midnight. Or to use another figure of Scripture, Heathen children are weeds, and thorns, and briars, growing in a rough and howling wilderness; while Christian children are blooming flowers, fruitful olive plants in the well tilled garden of the Lord. Give me your prayerful and thankful attention, while I attempt to compare the lot of the children of Heathen and Christian parents.

1. Consider the lot of the children of Heathen parents.

I spent several years in India, where there are many millions of Heathen children; and have seen the idolatry and sin of the families into which they are born, and have heard them taught in the ways of their parents, and have perceived how they drink in heathenism and iniquity like water.

That day is a day of

A Hindoo child, is at his very birth subjected to pagan rites; and becomes a heathen the first day of his life. heathenish joy, and the gods are praised because a man is born into this dark and benighted heathen land. And a Brahmun, a heathen priest, consults the stars, to learn the fortunes of his life, and writes his jenma puttra, his

birth paper, and gives it to his parents, as the prophetic record of what will afterwards happen to this new comer into the world; and he receives on his forehead the mark of a heathen god; and upon his arm an amulet, which the gods make powerful, as his parents think, to keep off diseases and misfortunes. Poor little heathen thing! how poorly art thou received by thy fond parents-how poorly ushered into the duties and the blessings of the world. Thou art devoted and marked from thy birth, as the property of idol gods-whose eyes see not; whose ears hear not; whose hands handle not, and whose feet walk not-who cannot help those who put their trust in them!

But see again now this little heathen infant. He is nursed by a heathen mother--a mother who knows not God who made her-and Jesus the Saviour of sinners; but who, while she is setting in order her little hut, or grinding at the mill, or quieting her baby, has ever in her mouth, the names and the praises of her heathen gods. She lulls him to his sleep upon her lap, by the praises of Brahma his creator, or Vishnoo his preserver, or of his own village or family god; and daily as she sings the

names of her gods, a hundred and a hundred times over; he sinks into his daily slumbers. And when his father takes him and dandles him on his knee, or jumps him in his hands, or dances with him in his arms, it is to the tune of an idol's praises, or it may be around an idol's shrine.

Presently he begins to know the faces of his parents, and sees them marked with marks of idolatry, and beholds them making their salutations and prayers to their idols. And now they amuse him with the gorgeous pictures of their gods; and as he turns his eye from figure to figure, they tell him over the story, which he sees pictured before him, and even before he can well speak, his little mind muses upon the tricks and feats of the gods.

Now hear him begin his first attempts at speech-see how his parents ply him with their idol worship, and praise him as he learns to sing in honour of the gods-and now you may see his own little hands joined at his forehead, while he bows his head at the feet of his god; and you may hear him jingling the chains upon his wrists and ankles,

while he sings the song which his father and his mother and his grand parents taught him; and even as he sleeps, he will dream of the stories of his gods, and fancy that he is among the gods, and even think that he himself is a god.

Mean-while his parents, who so carefully teach him to worship stocks and stones, neglect to restrain his evil temper, and to teach him to be good, and the whole family must now submit to the Barl rajah, the little infant king that reigns among them.

Still he is plied more and more with the lessons of idolatry, and the growth of all his evil feelings is daily promoted by his hearing new stories of his gods; guilty of sins and follies far beyond his little infant power. He learns now to laugh with his mates, and even with his parents, at the tricks, the thefts, and the anger, of the childhood of his gods; and lets loose his own evil desires, which grow worse and worse, even while he prays and sings, and bows down at the footstool of his gods.

See him now at school, worshipping with his class. See him in the public assembly,

gazing at the thousand lights, which turn night into day; listening to the sound of music and hymns in honour of the gods; and see him bow his head with assembled thousands in their honour. See him in the throng of pilgrims, and in his hand the little offering to his idol, and hear his voice high as he can raise it, feeble amid the jargon of a hundred instruments, and ten thousand voices. Oh see him-no you must not see him while he joins in actions; hear him-no you must not hear him, while he joins in words and songs, too base to be named.

Thus he spends his boyhood; learning more and more the sin and folly of his parents and his nation, whose deceived heart hath turned them astray, so that they know not that there is a lie in their right-hand, while they give away their hearts and their time to stocks and stones, images of base and wicked gods.

Alas for the youth! his heart is full of sin and he knows it not: his conscience has been stupified by drinking in iniquity like water, he is satisfied with all his wickedness, because he is quite as good as the gods he