deprives it of the being which the hand of Beneficence bestowed. She points to a higher world, in which the inhabitants are " as little children;" and she hesitates not to affirm, that the soul of infant innocence finds its way to that region of purity, the air of which it seemed to breathe while yet below. She speaks here with a voice of confidence which may sometimes fail to be inspired, even from the contemplation of a long life spent in the practice of virtue. The best men have contracted many failings in the course of their earthly trial; and when we commit their bodies to the dust, while Religion calls upon us to look forward to their final destiny with holy hope, she yet permits some foreboding fears to cloud the brightness of the prospect. In less favourable cases, all we can do is to withdraw our minds from the vices of the departed, and rather to fix them, with apprehension and purposes of amendment, upon our own; to raise our thoughts, at the same time, to the perfect goodness of God, which seeth the secret springs of the heart, and judges not as man judges; which will forgive whatever can be forgiven, and which hath no pleasure in the death of the wicked. But when we follow to the grave the body of untried innocence, we at the same time restore to the Father of spirits the soul which he gave, yet unpolluted by the vices of time, and still an inmate meet for eternity. When the tears of nature are over, faith may here look up with an unclouded eye, and see the Saviour, whose descent upon earth cost so many tears to the mothers of Bethlehem, now speaking comfort to the mothers of his people, and telling them, that he who here below "suffered little children to come unto him," still delights

to throw around them the arms of his love, when, like him, they have burst the bonds of mortality.

Besides this lofty source of consolation which Religion opens up to afflicted parents, she, in the second place, suggests to them some of the wise purposes which Providence may have in view in this afflicting dispensation. Although the ways of Heaven are confessedly dark, and although we must, in many instances, bow down in resignation, without pretending to examine them, it is yet more pleasing when we can discover some of the designs which may be intended, and we are thus more easily reconciled to the evils which may accompany the execution of them. In the death of children, Providence seems, on a hasty glance, to be acting in a manner contradictory to its own plan; to be destroying life ere it is well begun; to be depriving us of blessings which we can scarcely be said to have tasted; and while with one hand it gives, with another to be taking away. Let it however be considered, that it answers an important purpose in the government of the world, to keep men in mind of the constant sovereignty of God, and of his right to the entire disposal of the fate of his creatures. Let it farther be recollected, that we are prone to forget the hand from which our blessings flow, and that too often we do not discern its agency till these blessings are withdrawn. It is thus not an unpleasing aspect of the ways of Providence, to consider the death of a child as an interposition of God, by which he awakens the slumbering piety of the parent, and, by depriving him of the object of his mortal affections, leads his thoughts to immortality.

We are all well aware, my brethren, of the influence of the world: we know how strongly it engages our thoughts, and debases the springs of our actions: we all know how important it is to have the spirits of our minds renewed, and the rust which gathers over them cleared away. One of the principal advantages, perhaps, which arises from the possession of children, is, that in their society the simplicity of our nature is constantly recalled to our view; and that, when we return from the cares and thoughts of the world into our domestic circle, we behold beings whose happiness springs from no false estimates of worldly good, but from the benevolent instincts of nature. The same moral advantage is often derived, in a greater degree, from the memory of those children who have left us. Their simple characters dwell upon our minds with a deeper impression; their least actions return to our thoughts with more force than if we had it still in our power to witness them; and they return to us clothed in that saintly garb which belongs to the possessors of a higher existence. We feel that there is now a link connecting us with a purer and a better scene of being; that a part of ourselves has gone before us into the bosom of God; and that the same happy creature which here on earth showed us the simple sources from which happiness springs, now hovers over us, and scatters from its wings the graces and beatitudes of eternity.

To you, then, my brethren, who have suffered from the present visitation of Providence, Religion thus unfolds the sources of consolation and of improvement. She calls upon you not to mourn as those who have no hope; to give the children of whom you have been de

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prived into the hands of your and their Father; and when the first pangs of affliction are over, to lift up your thoughts with that faith toward him, which may at last enable you to meet them in his presence for ever. Yet while she calls you not to mourn, she does not ask you to forget. This perhaps may be the language of the world. The loftier language of religion is, that you should remember whatever may contribute to your pu rity and virtue; that you should sometimes meditate with holy emotion on those angel forms which are gone before you; and that, amidst the temptations of the world, you should call to mind, that their eyes are now impending over you, and feel the additional link which binds you to the higher destinations of your being.

To us, my brethren, over whose houses the angel of death may now have passed, let not the scene which we have witnessed be unaccompanied with instruction. While we fall down in gratitude before Heaven for the deliverance which we have hitherto experienced, let us confess that it is undeserved; that we have not, as we ought, blessed the giver of all our good; and let us henceforth resolve to have his goodness more constantly in our thoughts. Let us sympathize with our brethren in affliction, and feel that their sorrow may soon be ours. Above all, let us make it our firm resolution, to train up those children whom God may have spared to us, in the knowledge of him and of his laws, that at whatever hour of their future life the call may come, they may be found of him in peace, and that we too may, with them, glorify him in heaven.

SERMON XXI.

ON RELIGIOUS EDUCATION.

PROV. xxii. 6.

"Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it."

IN these words, my brethren, the wise man points out powerfully the effects of early education. As the mind is very liable to the influence of habit, it is a happy circumstance that it can acquire good habits as well as bad, and that the infant heart can be moulded to the love of virtue, no less surely than it may be misled into vice and disorder. This is a consideration which affords both a pleasing view of human nature, and is of the utmost importance in a practical light. It is farther a consideration which imposes a most forcible obliga, tion on parents and instructors. It suggests to them, that to their hands the fate of the rising generation is in a great degree committed; that they must in no small. extent be responsible for the future deviations of the children entrusted to their care; and that, if they would have these children walk in the way in which they