ot
fully, in this world, even by the most judicious Christian parents.

Considering the instinctive love of offspring which God has implanted in
the parental bosom, it is most painful to see the utter dislike which so
many persons at the present day, who have entered the marriage relation,
evince to the care and responsibility which the guardianship of children
must ever involve.

There is something in all this manifestly wrong. It is unnatural. It is
even monstrous--even below the brute creation. It interferes with the
whole economy of nature, and frustrates the wise and benevolent designs
of the Creator, when he set the solitary in families. No person who
takes into view eternal realities and prospects, can, while so doing,
indulge in such selfish, carnal and sordid views. Those who are without
natural affection are classed by Paul with the enemies of all
righteousness. We cannot therefore but look suspiciously upon all such
as deny the marriage relation, cause of abuses (this is not the way to
cure them), or, for any pretext, profess to plead the superior
advantages of those who, for reasons best known to themselves, may
choose a state of "single blessedness," however plausible or cogent
their arguments may appear in favor of such a choice. We may not do evil
that good may come, or in other words, "root up the tares, lest we also
root up the wheat."

* * * * *

Original.

THE ORPHAN SON AND PRAYING MOTHER.

Some years since a small volume was sent to me by a friend, containing
an account of the labors of a pious missionary along the line of the
Erie canal. I read it with great interest, and I trust, with profit. God
honors his word; he honors his faithful servants; and when the Great Day
shall reveal the secrets of this world, it will be seen to the glory of
divine grace, that many a humble missionary was made the instrument of
eternal consolation to the poor neglected orphan--in answer to a pious
mother's prayers.

I beg leave to ask the insertion in the Magazine of a touching scene,
which occurred during a missionary tour of the above friend of the
outcast and neglected. I shall give the narrative chiefly in his own
words.

"I called at a horse station one morning very early. The station keeper
had just got up, and stood in the door. I told him my business, and that
I desired to see his boys a few moments. He said his boys were in bed,
and as I was an old man, he did no