and to acquit yourself honorably in view of witnessing angels, amidst these responsibilities. You will rejoice with pure and serene joy, if you are enabled to behold the mother, in her own peculiar sphere, cleaving to the Lord of the covenant. You will delight to enforce her judicious regulations with your decisive authority, and embody her affec tions and persuasions in your paternal counsels and prayers.

How guilty are those fathers who publicly profess religion, and yet who will not act as the priest of their household; whose voice, if heard in prayer, would sound strange in the ears of those children who often behold them at the table of the Lord. If there is one such father now reading these remarks, I conjure him to repent. I beg of him to remeinber, that God will hold him responsible for depriving his family of these sacred rights, which he has demanded for them in the very provisions of the covenant. Your neglect, O guilty professor, embarrasses your partner in life; if she is pious, it discourages her exertions; if she is impenitent, it will probably ruin her soul.

To the impenitent father these views come with imploring earnestness, and with alarming import. Perhaps, a pious wife, in the ear of her child, has to explain why the father does not pray. Perhaps the thoughtful child that has visited where the family altar was honored, sits wondering in her mind why her father does not pray. Perhaps in the simplicity of childhood, she asked you, why you do not pray. Perhaps you are called to stand in the place of your aged father, now superannuated or departed, and that on you rests the guilt of causing the voice of prayer to cease in the ancient mansion, whose walls had for ages been consecrated by the holy words of faith, and the simple rites of the patriarchal Church. If any or all of these impressive circumstances put in their plea for God, how stubborn must that heart be, which shall interpose between the descending

blessings of consecrated ages past, and the immortal interests of ages to come, and erect the barriers of unholy parental influence, to roll back the living waters. Perhaps, if you have no such pious ancestry, you have lured away from the God of her fathers your devoted wife, and are standing between her soul and the spiritual good which, were it not for your influence, she would have secured to herself and her children.

Yet, if no such peculiar fact is connected with your history, there are two great facts connected with your paternal relation, which should arouse you to repentance. One is, that God will call you to account, as the head of the family, for all your abuse of the sacred powers with which he invested you. The other is, that he will demand of you a reason for your refusal to act as his minister, in the circle where he placed you. From this station of responsibility you cannot descend, so long as your paternal relations exist. The final account will of course be called for. What wilt thou say when he shall punish thee? "Prepare to meet thy God," impenitent father. Be sure, moreover, that he will not meet thee as a man.

3. The responsibility of the father is manifest from the fact, that he transmits his name, and the great historical associations of the family, through all the periods of time. Is it no object to you, Christian father, that the name which is written on the Lamb's book of life, and that which you transmit to innumerable descendants, should pass down, laden with promises; venerable for its Christian renown, and revered for its holy memories? Is it nothing to you, that either you now inherit such a name from ages past, or now may thus present in the chancery of the covenant your own name, for ages to come? It is a great thing for a father to have his name written in the book of life. It is written on the bright leaf of the covenant of grace, ensured

for free pardon; for sanctification, and perseverance; for final glory. It is written on the leaf of the household cove. nant, adorned with the personal promise of grace, on one page, and with the everlasting household promise on the other. An edition of the book of life, published, so far as it may be to mortals, for the use of the Church. Will it be no joy, to have angels continue to announce it, for the delight of heaven, that another and another of distant generations, bearing that name, have repented? Will it not be above all earthly applause, to hear the ancient inhabitants of hea. ven respond "that same name, that old, familiar name?” This is the glory, the honor, the immortality, of the faithful father. In these methods, surely, the name of the just shall be held in everlasting remembrance.

But the name of the wicked shall rot. Is it noth. ing to you, O impenitent father, that whatever honors may be associated with your name, in the records of worldly glory, it shall be indelibly disgraced in heaven? Is it nothing, that as to the third and fourth generation, thy influence descends upon those that wear thy name, "the tormentors" shall calmly await the death of thy descendants, as affording a sure addition to their number, or taunt thee with astonishment, if any of thine come not to the place of their dwelling? Is it nothing, when the overcoming mercy of God shall supplant thy influence, and elevate that name, as worn by distant ages, amidst the salvations of the millennium, to have it distinctly recorded, that had not thy influence been especially counteracted by his sovereign grace, thou wouldst have sent it down disgraced amidst all those glories? Is it nothing, to expose those that wear it, to those terrible judgments which will prepare the way for the millennium, by the extermination of the ungodly? Is it nothing, amidst the revelations of the judgment, to have thy name, as transmitted along with thine influence, stained

with all manner of crime, and characterized by all degrees of rebellion, through various ages? Ah! how will it appear, when the searchings of the judgment shall reveal the hearts that have gloried beneath it? Reveal those hearts, in all the history of their outbursting influence, and the secresy of their vilest passions! Pause, O impenitent father, and give thy name-thy patriarchal name-thine hereditary appellation-to the God of grace. Inscribe it,

associated with the names of thy children, and of thy wife, on the Abrahamic covenant! The wings of that covenant are lifted, to cover thee! O come thyself, and gather thy

children under them!

The responsibility of the father is pre-eminently great. He needs, therefore, to understand the covenant, in order that he may fully appreciate his responsibility, and at the same time be sustained under its pressure. He is the constituted head, priest, and representative of his household. He is invested with these offices by the unchanging ordinances of God. He may not retire from this station of responsibilities. Overwhelming motives call him to faithfulness. He needs to take advantage of all the covenant promises. His daughter, blending the mother's grace with the father's dignity, claims the guardianship of the covenant. The purity, the elevation of its principles, should be so wrought into the father's character, that his image in all times of temptation should rise upon her heart, like a guardian spirit, to purify, energize, and protect. His son, exposed in this bustling and licentious age, to a thousand snares, as he breaks forth from the scenes of the nursery and of quiet home, to mingle with the world, needs a father's thorough instructions, nobleness of example, unsullied reputation, and inspiring presence, to be at once a model of imitation and a wall of defence. The great enterprises of benevolence; the revolutionary spirit of the age; the great conflict of principles; the rising im

portance of questions, of a moral nature, call loudly upon the fathers of this age to build the prospects of their sons on the enduring foundations of the gracious covenant. O, how unwise, how recreant to all sacred trust, is that father, who, not content with refusing to discharge his duty, does all he can to countervail the efforts of a believing wife; who, by his habitual ungodliness, his vile sentiments, and perhaps his outrageous abuse of conjugal relations, per, verts all the high powers of usefulness which God has con. ferred upon him, into means of ruin for his offspring, and into stores of vengeance for himself. If such a father shall read this passage, I beg him to remember, that the God of the widow and the orphan will avenge upon his soul that conduct which, to his family, is worse than widowhood and orphanage. Perhaps God, to save the family, may out him suddenly down, in order that the mother may freely per form the duties which he neglects, or at least exert her own influence, uncounteracted.

Perhaps the mother may be removed to a place where the wicked trouble not, while the father is left to mould and fashion morally his offspring according to his own character, and provide himself with accusers for the judgment seat, and with tormentors for the scenes of the pit. Terrible will be the fall of that father who tramples on the interests which the covenant is designed to protect, and defies the authority of that God who has pledged for its vindication, not only the issues of his grace, but the severity of his retri bution,