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Society will go to pieces if the love of children cannot be maintained. And the love of children will not be maintained if we are to prefer cheapness to the happy responsibility of rearing them. God has given us many things which were never intended "to pay," but contrariwise to tax both nerve and purse, time and patience. Among many of the things that fail to conform to commercial standards He has made lingering old age and lingering disease more than a possibility in the case of many. Now, how many families there are which cannot afford this! And if nothing is for human advantage which cannot return a two-and-a-half percentage, lingering death, among the poor, is of all things the least defensible and endurable. So thought the people of India up to a very recent date, if they do not think so now. They used to take the old people down to the Ganges, and when the tide came in, or when the alligators came up, the domestic problem of reducing expenditure was soon solved. And in Sparta, whose people attained to a civilised horror of unremunerative offspring long before our forefathers could construct a pair of shoes, the girl children were often killed as soon as they were born. Now, that was an unblushing policy; it was human life carried on upon a strictly cash basis. But Christianity is freely taught amongst ourselves, with happy results evident on every hand. The weak are cared for and cured, the old are honoured and sheltered, and children are treated as a heavy but sacred charge from the Almighty. It is a ghastly thing to see some people express pity for the loving pair who can count many curly heads on the snow-white pillows in the children's rooms. Hannah, Samuel's mother, had no such thought about children. She prayed for her child. You may hear it said, perhaps, "But all children are not Samuels;" to which it is a sufficient reply to say that, all mothers are not Hannahs. If there were more Hannahs there would be more Samuels. For children reflect the entire nature of their parents. What was it which under. lay Hannah's prayer? It was a desire, the noblest which can animate a mortal, to live for another. She wanted to train a soul for God. They who watched over our bodily growth and our education were often tried in the process. They spared no time, pains, or money in their power. And despite of all that is said by spurious philanthropists, it may be safely said that our fathers were the better for the strain to which our training subjected them. Hannah prayed that she might have such a work to fill her heart. Hannah herself had already found God, the chief gift mortals can receive, and as a gift next in value to that, she asked Him to put under her care a spirit bearing His image, that upon it, as His visible, helpless representative, she might lavish both a motherly and a religious love. And she was right. They who can ridicule such a relation as she aspired to, and afterwards filled, are to be pitied for the blindness and emptiness of their scorn They wish to improve human life, and so they begin by trying to improve the laws of God. Thinking they can trace poverty and crime to the Christian family system, under which children are treated as a blessing, they discourage it as a bad speculation, an ill-paying concern. The Infidel Millennium is to be a millennium of small families, or none. Probably the latter would be the upshot. There would be just the same logic for that as for the other result. It is not the dear children, be they many or few, that cause vice and poverty. It is the parents, who should be dear parents, and are not. I need not remind you of the noble lives that have grown up in our country districts, and elsewhere, in homes where eight or nine hungry mouths have had to be filled out of twelve or fourteen shillings a week. Of course, if half the wages had gone in tobacco or drink, the lads and lasses would have been costly enough. It is certain that children prevent, in particular families, far more poverty than they cause. When a family has struggled through the years which precede the early youth of the children, the tide begins to turn. The regular income of the home becomes greater and more secure, in most cases, especially whore parents do not mind putting their children to the noblest of all ordinary callings, some constructive trade. Hannah's philosophy transcends them all! They who live for their children, and not for cheapness, will find life both cheaper and sweeter than they who, to compass a visionary social progress, advocate the improvement of everything except personal character. The true interests of society require no unnatural and mean devices. We need not dread the growing hosts of humanity. They are not locusts — they produce more than they consume, if they live honest lives. It is a diminishing population that a virtuous nation has to fear.

(J. H. Hollowell.)

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KJV: For this child I prayed; and the LORD hath given me my petition which I asked of him:

WEB: For this child I prayed; and Yahweh has given me my petition which I asked of him.