GOOD MISTRESSES MAKE GOOD SERVANTS. 77 4. Describe the cause of early religious impressions, and what gave to them the most lasting interest in the mind of your child. 5. Notice in such a diary the improvement you make yourself, in the attainment of patience, self-denial, forbearance, perseverance, and decision. 6. Though you design chiefly to promote your own personal benefit, yet it would add essentially to the interest with which your children, when arrived to years of maturity, by means of this manuscript, would contemplate the devotedness and self-denying efforts of their fond mother. 7. If early removed from your little flock, you may leave behind you a precious testimony of affectionate solicitude for your dear ones, making them, at the same time, in some measure acquainted with your views and wishes, in regard to their temporal and eternal happiness. B....., March 30, 1833. For the Mother's Magazine. GOOD MISTRESSES MAKE GOOD SERVANTS. A well regulated family, is the best school for servants. If there were more of these, we should have more good servants, and when there are more young women well instructed by their mothers in relation to domestic duties, there will be more well regulated families, and consequently there will be a much larger amount of domestic happiness. If a lady wishes to have neat servants, she must be neat. If she wishes to have regular and methodical servants, she must be regular and methodical. If she wishes to have honest servants, she must equally avoid careless exposure of of her household goods, and an over suspicious vigilance and distrust. Servants should be treated with frankness and confidence, with kind. ness and consideration. If you wish servants to be respectful, be not too familiar with them. In those parts of our country where a more general equality prevails, and where those who serve, have nearly equal opportunities for gaining knowledge with those who are served, it is of great importance that such principles and sentiments should be inculcated in common schools and Sunday schools, as will give correct impressions of relative duties and obligations in social life. The inordinate desire of equality and the spirit of insubordination, might there be corrected, through the medium of moral and religious instruction. ADDRESS OF THE MATERNAL ASSOCIATION OF THE BAPTIST CHURCH AND SOCIETY IN UTICA, TO MOTHERS. Although our institution is of very recent date, and we deeply feel our inexperience and consequent incompetency to exhibit the full weight of the subject, yet we entreat you to listen to a few considerations which have induced us to associate together, and combine our prayers and efforts to promote the temporal and eternal welfare of our offspring, and which may impress 78 ADDRESS OF THE MATERNAL ASSOCIATION OF THE upon your minds a sense of the importance of the relation that you sustain to your children, and the solemn duties which that relation imposes upon you. The station assigned you by the Father of spirits, is one which involves the highest responsibility, and from which emanates an influence as serious and as lasting as eternity. You are the stewards of the Lord. To you he has committed treasures which outweigh the world! To your charge he has given the tender buds of endless being; yours it is to expose them to the Sun of Righteousness that they may so bloom on earth as to bear fruit in heaven. God will hold you in a measure responsible, should they be blighted in your hands. How fearful is your trust! To rear the slender frame, to train the shooting intellect, to guide the ruling passion, and fix the early habits with safety and success, is a delicate, difficult, and all important task. Yet all this, with the blessing of God, is required at the mother's hand. To her case we may well apply the words of the apostle, "Who is sufficient for these things?" To the right discharge of your momentous duties, an enlightened mind, a devout heart and a diligent hand, are indispensably requisite. And yet the circumstances in which some of you are placed, may be very unfavorable to the cultivation of your minds and the improvement of your hearts, while numerous cares press upon your attention, and onerous labors employ your hands. These difficulties may be in a good degree obviated by uniting with a maternal association. By this means you will enjoy the benefit of choice books, derive instruction from members of more extensive reading, and be favored with the devotions of those whose minds are better disciplined, and less distracted with domestic concerns. Seize upon every facility to improve in the arduous work which God has enjoined upon you. Apply yourselves to your maternal duties with unslumbering vigilance, untiring effort, and unceasing prayer. "Take heed unto yourselves" as well as unto your children, over whom the Author of their being has made you overseers. Remember you are the models on which their characters are likely to be formed. Your own image will be stamped upon them. Your principles will constitute their moral standard, and your examples will leave an impress on the soul, which it will carry to eternity. The infant eye will watch your every movement; the infant ear will catch your every accent; the infant tongue will reiterate your every expession, and the infant heart respond to your every feeling. You can neither act nor speak without affecting both the character and the welfare of undying spirits. How important then that you watch over your own hearts and lips every moment. "What manner of persons ought ye to be, in all holy conversation and godliness?" Let it not be forgotton that your own happiness is inseparably connected with that of your children. If you inculcate on their flexile minds, sentiments which tend to misguide them; if you set before them examples which have an irreligious influence; if you indulge your own pride or petulance, avarice or selfishness, perverse will or earthly affections, or cherish these in your children; if you fail to implant in their infant bosoms, seeds of virtue and religious knowledge, and leave their untutored minds to be overgrown by the luxuriant productions of corrupt nature; in short, if you fail to bring them up in the nurture and admonition of God, or to exhibit be BAPTIST CHURCH AND SOCIETY IN UTICA, TO MOTHERS. 79 fore them the attractive charms of personal piety, you may not only be acces. sary to their everlasting ruin, but also plant thorns in your own dying pillow. To you the eye of our nation is turned, not as the mere nurses, but the guardians, the instructors, and patterns of her brightest sons. You must prepare the ornaments which are to adorn every department of society. From your moulding hands must pass our future Washingtons, Franklins, Hamiltons, Edwardses, Maxcys, Brainards, Parsons, and Judsons. Your influence will reach every rank and station. It will be felt in the medical profession, at the bar, on the bench, in our halls of legislation, in the sanctuary, and the missionary field. Let that influence be healthful. Let it carry dignity, purity, and felicity in its course. To you especially the church of Christ looks, for those holy impulses, and those devout aspirations, which God employs to imbue the infant mind with his own Spirit. Scarcely does a faithful minister of the word prove a richer blessing to the church than pious praying mothers. The vivacity, sensibility, and sympathy of your nature, when sanctified by grace, eminently qualify you for the interesting and important duties of devotion. The simplicity, sincerity, and fervency, of the importunate and godly mother's supplications, seem to lay hold on the divine blessing. O strive to draw down that blessing, not only on your own offspring, but also upon the church of the living God. In proportion to the fearful responsibility under which God has placed you, is the gracious reward connected with a faithful discharge of the duties incumbent. Should the divine blessing succeed your pious and assiduous endeavors to bring your offspring under the renewing and sanctifying influence of the Holy Spirit, what joy will thrill your hearts in view of the happy result! While the approving smile of your Heavenly Father rests upon you, the church of Christ will regard you as her benefactors, and your children will rise up and call you blessed. The word of God affords you great encouragement to seek the eternal salvation of your children. And should you be instrumental of such a blessing, who can estimate the happiness you would derive from that source for ever? Although the solemnity of this subject may awaken in your bosoms the most painful anxiety, yet, if it cause you to sow in tears, it may enable you, hereafter, to reap in joy. Beware of insensibility! Beware of procrastination! Time steals imperceptibly away. The indelible impress will soon be fixed on the mind. The twig will soon be bent, and the tree receive its inclination for eternity. The instruction, admonition and correction, which is now demanded, if neglected, may hereafter be administered in vain. The young passions and propensities of depraved nature gain strength by indulgence, and become inveterate by the force of habit. Nor is there any thing that exceeds the rapidity of their growth. Leave your children to themselves but a little while, and their hearts will become so obdurate, their wills so obstinate, and their moral sensibility so blunted, that they will trample on your instructions-trifle with your admonitions and despise your corrections. How painful then will be your unscasonable and unavailing efforts, to extricate them from the vortex of ruin! What you do must be done quickly. There is not a moment to be lost; for besides what we have already suggested, there is a double uncertainty of future opportunity. Both your life and theirs, are held by a slender tenure. A little more sleep, a little more slumber, and the dread summons will awake you. Should they first be arrested by death, how painful will be the parting moment, if you shall have neglected their immortal souls! How can you endure to see them die without hope-and go to the retributions of eternity, unprepared? In vain will you then wish that you had been faithful while your stewardship continued. The past cannot be retrieved. Your loss will then be irreparable, and their ruin will be remediless. O how can you resign your dear offspring to the pangs of an eternal death! or how can you set such examples, or be guilty of such neglect as shall conduce to that awful event? But should your children survive you, how would your death be embittered by the thought of leaving them in a world of sin and temptation, exposed to the snares of the wicked, and the wiles of Satan, before you had implanted in their bosoms the inflexible principles of virtue-before you had sought and obtained for them an interest in the precious Savior, and seen them imbued with the Spirit of God? O, contemplate the solemnities of that day when you and your children will stand before the judgment seat! If you are faithful to them and to God, and he shall succeed your untiring labors, and answer your importunate prayers in their behalf, you hearts will swell with gratitude and love in that day, while in the transports of joy and thanksgiving you exclaim, "Here am I, and the children thou hast given me!" The awful contrast we will not attempt to draw, trusting that the thrilling hope of uniting with your beloved children in singing the song of Moses and the Lamb, before the throne, and in the presence of the redeemed for ever, will stimulate you to diligence, in seeking the glory of God in the salvation of the deathless spirits committed to your care. SCRIPTURE EXERCISE, FOR THE NEXT QUARTERLY MEETING OF THE UTICA MATERNAL ASSOCIATION. HISTORY OF ADAM AND EVE-CONTINUED. LESSON II. Gen. iii. Did Adam and Eve remain innocent, as God created them? By whose instrumentality was it effected? What kind of an animal was the serpent originally? By whom was he instigated to destroy the happiness of Adam and Eve ? What names are given to him in the Bible? What did he say to the woman? Did she do right to listen to his suggestions, or to reply to him? Does the devil now tempt children to sin? Is it wicked for them to listen to him, or to wicked companions? What does the Bible say they must do ? Did Satan tell a lie when conversing with Eve, and what was it ? What inducements prevailed with Eve to yield to Satan's advice? Who was first called to an account? What excuse did Adam make? What base disposition did he manifest? What excuse did Eve make? What curse did God denounce upon the serpent? What upon Eve? What upon Adam? What temporal consequences ensued? What spiritual? How many kinds of death were implied in the curse, "Thou shalt surely die ?" Three; temporal, spiritual, eternal ? What is temporal death? What is spiritual death? What is eternal death? Are you as guilty when you break one known command of God, as Adam and Eve were, when they ate the forbidden fruit? What then do you deserve? What promise was made to Adam before he was cast out of the garden? What prevented Adam and Eve from returning to the garden? Was the sin of Adam and Eve the occasion of all the sin and misery which are known in our world? ANECDOTES. A little boy six years old, whose father had recently died, had gone to bed one evening, when his mother sat by the nursery fire, weeping at the remeinbrance of her loss. She supposed her son was asleep; but after a little time he raised his head and said, "Mamma, won't God be willing to be your husband?" Why my dear, said his mother, how came you to think he would? "Because you say, now that papa is gone to heaven, God will be my father, and I don't see why he won't be willing to be your husband too." An anecdote of a little boy was suggested to my mind, when reading in the last number of the Mother's Magazine the article "Parental Consistency," not inapplicable to the subject, which, if you think proper, you are at liberty to give a place in your valuable publication. When this little boy was just beginning to articulate, it was a source of great unhappiness to him, that his coat was not fashioned like that of a man. Frequently, after a gentleman had visited at his father's, he would importune his mamma for a coat with pockets behind.' Her reply usually was, "My son, you are now a little boy; when you grow to be a man you shall have such a coat." About the same time it became necessary to take him to a medical spring, for a cutaneous disease. On attempting to bathe him in the water, the child appeared afraid; his mother used many arguments to persuade him to comply. At length she said, “you |