lad, as far back as I can mind, was that when old John McNeil-alas! alas! I feel what Luther said when his father died, "I am old John McNeil now - but I remember how he used to stand, and although he was strong and stubborn if he took it into his head, and certainly not to be trifled with, as my poor body knew, still, when he named the name of God I found him at the softest. I never can remember a prayer that he began and ended without his voice breaking and his eyes a little moist. I have seen him go through many hardships, and seen him go through many trials, and his eyes never filled, and his lips never quivered, he bore all calmly; but in prayer he melted. May God multiply the number of fathers and mothers like that who give the children, while the children are about them, an instinctive, regard for and notion of the reality of the name of God, and the Book of God, and the worship of God, and the day of God, and the house of God. What a splendid endowment I got, although I was not born with a silver spoon in my mouth. And if any of you have been born with a silver spoon in your mouth, give it to me. For any sake get rid of that silver spoon, Spurgeon was saying the other day that it choked some people. Here is the real endowment to give to our children; here is the real heritage to give to them "while they are about us." I can think of no better outfit for sending out your lads and your girls to the ends of the earth; and the ends of the earth are opening their doors for your children increasingly every day we live. If you want to equip them and endow them, do not give them a lump of money. I deny that a lump of money is what your children need. I absolutely deny it. It is, perhaps, the worst thing that will come to them when the will is read after you are gone. But give

them this endowment of love for the name of God, and the day of God, and the Book of God, and the ways of God. And they cannot turn out failures after that.

While the children are about us, let us have more of making the rafters ring with family worship. Children are being taught to sing now as they never were taught before. Let us use the singing to the best account at home. Homes ought to be far brighter in the evenings than they used to be. The musical gift is being developed. Use it in the best way, especially at the close of the day, to cheer your own heart, and lift away your own cares, making your children, while they are about you, sing the songs of Zion.

"The cheerfu' supper done, wi' serious face,
They round the ingle form a circle wide;
The sire turns o'er, wi' patriarchal grace,

The big ha' Bible ance his father's pride :
His bonnet rev'rently is laid aside,

His lyart haffets wearing thin an' bare,

Those strains that once did sweet in Zion glide,

He wales a portion with judicious care;

And, 'Let us worship God!' he says with solemn air."

Then we remember the singing

66

'Perhaps 'Dundee's' wild warbling measures rise,

Or plaintive Martyrs,' worthy of the name,

Or noble' Elgin' beets the heavenward flame."

Then the prayer. I think I can hear the shuffling of our feet on the sanded floor as we turned to kneel in prayer:

"Then kneeling down to Heaven's Eternal King,
The saint, the father, and the husband prays;
Hope 'springs exulting on triumphant wing,'
That thus they all shall meet in future days;

There ever bask in uncreated rays,

No more to sigh or shed the bitter tear,
Together hymning their Creator's praise,

In such society, yet still more dear,

While circling time moves round in an eternal sphere."

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WHILE THE CHILDREN ARE ABOUT US.

You remember it: do you not? Are you seeing that you are giving that impress to your children? Oh, I feel inclined to go on, and apply not only to Scotland, but to your own English nation (to which we belong now, in sympathy, seeing that we are here), and to all the nations of the earth, what the poet says about his own:

"From scenes like these old Scotia's grandeur springs,

That makes her loved at home, revered abroad;
Princes and lords are but the breath of kings,

'An honest man's the noblest work of God.''

May you be a man like that to the children while they are about you.

I have been speaking more about the father, but I do not mean to let the mother go. What is home without a mother? Ah! it is a great loss. Mother, I want to speak to you. If I could bring this more home to mothers, I would almost take my own wife from her seat and set her in the front and catechize her, if it would bring home to mothers what I wish

to

say for God to you "while the children are about you." I cannot understand the mother who loves her children as they run about her and does not pray for them and with them, no matter what the father may do. Somebody has said, "If I could convert the mothers, I would save the world"; and you know the familiar phrase, "The hand

that rocks the cradle rules the world." May our children be saved from giddy, frivolous, gadabout mothers, or from another kind of mother who, I am afraid, is becoming a little too common-the mother who, when she was a young girl, was wonderfully trained in all worldly training. She can dance, she can sing, she can play. What Continental language does she not know? Now she has got married, and the children are beginning to rise round about her; but, alas! they are away to the nursery, or anywhere and every

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where, rather than on her lap and in her bosom. From such a mother may the nation be delivered! Mothers, while the children are about you, give them what no other one can— not the father, not the Sunday-school teacher. Give this honour to none but yourself. As you, and you alone, bore them and suffered for them, take them in before God, in prayer and travail as in birth, till they be born a second time-born again to become the children of God through faith in Jesus Christ. I need not go over the biographies of eminent men, eminent for service in the Church, and eminent for service in the State, to show how, time and again and again, they themselves attributed their safety and all their success the fact that they stood where others fell, and they persevered where others gave in-to this, that when they were young, perhaps in some obscure home, their mother prayed with them and prayed for them. One day, long ago, a lad was setting out from a home in Fife, in Scotland. He was setting out in life. His childhood's days were done, and his mother was going along the road with him, and that mother was a true mother in Israel. He was not converted; but at the turning of the road, where mother and son parted from each other, “Now, Robert," said the mother, "just one thing I have to ask you, and you will promise me before I ask you." Robert was somewhat like his mother, and he said, "No; I will not promise until I know." He had a kind of notion of what the promise was to be. "Ah!" she said; "now it is not anything that will trouble you. It will not be hard or severe." "Well, mother," he said, "I will." "Promise me," she said, "that every night before you lie down to sleep you will read a chapter of your Bible and pray.” He screwed his face, for it was an unpalatable promise, but he

promised it. Who was that Robert? That Robert was Robert Moffat, and Africa is coming into the kingdom of God behind him. Mothers, be wise. Seize the opportunity, and if father, or Sunday-school teacher lag behind, for the sake of everything I charge it upon you, while they are about you, give them this stamp and impress for God and Christ and the Bible and eternity.

I should like to emphasize this by a consideration that was present to my mind just a little time ago. To emphasize all this, remember, that although they are about us to-day, it is only for to-day. Soon the morrow will come, when you will look round and miss them. There they are now! Dear me, how fast they grow! How our Johnnies, and Jennies, and Marys are stretching up, and up, and up, and up! Such a little while ago it seems when they were born, and now how tall they are! Already you are beginning to make inquiries among your business friends where you can place out that hopeful son of yours. Already your girl is budding and developing into the woman that you remember yourself to have been at what seems such a long time ago. Remember all this. Remember how silently, how noiselessly, and yet how really our children are changing even before our eyes. You cannot see them grow, or hear them grow, any more than the grass; but they are changing, they are growing. While they are about you, remember that. Understand the world into which they are going. I say to all fathers, and to all mothers, and Sabbath - school teachers, understand the world into which your children are going. It is no rosy world; it is not a kind world; it is not a pure world. If they are to live in London, or Liverpool, or Manchester, or Edinburgh, or