family; and, among these, some from him of whom I have a moment ago been speaking. He gave me this account of them: "Their composition was not altogether the whiling away of an idle hour; it served me for something of a higher nature than mere amusement, since the constraint of verse obliged me to turu the leading idea, and view it in every possible light, to pursue it into all its bearings. Thus I arrived, as from the porch to the sanctuary, at thoughts and objects of meditation, which had otherwise never presented themselves, and the less so in proportion to the holiness and loftiness of their nature; and, besides, I found that I thus concentrated, and called home to their due service, a crowd of ideas, which had else floated about loose and unemployed, and served rather to perplex me than to inform. I consider, therefore, each of these little pieces as the clinging and twining of my mind round some subject, which it would fain not dismiss until it had attained the angel's blessing!-May it have so attained! They are now precious to me as the tokens and sensible relics of past and blessed moments ;-may they be precious to you as the results of a fellow-creature's experience."

CHAPTER II.

THE CONSTITUTION OF A CHRISTIAN
FAMILY.

I HAD not long enjoyed the acquaintance of my venerable friend, when he began to unfold the habits and opinions in which he had been brought up. I had been observing to him the method and regularity which distinguished the older families of the parish, attributing it, where I believe it was entirely due, to the exertions of his father. "My father," he said, "was thought to entertain peculiar notions on the subject by most of his neighbours. But my experience has convinced me that they were not only sound in doctrine, but replete with benefit in practice. The turf here is soft and dry, and we have a delicious prospect to amuse our eyes. Let us sit down for a short time, and I will detail to you some of the doctrines and traditions of our

little church, for so my father delighted to term his domestic circle."

He maintained that society in general, as established on the principles of our nature, and still more the church, as based upon the feelings superinduced by the Gospel, was like those perfect bodies in unorganized nature, which, however you divide them, and however far you carry your division, still present, though on a lessening scale, parts similar to each other, and to the whole. Thus, as in one case, we divide kingdom into provinces, province into districts, district into families, each under their respective heads of king, governor, lieutenant, father, and each a model of the preceding; so, too, may we divide the universal church into national churches, national church into dioceses, diocese into congregations, congregation into families, each an epitome of the preceding, and collected under its proper head, as under Christ, under chief bishop, under bishop, under minister, under father. And as the subject maintains connexion with his king through the links of society above mentioned, so the individual with Christ through the corresponding bonds of the church. He cannot for a moment consider himself isolated and independent of the next link above him,

his family, nor that family deem itself unconnected with the next superior bond, the congregation. From this view of the case he shewed what an important element a family was in both societies, natural and spiritual, and if in the former system it was reckoned by the heathen a portion so significant that he assigned to it peculiar deities and peculiar rites, what ought we to think of its value in the latter? In both cases it is the concentrated spot of those motives, the place where that bias and impulse is given, the cradle of those affections and principles which, from their intensity here, proceed beyond the threshold, arrive in proper vigour at the wider circles of public life, and there, uniting with the corresponding energies of other families, bind together the mass of society, so as to become solid as the congealed surface which originates from a number of centres, shooting forth their raying needles, and interlacing till they form one uniform surface. God has himself determined its importance in his church. For as in that he has declared his sense of its dignity and holiness, by appearing in it amid signs and wonders, with the blazing mountain, the host of Angels, the voice of the trumpet, and the sound of words, unendurable, from the

terror which it inspired; so in this, in this lesser Zion, he has assured us of its sanctity, by manifesting his presence in it with a softening of his glory in beautiful accordance with the calmness of domestic life. Who has not felt his bosom burn within him when he reads of his abode in the house of Lazarus, and finds him weeping with those that weep, comforting the afflicted, and dismissing the penitent in forgiveness?

It is truly delightful at times to take off the eyes from the direct view of the painful splendour of the universal church, and to contemplate it through this soft and attempering medium: the perception is then accompanied with those vigorous and elementary feelings of love and warmth of heart, which are too apt to become vague in attempting to comprehend the vast proportions of the other. Let us for a moment indulge in the contemplation.

In the venerable head of the family we acknowledge its bishop, its centre of unity, source of faith, object of obedience. Of him the flock is both naturally and spiritually born, and fed with the necessaries of this life, and of the next. He is to them the conservator of the oracles of God he is the entrusted minister of Christ.