The boy was silent a little, and then said, Tell me, father, again, how Jesus redeemed us.

Yes, my boy, I'll tell thee again and again, in God's own words: He redeemed us with His own blood. He was taken by wicked hands and nailed to the cross; they put a crown of thorns upon His head; they pierced his side. It was done by wicked hands, but He gave himself for

us.

I remember looking in the boy's face and seeing tears in his eyes.

Then, father, did the blood of Jesus flow? Yes; His head, His hands, His feet, His pierced side, all bled for sinners, for wretched sinners!

For me and you, father?

Yes, my boy; for me and thee, and for thousands and tens of thousands that are redeemed with his precious blood.

Father, I love the Lord Jesus!

Will you serve him, John?

You'll teach me how to serve him?

Yes, John; it must be with all your heart, and all your soul, and all your mind, and all your strength.

Often, Sir, have I heard my father tell this conversation; and he said it made a cold chill run through him; he said he felt as if he had fallen in with spirits from another world, and could hardly help fancying it was not real.

They got over a stile that was in the bye way to church; but as we had to go on our business

we kept the highway that took us by the gentleman's house. I remember my father didn't speak a word all the way; and when he delivered the plants, the servant asked if he was ill; but he "I'm rather sick, but it's going off."

said,

We went to church, and I was entertained by all I saw; for you'll perceive, Sir, I hadn't been trained in the way I should go. I saw the boy and his father in the next pew, but was surprised to see him looking in his father's book, and singing the psalms with the congregation. There was this difference between him and me, he was doing something, and I was looking at other people's doings.

When the clergyman got up into the pulpit and gave out his text, the father found it in the Bible and showed it to his boy.

When service was over, my father sat still as if he'd forgot to go; so I took him by the hand, and said, Come, father, let's go away; and so we walked back home. I was surprised my father didn't speak, but amused myself by whistling tunes. I'm more particular in telling you all this, Sir, because it was the beginning of that bringing up he gave me afterwards. It came on a rainy evening, so nobody came in to talk, and my father, and mother, and brother, and sister, were all at home. My mother began to order sister Sally to put off her fine Sunday clothes, as we should not see anybody, and she refused to obey, saying, she shouldn't. My mother flew into a passion, and then my father stopt her by saying,

1

What signifies being in a passion? it's your own fault; we've never taught her better. What is better than to do as I bid her?

My father bid us all sit down quietly, till he told us something. And then in a very grave way, he told us what had passed in his mind, saying, I'm convinced we neither know how to do our own duty, nor to teach the children their's, and I'll seek out that man, and beg him to teach us.

My mother said, she didn't want her house to be turned upside down, and us all to be made Methodists.

But my father did what he said; and next day he took us near to him, and confessed his sin to us all, for his great neglect of us; and said, Now take notice, children, from this day I begin a new course, and God help me to worship and serve him, and to teach you to do so too!

They none of 'em fell in with his plan but me. Poor brother John died soon after of the smallpox he caught; and sister Sally married a soldier, and after a hard life, died in America. Many's the tears my father shed for them, always repenting himself before God, that he had left them so long to get hardened in ungodliness. I was the youngest, and God gave grace and a blessing to fix my heart on my father's new way. But my mother rebelled against it sadly, for a long time; so that many a hard thing happened to me for the "instruction of my father, and the law of my mother," were quite different, and

it was like having to serve two masters. My father always watched me; for my temptation was to despise my mother, because she didn't take the same rule. But he rebuked me sharply for that, and made me always explain what she wanted, and then made me confess, if the thing was a right thing, I must do it, and honor her as my mother, though the reason why she ordered it might be different from the reason he might have; and, except when it was anything that interfered with my duty to God, he always made me obey; and often gave up his own wishes, when contrary to hers, provided duty did not forbid it.

He was very intimate with our godly neighbor, and took his counsel in every thing, and John and me grew great friends. The Bible

came to be our delight, and we loved each other in the Lord; and by degrees, every thing that my father ordered me to do, or taught me, was by Bible rules and even my poor mother got subdued in time, and so our house was a house of peace, for Jesus, the Prince of Peace, was our Lord, and our God.

Now you see, Sir, here is an example of what you said about the promise of all things going well with thee, which shows the blessing on the duty of parents to children; and if master Charles would look at the sixth chapter of Deuteronomy, and read from the twentieth verse, he will see how our godly friend fulfilled the direction of God to his son, and by that means became a blessing to my father and me.

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Those who had Bibles with them instantly turned to the passage as directed by Thomas, and Charles read aloud,

"And when thy son asketh thee in time to come, saying, What mean the testimonies, and the statutes, and the judgments, which the Lord our God hath commanded you? then thou shalt say unto thy son, We were Pharaoh's bondmen in Egypt; and the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand; and the Lord showed signs and wonders, great and sore, upon Egypt, upon Pharaoh, and upon all his household, before our eyes; and he brought us out from thence that he might bring us in, to give us the land which he sware unto our fathers: and the Lord commanded us to do all these statutes, to fear the Lord our God for our good always, that he might preserve us alive, as it is this day."

This reference, I said, turning to the elder part of my company, is one that has always been most interesting to me, and by it I have many times been directed when young children have made inquiries of a religious nature, to be full and explicit in answering these inquiries. I have often heard parents say with a mixed kind of expression," Really, my children sometimes ask questions which it puzzles me to answer." The pride they feel in displaying the acuteness of their children's understanding, deceives them into the exposure of their own ignorance and culpable negligence in not being prepared to answer them. I have often, too, seen them teas