we behold a vast and ever-increasing number of boys who evidently consider smoking essential to manliness. And our police have orders to stop all boys under sixteen! Parents are surprisingly ignorant of the habits of their boys in this regard, and when not ignorant, surprisingly timid and criminally indifferent. Would to God that all fathers were models to their boys.

Boys, break away now, before you are bound hand and foot to a pitiable thralldom. Think of a man mastered by a cigarette!

XXXII.

THE BRIDAL SCENE AT CANA.

THIS Wedding, made forever the most memorable one in history by the presence and grace of Christ, was celebrated in the lovely little town of Cana, three miles northeast of Nazareth, "lying in the lap of the Galilean hills like a bird in its nest."

There is something significant in the fact that the Saviour began his miracles at a wedding rather than at a funeral-the grave of Lazarus, or the gate of Nain. It was a practical reproof of the asceticism that scorns the happiness of social and domestic affections, and that would make of life a ghostly austerity, just as if men were heavenly because they were unearthly.

No personal act more deeply involves happiness than marriage. Yet the general conversation on this ordinance is lamentably below the high standard God has given to it. Marriage is the perfected life of love between two kindred spirits; and yet how often it is merely a society affair between two exquisite fools;

matrimony is made a matter-of-money, and how often the lips utter vows of love which the heart can never ratify. A marriage for anything but love is a humiliating stoop to the dust, a mockery that blushes to the skies. Love is founded upon esteem, and is therefore under the control of reason.

Marry "only in the Lord." "For how can two walk together except they be agreed?" If there is one place at which husband and wife should meet in the completest harmony, it is at the cross of Christ.

"Together should their prayers ascend,
Together should they humbly bend

To praise the Almighty name.”

Those who are one in Christ fight doublehanded against evil. The child of God will bring a blessing to your house above earthly riches.

Make Christ one of your wedding-guests. Never should the duty with the prayer, "Commit thy way unto him, and he will direct thy paths," be more intensely realized than at the marriage altar. With your selected and future companion say to him, "If thy presence go not with us, carry us not up hence." If earnestly solicited by you, Christ will now, as of old, by his presence beautify and bless your bridal

hour, sanctify your joy, and leave his benediction upon your hearts to perpetuate your love, and fulfill all the happy prophecies of the bridal day. Without the presence of Christ to bless the marriage, the congratulations and good wishes of friends will be only empty words, the flowers will wither and the music grow discordant.

Having entered upon your new home, get down upon your knees together, and ask Christ to consecrate it. The faith of heart in heart will die without faith in Christ. Love purified by religion is the fragrant blossom that will gladden the heart and beautify the humblest home.

"Home's not merely four square walls,

Though with pictures hung and gilded;
Home is where affection calls,

Filled with shrines the heart hath builded."

This sanctified love instantly recalls the hasty word; it stands upon no dignity as to whose place it is to yield first to the other; it lets not the sun go down upon an angry thought or feeling between two hearts that have been made one. It transforms blemishes into imaginary virtues. As Shakespeare has it

"My love doth so approve him,
That e'en his stubbornness, his checks and frowns,
Have grace and favor in them."

To make a home you must strengthen the bonds of affection. The Gospel of Christ hallows the affections and sweetens the temper. Come, then, often to the throne of grace, and by prayer enliven your religious sensibilities, which is the very soul of conjugal love and the maturer of those graces that belong to wedlock's string of pearls.

How fitting it was that He who came to restore the Lost Paradise to man should give this significant approval of this sacred bond, and make the Christian home the mightiest instrument in the work of regenerating the human race. The Christian home is the master of life's busy school, the brightest radiance that cheers the darkness of man's earthly condition; it is the guiding star of his good destiny; and the richest earthly prize a man can win is a wife from the Lord.

Christ never meant that home was to be merely a refectory and dormitory, but a place to live. If you would not have your children lost to you in after-life, make home happy to them when they are young. Let it be the place of sparkling joy and innocent amusement, and thus counteract the fashionable tendency of our time to abandon the home and seek pleasure abroad. The reason that so many children make every effort possible to