Father, friend, protector, and judge, and the fear of his difpleasure, impair the energy of virtue? Why then do we reject the falutary affiftence which religion offers us for fubduing the worft, and cultivating the best paffions and affections of the human heart? Alas! because, that by the public and the fplendid scenes of this vain and tranfitory life we are fo completely engroffed, that in the education of our children, we lofe every other view but that of qualifying them to attract the applause and admiration of the world. For this in our boys we cultivate the understanding while we neglect the heart. In our girls we leave both heart and understanding to the care of chance, while we affiduously endeavour to make them excel in a few fuperficial and ufelefs accomplishments. But while we thus strive to build the fabric of their fame, it is to be feared that in laying the foundation we fometimes undermine their happiness: "One felf-approving hour whole years outweighs, "Of stupid ftarers, and of loud huzzas."

The

The applaufe and admiration of the world, for which we fo anxiously prepare them, it may never be their lot to receive. Fortune may remove her pedestal, on which, if the candidate for admiration does not stand, in vain will he hope for fuccefs; or envy may stifle the voice of approbation; or fuperior addrefs and impudence may gain the prize. From a thousand fources difappointment may flow; bringing to minds perverted by a false ambition all the anguish of chagrin, envy, and malevolence.

The fympathy which makes the applaufe of our fellow-creatures fo grateful to the heart; the fenfibility which makes us fo keenly feel the wounds of neglect, ridicule, or disapprobation; may be made inftruments to form the character either to vice or virtue, according to the direction they receive from early affociation. Where the love of God has been early implanted in the heart, where the mind has been taught

to

to approve itself by its idea of the approbation of a Being infinite in all perfection, immutable as powerful, benevolent as wife; its fympathy will become difcriminating; it will only be gratified by the applause which in fome measure accords with that of the Supreme. Senfibility will then ferve to heighten the delight of that fweet consciousness which arifes from a fenfe of the performance of duty; and this delight will be augmented, not by the vain applause of the multitude, but by the concurring approbation of the good and wife. A young man who has imbibed these principles, will on entering into life, efcape much of the danger to which young men are generally expofed from the defire of obtaining the applause of those with whom it may be their fate to affociate. He will distinguish between the agreeable and the worthy, the folid and the fuperficial, the real and the seeming; he will neither be dazzled by the splendour of talents, nor misled by the fophistry

fophiftry of argument. He will, on all occafions, have an unerring standard to refer to; and should he by the strength of temptation, or the force of example be led to make a momentary aberration into the paths of vice, his excurfion will be short, his return certain.

It may, perhaps, be faid, that experience does not juftify us in making this affertion. That on the contrary, we every day fee inftances of those who after having received the most religious education, and been moft ftrictly brought up in the fear of GOD, have no fooner been released from parental restraint, than they have entered on the career of vice, and become the most zealous champions of infidelity.

A point fo momentous is worthy of our attention; and calls for our minute and anxious investigation. Let us firft examine how notions of the Deity, and religious fentiment, the confequence of these notions, are commonly inftilled by pious parents;

and

and fee if we cannot discover some caufe for that dereliction of religious principle here complained of.

These

We have already obferved the effects of strong and painful fenfation in producing affociations of terror and averfion. effects are often too little attended to in the religious education of the nursery. By pious, but ill-judging parents, the idea of the Deity is introduced to the imagination of infants, accompanied by exactly fimilar impreffions to those which were conjured up by the name of raw-head and bloodybones. Their kind and heavenly Father is made to appear to them in the light of an invisible but avenging tyrant, whofe fervice is perfect bondage. That hatred of fin, which springs from the perfection of the moral attributes of the Deity, is prema turely presented to their minds at a period when they are yet incapable of perceiving abstract truth. The impreffion that is by thefe means made upon their fenfes, is, how