ture to hope that their children will perform, in subsequent life, the duties they owe to God and their fellow-creatures, when little care has been taken to prepare them for this great work, is perfectly astonishing. Do we form such absurd expectations in other things? Does any man suppose that his son will be fit for any profession, or business, without substantial and persevering instruction? Does he venture to send him out into the world as a lawyer, a surgeon, or a tradesman, without a long preparation, expressly calculated to qualify him for the line of life to which he is destined? And yet how many fathers expect their children to maintain the character of Christians, with very little appropriate education to lead them to conquer, through Divine grace, their natural alienation from God, and to become new creatures under Christ their Saviour! God does not treat man in this manner, but furnishes him, in the Scriptures, with the most august and persuasive teachers, and the greatest variety of instruction. and exhortation, calculated to turn him from darkness to light, and to induce him to crucify the flesh with its affections and lusts. But man, deaf to the Divine voice, which says, "Go and do thou likewise," and deaf also to the call even of parental affection, not seldom suffers the early years of his offspring to pass without any systematic and adequate plan of instruction and discipline expressly calculated for the attainment of those great ends. But let us view this subject a little more narrowly. Is a son intended for a learned profession? He is sent to school. The father is earnest that the master should ground him well in grammar, give him a taste for classical literature, and call forth his powers in composition. Afterwards, when the youth is removed to the university, a college and tutor are selected with anxious care to promote his intellectual improvement. An earnest solicitude is felt that he should become a sound and elegant scholar; and inquiring friends are told what progress he makes in his literary pursuits.-Again: suppose that a more humble walk in life is chosen by the parent, and that his boy is to be a tradesman with what care does he select a master who perfectly understands his business, and will be likely to make the boy thoroughly acquainted with it? And as the years of apprenticeship draw towards their close, he is solicitous that : his son should be instructed in all the higher parts of the trade, that he may be in no respect deficient, when he becomes his own master, and is to establish himself in life. Let any one who allows these to be just pictures of parental care in providing for the worldly interests of children, say how seldom their spiritual interests are the object of equal solicitude. Are masters chosen with the same care for the promotion of these interests? In fixing on schools and colleges for boys destined to the higher professions, and on masters and counting-houses . for those who are to move in a more humble line, it is a matter of prime consideration to select those which are known to be favourable to true religion? During education, is the progress of the boy in religion watched with unremitting solicitude, and promoted by all those measures which solicitude suggests? Are pains anxiously taken to remove all the obstacles in the way? And finally, is the boy himself removed (when that is possible) to a more favourable situation, if those obstacles are such as essentially to counteract his advancement in religious attainments? In most cases, I fear, even where better things might be hoped, these 1 questions must be answered in the negative. The efforts made in favour of the religious improvement of youth are partial and unsystematic, and generally cold and languid. But, even when accompanied by a considerable degree of earnestness, they very seldom evince a care and thought at all proportioned to the greatness of the object. An attention to the externals of religion is enforced, and glaring sins are forbidden and punished; and perhaps also the leading principles of the Gospel are occasionally inculcated;-but are the temper, the taste, and the habits narrowly watched? Is evil counteracted, not only in its commencement, but even before it appears, by guarding against dispositions and practices which, though not wrong in themselves, are dangerous from their natural alliance with those which are so? Are the dawnings of good early descried and carefully cherished? And above all, is the youthful mind continually taught to raise itself to the only source of safety and strength; to be diligent in self-examination, penitence, prayer, and praise? I fear it can seldom be said that a plan of this kind is followed earnestly, assiduously, and, with due allowance for casual interruptions, daily from youth to manhood. And yet earnestly, assiduously, and daily is the child taught his reading and spelling; the school-boy his grammar and classics; the academician his Euclid, Locke, and Newton; and the clerk or apprentice his master's business. Can we consult our experience on these points without exclaiming; What prudent care in human things! What negligence in divine! The result of such negligence may easily be anticipated, and is lamentably apparent in the character and habits of our young men. Is this negligence to be accounted for from any peculiar facility with which Christian truths are imbibed, and Christian habits formed? Is the path of true religion so easily discovered, and so inviting, that the young scarcely want a monitor to point it out and recommend it to their choice; while that of human science is thorny, and arduous, and disgusting, and never willingly chosen? Let the word of God and human experience answer. In fact, truth requires that this picture should be almost reversed. Religion is that which is, beyond all things, repulsive to the nature of man; while human science has many charms for him, and |