as any chosen from the world of heartless fashion, -as beautiful in sound, and infinitely more so in associations which bind them to deeds of humanity and Christian love. The utterance of such names would be more becoming the Christian home; because they aid in developing the purest holiest and loftiest idea of its nature and calling. Such names will bind your little ones to pure and holy persons and deeds, and will suit the book of life in which you hope to have them enrolled.

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Then, safe within a better home, where time and its titles

are not found,

God will give thee His new name, and write it on thy heart; A name, better than of sons, a name dearer than of daughters, A name of union, peace and praise, as numbered in thy God."

CHAPTER XIII.

HOME AS A NURSERY.

THE Ostrich, silliest of the feathered kind,
And formed of God without a parent's mind,
Commits her eggs, incautious, to the dust,
Forgetful that the foot may crush the trust;
And, while on public nurseries they rely,
Not knowing, and too oft not caring why,
Irrational in what they thus prefer

No few, that would seem wise, resemble her."

To nurse means to educate or draw out and direct what exists in a state of mere involution. It means to protect, to foster, to supply with appropriate food, to cause to grow or promote growth, to manage with a view to increase. Thus Greece was the nurse of the liberal arts; Rome was the nurse of law. In horticulture, a shrub or tree is the nurse or protector of a young and tender plant. We are said to nurse our national resources. Isaiah, in speaking of the coming Messiah and the glory of his church, says, "Thy daughters shall be nursed at thy side." "Kings

shall be thy nursing fathers, and their queens thy nursing mothers."

The place or apartment appropriated to such nursing is called a nursery. Thus a plantation of young trees is called a nursery. Shakspeare calls Padua the nursery of arts. We call a very bad place the nursery of thieves and rogues. Dram-shops are the nurseries of intemperance. Commerce is called the nursery of seamen. Universities are the nurseries of the arts and sciences. The church on earth is called the nursery of the church in heaven. Christian families are called the nurseries of the church on earth, because in the former its members are nursed and propagated for the purpose of being transplanted into the Gatter.

In the same sense and for the same reason, the Christian home is the nursery of the young,—of human nature in its normal state. And as home is the nursery of the state as well as of the church on earth and in heaven, we must see that it is a physical, intellectual and religious nursery. We shall briefly consider it in these aspects. Indeed the Christian home cannot be considered in a more interesting and responsible light. The little child, dedicated to God in holy baptism, is entirely helpless and dependent upon the ministrations of the nursery. There is the department of its first impressions, of its first directions, of its first intellectual and moral formation, of the first evolution of physical and moral life. There the child exists as but the germ of

what is to be. It grows up under the fostering care and plastic power of the parents. God's commission to them in the nursery is, to bring up these germs of life, in His nurture and ad monition."

"Take the germ, and make it

A bud of moral beauty. Let the dews

Of knowledge, and the light of virtue, wake it
In richest fragrance and in purest hues."

The nursery is the department of home in which the mother fulfils her peculiar missionThis is her special sphere. None can effectually take her place there. She is the center of at traction, the guardian of the infant's destiny; and none like she, can overrule the unfolding life and character of the child. God has fitted her for the work of the nursery. Here she reigns supreme, the arbitress of the everlast ing weal or woe of untutored infancy. On her the fairest hopes of educated man depend, and in the exercise of her power there, she sways a nation's destiny, gives to the infant body and soul their beauty, their bias and their direction. She there possesses the immense force of first impressions. The soul of her child lies unveiled before her, and she makes the stamp of her own spirit and personality upon its pliable nature. She there engrafts it, as it were, into her own being, and from the combined elements of her own character, builds up and establishes the

character of her offspring. Hers will, therefore,

be the glory or the shame.

"Then take the heart thy charms have won,

And nurse it for the skies.".

The nursery is that department of home in which the formation of our character is begun. Infancy demands the nursery. It is not fullformed and equipped for the battle of life. It lies in the cradle in a state of mere involution, and in the hands of its parents is altogether pas sive, and susceptible of impressions as wax before the sun. The germ of the man is there; but it has yet to be developed. Its indwelling life must be nurtured with tender and assiduous care. It demands an influence suited to the expansion of its nature into bloom and maturity. It demands physical development, mental evolution, moral training, and spiritual elevation. In order to these it must live amidst the sweet and plastic socialities of maternal relationship. It must come under the fostering influence of a mother's heart, and be reared up by the tender touches of a mother's hand. This idea is embodied in home as a nursery. This is fourfold in its conception and relation to the child.

The nursery is physical. This involves the means of keeping the child in health, and the appliances of a vigorous physical development. The Christian mother, to this end, should make herself acquainted with the physiology of the infant body. Many well-meaning mothers, from