boy to the immediate service of his Maker, with as much sincerity as Samuel was devoted to the worship in the Temple by his parents.  You must regard him as a being separated from the rest of the world.  In childhood, in boyhood, you must surround him with the pious and virtuous, and protect him to the utmost of your power from the sight or hearing of any crime, in word or action.  He must be educated in religious and moral principles of the strictest description.  Let him not enter the world, lest he learn to partake of its follies, or perhaps of its vices.  In short, preserve him as far as possible from all sin, save that of which too great a portion belongs to all the fallen race of Adam.  With the approach of his twenty-first birth-day comes the crisis of his fate.  If he survive it, he will be happy and prosperous on earth, and a chosen vessel among those elected for heaven.  But if it be otherwise”——­The astrologer stopped and sighed deeply.  “Sir,” replied the parent, still more alarmed than before, “your words are so kind, your advice so serious, that I will pay the deepest attention to your behests; but can you not aid me farther in this most important concern.  Believe me, I will not be ungrateful.”  “I require and deserve no gratitude for doing a good action,” said the stranger; “in especial for contributing all that lies in my power, to save from an abhorred fate the harmless infant to whom, under a singular conjunction of planets, last night gave life.  There is my address; you may write to me from time to time concerning the progress of the boy in religious knowledge.  If he be bred up as I advise, I think it will be best that he come to my house at the time when the fatal and decisive period approaches, that is, before he has attained his twenty-first year complete.  If you send him such as I desire, I humbly trust that God will protect his own, through whatever strong temptation his fate may subject him to.”  He then gave his host his address, which was a country-seat near a post town in the south of England, and bid him an affectionate farewell.

The mysterious stranger departed; but his words remained impressed upon the mind of the anxious parent.  He lost his lady while his boy was still in infancy.  This calamity, I think, had been predicted by the astrologer; and thus his confidence, which, like most people of the period, he had freely given to the science, was riveted and confirmed.  The utmost care, therefore, was taken to carry into effect the severe and almost ascetic plan of education which the sage had enjoined.  A tutor of the strictest principles was employed to superintend the youth’s education; he was surrounded by domestics of the most established character, and closely watched and looked after by the anxious father himself.  The years of infancy, childhood, and boyhood, passed as the father could have wished.  A young Nazarene could not have been bred up with more rigour.  All that was evil was withheld from