arthly monarch, is not worth some consideration?

Then the cry is, "They will not hold out." Time only will show that.
They are doing all they can. You cannot expect them to hold out ten
years in six weeks. The most faithful Christians we have ever known
were brought in through revivals, and the meanest, stingiest, dullest,
hardest-to-get-on-with Christians have joined when the church was dead.

When a candidate for admission comes before session in revival times, I ask
him only seven or eight questions; but when he comes during a cold state of
religion, I ask him twenty questions, and get the elders to ask him as many
more. In other words, I have more faith in conversions under special
religious influence than under ordinary.

The best luck I ever had in fishing was when I dropped the net in the bay
and brought up at one haul twenty bluefish, with only three or four
moss-bunkers, and the poorest luck I ever had was when, after standing two
hours in the soggy meadow with one hook on the line, I felt I had a bite,
and began to pull, more and more persuaded of the great size of the
captive, until I flung to the shore a snapping-turtle. As a gospel
fisherman I would rather run the risk of a large haul than of a solitary
angling. I can soon sort out and throw overboard the few moss-bunkers.

Oh for great awakenings all over Christendom!

We have had a drought so long we can stand a freshet. Let the Hudson and
the Thames and the Susquehanna rise and overflow the lowlands, and the
earth be full of the knowledge of God as the waters fill the seas. That
time is hastening, probably!

CHAPTER LXI.

FAMILY PRAYERS.

Take first the statement that unless our children are saved in early life
they probably never will be. They who go over the twentieth year without
Christ are apt to go all the way without Him. Grace, like flower-seed,
needs to be sown in spring. The first fifteen years of life, and often the
first six, decide the eternal destiny.

The first thing to do with a lamb is to put it in the arms of the Great
Shepherd. Of course we must observe natural laws. Give a child excessive
meat diet, and it will grow up sensual, and catechism three times a day,
and sixty grains in each dose, won't prevent it. Talk much in your child's
presence about the fashions, and it will be fond of dress, notwithstanding
all your lectures on humility. Fill your house with gossip, and your
children will tattle. Culture them as much