WHITE AS SNOW. Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow."-Isaiah i. 18. HITE AS SNOW!" Oh what a promise For the heavy-laden When, by faith, the soul receives it, Which upon my conscience lie. God alone can look within'; Proves my sin and shame and loss; Softly carpeting the ground, Wreathing with a wreath of silver Every common thing around? Have you ever placed beside it Spotless linen, fair and white? Did it not seem foul by contrast, Like a shadow on the light? "White as snow!" Can my trans gressions Thus be wholly washed away, Dare to lift his head in pride? EARLY CONVERSIONS.-I believe in early conversions. A lady of my acquaintance told me she was converted at seven years of age. Her father was leader of a classmeeting. One night she was anxious to go with him, but was not permitted to go. "Weeping, my mother asked me the reason. I replied, 'I do think, if I'd gone to my father's class to-night and heard him talk to the class, and their replies to him, I know I should have learnt to love Jesus better.' Mother said, 'Bless the Lord for that; come upstairs with me, my dear Elizabeth.' She took me up, and we prayed together. Soon my father came upstairs, and clasping him round the neck, I said, 'Oh, father, I've found Jesus, I know. I love Him!"" This Elizabeth is the truest and most zealous worker in the whole church. Who is the tract distributor? It is Elizabeth. Who is the most frequently found at the bedside of sickness and suffering? It is Elizabeth. Who is the superintendent of one of the largest Sunday-schools in England? It is Elizabeth!-converted at seven years of age, fifty years ago.J. Ashworth. HINTS FOR THE HOUSEHOLD. INFANCY. The three first months of infancy should be a season of quietness. The unfolding organs require the nursing of silence and of love. The delicate system, like the mimosa, shrinks from every rude touch. Violent motions are uncongenial to the new-born. Loud, sharp sounds, and even glaring colours, should be excluded from the nursery. The visual and auditory nerves, those princely ambassadors to the mind, are still in embryo: inure them tenderly and gradually to their respective functions. I would say to every mother, Guard your own health and serenity of spirit, for the child is still part of yourself, as the blossom of the plant from whose root it gathers sustenance. Breathe over it the atmosphere of happy and benevolent affections. Surely you cannot fail to thank your Heavenly Father for this precious gift; and as you lull it to that sleep which knows no dream of sorrow, lift up the prayer, "Let this soul, so lately divided from mine, live before Thee, O God."-Mrs. Sigourney. NOXIOUS INSECTS. Hot alum-water will destroy red and black ants, cockroaches, spiders, chintz bugs, and all the crawling pests which infest our houses. Take two pounds of alum and dissolve it in three or four quarts of boiling water; let it stand on the fire till the alum disappears; apply it with a brush, while nearly boiling hot, to every joint and crevice in your closets, bedsteads, pantry shelves, and the like. Brush the crevices in the floor of the skirting, or mop boards, if you suspect that they harbour vermin. If, in white washing a ceiling, plenty of alum is added to the lime, it will also serve to keep insects at a distance. Cockroaches will flee the paint which has been washed in cool alum-water. TOBACCO. "I am confident this poisonous weed, tobacco, produces every kind and degree of nervous depression, from lowness of spirits to palsy, apoplexy, and insanity." -Dr. Conquest. SPRAIN. This is generally an accident to the ankle, wrist, or finger-joint; the part affected should be immediately plunged into a cold bath, and remain there till the pain is a little allayed; but as an accident of this kind is not relieved in a moment, the remedy must be often repeated, and the articulation left at rest. Bandages should be applied, but these are always better fixed by a medical man, who, knowing the anatomical arrangement of these ligatures, can best apply the remedy. It is a mistaken notion to attempt to use the limb as soon as the pain ceases, it being often the cause of long after-suffering and irremediable evil. RHEUMATISM. All persons are liable to this malady. It often proceeds from cold striking on some particular part, therefore stimulants and hot external applications are good for it. Bathe the part with a hot infusion of bay or laurel leaves, or a mustard lotion of a table-spoonful to a quart of water. THE MOTHERS' TREASURY. NURSERIES FOR HEAVEN. "Christian families are Divine plantations settled by God Himself, for this very end and purpose, to be nurseries of religion and godliness."-Howe. HE wonderful and almost unlimited control which parents have over their offspring is not by any means an accident-not a mere fashion-not a contrivance of civilized life, or a relic of barbarism. To a reflecting mind it presents all the elements and attributes of a fundamental law pointing directly to a final cause. That which composes the essential materials of this power is from God; as much so as the Bible or the mission of Jesus Christ. It is emphatically God's work. He meant to make the human race an aggregate of numerous families, and has done so. He began by making one family-starting the existence of the original pair as a family, and not as separate and disconnected persons. In the legislation both of the Old and New Testament, He has recognised the family, and spoken to its several members in view of their mutual relations. It is also a wellattested fact in the history of Divine providence, that the wellbeing and progress of our species have always been connected with the healthy condition of the family principle. upon The wise Father of worlds has endowed the parental heart with the susceptibility of the tenderest feelings towards offspring. He has also ordained that every human creature should enter existence as a perfectly helpless being-the most so of any living thing that comes into this world, knowing nothing, capable of doing nothing-for the time being a mere mass of passive power. As years advance this helplessness decreases, but a comparatively long period must elapse before it is entirely removed. Having provided in the parent the natural guardian of the child, and adjusted the capacities of the one to the wants of the other, God then adds responsibilities and privileges to the parent, for which he only will give account. If he feed and clothe, it is both his duty and privilege to govern in some way, and in the best way to guide the action of that infant soul. That little and apparently insignificant creature is put into the parental charge, fitted to be in this place, and for the time being in no other; and the hand that holds it is equally fitted for its trust. What is that little creature you are rocking in that cradle? As in yourself, so in that child, are angelic capacities, only not yet awake,-powers for thought, for happiness or wretchedness, for virtue or vice, to serve God or hate Him, that shall endure long after these heavens and this earth shall have passed away, and all the magnificence of earthly skill been swept into forgotten chaos. That little creature which smiles when you smile, has a soul made for the same end for which Gabriel lives,-made to glorify God and enjoy Him for ever. What then does God mean that you shall do with and for that soul thus intrusted to you, in the fact that you are a parent? Why has He delegated to you such an immense power? The nature of the case as well as the precepts of the Scriptures leave but one answer as reasonably possible. Being a parent or parents, you are to train those you call your children for GOD, as you are to live yourselves for the same Being. This is what He expects and demands who is the Maker of both. The inspired injunction upon parents is, that they should not provoke their children to wrath, "but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord." The proverb by Solomon is, "Train up a child in the way he should go.' In the statutes of God by Moses, provision is made for a most thorough and unceasing system of family nurture in the ways of a godly life: "And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up." The matter of giving them a trade, a worldly education, of setting them up in business, is left to the parent's discretion, the question of their religious character before God being the point upon which Jehovah has announced His law. Here He indicates unmistakably the great primary design of the family arrangement. It is an institution of power-made such by its Divine Author, and meant to prepare each generation for HIMSELF (Ps. lxxviii. 5-7). "Hence it is God's method to communicate blessings to others through agents who are first blessed themselves: I will bless thee, and thou shalt be a blessing.' Religion is nurtured in families. He makes godly parents the channel through which He conveys godliness to the children. The extent of parental power is incalculable; it will form one of the subjects of our grateful occupations in the world of light, to retrace how far the Holy Ghost shall have employed the hands of our earthly parents to 'give form and pressure' to our souls, which He created anew good them, works, which God before ordained we should walk in After obtaining a very vivid hold of the preceding thoughts, I hardly know of a more painful subject than that of the manner in which a large number of parents are using their power. There is nothing in their example, and very little in their words, to impress upon their children any sense of the importance of serving God. Often the whole weight of family influence is thrown against God, in respect to every member born into that family. An irreligious father or mother, or both, truly present a sad spectacle. They are not qualified to fulfil the chief duty and end of their relation; they do not breathe pious sentiments into their offspring, and seek to fashion them for the skies; they have no adjustments of plans for this purpose. The steady warmth of parental affection does not, in any practical way, reach to the wants and interests of the soul. TRAINING GIRLS. RAINING girls for household duties ought to be considered as necessary as instruction in reading, writing, and arithmetic, and quite as universal. We are in our houses more than half of our existence, and it is the household surroundings which affect most largely the happiness or misery of domestic life. If the wife knows how to "keep house," if she understands how to "set a table," if she has learned how things ought to be cooked, how beds should be made, how carpets should be swept, how the furniture should be dusted, how the clothing should be repaired and turned and altered and renovated; if she knows how purchases can be made to the best advantage, and understands the laying in of provisions, how to make them go farther and last longer; if she appreciates the importance of system, order, tidiness, and the quiet management of children and servants, then she knows how to make a little heaven of home; how to win her children from the street, how to keep her busband from the public-house and the gaming-table. Such a family will be trained to social respectability, to business success, and to efficiency and usefulness, in whatever position may be allotted to them. It may be safe to say, that not one girl in ten in our large towns and cities enters married life who has learned to bake a loaf of bread, to purchase a joint of meat, to sweep a carpet, or to cut and fit and make her own dress. How much the perfect knowledge of these things bears upon the thrift, the comfort, and the health of families, may be conjectured, but not calculated by figures. It would be an immeasurable advantage to make a beginning by attaching a kitchen to every girls' school in the nation, and have lessons given daily in the preparation of all the ordinary articles of food and drink for the table, and how to purchase them in the market to the best advantage, with the result of a large saving of money, an increase of comfort, and higher health in every family in the land |