n bless yours. Has he heard their prayers? he can hear and answer
yours.

Say not that you have prayed, labored, watched, and all in vain! How
long have you thus toiled? thus wrestled? Years? Well, and may be you
will have to toil and strive years to come. What then! Your Heavenly
Father knows precisely when it is best to answer you, and how! Suppose
you pray and labor ten, twenty, thirty years--and then you
succeed--won't the salvation of your children be a sufficient reward?
How do worldly parents do? Take an example from them. _They_ spend
_life_ in laying up this world's goods for their children--treasures
which perish in the using. Surely, then, you may, with great propriety,
devote a few years to secure an imperishable crown of glory for your
sons and daughters. For what is the present world--its gold of
California or its gems of Golconda--what are its honors--its stars,
coronets, crowns--to an inheritance in the kingdom of God!

The time has not yet come when parents appreciate this subject as they
will do. Oh, no! and until they realize their duty, their privileges,
the purchase which they have on the throne of God by means of faith, and
their covenant interest in the blood of Jesus, there is reason to fear
that many children will perish, but who need not perish--who would not
perish were their parents as faithful and energetic as parents will be
in some more distant age of the world.

But why postpone what may be realized now? Why relinquish blessings of
vast and incomparable magnitude to others which you may enjoy, and which
it is no benevolence to forego for others, because when they come upon
the stage, there will be blessings for them in abundance and to spare?
Let the sentiment fall upon your hearts, and make its appropriate
impression there--"While God invites, how blest the day!"

* * * * *

If the candle of your earthly comfort be blown out, remember it is but a
little while to the break of day, when there will be no more need of
_candles_.

* * * * *

CHRISTIAN, wouldst thou have an easy death? then get a
mortified heart; the surgeon's knife is scarcely felt when it cuts off a
mortified member.

* * * * *

FROST.

BY MRS. JULIA NORTON.

The beams of morn were glittering in the east,
The hoary frost had gathered like a mist
On every blade of grass, on plant and flower,
And sparkling w