nurture and admonition of the Lord. Nor have I a right to affirm, that any one parent in this assembly neglects duties that so obviously commend themselves to his conscience. I do not know but you have the witness within you, that you have endeavored to lead your children in the way of holiness and heaven. I do not know but you have the witness of your faithfulness in the bosoms of your children; and that when you shall be called to meet them at the bar of God, they will feel that it has not been owing to any unfaithfulness on your part, that they are not saved. But if your own consciences condemn you; if any of you judge yourselves to be unfaithful in this great matter; it is unfaithfulness with which God is highly displeased, and which will probably be attended with consequences that will be bitterly felt, and mournfully remembered, forever. He has threatened to visit your iniquity upon your children, unto the third and fourth generation. Yes, he may leave your children, and your children's children, to fill up the measure of their iniquity before your eyes, and you yourselves may live to see them plunge down to death and hell.

Is there an unfaithful parent that hears me? I implore him that the thoughts which have been suggested in this discourse may be allowed to find a place in his bosom. Let him beware

how he stands between God and his blessing upon his children! Let him reform at once. Let him begin to day, to take his children by the hand and conduct them in the paths of holiness and salvation. Let him remember that their childhood will probably furnish him the only opportunity. O ye parents, who neglect God, cast your eyes upon your children. Look at the cradle. Anticipate their progress through this ensnaring world. Look at death and judgment. There you must meet them. And O tell me, will you meet them there with joy? Will you, on the morning of the resurrection, and at the gate of heaven, greet these sons and daughters with a smile?

3. We also see, on reviewing our subject, the high obligations of children, for pious and faithful parents. It is one of the darkest omens in the prospects of the children of pious parents, when they are left to despise the instructions and prayers of those who have done so much to draw down the divine blessings upon their head. My young friends, it will be but a short period that you can enjoy the high privileges of a religious education. You and your parents must soon part, and perhaps forever. Many of you have known your parents in the prime and vigor of their days. But their sun already begins to descend. Soon the wind will pass over them, and they will be gone, and the places that now

know them, will know them no more. They may indeed be your survivors; for the early shadows may gather around the bright morning of your existence, and your sun may go down before it is noon. But should they survive you or not, I beg you to appreciate their solicitude and faithfulness, while you enjoy it. Believe me, you will weep and mourn at your negligence, when you see them deposited in the dust. Then you will justify their severest discipline. You will be ashamed, and humbled, that you ever questioned the purity of their motives in their conduct toward you. You will feel as though you wanted to call them up from their grave, once more to ask their forgiveness. Many a time have I said within myself, since I deposited my beloved and honored parents in the dust, O that I could now recall my parents' counsel and my parents' prayers! Beloved youth! bear with me. I know the anxiety of a father's bosom. In the name and in the behalf of your parents, I come to-day to bespeak your love, your reverence, your dutiful and respectful deportment. Is there a careless, licentious youth here, over whom some distressed and grief-worn parent is mourning in the bitterness of her soul; let me implore him to staunch those wounds his rashness and folly have inflicted, and pour in the balm which will be like life from the dead. Honor thy father and thy mother, that thy days

may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee. I have lived long enough to see many a delightful fulfilment of this promise, and many a tremendous execution of this implied threatening. In this guilty metropolis, this vortex of youth, where popular feeling and the maxims of the world array themselves so fearfully against domestic discipline, I have seen many an unwary youth glide down the current! I have watched the movements of an allpervading providence, as they followed, and overtook, and scathed the head of many a contemner of domestic authority, and consigned him to a premature and ignominious grave. Children, obey your parents in the Lord; For This Is Right.

But I come to claim more than this. I solicit your hearts, your lives, your existence for him who made you and bought you with his blood. It is to your father's God, to whom we beg you to consecrate the bud and flower, the dawn and glory of your being. Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth. Seek the Lord while he may be found; call upon him while he is near. Is there some thoughtless despiser of the great salvation here, over whom the happy spirit of some departed mother is now bending from the courts of heaven to see, after so long a separation, what has become of the son of her vows; let me say to him, whence the infatuation that drives thee on to ruin and despair? Say not this is a

phantom that floats in the imagination of the preacher. O sport not with that at which sainted spirits in glory weep. Let it not be said that you were nurtured in the lap of piety only for the society and employment of fiends. Let not that note of triumph ever be heard in the world of darkness, that a child of so many prayers and tears has become the son of perdition.

THE END.