2. I urge this duty by a due regard to the temporal and eternal welfare of your children. You love your children, and would deem it a most cruel and insulting insinuation to have your affection for a moment questioned. But do what you will for them; devote as you may the energies of body and mind; the sleep of your nights and the activities of your days to your childrens' comfort: wear out your strength in ceaseless labour and solicitude, and yet at the same time neglect the religious education of your children, you are guilty of a species of most horrid cruelty towards them, the bitter consequences of which may begin in this world in profligacy and vice, and extend to the other in all the bitter pains of eternal death. Unrestrained by sentiments of piety, uncontroled by a conscience, which has never been enlightened, what is to prevent them from being plunged into infamy by their unbridled passions? Have not many young men at the hulks, in the land of exile, or at the gallows; and many unhappy females when closing in misery a course of infamy, cursed their parents for not giving them a religious education? But even though they live and die in worldly honour and respectability, what will this do for them amidst the sorrows of life, the agonies of death, the solemnities of judgment, and the torments of perdition. Hear them as they stand shuddering and affrighted on the brink of that gulph into which they are about to plunge. "Of what avail are the riches and honours and pleasures of the world, which my parents were so anxious to obtain for me? Why did

they not tell me that the salvation of my soul was of more importance to me as an immortal creature, than the possession of the universe? Cruel, cruel parents! Fool that I was to be blinded and rendered careless by you: but my self-reproaches are now unavailing, I de servedly perish; but my blood be upon the head of those that neglected me." Ah cruel parents indeed, who neglect the religious education of their children: more cruel in some respects than Herod; he slew the bodies of children, these murder souls; he murdered the children of others, these murder their own; he employed the agency of his servants, these do the work of slaughter themselves.

3. Do you regard your own comfort? Do you love yourselves? Are you anxious to avoid painful and incessant solicitude, bitter reflexion, domestic disquie tude, dreadful foreboding? Then bring up your chil dren with the most unvarying regard to their religious character. Should God crown your efforts with success what a harvest of joys will you reap even in this world. When you see your children enter the paths of wisdom, "thank God," you will exclaim, "my highest ambition has at length reached its object. My children are decided christians. I am now no longer distressingly anxious for their future prospects in this life. In one way or other, God will provide for them. And as to eternity they are safe." Who can describe the pure, elevated felicity with which such parents mark the course of their children, in going from strength to What a season of assume the profess

strength in their progress to Zion.

delight is that, when they publicly

ion of a christian, and connect themselves with the church! What joy is felt in beholding them at their side at the table of the Lord, and holding communion with them in the joys of faith and the anticipations of eternity. And what satisfaction is experienced in seeing them enrolling their names as the friends of God and man, and giving their support to those institutions which are formed to promote the highest interests of the human race. As they grow in experience, in usefulness, in respectability in the church, the parents' joy and gratitude are continually increasing, and they feel the honour of having sent such members into the fellowship of the faithful. Should God in the mysteries of his providence remove them by an early death, you will be cheered amidst the agonies of separation, by their dying consolation; their piety will wipe away your tears and be a balm to the wounds of your mind; and when they have departed, you will solace yourselves with the healing thought, that they are gone to that world of glory in which you will soon be reunited with them. Or should the order of nature be observed, and you precede them to the tomb, will not their presence and attentions in your dying chamber, be more soothing by the consideration, that they are so many saints, as well as children, ministering to your comfort? Will not their piety give a sanctity and a sweetness to all the offices of their affection? "I die," will be your expression, as like departing Jacob, you address yourselves to them, "but God will be with you, and we shall meet again where there will be no more death."

But should you unhappily neglect their religious education, and they, through your neglect, should grow up without any due sense of the claims of God, is there not a danger of their becoming immoral, as well as irreligious? And how could you bear to witness, or to hear of their profligacy and vice, if at the same time, you were conscious that it was in a measure through your neglect? Perhaps they may be unkind and disobedient to you; for God may justly render that child a scourge to his parent, whose parent did not train him up in the ways of religion. O what scenes of domestic misery, what heart rending spectacles of confusion and wretchedness, have profligate children occasioned in the families to which they belong! How many have thus had their hearts suddenly broken, or their grey hairs brought down by the slow process of withering sorrow, to the grave: and the sting of all this, in some cases, has been the consciousness of parental neglect. No sin more heavily punishes itself, than this, nor mingles for its subject a more bitter cup. But then, the eternal consequences, oh, the eternal consequences of this neglect. See the heart-stricken parent, wringing his hands over the dying youth, who is departing without repentance. No, not a syllable escapes his lips that sounds like penitence: the father weeps, and prays, and entreats, but the son hearkens not, and dies, and makes no sign. Now in what a burst of agony does he give vent to his feelings over the corpse, from which the spirit has departed, but departed not to the mansions of the blest.

CHAPTER V.

THE DUTIES OF CHILDREN TO THEIR PARENTS.

Children, obey your parents in the Lord; for this is right. Honour thy father and mother; which is the first commandment with promise; that it may be well with thee, and that thou mayest live long on the earth."

EPHES. vi. 1, 2, 3.

"My son, keep thy father's commandment, and forsake not the law of thy mother; bind them continually upon thine heart, and tie them about thy neck. When thou goest it shall lead thee; when thou sleepest it shall keep thee; and when thou awakest it shall talk with thee."

PROVERBS vi. 20-22.

"The father of the righteous shall greatly rejoice; and he that begetteth a wise child shall have joy of him. Thy father and thy mother shall be glad, and she that bare thee shall rejoice."

PROVERBS XXiii. 24, 25.

PERHAPS there is no duty, the obligations of which are more generally acknowledged, than filial piety; none which in the performance yields greater pleasure, or which, if neglected, brings a more severe or righteous retribution. All nations, however sunk in barbarism or elevated by science, have admitted the strength and justice of parental claims, and the unhappy youth who resists them, stands convicted, condemned and reprobated before the tribunal of the world. On the