PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION. ON being called upon for a third edition of this work, the author has been anxious to make such improvements as the time and his leisure would allow. In some places, therefore, he has made corrections, in others, expanded the sense of a passage by additions, and has inserted two new Chapters, which have appeared to him requisite to complete the plan. With regard to the model of a Christian Home presented in the following pages, he wishes to state that he holds the principle, that a model proposed to moral or religious practice, while it may be approachable in va rious degrees, should also be unattainable in the whole; otherwise, at some point or other, it will cease both to stimulate and to instruct. He hopes that this will be borne in mind by any one who shall think that the picture here presented can scarcely be realized in the practice of life, at least in these most unpatriarchal of days. CAMBRIDGE, |