munity will be prosperous and happy. Beyond all doubt it is to parental neglect, or to the want of proper parental nurture, that by far the larger share of the grosser crimes, as well as the smaller irregularities of the present day, is to be attributed. The number of youthful criminals is one of the most appalling signs of our times. The number of children under restraint in reformatories is very great. It is well known that in London many thousand children are trained to be thieves. Another very large class of young offenders are those degraded females who live upon the wages of iniquity. Such multitudes of youthful criminals could not exist, but for the neglect of parental duties, or at least the absence of parental care. Many of them are orphans, no doubt, the children of the work-house or of the street, who have never known a happy home. But more are the children of wicked parents, whose homes are so wretched, and whose tempers are so furious, that the children fly from them in horror. There is no doubt, too, that a large share of the other irregularities and vices of the day-intemperance, waste, vanity, violence of temper, and the like—are due to the same cause. Could we but get an efficient system of Christian family training made universal, how glorious would be the change; how little need would remain for police, and prisons, and penitentiaries, and

Magdalene asylums, and penal settlements, and hulks and scaffolds !

It is a remarkable fact that the countries in Europe where there is most disorder, are those in which the family constitution is least attended to. We refer to such countries as France, Ireland, and Spain. Home is a word hardly understood in Paris. It is not improbable that the cold-blooded atrocities that make one shudder in reading the accounts of the first French Revolution, were largely due to the early loosening of family ties, to the violence done to nature's method of making men "kindly affectioned one to another." If there be one symptom more than another fitted to create alarm for the destinies of our own country, it is the wide-spread evil of parental neglect. Whether it is right to represent it as an increasing evil, we do not know; men are very apt to think that certain evils are increasing when it is they that are bestowing increased attention upon them. Perhaps it is the increased density of the population that makes the evil bulk more largely now than formerly. But whether it be increasing or not, there is enough of it to create much anxiety. In that awful state of darkness and corruption into which the world had sunk before the coming of Christ, the "turning of the hearts of the fathers to the children, and of the children to the

N

fathers," is declared to be necessary, else God would come and “smite the earth with a curse.” To remove the curse, and to bring a blessing, let us work and pray for-Home-Sunshine.

The practical management of the working man's family must be mainly the charge of the working man's wife. In mere bodily exertion, her duties in a family of average size are sufficiently heavy, and she is well entitled to the sympathy of her husband, and the help of her neighbours and friends when illhealth or feeble strength make it a terrible fight for her to get through. Much need has she, too, of the help of God, not only for bodily strength to carry her burdens, but for patience to bear her trials, selfpossession when her temper is crossed, the faculty of method to economize time, and get everything duly attended to, and still more for the kindliness and cheerfulness that will shed a constant radiance over the dwelling, and the grace that will enable her to secure the affections and form the character of her children. The question has sometimes been put, Is a worthless father or a worthless mother the greater evil? Among the working classes especially we do not hesitate to answer, a worthless mother. Not only does she often alienate her husband from his home, but her corrupting influence on the children is more constant and more pernicious than his. In ordinary

cases, the mother's influence in forming the character of the children, whether for good or for evil, is more powerful than the father's. It was one of Napoleon's pithy remarks, What France needs for her regeneration is-mothers. Abbot relates that some years ago, a body of young men preparing for the ministry felt interested in ascertaining what proportion of their number had pious mothers. They were greatly surprised and delighted to find, that out of a hundred and twenty students, more than a hundred had been carried by a mother's prayers, and directed by a mother's counsels to the Saviour. It is wonderful what an influence the example and efforts of the mother sometimes have, years after she is dead and gone. a good old man, "my mother used to make me kneel down beside her, and place her hand upon my head while she taught me to pray. She died when I was very young, but still, when going to do wrong, I seemed to feel her soft hand upon my head. When I grew to be a man, the thought of that same hand still kept me safe."1 A minister records the case of

When I was a little child," said

1 In Mr. Clarke's Heart-Music for Working People, this incident is made the text of a simple poem :

"Why gaze ye on my hoary hairs,

Ye children young and gay?
Your locks beneath the blast of cares
Will bleach as white as they.

a dying profligate, whose heart would not yield to all his efforts, till, overpowered by early association, he burst into tears at the question, "Have you a mother?"

Of all monsters or abortions, known or imagined, the worst is a drunken mother. 66 'No tongue," says one who has seen not a few of the class, "can express what the child of the drunken mother suffers. I cannot think of such misery without tears. Two wretched little children almost destitute of clothes, came to my door one bitterly cold day. The very sight of them made my children cry; and contrary to my judgment (for, alas! experience has made me wise), I allowed them to dress them in woollen

"I had a mother once, like you,

Who o'er my pillow hung;

Kissed from my cheek the briny dew,
And taught my faltering tongue.

"She, when the nightly couch was spread,
Would bow my infant knee;
And place her hand upon my head,
And kneeling pray for me.

"But then there came a fearful day,
I sought my mother's bed;

Till harsh hands tore me thence away,
And told me she was dead.

"That eve I knelt me down in woe,
And said a lonely prayer;

Yet still my temples seem'd to glow,
As if that hand were there.