are you talk such blasphemy? God was
busy six days in making the world, and has allowed it to hang six
thousand years on his holy heart; and that world hath fed you, and
clothed you, and shone on you for fifty years: and yet you talk about
the nothingness of this world! Do you expect the young people in
your family to sit a whole evening and hear you groan about this
magnificent, star-lighted, sun-warmed, shower-baptized, flower-strewn,
angel-watched, God-inhabited planet? From such homes young men make a
wild plunge into dissipation. Many of you have the means: why do you
not buy them a violin or a picture? or have your daughter cultured in
music until she can help to make home attractive?

There are ten thousand ways of lighting up the domestic circle. It
requires no large income, no big house, no rich wardrobe, no chased
silver, no gorgeous upholstery, but a parental heart awake to its
duty.

Have a doleful home and your children will not stay in it, though
you block up the door with Bibles, and tie fast to them a million
Heidelberg catechisms.

I said to a man, "This is a beautiful tree in front of your house."

He answered, with a whine, "Yes; but it will fade."

I said to him, "You have a beautiful garden."

He replied, "Yes; but it will perish."

I found out afterward that his son was a vagabond, and I was not
surprised at it.

You cannot groan men into decency, but you can groan them out.

Pray ye that your flight be not in the winter! Devote these December,
January and February evenings to high pursuits, innocent amusements,
intelligent socialities, and Christian attainments. Do not waste this
winter. We shall soon have seen the last snow-shower, and have passed
up into the companionship of Him whose raiment is exceeding white as
snow--as no fuller on earth can whiten it.

To the right-hearted, the winter nights of earth will soon end in the
June morning of heaven.

The River of God, from under the Throne, never freezes over. The
foliage of Life's fair tree is never frost-bitten. The festivals, and
hilarities, and family gatherings of Christmas times on earth, will
give way to the larger reunions, and the brighter lights, and the
gladder scenes, and the sweeter garlands, and the richer feastings of
the great holiday of Heaven.

THE POWER OF CLOTHES.

One cannot always tell by a man's coat what kind of a heart he has
under it; still, his dress is apt to be the out-blossoming of his
char