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ment, be sure your sin will find you out, and the Lord will visit it." When such is the final declaration of a parent or rightful governor, whose previous more gentle dissuasions have proved ineffectual, it is not often. that the words fall to the ground.

The same rule holds good with servants. We detect something in their habits, language, or pursuits in no way interfering with the due discharge of their duties to us, but such as we should not sanction in ourselves, or expect the Lord to sanction, in any professing his holy name. The alternative is plain after setting it before them in the light of scripture, and showing its injurious tendency, we must plead our own accountability before God. "Abraham is held out to us as a pattern for believers, who are told to walk in his faith: he, by the power of that faith, commanded his children and household to keep the way of the Lord, and he was therein greatly blessed. Eli, neglecting so to do, was terribly scourged, and a sword rested on his posterity. These are warnings to me: you form part of my household, and if you persist in a wrong course, you must do so no longer. I part with

you for no fault in your conduct towards me, but because I dare not, as your master, stand faulty before God."

Let no one say this savours of works-of cleansing the outside of the cup and platter only. All things pertaining to the Christian. ought to be pure and clean, so far as he can make them so for every believer is the temple of God, and these vessels of the temple, whether they be gold or clay, should be kept decent. Young Edward soon put down the rebellion that he so royally met and rebuked: Abraham promptly ejected the bond-woman and her son who mocked a divine ordinance and persecuted him that was born after the Spirit. Joshua could not enter into the domestic details of all the families of Israel, but publicly pledged himself that both he and his house would serve the Lord.

In all these cases, the exercise of authority was plainly implied, and a blessing accompanied it. Eli fell short of his duty for his sin the ark was taken, his sons were slain, his own neck broken, and poverty and degradation entailed on his house for ever.

I

No. VIII.

HOME-BIRDS.

THIS phrase expresses a class once comprising nearly the whole population of England, now diminished to so lank a minority that it serves as an exception to establish the general rule of what we might perhaps call Flittiveness, in contra-distinction to the phrenological development known as Inhabitativeness.

No doubt the title, Home-bird, took its rise from the marked characteristic of the feathered race in general, as opposed to the migratory families, who fly from the face of winter, as our flitters fly from that of summer when it smiles upon them in their own homes, to see how it looks elsewhere; but I am not going to select any bird for an illustration, either of this quality or its opposite, though my pet pigeons, now basking in the sunshine on the platform of their house, under the canopy of a

bright acacia, are peering at me as I write, as though to say, 'look at us, and do us justice; are not we Home-birds?

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Whence can this mania have arisen, which annually shuffles our population, so that each seems to occupy his neighbour's place, and to transfer his own to another? Undoubtedly, among the pent-up dwellers in cities, it is not only justifiable, but clearly a right, and a commendable act too, to seize an opportunity for seeing the broad natural world which God made for man to expatiate in, decked in those glorious and refreshing charms that are scarcely admissible into the narrow artificial world which man has made for himself to plod in. There are also cases of deranged health, requiring even the inhabitants of a more rural district to seek the breezes of ocean; and there are claims of consanguinity, and of attached friendship, that call for a kindly interchange of visits now and then, for which summer affords the most fitting opportunity. These are the right exceptions to an old rule; but the new rule to which the opposite class, the Home-birds, now form the pitied, not the

pitiable exception, sends a summons through the land to pack up and be gone.

If this were merely a matter of taste, the only feeling excited by the strange spectacle would be one of self-gratulation on the part of those who have escaped the epidemic: whose habitations being placed beyond the range of close-built streets, and canopies of smoke, and exhalations from water impregnated with the vile drainings of a city, possess a charm sufficient to detain them; while the fields that so long presented a dark, uninteresting surface to their view, mantle with summer tints, sending fortht he fragrance of new-mown hay, waving their ripening corn to court the sickle, and spreading their rich hedge-rows, festooned with the wild garlands of the season. These Home-birds feel it a privilege to see their own garden repay the labour and the cost bestowed on it preparatory to that very season of beauty and produce; they love to contrast the verdure of its foliage and the glow of its flowers with the denuded stems,—the buried, invisible roots of winter. The song is pleasant to them that comes from the throat of the little warbler, whom their hand fed during the in

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