Read Ebook: The Chautauquan Vol. 03 April 1883 by Chautauqua Institution Chautauqua Literary And Scientific Circle Flood Theodore L Editor

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In the general panic Richard was the only man in England equal to the emergency. Man! He was only sixteen, but at about that age his father had won his spurs at Cressy. He took boat on the Thames and rowed down to the insurgents' camp. The Archbishop of Canterbury and some ministers were with him, and when Tyler asked the king to land and talk with them, promising respect and loyalty, this prelate prevented him, thus confirming the stories of the king's duress. The rescue of their sovereign became their first object. They marched on the city, and the sympathizing citizens threw open the gates.

Lancaster's stately Savoy Palace was soon in flames; also the Marshalsea and the King's Bench Temple, the dwellings and offices of the hated lawyers. But one of their number who undertook to carry off a silver tankard from the destruction was immediately drowned in the Thames. "We are no thieves and robbers; we are not nobles and bishops; we are honest workingmen, come to deliver the king and ourselves," said Tyler. The next day they captured the tower, took the archbishop, the royal treasurer, and the commissioner of the poll-tax, and cut off their heads as traitors on Tower Hill.

The king, now delivered from his court, sent word to Tyler that he would meet them at Mile-End, just out of London, to hear their grievances. The knights of the Tower and the guards wanted to gather a force and attack the mob, but the king rode out unarmed, with a few companions, to this historic appointment.

It was a memorable scene, and a poetic coincidence. The day was the anniversary of that other demand for rights from King John. Just one hundred and sixty-six years before Magna Charta has been wrung from a king at Runnymede. Now the boy king and the peasant leader meet to treat on equal terms. Justice levels all distinctions. The graceful, delicate and beautiful descendant of the Plantagenets and the rough, unkempt, Celto-Saxon artisan--the personification of the two armies at Hastings--the types of the extremes of English civilization; extremes destined to draw nearer together through centuries of civil war, of martyrdoms for free thought and speech, of sufferings and defeats, ever bravely and persistently renewed by generation after generation of laborers on the one side: through discrownings, beheadings and gradual curtailment of royal power on the other. Two chief agencies were to draw these extremes together--gunpowder and printer's ink. The one to blow feudalism off the earth and put an end to baronial domination--the other to unlock the storehouses of thought and introduce the rule of mind, to the permanent limitation of those other two classes of tyrants: priests and kings. The despised class, represented by the ruder of these two "high contracting parties," is to rise by slow and stormful evolution: the slave to become freeman--the freeman, yeoman--the yeoman, citizen--the citizen, an elector of rulers; out of all to be evolved that splendid, conservative, expansive power of England, the Middle Class. Happy England! that the two extremes stood that day and thereafter not as antagonists but as treaty-makers.

Richard found the Toussaint l'Overteur of that day prepared with very distinct and well-grounded grievances, though not numerous or unreasonable. He asked--

First--The abolition of slavery.

Second--Limitation of rent of land to fourpence an acre.

Third--Liberty to buy and sell in all markets and fairs, without favoritism or toll.

Fourth--Pardon for what they had done in order to obtain this interview.

The young king, more just than well-informed, more generous than politic, promised it all, and said he would immediately cause franchises and letters of pardon and emancipation to be drawn up under the royal seal. Great shouts of joy went up--premature shouts indeed!

During all that day and succeeding night thirty clerks were busy drawing up the charter of freedom and amnesty for every parish and township; and the next day the great body of the insurgents marched home, the king's proclamation in their hands, the king's banners over their heads, and in their hearts such joy as the children of Israel felt when Miriam's timbrel rang out its triumph over the Red Sea.

Well if this had been the end of it; but there was to be a dark and bloody finale for Richard and Walter. Walter Tyler and many of the Kentish men remained behind, dissatisfied with the terms of the writs. We do not know the causes of Tyler's refusal to accept the charters. Perhaps he foresaw what must and did come: that as soon as this pressure was removed from the young king, and his evil counselors again got control, all that had been given to the people would be withdrawn, and he wanted guaranties of fulfillment, just as the barons had done with John. However it was, we only know that the King and his attendants riding through Smith Fields the next day, chanced upon Tyler and his followers. Tyler rode out alone to speak with the king, and the mayor of London reproached him for approaching the king uninvited. Hot words followed, and the mayor stabbed Tyler dead, in sight of all his men.

Instantly thousands of arrows were drawn to let fly on the king and his party. Well for him had they sped and ended his unhappy career there, with the crown of emancipator upon it, instead of the failure, disgrace, and violent death that were to terminate it. Putting spurs to his horse he rode directly into the midst of the angry mob. "I will be your captain! Follow me!" he cried. This seemed to their simple-minded loyalty the obtaining of the end for which they had come out, and they followed the boy with docility to the fields at Islington, where a considerable force of royal troops was met. The king restrained the courage which now returned redundantly to the nobles and forbade the slaughter they were anxious to begin, dismissing the peasants to their homes.

And now the nobility began their revenge everywhere, and the embers of resistance were again blown into flames here and there. Green sketches the stamping-out of the fire:

"The revolt, indeed, was far from being at an end. A strong body of peasants occupied St. Albans. In the eastern counties 50,000 men forced the gates of St. Edmondsbury and wrested from the trembling monks a charter of enfranchisement for the town. Sittester, a dyer of Norwich, headed a strong mass of the peasants, under the title of the 'King of the Commons,' and compelled the nobles he had captured to act as his meat-tasters, and to serve him during his repast. But the warlike Bishop of Norwich fell lance in hand on the rebel camp and scattered them at the first shock. The villagers of Billericay demanded from the king the same liberties as their lords, and on his refusal threw themselves into the woods and fought two hard fights before they were reduced to submission."

For many years there were camps of refuge of these outlawed peasants in forests and upon lonely islands--Englishmen exiles in their own country for the cause of human rights.

The prelates and lawyers gathered around Richard with their sophisms and technicalities, to show him he had done an unlawful thing with his proclamations of emancipation and clemency; the barons backed the constitutional arguments up with fierce threats about this "royal usurpation," insomuch that Richard within two weeks recalled and canceled all his charters, and let loose the unrestrained arrogance of the nobles on the people. So many and such unwarranted executions took place that Parliament subsequently granted an act of indemnity to the savage perpetrators, who, it says, "made divers punishments upon the said villeins and other traitors without due process of law, but only to appease and cease the apparent mischief." All manumissions were declared void. But Richard submitted to the Parliament the proposition to abolish slavery if Parliament would lend its sanction. The lords and gentlemen replied, "The serfs are our chattels, and the king can not take our property from us without our consent. And this consent we have never given, and never will give were we all to die in one day." Had Richard insisted on keeping faith with the lower classes of his subjects, had he placed his crown and life in the scale against human slavery, he would have gone into history as the Great Emancipator of Englishmen, or as Freedom's Greatest Martyr. Either destiny was preferable to the ignominious end he did meet. He was a man for an emergency, but not a statesman for one of the world's great crises. But in a boy of sixteen were not his conduct and his attempt at a great deed wonderful?

It is a curious thing to reflect on that Abraham Lincoln, in a government of constitutional law and in a position of very limited powers, could with a stroke of the pen decree emancipation, while Richard, a ruler of almost absolute powers in an age of ill-defined authority and much lawless administration, could not take the chains off one of his subjects.

At this distance it is difficult to determine just how much influence the only servile uprising of England had upon the emancipation of her serfs. It at least stamped a wholesome dread of the laboring classes into the selfish souls of the nobles, a dread that had much influence on the contentions of succeeding reigns, and raised the common people in importance. Slavery did not disappear for over two centuries; "Good Queen Bess" got her much gain by selling her subjects for slaves in the West Indies. But if "they never die who perish in a good cause," the blood of Walter the Tyler aided the cause of human liberty, and he ought to be canonized as one of her martyrs, instead of being treated as the violent and bloody rioter that most historians make him.

ANECDOTES IN SERMONS.--The fashion which once prevailed of introducing historical anecdotes into addresses from the pulpit, is illustrated by the following extract from a sermon by the martyr Bishop Ridley: "Cambyses was a great emperor, such another as our master is; he had many lord-deputies, lord-presidents, and lieutenants under him. It is a great while ago since I read the history. It chanced he had under him, in one of his dominions, a briber, a gift-taker, a gratifier of rich men; he followed gifts as fast as he that followed the pudding; a hand-maker in his office, to make his son a great man; as the old saying is, 'Happy is the child whose father goeth to the devil.' The cry of the poor widow came to the emperor's ear, and caused him to flay the judge quick, and laid his skin in his chair of judgment, that all judges that should give judgment afterward should sit in the same skin. Surely it was a goodly sign, a goodly monument, the sign of the judge's skin. I pray God we may once see the sign of the skin in England."

PHYSIOLOGY.

Physiology is a science, because it embodies a collection of general principles and ascertained truths relating to a particular subject, and is called a natural science because these truths are founded on observation. The word "physiology" is derived from two Greek words meaning a discourse about nature; but it is used in a restricted sense, and is the science of the functions of the different parts of any living body. Thus we have animal and vegetable physiology, while the former is divided into human and comparative. The first of these divisions relates only to man, while the other reviews the entire animal kingdom.

Our object is to teach some of the simple truths of human physiology; such as may be intelligible without any extended knowledge of other sciences. It must be remembered, however, that a more thorough and complete study of physiology can not be undertaken without a considerable acquaintance with such sciences as mechanics, hydraulics, optics, etc., without which the action of the muscles, the circulation of fluids, and vision can not be properly and fully comprehended.

Whenever a piece of mechanism, designed for some particular use, is brought under our notice, and we wish to understand its manner of working, we naturally inquire about its structure; for without some knowledge of how its component parts are put together, and by what means it is put in motion, we can not hope to understand how it performs the part which we see it do. Such is the case, for example, with a watch or steam engine; their parts must be carefully studied in order that their workings may be fully understood.

Hence, it will be observed from what has been said, that it is impossible to study the uses of various parts of the body without some knowledge of anatomy, this being that branch of knowledge which treats of structure.

In order that anatomy may be studied the organs must be dissected.

The words "anatomy" and "dissection" have the same literal meaning, the former being derived from the Greek language, and the latter from the Latin, meaning to cut apart or separate. But anatomy is employed to signify the science of structure in living bodies, and dissection is used to denote the unravelling or laying bare the parts of the body, by means of which anatomy is studied.

The words "organ," "organization," and "organize," are so convenient and necessary that we must know what they mean. The word "organ" signifies some part or parts of the body that have a particular use or function: thus, muscles are organs of motion, and nerves of sensation; the eye is the organ of sight, and the heart and blood vessels are the organs for circulating the blood. Now, any structure is said to be organized, or to have organization, that possesses the properties which distinguish a living body from one that never had life. Therefore we speak of the organic world as distinguished from the inorganic; the former includes plants and animals, the latter minerals, etc.

The nature of that mysterious principle which we call life is unknown to scientists. Yet we may know and understand many of those things which are believed by physiologists concerning life. Certain of them believe that life is a phenomenon that follows organization; or, in other words, that organization is the cause, life the result; while others contend that organization is the result of life. In the former life is produced by changes that take place in matter, under the influence of those forces of nature called heat, light, electricity, and chemism; by the latter theory all these forces are present and act under the influence of a potent force called life. This will be our belief: Life is a distinct endowment, capable of propagation, and superior to all other forces by which it is attended. Let us see by what means living bodies are distinguished from unorganized. Living bodies increase in size; so do minerals; the former by the addition of material throughout the tissue, the latter by outside additions. Organized bodies have a limited existence. All are subject to constant change, and to final dissolution. They all spring from a parent, and only originate in this method. The opposite characteristics belong to unorganized matter.

This elemental living matter is called protoplasm. Its simplest form is termed a cell, and the word is applied to little bodies varying much in form. Thus some cells are really little bags filled with fluid. Such are those in which the fat is deposited; others are disk like, others lengthened, while some so-called cells are simply masses of jelly.

Out of these organic compounds all the softer tissue of the body is formed, such as fibrous, muscular, cellular, and adipose tissue.

Fat is deposited in little cells situated in the connective tissue.

The most remarkable part of the skeleton is the spinal column, commonly called the back-bone. It is made up of twenty-six bones, or spines, which are united together in a marvelous manner, combining strength and freedom of motion. Each spine has a central aperture which communicates with that of the adjoining spines, thus forming a long canal in which the spinal cord lies. This cord connects the brain with the various parts of the body. There is a soft cushion of cartilage between each spine, which adds much to the elasticity of the back-bone, protecting the brain from shocks. This protection is further accomplished by the curvature of the spine. These bones are not placed directly over each other, but are so arranged as to give three curves to the spinal column. Along the column there are openings, at each joint, through which the nerves come to supply fibers to the different organs of the body.

The bones of the arm corresponding to those of the leg are the humerus, the radius, and the ulna. The humerus is the bone of the upper arm, and is large and strong; it articulates with the body in so perfect a manner that the great variety of motions required to be performed is easily and gracefully accomplished. This bone is fastened by a ball and socket joint, but is not, like the thigh bone, firmly fixed to an immovable bone. It is attached to a broad bone called the scapula, or blade bone; this is fastened to the body by muscles which give it great freedom of motion. The bones of the fore arm are the radius and ulna: these are nearly of the same size; in this they differ from the leg bones.

The preparation of the food for assimilation by the tissues is accomplished in a long tube called the alimentary canal. This canal is made up of various parts having different functions and different construction. These parts we will briefly describe. They are the mouth, pharynx, aesophagus, stomach, small and large intestine.

As solid food requires to be broken up or ground before it passes into the stomach, the mouth is provided with teeth firmly implanted in the jaws, while the lower jaw is moved by strong muscles in two directions, one vertical, the other lateral. Man is supplied with two sets of teeth; the first adapted to the jaws of childhood; the second larger, which replace the former, are designed to last through life. The rudiments of each set are found in the jaws before birth. During the grinding or mastication of the food it is moistened and softened by a fluid called saliva. This also acts chemically upon it, changing the starch into sugar. The food is carried from the mouth to the stomach in a long tube called the aesophagus, by means of the muscular contraction of this tube.

Many of these nerves are not sensitive, in the ordinary use of the word. Thus, the retina of the eye is the expansion of the optic nerve, and, while it is sensitive to light, it is not to ordinary impressions, such as material contact. Also, the nerve of the ear is only sensitive to the vibrations of fluids. We see by light reflected from objects. This light passes through a set of lenses, and by means of these an image is formed on the retina, which impression is carried to the brain. Just how all this is accomplished is not known. The nerve of the ear floats in a fluid called lymph. This fluid receives the vibrations of bodies through the air, through the membranes and chain of bones, and thus the nerves receive and transmit them to the brain, which act constitutes hearing.

Volumes could not tell all that one single fiber of muscle contains that is instructive, much less the entire functions, constructions, and mysteries of a single organ of special sense. And to perform all the allotted functions every part must be in the best repair. This constitutes health. Health is maintained by cleanliness, by repose, by muscular activity, by moderate eating, by plenty of fresh air, by a contented disposition, and a clear and active mind. Watch over your body with a jealous care, for all your future depends upon its good condition.

SUNDAY READINGS.

THE LAW OF THE HOUSEHOLD.

"Honor thy father and thy mother; that thy days may be long in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee."--Exod. xx: 12.

We open this second division of the Law with the duties of man to man; and at its head stands the commandment of the household. I must repeat here the remark of eminent scholars, that each of the original tables probably contained five statutes; and thus the maxim we now consider was directly joined with the four concerning the worship of God. Such a view gives us indeed a new insight into the Hebrew religion, which linked the first of social truths with a divine faith; it is the anticipation of his Gospel, who has taught us that the love of parent and children is the type of our holier bond in the family of Christ. But there is a yet further thought in the words of this "commandment with promise." That "thy days maybe long in the land." Those earlier commandments tower above us like the lonely heights, where Moses communed with God; but as we read this sentence, we see rise on the eyes of the lawgiver the landscape of far Judea, with its laughing fields, the voice of children and the home of calm old age. These words suggest the whole line of our reasoning on this subject. Filial reverence is the fountain of all affections, all duties; it flows like the river of Eden, parted into its branching heads, through every channel of human life.

It is then the family, as the institution which God has implanted in our nature, and Christianity has hallowed, that we are to consider. I know indeed no richer study than thus to trace its growth. I have no theories to offer you. It is the simplest of facts. There has been no more favorite field for our philosophers than that of the origin of human government. Some have fancied that men met together in formal compact; others have held the state of nature that of a pack of wolves, at last brought together by self-interest to choose some kingly wolf, who could keep the peace; and we have to-day our sages, so enamored of their researches into comparative anatomy, that they can pass by all the nobler facts of social history, and find the primitive man in some anthropoid ape. Yet as the grandest laws of God are revealed in the nearest example, we learn more than volumes of such theory in the life of our own households. Government began with the family. It is no artificial thing. It was not imposed by force. There is no state of nature that goes before it; but as all our discoveries in organic life lead to the primary cell, so all social formations are only the enlargement of this little human embryo. We need no other truth than that he, who gave us this moral being, made us to dwell in mutual dependence; and thus the germ of all authority lies in the relation of parent and child, in the care it calls forth, in the weakness of infancy, and the natural reverence that springs from the heart. Open the Book of the Genesis; you see the patriarch Abraham dwelling in the tent with his children; you see this household passing into tribes, linked in a bond of brotherhood, reverencing the father of them all, who is priest and head; and you trace further on a Mosaic commonwealth. History repeats the same early chapter in the Arab of the desert to-day, or in the beginnings of ancient Rome. "Society in primitive times," it is said by one of the wisest of English jurists, in his work on Ancient Law, "was not a collection of individuals; it was an aggregation of families." Among all early peoples the law of the household is thus supreme; it embraces all duties, and reaches to the nicest detail of courtesy. The oldest laws of China are as rich in their family wisdom as any in the world. Filial reverence was the corner-stone of the state. I well remember with what surprise I saw the son of a venerable Parsee, himself a man of fifty, wait behind his father's chair during a long interview; it was a vestige of the stately manners of the East, strangely contrasting with our civilized rudeness. But if we will find the finest examples in the past, we must turn to those scenes in the Old Testament, where the aged patriarch lays his hands on his eldest born in token of his birth-right, or the twelve gather reverently about the bed of the dying Jacob to receive his blessing. In this household life, interwoven with all their social habits, the heart of the Hebrew was nursed; and in many a quiet home, like that of Nazareth, there grew the blossoming graces of childhood, that made this history so pure amidst all its decays.

But we must pass from this earlier view to the new life of Christianity, if we would know its nobler influence. Many pure affections and virtues grew without doubt in a heathen civilization. But the family authority was almost a despotism; the father had power of life and death over the child, and woman was little more than a slave. The one great feature of all social progress, we are told by the jurist already cited, has been the recognition of the rights of the person, instead of absolute family dependence. Here it was that the religion of the Gospel had its living power, and I ask you to study this wonderful fact in its early history. As we look back on the state of society at that time, we are struck everywhere with the decay of those fair examples of chastity, of maternal virtue, of household strength which bloomed in the old Roman commonwealth. Family life had withered, because it had not in its ancient pagan form those elements which could preserve its influence amidst the shameless sensuality of the world. The public talk of the forum, the theater, the games, the busy out-of-door existence, such as you see to-day in Southern Europe, were everything; nor was there a purer tide flowing into the great city, as from the country homes of England and America, to cleanse and freshen it. Religion was a brilliant temple pageantry. Thus, as in all pagan lands, you have the same striking facts; the degradation of woman and the degradation of man with it. This it was that the religion of Christ changed. It taught, as its first truth, that God was our Father, and all men one brotherhood in Christ. What a revelation was this beyond all that the pagan mind had known! The paternal power was no longer a despotism to the believer; the father knew that he had a Father in heaven, and that his child was no serf, but the household tie was a type of the holier family of God. Read that clear utterance of the household law in St. Paul: "Children, obey your parents in the Lord; fathers, provoke not your children to wrath." The Gospel cherished above all else the family authority; yet it hallowed, sweetened, enlarged it. It nursed the virtues of the household. It made woman the companion of the heart and home; it hallowed marriage; it taught the love of Christ and the brethren, contentment, industry, frugality, sacrifice, and charity to the poor. What picture so fair as in the letters of that time of its fresh, healthful life; that "church in the house," breathing the soul of the early religion? The kingdom came without observation, without noise; and a new home-born, home-bred society grew in the midst of the dying civilization.

THE LAW OF THE HOUSEHOLD.

In this light, then, we can understand, brethren, the place of the Christian family, as always the first of social institutions. Such is the view I wish to urge, because I believe that, far more than we suppose, this law of the family enters into the most real questions of our time as to popular education or social reform. We live in a day of theories; and in such a day we are most apt to forget the simple truths, which, in Coleridge's words, "are so true, that they lie bed-ridden by the side of the most exploded errors." I speak no mere sentiment; I address myself to the plain sense and Christian experience of all. It is the problem that presses on us to-day more than ever, when we look at the mingled good and evil of our modern world; when we enter one of our great cities, where wealth glitters as if there were no suffering, yet a step apart there lurks a world of beggary and crime, which our Christianity has hardly pierced, although it has sent a Livingston into the heart of Africa;--what is the hope of Christian more than pagan progress, of a Paris or New York more than a Rome? I give the answer, which I think all history as well as the Gospel gives. The purity of the household is the salt of our civilization. I know no other answer. Need I then, state the ground on which such a truth rests? The only lasting influence which can preserve or heal the social body is one that works from the root. We can not, with dreamers like Rousseau, believe the savage better than the civilized state. Art and science bring manifold vices with the good, yet we can never grapple with the sins of our day by vague railing against luxury. In the decaying age of the Roman world a Jerome retired into his cave at Bethlehem; but his idle despair did not cure the evil. We often indulge the same false humor. We speak of a London or a New York as the swollen ulcer of society, but we forget that we may as well talk of a body without its brain; that it is in mutual circulation, the country feeding the city with fresh blood, the city pouring it back enriched in its double circuit, the life is maintained; and thus while we see the vices, we should see also the enlarged activities, the myriad callings for the poor, the treasures of art and culture for all, the uncounted charities walking in every haunt of sorrow or sin. But this growth of civilization has in it no self-preserving might. A refined culture is no safeguard against our moral diseases. We repeat often that this American people is abler to keep its freedom and virtue, because of the education of all: yet it is one of those surface truths that may cover a fallacy. I believe heartily in popular education. But there is a more knowing vice as well as virtue. The mob of Paris is more intelligent than the country boor; but it is a witty and polished animal. Such training, without a deeper root, only quickens the weeds in the rank field of our time, and chokes the public conscience.

Whatever, then, the form of our civilization, it must depend on the tone of our household life for its healthy growth, because this precedes all else in its shaping power. All the germs of personal character, truth, purity, honesty, reverence of law, must be implanted in this soil. The state rests on it. The church rests on it, and its teaching is barren, unless it begin with home nurture. We may make what laws we will for the suppression of vice, what plans we will of education, what better methods of industry; but what are they without the education of the character? What is our most perfect theory of government, unless there be a self-governed people? What are commercial rules, if there be no conscience of integrity and honor? Study this truth in its widest bearings. Our time is marked by its noble efforts for reform. We hail each healthy improvement in the condition of the poor, the opening of new channels of labor, the breaking down of false monopolies.

It is thus, my friends, we are to learn the bearing of such a truth on our own land and time. We can not study the growth of society, especially in our great cities, without observing that there are many influences, such as I have already described in the old Pagan civilization, which tend to impair the purity of home. The family habits decay in the larger world of sensual splendor. It is becoming a hard thing for our young men of fashion to afford the luxury of marriage; and our young women learn that the aim of life is a rich husband, who can supply the gold for the wardrobe and the glitter of an establishment. We have imported from abroad within these few years many of the loose ideas of modern Epicurism. But there are, besides, influences peculiar to our American society, which are developing a type of precocious youth not pleasant to look upon. I know not whether it be the abuse of our free institutions, that begets our style of manners: but we are too fast losing the habits of home authority and filial reverence. It has been truly said of us, that we have as much family government as ever, but the young govern the parents. We have no children now-a-days. Our infants leap from the nursery into the drawing-room; and while abroad a son or a daughter has hardly left the retreat of home, here they are already veterans in the ways of fashion, and society is quite surrendered to them. Many of our foreign visitors have repeated the remark of De Tocqueville, that an American girl has more of self-poised ease, but is wanting in the fresh charm seen so often in the young maidens of England or France. I doubt not there is a better side to this. I would not keep them, as is too often done abroad, shut in nursery or convent without the education of the character. I love the intelligence, the generous freedom of youth, but I wish we might not lose with these the modest heart, the simple tastes of past years. It maybe the passing excess of our national childhood, but it is not to be flattered as it is too often. I know that I am very old-fashioned in my ideas, yet it may be well if we soberly reflect on these things. We may grow in wealth and all the arts of social culture, but let these fast habits of the time, this whirl of our modern life eat into the heart of our home piety, and the whole body must die of its own gangrenes.

In that conviction I urge on you, my friends, your personal obligation. Who of us can enough appreciate its meaning? Who of us, if he could keep afresh the feeling of awe and tenderness with which he looked on the face of his first-born infant, and felt what an undiscovered world was opened to him, who would ever need to learn his duty? What a work it is, how ceaseless, how growing at each step, how delicate in all its adaptations, how asking all our love, our thoughtfulness, our patience! I offer you no system of education. I repeat only the principle, which I thank God is the root of all wholesome teaching, that a Christian godliness is the growth of the whole character; and therefore it begins with the recognition of the child as a new-born member of the family of Christ; and plants its simplest truths in the moral affections, and blends them with the real duties of life. This is sound sense and piety. This, in Wordsworth's happy line, is

Pure religion breathing household laws.

Give your offspring this training of the character; teach them to be frank and open-hearted, to hate a lie or a mean action, to be kind to the poor, to protect the weaker, to respect gray hairs, to reverence your authority from love not fear, to cherish the natural pleasures and employments of home, a book or a ramble more than the finery of modish children young or old; above all to be always constant in their Christian habits, with no affectations of a premature piety, with a child's faults, but a child's sweet faith; give them, I say, this training, if you will have them men and women indeed.

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