain, in earlier years of their misconduct, to console herself with the axioms of philosophy, and

their father, and by the influence of all association from || over the violation of God's laws, and the accumulation without, they had been led on to a decided taste, and even the determination to indulge, like others in the school, in vain amusements, shows, and spectacles idlenesses which, whilst they feed, out of all proportion, the outward senses, leave the mind and the soul to starve. I have used the word "determined." That, indeed, is a strong word for a girl of thirteen years. Yet such was the case. Sophia C., possessing the best style of intellect, and a capacity that grasped at whatever it contemplated, had yet these rare endowments more than counterbalanced by a frowardness of temper and an incorrigible obstinacy of will which set admonition, entreaty, and even command, at defiance; and persisting in her self-will, she often absented school, to join in forbidden amusements, dressed expensively and|| beyond her years, spent much of her time in promenading the streets, and in the annoying and impertinent occupation of shopping without an errand, and finally entered into an epistolary correspondence with one of the young clerks of the counter. All these things, whilst they revolted her mother's nice propriety, and yet more alarmed her rectitude in a holier sense, shock-would say, "I have been too proud of my husband's ed her father's pride, and offended his gentility.

public influence and his fame, and too well satisfied in The mother, we say, had been overruled in the man- his preference of me. Alas, I begin to perceive that agement of her daughters. She had also, of late years, no mere earthly good but has its alloy-its counterbalbecome habitually an invalid, and was of necessity not ancing evil! Shall the heathen, indeed, plead the arso vigilant as otherwise she might have been. But gument, 'for the sake of the good to bear the evil,' and what was the father about whilst these evil fruits of shall not I, a Christian mother, be able to adopt so good misrule had been ripening in the domestic nursery? a precept?" But now this mother had become a ChrisHe was making a fortune, and spreading himself into tian indeed-she had experienced that great change fame. He was indulgent to his children; and when which enlarges the vision by all that is spiritually disthey were on their good behavior, which his petulant cerned, and she began to say, "I once affected to conrebuke mostly controlled whilst in his presence, he was sole myself with teachings of philosophy; but I now carelessly fond of them. But in any other sense than desire to be consoled of that philosophy itself; and I that of their temporal prosperity and preferment, they begin to know that no human fortitude, nor any well were but a third or fourth rate consideration with him. suffered disadvantage shall suffice, or be accounted an He would fain, indeed, that their characters were more offset for concomitant breach of trust. Out of regard to thoroughly amiable, and particularly as to their estab-|| my husband's mistaken views, I have violated the trust lishment in life. Their aberrations he looked upon of a mother. I have been more regardful of him than rather as the play of an extra juvenescence than as of my God. I see the evil-I feel the punishment, in marks of positively vicious tendencies. He considered the ingratitude of those I have nurtured and nourished. them very young, and that rectitude and decorum would And, O, how more bitter than the 'serpent's tooth it is' come by the way, and follow in the train of woman-to my fond and affectionate heart! But God will forhood and propriety. A woman, however negligent give me if I turn and change, and seek my consolashe may have been in the fact, would not have used tions with him, and obey him, and constrain my chilthis argument, at least in so large allowance; and al-dren, with tears and with prayers, to turn away from though it is a beautiful comment upon the providence of nature that she does afford this superinduced propriety, as it becomes more needed, yet not so unwisely does she afford it as to supersede the necessity of parental surveilance and authority. But did the father continue to be satisfied in this half care of his children? or did conscience and a better sway of nature sometimes sting him into conviction and remorse? Yes, sometimes, especially when he saw that his wife, whom he tenderly loved, was afflicted to anguish, and almost to the verge of despair at their misdoings. But he by no means had the same view of the enormity of these self-directing children that she had. Where she grieved

their errors, and to leave off sinning and lead them on the way to do somewhat that shall be worthy of a blessing, when my poor head shall be cold and at rest within the earth. I feel, indeed, some intimations of that event, and that it is no very long time in which I may repair my unfaithfulness, my concedings of right to wrong, of rectitude to disorder. I have acted on a weak principle of pleasing and quieting. Alas, I have been unfaithful-I have cried peace, peace, when there was no peace! But this day, by the help of the Spirit, do I become indeed a new creature; for with my might will I redeem the children whom God hath given me from his arch enemy. I will reclaim them and save

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their souls if I can. Mightily will I cry to God for || youngest, now about twelve years of age, after strict help, and I shall be helped." coercion and training, her mother had the satisfaction Such was the noble resolution which this Christian to discover, or rather to bring into action, the naturally mother adopted; and in all ways and by all means did obliging disposition, which had been half smothered by she urge, and plead, and insist, and pray over her chil- the long continued pressure of adverse influences. In dren. She felt herself breaking down and sinking un- Mary, too, after some months of close application, she der the slow, sure, insidious approach and gainings of discovered a tendency to domestic performances, and to phthisis; yet this in all its sad changes admonished her||industry at large. In Sophia, the strong Sophia, she to be faithful. And, first, she called her children, and had succeeded in awakening a sensibility which had told them she was dying; and this produced a shock | lain for ever dormant under the supervening action of upon their unextinguished affections, salutary to her outward tendencies of excitement, company, and dissipurpose of enforced obedience and reform. She added pation-genteel dissipation, as it is called-being a that she required and commanded that they should waste of time, health, innocence, and happiness. Let obey her all the remaining days of her life, and she no one suppose that we use the word innocence in the prayed that the remnant might yet be sufficient, with perverted sense of the novelist. Nothing so gross apGod's blessing, to save them. They were rebuked, and pertains to these young persons, faulty as they are. solemnized, and affected, and they promised to do all Let many a fashionable mother reflect that her own that she should require of them. She commenced her daughters, who, she thinks, are only "doing as others plan, first, with a daily reading of the Scriptures, and do," are perhaps in as bad a train, and as effectually taintthen that they begin a course of industry, in which ed with follies verging on to vice as these are. But Sothey were particularly deficient; and in this she encoun- phia had been aroused and alarmed. She was now tered all the difficulties of their unwillingness to con- alive to her mother's counsel, and she promised that finement, their awkwardness of skill, their impatience when her mother should have passed away from the of sedentary employment, and their indolence. But supervision of her children, she would herself assume, she persevered. Each day there was a prescribed task- from time to time, to admonish them in the name, and a task, indeed, to their poor pale mother, who was liv- in the gentle words and gentle tones of that now well ing on broken doses of calomel; and as her patient, beloved mother. "Not so," said her mother, "not in my melancholy eye rested on them, they perceived the name first, but call upon God, and you shall be enabled case, and felt how precious it was to obey her guidance. to do this thing, which, of yourself, nor even in my But sometimes, when they witnessed in their ignorance name of human affection, you could not do effectually the momentary strength, the sparkling eye, or the hec- without any other means. It is asking a very great tic flush, they believed it was a true health, and per- grace, to root the weeds of bitterness from their hearts, haps revolted from close rule, and relapsed into their and implant in their stead perennial flowers, fit for the wonted disobedience, or some contention amongst them- paradise of God." Such was her talk; and she said to selves; for they were habitually too selfish to be kind them, (and there was a feast of tears that day,) "My sisters. children, I feel myself, with all my infirmities, whilst heart and flesh are sinking away, I feel myself happier in your love and duty, and reclaimed life-I feel happier than I have been for years. 'Reclaimed,' I say, for I have your promises that you will continue your good course after I am departed, and sped to that bourne whence none return. Yet, as our affections, in their purity, which means their conformity to God's laws, as our affections, I say, get ingrafted into the soul itself, so the dying mother hopes yet again to see her children;" and she added, "if they consent that she should." And they all said, "O, mother, we will obey you for ever upon earth, that we may see you again in heaven." After this there was but once any showing of resistance. Sophia once, at an insensible moment, relapsed into contradiction and impatience of her sisters. But when she saw that her mother's tender eye glistened forth a spark, followed by a single drop of moisture, at the exacerbation of a trouble too strong to be repressed, she was smitten, convicted, and sin-sick to the very core of her heart. She fell on her knees, acknowledged her sin, and then her mother prayed over her a prayer that she never forgot. It was that she might be for ever admonished of a like guilt by the memory of this, and its exceeding bitterness to both.

The work of reform is not of days, or months, but of years. For the eradicating of bad habits the time required bears some proportion to their date of duration. Neither here was the matter of reform expected to be established. But Mrs. C. counted, in her own case, chiefly upon the influences of her situation as it was, and upon the still youthful, though perverted minds of her daughters, as being acted upon by her dying voice.

She instructed them, as I have said, in the Scriptures, of which each one of them every day read a portion, with the affecting injunction, that whenever they should again read the same, to recollect all that she now said upon it, as applying to their benefit and assurance, and to think of her earnest wishes in connection, and to follow them out-spiritually, because God has commanded them to do so-naturally, which she was aware would as yet most influence them to the performance, for her sake.

It was the eldest daughter, Sophia, in particular, that had been most pertinacious in her sins. Of the other two, Mary and Elizabeth, it was rather a following of their sister's example than any rebellious outbreak of their own by which they offended; and in the

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would prefer cooking your dinner myself to telling you; but that is not the thing. None other, after I am departed, will serve you with as much devotion as I have done."

associations of the time it worked its effect of putting him back to the propriety from which he had diverged. This excellent lady had, all her life-time, adopted some peculiar habits of self-admonition. Even in the hurried scenes of her first house-keeping, she used every day, when she combed her hair, to gather the strands shed on the comb, and deposit them in a certain drawer in her dressing table. "They shall make," said she, “a pillow for my coffin." "Once a day, dear George, is seldom enough to think of death!" And now that that time seemed approaching, how inconsolable was that sad friend!—his only comfort, indeed, was derived from a looking out from earth to heaven; and their associated prayers were a breathing of comfort to his ag

How affecting is a mother's death-bed! She seems || admonish you of it. You must learn patience, dear often, in her anxiety for her children, to forget that George-no other person dares to tell you; and even I there is such a being as herself, until she is recalled by some painful intimation of nature. How beautifully did this mother descant upon the relative value of our manifold being! She said, "And has there been a moment of my life when I have more regarded nature This was one instance of many little things in which than spirit. The gifts of the first are in themselves this pious wife sacrificed her own feelings to her husworthy of our acceptance and our care, because God band's amendment. This was in the early part of her has ordained that we should for awhile be 'so clothed declining health; and from one less truthful and sinupon.' But in the surrender how painful! With cere, it might not have been so well received. He nevwhat ruthless haste does nature invade upon health—||er doubted her motive for an instant; and with the with all the devices of disease she saps and mines upon our strength, and follows it out with her sure, insidious, stealthy step; and, finally, with what greedy devouring does she claim back all that she ever bestowed upon us! Look here," said she-and she showed the then impoverished integument above the thumb-"that is consumption; and I yield to it as thousands have before me; but not unwillingly, for there is a converse to this sad picture'—I have a soul as well as a body; and whilst my sorrows and anxieties shall be buried with this, my felicities, my hopes, and my affections, shall be conservated with that. As, purified from the dross of earth, they have been conformed to God, they shall be accepted of him again. Yes, the soul, that precious germ, still lives and passes up to its Giver-its outbud-grieved spirit. ding graces to be enlarged for ever, and finally absorbed Her sickness was a protracted one. It has often into the beatitude of its original! O, my children, struck us that a mother, anxious for her children, is pluck hold of the faith that shall make you perceive seen to linger longer than another patient on the dying all this—that shall engross the better part of your be- bed. Is it the natural tendency, that what diverts from ing, and save it from the desecration of folly-that shall the consciousness of disease also saves from the extra save you from the sin of wasting your time and squan-action of agitating conflict, so unfriendly to a weakened dering your health and feelings upon trifles which were state? The especial boons of the dying hour, we never intended to supply, to satisfy, or please them." know, are of the spirit and the soul. And so it was Her husband was deeply, thoroughly, substantially with this expiring Christian. The death was serene, convicted. He took himself away from his business calm, and triumphant; and they that had wept over to converse and commune with the friend of his life her for many days, wept less on this day than on many and his affections. You may infer from the tenor of her that had gone before it, or than on many that succeedcharacter, that she was one to whom a husband would ed it. Their anxieties and their vigilance were remitbecome more and more attached every succeeding year. ted, though their regret was no less. The lassitude He now wasted not in bewailings the days that were left, that supervened was not of insensibility, but of exbut he joined with her in the covenant of faith, and haustion-the collapse of the bow after the shaft is prayed and hoped with her; and he promised to keep sped. The regret of her husband merged into a meltheir children in the path to which she had reclaimed ancholy, relieved only by the faith which she had been them; and also he promised to watch over the impatience the instrument, in the hand of God, of supplying to of his own spirit, which, by the indulgence of almost all his want. He had become a man of renown, and had about him for many years, had grown to be as unrea- accepted a place in the Senate of his country; and sonable as it was unrestrained. Mrs. C., indeed, in the though prompt and earnest in his duties, they filled not early part of her convictions, had humbly admonished the void in his heart. His two eldest daughters were him of this, and had even made some rule to herself of married, and the third resided alternately with one and faithfulness to both. It had been his wont, in the hurry the other; and Mr. C., now that his home was broken of business, to come into his meals, and to hurry and up, thought never to supply it with another fire-side fret, requiring immediate service, even at undue hours, companion. In his case it was a worthy decision-he from every attendant about him. Mrs. C. used former- had never seen another with whom he would not have ly to assist in this. But when she came to see spiritually, been inclined to institute a disadvantageous comparison, she said, "Dear George, I love you as ever, better, and perhaps a contrast; and after some few years walking will do as much really to oblige you; but I must never in a bereaved remembrance, rather than in the spirit again abet you in your impatience. It is wrong, and I of this life, he, too, was summoned to his audit, have come to know that it is unfaithful in me not to hoping and rejoicing, and believing that whether of

a renewed consciousness or not, all would be right. || shall be as Sodom and Gomorrah: it shall never be inThe reformation of these children was substantial habited, neither shall it be dwelt in from generation to for I tell you a true story-but it probably could not have happened out of any other circumstances than those which effected it-the mother's long sickness and death. Are there now any young daughters as far gone in sin, or of much shorter progress in the same course, we hope they have a monitress as faithful as these-and without their bereavement a reformation as effectual.

Original.

PASSING AWAY.

"Seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved."

generation; neither shall the Arabian pitch tent there; neither shall the shepherds make their fold there; but wild beasts of the desert shall be there, and their houses shall be full of doleful creatures, and owls shall dwell there, and satyrs shall dance there, and the wild beasts of the island shall cry in their desolate houses, and dragons in their pleasant palaces." Go now and search for the site of Babylon, and as you stand at the lonesome hour of midnight, and hear the scream of the hyena, the yell of the jackall, and the roar of the king of the forest, tell me if you do not feel the force of the declaration, "All these things shall be dissolved." Every passing breeze seems to whisper, "Passing away." I point you to the remains of the proud Acropolis THERE is nothing on which we can fix our eyes that and Parthenon of Athens, and as you cast a glance is not subject to mutation and decay. The "everlast-upon their tottering columns, ruined battlements, and ing hills," as they are called, are gradually crumbling nodding porticos, strewed around with the fragments down and filling the vallies at their bases. The solid of broken capitals, friezes, pedestals, architraves, and granite of the mountain wastes away under the ravages statuary, say if the things of earth are not hastening of time. The aged oak of the forest, having put on to dissolution. Transport yourself to the Colisseum the drapery of a hundred summers, and withstood the of Rome, and as you trace upon its broken walls the storms of as many successive winters, finally yields, ravages of time, tell me if all things are not subject to and is stripped of its foliage-despoiled of its glory. mutation and decay. The barren trunk, which stands up in solitude to be riven by the lightning, and scattered to the winds, falls by piece-meal in the stillness of the untrodden forest.

Change follows change in rapid succession. Where flourishing empires, and populous cities, in one age of the world, obtrude their splendor and magnificence upon the contemplative vision, in the next, naught is presented to the gaze but the time-honored vestiges of what had been. As we look out upon the world, here and there scattered far and wide, we descry the last lingering relics of splendid empires and almost forgotten kingdoms. The chiseled fragments of proud columns, and triumphal arches, the remains of magnificent temples, and the ruins of ancient mausoleums, are presented to our gaze, and upon every fragment we see inscribed by the hand of time, "Passing away."

*

Man himself hastens to decay. To-day he is an infant, to-morrow he treads the slippery paths of youth, and anon we see him in the vigor of manhood; but again his furrowed cheek and palsied hand point him to the grave. The vision has fled, and the aged form sleeps at last in the silent grave. "All flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of the grass." Before me is a young female, whose destiny in this world will furnish a melancholy illustration of my subject. Her glossy tresses shade a brow that wears no marks of care. Her eye burns with unquenched fires, and her cheek glows with freshest shades. Her young life-blood is bounding free, and with a tread as buoyant as air, she glides along through a world of flowers and sunshine. Look at her again, and soon you shall see her blasted by affliction. The rose has faded from her cheek-her eye no longer sparkling with vivacity, but bedimmed with tears of deep affliction. Autumnal leaves, sear and blasted, rustle upon her grave-fit emblems of earthly beauty. "Seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and godliness!" J. E. E.

Suppose we transport ourselves upon the wing of imagination to distant years—before us rises ancient Babylon, in all her strength and beauty. See her ærial gardens, her elegantly finished temples, surmounted with minerets. Gaze upon her massive walls and impregnable towers-let the eye rest for a moment upon the long sweeping arches, supporting the splendid bridges that seem self-suspended over the Euphrates that glides in noiseless grandeur along. Turn to the temple of Belus, and from its topmost pinnacle take a HE that acts towards men, as if God saw him, and survey of the scene that spreads around you, and ask, prays to God, as if men heard him, although he may not can this city, which in the Book of God is called "the obtain all that he asks, or succeed in all that he underglory of kingdoms," and "the beauty of the Chaldees' takes, will most probably deserve to do so. For with reexcellency," ever be laid waste? Every tower that spect to his actions to men, however much he may fail rises from her splendid edifices-every fortress that with regard to others, yet if pure and good, with regard surmounts her walls-every temple and palace that to himself and his highest interests, they cannot fail; swells up in majesty beneath you, would answer, never. and with respect to his prayers to God, although they But to the prophet's eye, piercing the gloom of inter- cannot make the Deity more willing to give, yet they vening years, appeared a different scene: “Babylon ||will make the supplicant more worthy to receive.

THE FALL OF BABYLON.