tuous habits, to prevent Satan from gaining new authority in their souls, and to regulate their outward conduct; and you have great ground to hope that whilst you are thus employed, God will shed down his Holy Spirit to bless your exertions, and to change the hearts of your offspring.

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When I speak of the necessity of discipline, I am not recommending an inhuman severity. This will provoke them to wrath,” and irritate instead of reforming them. Let your government be like that of our Father in heaven; mild, gentle, affectionate, springing from love and exercised in mercy; yet not weakly withholding reproof and chastisement when they are necessary. In inflicting this punishment, however, be careful to make your children feel that you do it in the name of God, from a hatred of sin, and for their good. Be firm, but not furious; let your eye melt with sorrow, but not sparkle with rage; let your tongue express your regret and pity, but not pour out bitter and passionate reproaches. If your children perceive that you are influenced by passion, and not by reason and religion, your authority will become odious or contemptible.

Let your discipline be just and equal; make no invidious distinctions between your children; indulge no partial affection for one child in preference to another equally deserving. Let punishment be proportioned to faults; punish those sins that are immediately against God, more severely than those that are against you. Let wilful and habitual vices be treated with greater severity than those that are more unintentional and rare. Preserve this familyjustice, or your punishments will harden, instead of amending your children.

Finally study carefully the tempers of your children, and diversify your discipline according to the. diversity of their tempers. Let it be more mild or rigorous, according as the gentleness or stubbornness of their dispositions requires one or the other of these modes of treatment.

This is the first thing that is included in a Christian education: a wise discipline.

2. A Christian education requires the diligent instruction of children in the principles of our holy religion. It is possible that a person may know the doctrines of Christianity and yet be unholy; but it is impossible that he should be entirely ignorant of them, and yet be holy. The illumination of the mind always must and does precede the sanctification of the heart. Be careful then to give your offspring that knowledge and information which they must have before they can understandingly embrace the offers of salvation, and become the children of God; and if in discharging this duty you are animated by proper motives, you have reason to hope for the accompanying influences of the Holy Spirit to bring them "from darkness into marvellous light.” And even though this great effect should not immediately be produced, yet still your labours are not in vain. That religious knowledge, with which you store their minds, will be a powerful guard against temptation, a strong incentive to duty, a means which God may hereafter employ for their conversion. Though they now neglect your instructions, yet they will not be able entirely to efface them. They may hereafter be forcibly brought to their remembrance by the Holy Ghost, and produce a saving conversion. It is a just observation of a pious and

judicious writer,* that "conversions in advanced life are most commonly the resurrection of those seeds which were sown in infancy, but had long been stifled by the violence of youthful passions, or the pursuits of ambition, and the hurry of an active life."

Parents, it is not left to your choice whether or not you will afford this instruction to your children. God in innumerable places enjoins it upon you. "These my words ye shall teach unto your children, speaking of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way; when thou liest down, and when thou risest up." (Deut. xi. 18, 19.) "God hath established a testimony in Jacob, and appointed a law in Israel, which he commanded our fathers that they should make them known to their children; that the generation to come might know them, even the children which should be born, who should arise and declare them to their children, that they might set their hope in God, and not forget the works of God, but keep his commandments.” (Psalm lxxviii. 5. 4. 7.)

If then you would" bring up your children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord," you must afford them religious instructions, before their minds are pre-occupied by errors and prejudices. Early teach them their miserable and corrupted state by nature, When their little limbs are afflicted with pain, when sorrow forces tears from their eyes, when any distress assails them, tell them that this pain, this sorrow, this distress, are the fruits and the chastisements of sin. Tell them how odious this sin is to God, point them to the flames of the abyss which it has kindled. Reveal to them also the abounding

* Dr. Witherspoon.

grace of God; show them how he has given us his Son to save us from hell, and raise us to glory; and declare to them the splendours of that crown which he will give to all that love and serve him. Let these and similar truths be proposed to them in their tenderest years; not as subjects of discussion, but as historic facts; not as points that they are immediately to examine and understand, but as the testimony of God, which is to be received by them with full belief.

Be careful that in this first period of their life, you do not give them a disgust to religion, by inculcating it in a gloomy and injudicious manner. Proportion your instructions to their capacities. In their earliest years they will be unable to understand your abstract reasonings or your subtle explications of doctrinal points. By forcing them frequently to attend to these reasonings and explanations, at that period when your words are to them unintelligible sounds which excite no clear ideas, you render piety dry and wearisome; you make it a task and a burden, from which they rejoice to be released. Leave then this mode of instruction till they are able to comprehend you; and begin by recounting to them those interesting histories on which our religion is founded, and which are level to the weakest capacities. If you would give them striking ideas of the greatness, the mercy, and justice of God, do not enter into a laboured philosophical discussion, but relate to them some of the impressive events which illustrate these perfections. If you would give them a just representation of virtue, and an inclination to practise it, enter into no toilsome analysis, but present to them some touching incidents in the lives of the saints. Dwell fre

quently on the actions of our divine Saviour, on his birth, his sufferings, his death, his resurrection, and ascension. This picture will display, infinitely better than all your profound reasoning, the holiness and tender mercies of God; this will be the most perfect and admirable model of obedience to God, of charity to a guilty world, of humility, of self-denial, of resignation, of magnanimity under sufferings and persecutions. These histories properly related, will awaken the attention and feeling of your offspring, and will make the profoundest impression upon their mind and heart. You will behold them moved even to tears; their little hearts will glow with gratitude and love; their tongues will lisp forth the praises of their gracious Creator and blessed Saviour; and their feeble hands be lifted up to the throne of their heavenly Friend.

As the understandings of your children are developed, and as their minds expand, teach them, or cause them to be taught, the proofs of those sentiments which they had received as facts, revealed by God, and the doctrines which grow out of those histories in which they have been instructed. Teach them, or cause them to be taught, the reasons why we receive our religion as divine; and show them how superficial and ungrounded, are the objections of its adversaries. Teach them, or cause them to be taught, the high and sublime doctrines of this religion; show them, that though the utmost penetration of the human mind cannot fully comprehend or explain many of these doctrines, yet nevertheless, the utmost subtlety of the human mind cannot find any thing in them contradictory to reason. Teach them, or cause them to be taught, what are the particular tenets embraced by that communion in which