because, instead of accomplishing the purpose intended, it would effectuate the contrary purpose. Instead of increasing candour, and producing investigation, it would only prevent investigation, and advance prejudice. It is mischievous, because it would prevent children from knowing and embracing truth in the highest of all concerns, their duty and salvation; and would lead them only to ignorance, error, and iniquity.

Indeed, all this is so obvious, and so certain, that I hesitate not to pronounce those who propose it, whenever they are men of understanding, wholly insincere in the proposal. It is, I think, impossible, that they should be so blind to such obvious truth, as for a moment to imagine the education which they urge to be consistent with reason and common sense. On the contrary, it may without any want of candour be asserted, that their design is of a very different nature. Instead of aiming at the promotion of candour in children, they unquestionably intend to persuade men to educate their children in ignorance of the Scriptures, in an habitual disregard to them, and ultimately in a confirmed hatred of their precepts. They are sagacious enough to discern, that all persons are best fitted to receive religious impressions in childhood; and that, if they are suffered to grow up without them, they will either never receive them, or receive them with excessive difficulty. By prescribing and urging this mode of education, they expect to see children habituated to irreligion, and confirmed, without argument or conviction, in infidelity. In this manner, far more easily and surely than in all others, they hope to exterminate religion from the world.

Or all these observations complete proof is furnished by the conduct of modern Infidels. In defiance of this very scheme they have laboured with immense industry and art to possess themselves of the education of children, throughout France Germany, and other countries of Europe. Nor have they laboured without success. Distinguished infidels have extensively become instructors of those who were born to wealth and greatness; and men corrupted by themselves have still more extensively taught the mass of mankind. All these they have trained up to the principles of infidelity, and to the unAmited practice of vice. The mind, almost from its infancy, they have debauched by sentiments and images of pollution; withdrawn it from duty, from God, and from heaven, by fraud

and falsehood, and allured it to sin and to hell, by art and ingenuity, by sophistry, and entanglement, by insidious temptation and impudent example. With a smooth, soft, and lubricous progress, they have crept into the bosoms of the rising generation, and pierced them to the soul with fangs of poison. A general dissolution of health, a hopeless decay of the vital energy, has followed the incision. The bloom of life has vanished, a livid hue overspread the frame, and every harbinger of death hastened to announce the speedy dissolution.

Here no anxiety has been even pretended concerning the preoccupancy of the early mind, or the prevention of future candour. No succeeding investigation has been even hinted, and no intentional discussion of the great question proposed. Such fairness, indeed, was not to be expected from such men. Their only object has ever been to destroy the Bible, truth, and virtue; and to the nature of all means, provided they will accomplish the end, they are perfectly indifferent. The man who is deceived by such a scheme, supported by such arguments, and recommended by such men, must be a dupe of choice; a gudgeon, caught even without a hook.

2. From these observations it is also evident, that the religious education of children is a high and indispensable duty. In the text, and in many other passages of Scripture, it is solemnly commanded by God. If the considerations suggested throughout this discourse are just, it is powerfully enforced by reason. Our children are bone of our bone, and flesh of our flesh;' endeared to us by a thousand ties, and a thousand delightful offices. All their interests are ours, and often nearer to our hearts than our own. They are committed to us in solemn charge by our Maker, to be educated by us for his service and kingdom. He has made all things in their situation and ours conspire to this great end. Their helpless state calls for the habitual care and watchfulness, the uniform kindness and control of their parents. Their minds, unoccupied by falsehood, are easily susceptible of truth, and fitted to receive and retain every useful impression. If the best impressions are not made, the worst will be; and parents are the only friends from whom may rationally be expected the communication of good, or the prevention of evil. If this duty be not early done, they may die before it is done, and

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their souls be lost. If they live, we waste the golden season of doing them eternal good.

Who, that is not dead to conscience, to humanity, and even to instinct, can thus act the ostrich; and leave his little ones to be crushed by every foot? Think of the awful account to be given of wrapping this talent in a napkin, and burying it in the earth. Think of the infinite difference between ascending with them to heaven, and accompanying them down to the regions of perdition. Think of the reflections which must arise in their minds and ours throughout eternity, when their ruin snail be seen to have sprung from our neglect.

Nor is this duty incumbent on parents only. Every instructor is bound indispensably to second their endeavours, where they are faithful, and to supply as far as may be the defect, where they are not. Education ought everywhere to be religious education. The master is as truly bound to educate his apprentice or his servant in religion, and the schoolmaster his pupil, as the parent his child. In the degree of obligation, and of sin in violating it, there may perhaps be a difference. In the nature of it there is none. The command is, Train up a child in the way he should go;' directing all who are entrusted with the care of children to educate them in this manner.

At the same time, parents are farther bound to employno instructors who will not educate their children religiously. To commit our children to the care of irreligious persons, is to commit lambs to the superintendency of wolves. No sober man can lay his hand on his breast, when he has placed his child under the guidance of an irreligious teacher, and say that he has done his duty, or feel himself innocent of the blood of his child. No man will be able, without confusion of face, to recount this part of his conduct before the bar of the final Judge.

SERMON CXLVIII.

THE MEANS OF GRACE.

ORDINARY MEANS OF GRACE.

THE MANNER IN WHICH RELIGIOUS EDUCATION IS TO
BE CONDUCTED.

MOTIVES TO THIS DUTY.

TRAIN UP A CHILD IN THE WAY HE SHOULD GO, AND WHEN HE IS OLD, HE WILL NOT DEPART FROM IT.

PROVERBS XXII. 6.

In the last Discourse, I considered the duty of educating children religiously. In this I propose,

II. To point out the manner in which religious education should be conducted.

III. To exhibit some of the motives to the performance of this duty, suggested by the promise in the text.

The terms, in which the command in the text is communicated, teach us, as I have heretofore observed, that children, in their education, are to be drawn from one action and attainment to another, by pursuasion, promises, and other efforts, continually repeated. Under the general meaning of this phraseology may be easily included whatever I shall think it necessary to observe concerning this subject at the present time.

Some of the observations formerly made concerning the general education of children, will be applied here to their religious education. So important a subject deserves to be presented in a full light. No interesting, useful adjunct ought to be forgotten by the mind, while employed in the consideration of a duty which holds so high a rank. So far as the narrow limits necessarily assigned to it in such a system of discourses will allow, I shall endeavour to omit nothing, which is of peculiar weight.

1. Religious education should be begun in the dawn of childhood.

The earliest days, after intelligence is fairly formed in the mind, are incomparably the best for this purpose. The child should be taught, as soon as he is capable of understanding the instructions which are to be communicated. Nothing should be suffered to pre-occupy the place which is destined to truth. If the intellect is not filled with sound instruction as fast as it is capable of receiving it,' the enemy,' who never neglects to sow tares,' when parents are asleep,' will imperceptibly fill it with a dangerous and noxious growth. The great and plain doctrines of religion should be taught so early, that the mind should never remember when it began to learn, or when it was without this knowledge. Whenever it turns a retrospective view upon the preceding periods of its existence, these truths should seem always to have been in its possession, to have the character of innate principles, to have been inwoven in its nature, and to constitute a part of all its current of thinking.

In this manner the best security which is in the power of man will be furnished against the introduction and admission of dangerous errors. The principles of infidelity have little support in argument or evidence; but they easily take deep root in the inclinations of the mind, and hold but too frequently a secure possession of its faith by the aid of passion and prejudice. No human method of preventing this evil is so effectual as engrossing the assent to evangelical truth, when the mind is absolutely clear from every prepossession. A faith thus established, all the power of sophistry will be unable to shake. In the same manner ought its religious impressions to be begun. No period should be within the future reach of the memory, when they had not begun. Every child