appointed interview. At the proper time the two females attended at the court, hoping to find their benefactor and profit by his influence. When introduced into the emperor's private apartment, the young woman recognized her friend among a group of courtiers by whom he was surrounded; but she instantly perceived, by the respect which was paid to him, that he was the emperor himself. Recalling to mind what had escaped her on the subject of avarice, she trembled with apprehension. But her fears were soon calmed by the magnanimous monarch, who kindly soothed her with his courtesies, and addressing her mother, informed her that he had settled an annual pension upon her from the funds of the army. Then turning to the daughter, he added, "Another time I hope you will not despair of a heart that is just."

Were similar instances of regal benevolence common, how would monarchs ratify their title to be considered as the father of their people!

WHEN Augustus sent forth a decree that all "the world should be taxed," he vainly thought he was only enlarging his own imperial power, whereas he was acting in unconscious subservience to the decree of a higher Sovereign, and was helping to ascertain by a public act the exact period of Christ's birth, and furnishing a record of his extraction from that family from which it was predicted, by a long line of prophets, that he should spring. Herod's atrocious murder of the innocents has added an additional circumstance for the

confirmation of our faith; the incredulity of Thomas has strengthened our belief; nay, the very treachery of Judas, and the injustice of Pilate, were the human instruments employed for the salvation of the world. H. Moore.

THE MOTHER IN THE FAMILY.

I HAVE always been struck, he said, alluding to the gospel for the day, with the part which women bear in the history of our Lord's sojourn upon earth. We find a faithful little troop of them clinging round him to the last, even when men had lost all courage, and forsaken him. They attend at his cross, they wait upon his sepulchre, and they are, accordingly, honoured with being made the first witnesses of his resurrection. It seems as if all had been designed to enforce the sense of the completeness of our restoration, since woman, who first sinned and incurred death, was thus first presented with the visible, palpable pledge of everlasting life; and it is observable, that wherever the gospel is maintained in its purity, there woman is in full enjoyment of all her native rights and dignity. Hence it is that the Christian alone, at least in my view; possesses a home, our Saviour, in the course of effecting our eternal happiness, has established for us the greatest of earthly blessings. For, without a mother maintained in due honour, upheld in all her dignity, invested with her proper sway, home cannot exist. Tending to the same point is another remarkable fact, which, so far from being an accidental feature

in our Lord's history, has always appeared to me essential and designed. We hear nothing of his reputed father after his childhood, while his mother is prominently put forward, and, even after his ascension to heaven, she is carefully mentioned as present with her female companions at the first assembly of his infant church. The father's authority, indeed, needed no additional ratification; but what a sanction, what a sanctity, is thus imposed upon the mother's! and how more highly still should we think of it, when we feel that it is very much through his conversation with his mother and her companions, that our Lord's character comes invested to us with that human tenderness which gives us confidence, notwithstanding his divine unutterable majesty, to call upon him as our mediator with an assurance of his sympathy. This sanction seems still more marked, on comparing our Lord's ministry with that of Moses; that of the latter is all stern, masculine injunction, unbroken by a trait of female softness; all cold majestic publicity. The contrast, indeed, was fiting between a covenant of grace and a covenant of penalty; between a covenant which carried on the promise of the seed of the woman, and the covenant which gave that seed. In this blessed covenant, then, which we enjoy, the mother has been restored to all her legitimate sovereignty; and great and incalculable is her influence. Like some fine concentrated perfume, it penetrates with potent, but invisible, agency every nook of home, pervading where the coarser authority of the father could never reach; it begins with the

first breath we draw; with the first light we see. On her were fixed our first affections; from her we received the first food, on her lap spoke the first words, thought the first thought, read the first letter; and, with our hands clasped in hers, offered our first prayer. In all that we ever after think or know, we are immediately referred to her who furnished us with their elements. Under her rule it was that we enjoyed what now appears to have been the only period of unalloyed happiness, and from underneath her warm and sheltering wing, were taken to the first taste of anxiety and toil, and transferred to the comparatively stern control of the father; or still sterner discipline of the school. Nor ceases even her direct influence then; it revives, at intervals, in all its original freshness and strength of hold; often, after the lapse of many maturing years, when sickness makes us children again, in her we seek a refuge, once more experience her unwearied attention, and pain is deprived of half its sting by the renewal of that nursing care to which, as bliss for ever gone by, our memory has so often and so fondly reverted. Having received this power in common from nature, my mother laid hold of the blessed privilege and office of good which the gospel has assigned. God had originally given to her, she considered, dominion over her child's heart; and now through the gospel, has given to her dominion over every wild passion; every beast of the field, as it were, throughout its regions; there she must clear the wil derness, there erect the temple of the living God. She

She reflected that if the first mother was the author of sin, the Christian mother has been gloriously endowed with ample means of remedy; and that remedy, for her own salvation no less than of her child, she is in duty bound to apply.

In her the gospel should find one of its most efficient preachers; one endued with that gift of tongue, whose every accent reaches the child's inmost bosom; one who not only addresses the affections, but is the very first to call them into existence; who has to speak to no seared conscience and blunted feelings, but to the flexible freshness of the yet soft and innocent heart. She is the first object of the child's love, esteem, reverence, obedience; and occupies for a certain time the whole of that head and heart which is soon to be devoted to God's service. Him she represents for a season; and let her take heed lest she usurp his place, and continue her child's affections on earthly objects, after his mind shall have become capable of appreciating heavenly. Alas! how many a fond indulgent mother has wept the consequences of such idolatry, and discovered, when too late, that she has been sitting as God, in God's temple. She must render unto God the things that are God's, and labour incessantly in forming the infant mind, so that the love, the reverence, the obedience, which she now inspires for herself, shall be but the rude elements of the love, the reverence, the obedience, which he shall hereafter pay to the Almighty Father. Oh, how beautifully holy is a mother, thus employed! how blessed her house! Like

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