stage ride over the mountains we had ever made. We rode with the drivers on the box every mile of the way-were snowed on some eight inches thick-delivered some ten to fifteen lectures on the meanness, uselessness, and sinfulness of profane swearing to as many drivers-had not offended a single one-found our views on the subject approved fully by every one-and found only one driver, and that the first one, who made use of profane language. If there is any one who has ever travelled the same distance on a stage box, without being afflicted by profane words, we would like to hear from him.

Just twenty years have passed away since that eventful stage ride. What changes on that grand old stage route! Stages and drivers have all disappeared from it. Grass grows in front of those lively hotels posted through the mountains. Travel has found. other channels, and we fear swearing has followed. These old time stage drivers are getting grey like ourselves; some of them have perhaps gone to their eternal homes. As our conversation did not displease them, we hope it was not altogether useless to them. any of them are still living, we hope that to them, as to us, it is still a pleasant recollection, that it has been possible even for stagedrivers to make one trip across the Allegheny mountains without swearing.

BOOK NOTICE.

THE YOUNG PARSON. Smith, English | pass on-yea, is drawn on by the ever & Co., Philadelphia, 1863 increasing interest; and he is constantWe can only fall in with the generally meeting with so many familiar faces, tenor of the press in awarding high praise to this truly live book. The Author's name is not given, but "his speech betrayeth him," as we think; and we would not wonder if he should be a very particular friend of ours, and one not unknown to the readers of the "Guardian." The book is composed of sketches of the various characters, good and bad, with which every pastor meets in the course of his pastoral experience. These are so true to nature, that we fear almost every pastoral charge will regard itself to be the veritable Gainfield and Pumbeditha in which the "Young Parson" labored. The best advice we can give is, should any feel hit, let them be silent and improve by having viewed themselves in this mirror. The characters, which are all representative, are delineated with master strokes, and with great dispatch, so that the reader is allowed to

that there is neither loneliness nor weariness in the way. The book abounds in fine churchly ideas, and is full of the most childlike love toward all mankind. Its humor, with which it abounds, is of a most genial character, and always begets that kind of laugh which makes one not only happier but better. Its humor is only excelled by its tenderness. The tears it calls forth-and the history of Phoebe is sure to bring them up-are not of that sentimental kind, which a hot-house story of misery begets, preparing the weeping reader with impatience to spurn begging misery from the door, but truly softening to the heart, helping one to be patient and goodhumored even when misery is found associated with sin. The Book is neatly gotten up, as such contents deserve. It cannot fail to have an immense circulation.

The Guardian.

VOL. XIV.---NOVEMBER, 1863.--- No. 11.

HEREDITARY GRACE.

BY THE EDITOR.

To the second commandment of the Decalogue God has attached a fearful threat, and a glorious promise. It is to be kept, not only because its violation brings evil upon our children; but also because keeping it brings great good upon them. God will "shew mercy unto thousands of them that love Him, and keep His commandments."

The meaning evidently is, not a thousand individuals, but a thousand generations. Where sin abounds grace does much more abound. The iniquities of parents extend to the fourth generation -there mercy arrests the course of justice; but the good of parents is perpetuated in mercy to a thousand generations. "Know, therefore, that the Lord thy God, He is God, the faithful God, which keepeth covenant and mercy with them that love Him and keep His commandments to a thousand generations." (Deut. 7: 9.)

It will be observed that this promise of mercy to their offspring, is only to such parents as love Him and keep His commandments. Those only can keep His commandments, who do love Him; for true obedience must grow out of love.

To love Him is to be His-to have accepted of Him as our God— to be in truth His child. Such alone have Him, and His worship, in which they draw nigh to Him in filial confidence, and joy, and love. While others break through the covenant, out into the world's commons, where they see their posterity sink away, as waters in a waste of sand, those who remain in the holy enclosure of the covenant, shall leave the blessed inheritance of their faith and faithfulness, and of God's favor, to their children through a thousand generations.

Those to whom this law was given stood in the promise. They had a God, and now are warned against casting Him away, or pushing Him aside, in favor of graven images. The law here guards the promise as a fence guards a fruitful garden. If they remain in it, their children shall remain in it. Their children shall flourish in the same blessed soil to a thousand generations. (Gen. 17: 7, 8.) They themselves were the fruit of the promise which was now already four hundred and thirty years old-they are Abraham's children-God's family-God's Church.

Is it of any advantage to us to stand in this gracious promise? Yes. It is a begetting, a generating, an enlarging promise-its children shall increase as the stars of heaven in their number. This soil of the promise is life-giving. It is watched over, and it is blest with gracious sunshine, and descending showers (Is. 44: 3, 6.)

From all this it must be plain, that the position, which those occupied to whom the promise was given, was favorable to the propagation of piety from parents to children. All was done, that could be done, on God's side to insure this; and now nothing more was necessary than that parents should remain within the gracious enclosure, and therein faithfully serve God; then their children would be as safe as they were themselves. Then, as the fulfillment of the promise went on, which should make their seed as the stars of heaven, until the holy seed would embrace all nations, so would the piety of the parents descend, in the same blessed stream, embracing and blessing all their children.

We do not exist in this world merely as individuals; hence the Scripture promises never look at persons as individuals, occupying an independent position, but always as existing in families, and in the Church. The family embraces the children; and the Church embraces families. All covenants made, and all promises given, are to organizations. Inasmuch as a special transaction with men cannot take place except through some one man, these covenants were made, and these promises were given to individuals; but never for themselves alone; always for themselves, including the family, the nation, or the Church. Children could not break away from the Church, without first breaking away from the family; and thus despising, rejecting, and selling their birth right. Their birth-right was their Church-right, as long as they showed themselves ready to ratify these rights by their own acts, and as long as they did not cast both away. This birth-right bad afterwards to be ratified by circumcision. "The uncircumcised man-child, whose flesh of his foreskin is not circumcised, that soul shall be cut off from his people." "Cut off"-this shows that he belonged to his people before by a birth-right. (Gen. 17: 14.)

Thus then, to be born of parents to whom God was "a God," was their first blessing; to be circumcised, and thus to have God's visible seal upon them was the next blessing; to be in the bosom of a pious family-a family which had the promise-was the next; that this family was itself in the warm bosom of the Church, was another; then, through life, to have God's grace constantly descend

ing upon them like the dew upon Hermon was a blessing still greater; and then to be assured that this same stream of ever-increasing mercies should be sufficient in its merciful and gracious power to bear all their offspring on its bosom to the haven of endless rest for a thousand generations-this crowns all the grace with glory. All this was certainly enough to insure the descent of the parent's piety from generation to generation. All this was enough to justify the joyful and confident exclamation of the Psalmist, in reference to the final issue of the life of all who were so situated: "Those that be planted in the house of the Lord shall flourish in the courts of our God." (Ps. 92: 13.) "Our feet shall stand within thy gates, O Jerusalem." (Ps. 122: 2.) In view of the safety of those who are thus in families which are themselves in the Church, he could well exclaim, in triumphant and joyful challenge: "Walk about Zion, and go round about her: tell the towers thereof. Mark ye well her bulwarks, consider her palaces; that ye may tell it to the generations following. For this God is our God forever and ever: He will be our guide even unto death." (Ps. 48: 12–14.)

Such is the spiritual safety of those that are the Lord's; and such is the care which God has taken that the piety of parents shall become the inheritance of their children. Well may He say to His faithful ones, "Shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me and keep my commandments." But let any one despise, or neglect, the covenant and break out of this holy enclosure, in which the pious seed is to be trained and enlarged until it fill the whole earth-let any one forsake God and choose the world's uncovenanted commons-let any one go after graven images and the service of other gods, or sink into the supreme love of the world, and then let him hear what God says: "I the Lord thy God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me."

The New Testament dispensation which is "rather glorious," does not in the least restrict or curtail these blessings. God forbid! He is still the Gcd, not only of individuals, but of families-of parents and their seed:

Jesus the ancient faith confirms

To our fore-fathers given.

Our God, how faithful are his ways!
His love endures the same;

Nor from the promise of his grace,
Blots out the children's name.

With the same blessing grace endows
The Gentile and the Jew;

If pure and holy be the root,
Such are the branches too.

Thus to the parents and their se
Shall thy salvation come;
And numerous households mee
In one eternal home.

When the New Dispensation was introduced, a preference was manifested towards the Jews, as the children of the covenant. The Saviour himself was "the seed" of Abraham. In the bosom of the Jewish Church He appeared; and His first-begotten were Jews. Those whom He first drew around Him as the first-fruits of Abraham's spiritual seed were Jews-the legitimate heirs of the ancient promise. Although His seed was to inherit the Gentiles, yet His first mission and business had reference to the covenanted children -those who were heirs according to the promise.

When He was called upon, by a Greek woman, for aid to her daughter, He said: "I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel." (Math. 25: 24.) Though He was willing also, at the proper time, and in the proper order, to give help to the Gentiles-who were called "dogs" by the Jews-indicating that they stood in the same relation to the Father as dogs do in a familyyet He says: "Let the children first be filled for it is not meet to take the children's bread, and to cast it to dogs." (Luke 7: 27.) This shows, in a very forcible way, how covenanted people were remembered and favored above those who were not in covenant. Those who are the children of the ancient promise must first be filled.

The commission which our Saviour gave to His disciples also shows how the blessing descends in the families of those who are in covenant. "Go not in the way of the Gentiles, and into any city of the Samaritans enter ye not. But go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel." (Math. 10: 5, 6.) These were in

covenant.

The reason why salvation came to the house of Zaccheus is: "Forasmuch as he also is a son of Abraham." (Luke 19: 9.) Grace, guided by the promise, will find out its own children. Though Zaccheus was no doubt at the time wicked, yet he had pious parents who had him circumcised, and now the promise made to the parents finds out the child.

On the day of Pentecost there were at least fifteen nations represented, yet when Peter addressed the crowd he seems to forget all the rest, and says: "Ye men of Judea, and all ye that dwell at Jerusalem." Throughout the whole discourse he speaks to the "house of Israel;" and when, at the close, they were moved in their hearts and asked what they should do, he says, "Repent, and be baptized," and assures them that they have a warrant to hope for the remission of sin, and the gift of the Holy Ghost, because they are the children of the promise. "For the promise is unto you, and to your children." (Acts 2: 39.)

When Paul came to Corinth, he first "found a certain Jew named Aquilla with his wife Priscilla." This shows after what class of people he sought. There also "he reasoned in the synagogue." The Jews opposed themselves and blasphemed-Paul determined to leave them, and to go to the Gentiles; but God, in a vision, prevented him and directed him to remain. The reason which God gives, why he should not go away, was, "For I have much people