with a charm above all the days of the week, with a grace and beauty peculiarly its own.

The Lord's day, thus spent, will send its influence onward through all the days of the week. The homely adage is a true one, "A Sabbath well spent brings a week of content." Lord Chief Justice Hale's well-known testimony sums up the experience of many, "That a due observance of the duties of the Lord's day brought a blessing to him on the rest of his time, and made the coming week a prosperous one with him." "We need not inquire," writes Dr. Hamilton, referring to the holy observance of this day by the Puritans, "what was their week. That home would know no idleness, no contented ignorance, no constrained hospitality, no fretful bickering, no controversial strife. Worship still dressed its altar, prayer and praise still awoke, instruction and discipline still prevailed. The pastor was often seen at its hearth, the welcome casuist, comforter, and guest. Good men resorted thither, and left behind a blessing. That wicket was the gate of heaven. The law of kindness was on every lip. They forbore one another, they preferred one another. Some of us knew the likenesses well. We have seen the counterparts. Such were the families to which birth added us. We declaim no inventions, we draw no pictures, we speak no unknown things."

With the eloquent words of the same writer addressed to Christian parents, let this chapter close. "Our appeal is to Christian parents. We ask you not what you most desire for your children. It cannot

"The Sabbath," by Dr. R. W. Hamilton.

be wealth, class distinction, worldly alliance. You
'travail in birth that Christ may be formed in them.'
To see them called by Divine grace ere you die, would
be to turn your death into a rapture. For this you
would sacrifice all. You had rather leave them paupers
than aliens from the covenant. Do you respect the
Sabbath, and teach them to respect it? Is it the
memorial of your roof-tree? Is every duty and
pleasure, journey and visit, subordinated to it?
Do you let them see that nothing is suffered to interfere
Do you instruct them in the great
Do you impress upon

with it?
peculiarities of your faith?
them the ordinance of this day?

The remem

brance of the Sabbath day is the life of Christian families."

165

CHAPTER XI.

SOCIAL INTERCOURSE.

PEOPLE who live together must of necessity become familiar one with the other. They meet at all hours of the day. They talk together of matters of common concern. They have a mutual interest in each other's habits and pursuits. They learn one another's modes of thinking and feeling. They become acquainted with one another's faults and foibles, and they also know each other's graces and virtues.

Thus

This familiar association has a great deal to do with the growth and maintenance of family affection. It helps to create and keep alive a feeling of personal interest in those with whom we are associated. passengers in the same ship contract intimacies which they would not have dreamed of,-for which, indeed, they would have had no opportunity,-in the intercourse of ordinary life. And those who live in the same house contract mutual attachments, mainly from the fact of being daily associated in the free companionship of common life.

This is one of the conditions of home-life designed by our merciful Creator for our happiness and highest well-being. It is this which invests us with such an influence upon one another at home for good or evil. For it is impossible that any member of a household should be without some influence upon all the members of it; and a wise use of the necessary

intimacies of home will greatly conduce to the spiritual as well as the temporal benefit of those with whom we live.

"It is," writes Isaac Taylor, "an admirable provision of the Divine wisdom which affords us the opportunity of knowing best those whom we ought most to love and succour. The unlooked-for incidents of family history, and its sudden excitements, and its arduous occasions, bring the individuals of the home circle within the sanctuary of each other's bosoms. And then there is always going on in each mind an unobserved process of induction, wherein even the listless actions and trivial expressions of every hour go to form an estimate, in the mind of each, of the worth and quality of the others, until each feels that he has almost as perfect a knowledge of the heart of brother, sister, parent, child, husband, wife, as of his own. It is on the solid ground of this familiar knowledge that the domestic affections take their tranquil standing.

It is this home familiarity, this domestic perfection of knowledge, that opens the sluices of sensibility, vivifying every sympathy, and making the sentient principle of each common to all, so as in a manner to blend identities, and to suffuse consciousness through the social body. The many become one by the mutuality of every power of enjoyment and of suffering." 1

How, then, may this familiar intercourse be made to subserve the best ends? How may the affections, which are, at least in the great majority of cases, strengthened by, this intercourse until they acquire the force of habits, be used as a power for good?

1 66 Saturday Evening."

One condition certainly is, that this intercourse, however familiar, must always be courteous. No relationship, however near, can justify the violation of those rules of politeness by which society at large regulates and restrains individual selfishness. To fail in this respect towards those who love us, presuming on the strength of their affection, is to endanger our affection for them, and theirs for us, as well as to encourage in ourselves an unamiable and selfish disposition. Husbands and wives owe to each other all outward manifestations of respect and esteem. Parents owe it to their children to cultivate, in their intercourse with them, a habit of gentleness in speech and manner, and never to encourage them, by their own example, to adopt an angry tone amongst themselves. Masters owe it to their servants to treat them with courtesy, and servants to their masters to maintain all the forms of respect, "not answering again." Children owe it to their parents to show them reverence in word and deed, using as respectful a demeanour towards them as they would to any stranger of the same age and rank. Brothers and sisters owe it to each other to act with gentleness, forbearance, and mutual kindness.

These are principles readily enough admitted, but too often imperfectly carried out, just where regard to them is of greatest importance, at home. Το apply the principles of the gospel to the minute duties and cares of daily life requires a prayerful thoughtfulness, which must be cultivated if it is to be possessed. Bring our Lord's golden rule into constant

I Titus ii. 9.