this be acknowledged, then, whatever may be regarded its origin, we are still at one on this point,-that there is danger. To awaken this feeling is, at present, all my aim; though, in fact, it is not all the truth. The Bible, as we have seen, says the root of the evil exists and is to be sought in the heart of the youngest child. "Its nature is corrupt." John iii. 6. "By nature it is a child of wrath." Eph. ii. 3. But if any would yet demur, then together we will bear in mind that the tender herb may be swerved and bent by blasts from without. The long howling storms of winter, or sudden fierce tornadoes of the summer, especially as there is power enough in them to twist and fell the mightiest oak, may be far too much for the sapling of days. Just so there are storms and tornadoes in the moral world of a most desolating nature. And where is that community, in city or country, in which the child can go forth wholly unexposed? These moral tornadoes appear in the form of idleness and dishonesty, profanity and Sabbath-breaking, indulgence of sundry gross and angry appetites and passions. They sweep along our public streets, penetrate the sacred enclosure of the school-room or the spot designed and set apart for childish sports; and, after all our care and effort, we sometimes find them howling within the doors and windows of the child's best and surest retreat,the parents' home. And hence it follows, as a truth, that there is no child who, unaided and exposed, can escape from harm. Continued neglect and want of assistance may alone terminate in disgraceful and hopeless ruin. 2. Training implies watchfulness. The design of watchfulness will be to detect any deviation from the course we would have the child pursue. The man who would have his vine or sapling grow in a direction according to his mind must not be satisfied with merely passing it at distant intervals, according as business or pleasure may call him by that way, or with occasional reports concerning it from those who may chance to see it. Just in proportion to his interest in the matter will be the frequency of going himself, and going designedly and on purpose, to see if all is right. So, also, just as he may be more or less impressed with a sense of its danger from the many and powerful influences to which it stands exposed will be his anxiety to watch, protect, and assist it. Should school, or other cause, require the absence of their children for a season, anxious and faithful parents will avail themselves of the first opportunity, and of such methods as their judgments and duty shall point out, to ascertain what, if any, evil has followed from their intercourse and associations abroad. This end will not and cannot be gained by assuming that all is well, nor by deciding that it is so from a distant prospect. The twig may seem straight from afar, while closer inspection discloses many a curve. So may it be with a child, especially if thrown much with others. He may learn the wrong, and, at the same time, knowing that it is wrong, in a parent's presence and hearing may forbear thus to speak or act. Hence, it will require a nearer approach-by familiar conversation, or otherwise-to ascertain his views, and, if wrong, to strive to set him right. 3. Training implies that the time necessarily required for the work must and will be taken. Such a suggestion assumes that this training, if truly and regularly carried on, will necessarily be at the expense of time particularly and exclusively devoted to it;-hence, that, with the responsibility of the training of children upon us, we must not allow ourselves to be so involved in business of a different kind that want of time shall regularly be urged as an apology for neglecting this. And yet who has not often heard this plea presented? Many are the instances, both within and out of the church, in which even parents are heard to confess that their children are running at random through neglect, and that they are not at all brought up in accordance with the rule and care which they themselves admit to be true and right. But what forbids following out these convictions of what is true and right? Ever and anon you hear, as an excuse and kind of palliative to conscience, "We have not time to attend to these children, who, on account of the pressure of our engagements, are thus left so wholly to themselves and to the influences which others may exert upon them." Do not some professors of religion at times-yea, often-so excuse themselves? Now, what can be the reason that any parent is unable to command the time needful for a work at once so important and so delightful? Is it because of certain relations that he sustains to the community? i. e. because his relations abroad conflict with those at home? But suppose such conflict of claims actually to exist. Manifestly, one of the two must yield. The case, therefore, resolves itself into this simple inquiry:- Which claim is first in nature and in strength? In the order that God has established, and to which our own natures heartily respond, which, oh, which ought to prove the stronger and prevail?-claims from our relations to our beloved children, or to strangers? And yet how sadly true that time which was due and ought to have been devoted to "The Little Ones at Home" is regularly dissipated among the thousand calls which society is urging! And, while such are gone upon these social errands, unmindful that the vine, through mere neglect-much more if exposed to harm-falls, becomes worthless, and dies, they imagine that all is well if children only play, or sleep, or are confined to the care and influence of some workinggirl with whom they are not afraid to leave them." Is the apology offered based upon the toil needful not only for their support, but to have them live in comfort and to receive "a portion" when left as orphans? Diligence and care to provide for his family undoubtedly are due from each that stands at its head. But who sincerely believes that the feeding and clothing of the body exhausts the idea of the care and provision due from a parent to a child? Who does not admit that the mental and moral, no less than the physical, call for a share in this care and provision? Hence, to plead that our labour for the physical (which is the very essence of the excuse when urged) precludes the possibility of attending to the others, is, again, to affirm the existence of conflicting claims upon our time. But even if this were granted,-which, to a certain and proper degree, must be denied,-yet, for the present, granting it as a real difficulty, as before, so now we have only to inquire and to decide which of the two stands first? Which, oh, which, is of more importance to those children?-nourished bodies and means for gentility and outward show in society, or what is conceded to be proper training as to intellect and morality? And yet are there not mothers, even, who habitually plead their toil in "the care of the family" as their only and sufficient reason for having no time familiarly to instruct and cheer their children, fully to meet the wants of their expanding, inquiring minds, or patiently, regularly, and decidedly to subdue their insubordination and correct their wanderings? Alas for those children who have been. intrusted to parents that are capable of making parental ties yield to every other, or duties, avowedly the greater, constantly to give place to those which are less! Surely they are deserving of sympathy, and swell the number who need "to be looked up" for the Sabbath-school or other kind and pious care. Parents who can urge such a plea for their failure in this service must have most unworthy views of the relation they sustain, or most sordid views of worldly estimation and worldly gain. In all this it is not specified how much time is essential for this work. The whole idea now presented may be summed up by saying that whatever time enlightened and anxious parents see and feel to be necessary for the proper training of their children must be given up to this great work, and that there is no relation of life that has a more imperative claim upon time. To say that we have no time for this service is only equivalent to saying that we have not time to answer the great design of God in constituting families and putting us into that relation. Just observe how he has subdivided and apportioned all the children of the world into little groups-probably not exceeding an average of three or four,—in order that all might be trained for usefulness here and happiness hereafter, and yet none burdened with the work of training! To neglect or excuse ourselves from this work, therefore, is, most certainly, to neglect or excuse ourselves from a duty which grows out of the very design of the family relation. L. H. C. A CHILD'S PRAYER TO THE SHEPHERD. GENTLE Shepherd, pity me When the storms of life arise,-— When the tempter we behold,- Bistorical and Biographical. THE BEGINNING OF NEWSPAPERS. "THE first newspaper was issued monthly, in manuscript form, in the republic of Venice, and was called the Gazetta, probably from a farthing coin peculiar to Venice, and which was the common price at which it was sold. Thirty volumes of it are still preserved in a library at Florence. It was long supposed that the first newspaper published in England was at the epoch of the Spanish Armada, but it has been discovered that the copies of that bearing the imprint of 1588, in the British Museum, were forgeries. There was no doubt that the puny ancestor of the myriads of broad sheets was not published in London till 1622-one hundred and fifty years after the art of printing had been discovered, and it was nearly one hundred years more before a daily paper was ventured upon. Periodical papers seem first to have been used by the English during the times of the Commonwealth, and were then called 'weekly newsbooks.' Some of them had most whimsical titles. It was common with the early papers to have a blank page, which was sometimes filled up, in the paucity of news, by selections from the Scriptures. "The first newspaper in North America was printed in Boston, in 1690. Only one copy of that paper is known to be in existence. It was deposited in the State Paper Office in London, and is about the size of an ordinary sheet of letter-paper. It was stopped by the government. The Boston News-Letter was the first regular paper. It was first issued in 1704, and was printed by John Allan, in Pudding Lane. The contents of some of the early numbers are very peculiar. It had a speech of Queen Anne to Parliament, delivered one hundred and twenty days previously, and this was the latest news from England. In one of the early numbers there was an announcement that, by order of the Postmaster-General of North America, the post between Boston and New York sets out once a fortnight. Negro men, women, and children were advertised to be sold; and a call was made upon a woman who had stolen a piece of fine lace worth fourteen shillings a yard, and upon another who had conveyed a piece of fine calico under her riding-hood, to return the same or be exposed in the newspapers." The statistics of newspapers we shall take some future occasion to present to our readers. DR. ALEXANDER THE ORIGINATOR OF RELIGIOUS NEWSPAPERS. "The Presbyterian" says, "After all that has been said as to the relative claims of various parties to the honour of having originated religious newspapers, it seems that it belongs to the late Dr. Alexander. date of 1810, in his biography he is quoted as saying: Under "In considering the wants of the people and the difficulties of reaching the multitude with religious instructions, I conceived the plan of a religious newspaper, a thing at that time unknown in the world. But as the thing was new, I mentioned it to none but two or three of my ruling elders, and it met with approbation. It was suggested that we had a printer, who was a well-informed young man, John W. Scott. I conversed with him, and he drew up a wellwritten but rather florid address, to accompany a prospectus. Before the plan was carried into effect I was removed to Princeton; but Mr. Scott went forward with the enterprise, and published for a number of years, before any other work of the kind was thought of, The Christian Remembrancer. "This paper, having been published in Philadelphia in 1810, was the pioneer of this class of journals, and is entitled to rank as the oldest religious newspaper. As to Dr. Alexander's connection with the matter, it is well known that he was true to his idea of the importance of this agency for usefulness to his dying day, having, as is well known, written very extensively for the religious newspapers, especially in the later years of his life." THE GRAVES OF TENNENT AND FINLEY. AMONG the many interesting incidents connected with the church of Abington, Pennsylvania, (one of the oldest in the country, having been organized in 1714,) is the following: In 1853, a lady of Philadelphia, a granddaughter of Rev. GILBERT TENNENT, asked me if we would consent to have the remains of her grandfather interred at Abington. I answered, "Certainly, madam; we shall esteem it an honour to have the dust of such an eminent servant of God among us." When the old church at the corner of Arch and Third Streets was sold and torn down, the remains of Gilbert Tennent and President Finley were taken up and put in a strong box, and placed in the family vault of the late Charles Chauncey, Esq. There they remained until the time specifiea above, when they were transferred to our graveyard, and a handsome marble monument placed to mark the spot. From the inscription it ap |