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warm your devotion, than the sight of your children, while you are intreating God's protection for them and yourselves? Surely if ever a parent has a more than common earnestness of feeling, it must be when he is surrounded by his wife and family, and they are all offering up together to their common Father, praises for past mercies, and prayers for future blessings.

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Family prayer then comes recommended to you, as it appears, from these considerations: it is in the highest degree reasonable; it serves, as a bond of union, to increase the kindness which should already exist in the members of a family towards each other; it leads also, by the divine blessing, to peace of mind; it cannot fail of being acceptable to Almighty God; and it is calculated to call forth a peculiar warmth of devotion in parents, when they see themselves surrounded by their children.

The time required for family worship is, as I have shewn, so short, as even in the morning to be no material hindrance to the business of the day; and at night

there must be abundant time for the performance of this duty.

For these reasons I earnestly invite you all to join, each morning and night, with your families in prayer to Almighty God. I have pointed out to you a prayer to be used with the Lord's Prayer, and the form of blessing from St. Paul, at the opening and the close of each day. May God give you grace to follow the rule which I have recommended, and bestow upon you the fruits of peace, and joy, and brotherly love; for the sake of Jesus Christ our Lord, and by the aid of the Holy Spirit. To whom, the holy, blessed, and glorious Trinity, three Persons and one God, be praise, glory, might, majesty, and dominion, for ever and ever. Amen.

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SERMON III.

THE BEHAVIOUR OF CHILDREN THE PATTERN FOR CHRISTIANS.

MARK X. 14, 15.

Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom of God.

Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not enter therein.

WHEN Jesus Christ declares, as he does in the text, that none can become in heart and soul a Christian who does not receive the truths of the Gospel as a little child, it becomes our duty to enquire, what that frame of mind is which is necessary to render us the faithful servants of our crucified Master.

Now this will readily appear if we consider how children are accustomed to behave towards their parents.

As soon as a child can take notice of any thing, he discovers that if he wants food he must look to his parents for it. He soon learns from hence to depend entirely on them, and feels that he must do, at all times, as they bid him. He looks up to his parents therefore for the supply of all his wants, and considers that he has nothing to do but to mind what they say, and obey every order they give him.

Now this is exactly that state of mind which will fit us, by God's blessing, for the regular and faithful performance of all our duties; I say of all our duties; for the religion we profess does not teach us to do such and such things only, but calls upon us to perform every thing we take in hand as unto the Lord, and not unto man for if we look only to man, we may at times do ill, and yet appear to do well. We cannot look into the heart of each other; we are therefore in danger of being deceived by outward appearances. We cannot be ignorant that it is very possible to put on the form of kindness, for instance, without feeling it, and to do what

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