offices of Christ will begin to be unfolded. He will be painted as the Friend of mankind; as the great Refuge of all who have done wrong; as always willing to help them, and beg his Father to forgive them ;-as all kindness and goodness, and as setting us an example of all that is lovely and excellent; and as now exalted in glory, and all-wise, and allpowerful. Pains will be taken to make Him the object of affection attempered by reverence, and to make it pleasant to the child to please him, and painful to offend him. The child will in like manner be made acquainted with the Holy Ghost, and heaven, and hell, and the day of judgment, and eternity, and the lost state of man, and redemption. All these things will be taught with an immediate reference to practice and the heart. They must be unfolded gradually, and with a strict attention to the abilities and temperament of the child; and special care must be taken, that by God's blessing the feelings shall be properly affected as the understanding is informed.

5. Be on your guard against the little wiles and artifices, which children will soon employ to obtain their ends.

It is surprising how ingenious and adroit they will be in this way. They will endeavour to do, as mere play, something, which they know to be wrong and forbidden; and to put you off, by a laugh and a jest, when you require them to acknowledge that they have done wrong. These little tricks lead to much evil.

They undermine sincerity and simplicity of

character; and instead of being amused by them, as is often the case, a parent should view them with concern, and in that spirit carefully repress them. It is a good general rule in early youth, that nothing shall be said or done in jest which would be wrong if in earnest. More latitude may be allowed to those who are grown up: but children cannot so easily discriminate between what is innocent in jests, and what is not; and if they could, they have not sufficient steadiness of principle, and sufficient self-command, to confine themselves within the proper bounds, when suffered in their moments of gaiety to approach the brink of what is wrong. It is of the greatest possible importance to preserve the mind from the taint of cunning and deceit; and therefore we ought to be more anxious to avoid doing too little than too much to secure this point. Simplicity and integrity of character, the great foundation of every thing good, depend upon it.

6. Do all you can to secure a consistency of system in the management of your children.

It is quite apparent how indispensable it is that the father and mother should at least not counteract each other. If they do not and cannot think alike on the subject of education, by mutual concessions and accommodations they should pursue a similar plan with their children. Grievous are the consequences when they proceed differently. The children presume to erect themselves into judges between their parents: they play off one against the other. Not only one parent sinks in their esteem, but they

often lose respect for both, and are disobedient to both. Thus the Fifth Commandment is habitually broken; and bad principles and bad habits are as likely to be established by education in a young family, so circumstanced, as good ones.-Let me intreat parents to shun this fatal rock. If one of them is conscious that the other is best qualified for the work of education, let such parent be disposed to yield points as far as duty will allow, and to strengthen the hands of the other. And even the other, instead of presuming on superior ability in this line, and carrying matters with a high hand, and peremptorily insisting on points respecting which there may be a difference of opinion between them, should proceed with as much accommodation as can be made consistent with duty; and where a point cannot be yielded, still the suaviter in modo* should be practised with peculiar care, and the necessary duty performed in a way as little grating and offensive to the parent, who disapproves, as may be. Let the more enlightened parent recollect, that an indifferent plan of education, in which parents harmoniously join, will generally answer much better than a superior one respecting which they differ. Besides, by kind accommodations, the misjudging parent is often won by degrees to see things in a more just light, and to acquiesce in a better system. Where both parents act on principle, and refer to the Bible as their standard, and do not interpret it in a very different way, a degree of accordance,

* Mild and pleasant.

which will answer tolerably well for practical purposes, may reasonably be expected. The greatest difficulty arises when one of the parents does not act on principle, or refers, substantially, to a different standard from the other. Even in these distressing cases, the suaviter in modo,* on a true christian foundation, will do wonders. It often disarms hostility and counteraction, and leaves the young family very much in the hands of the parent best qualified to educate it. And I fully believe, from personal observation, that the divine blessing rests in an uncommon degree on the labours of a christian parent so unhappily circumstanced, and fruits follow excellent and abundant beyond all human expectation. With what pleasure have I seen a majority of the young members of a family, most lamentably exposed to temptation by one parent, snatched out of the fire, as it were, by the pious and constant, but meek and unassuming, labours of the other!

In families where the parents proceed harmoniously and well in the work of education, their plan is often lamentably counteracted in the nursery or the school room. If the children are indulged there in bad tempers and habits; and still more if they there meet with bad examples; with passion, or pride, or deceit, or a love of ease and luxury; all which is done in the parlour may be undone, and perhaps more than undone; and notwithstanding all the efforts of the parents, the progress of the child may be not in good, but in evil. Even on the most

* A gentle and accommodating manner.

favourable supposition, the fruits produced by the exertions of the parents, under such circumstances, will be scanty and crude. The bias of nature will be so in favour of what is wrong, and so against what is right, that, if divine grace did not wonderfully favour the exertions of true piety in education, the task of the parents would be hopeless. How carefully, then, should nurses and others, who have the care of children, be selected! And how attentively should the course of things in the nursery and the schoolroom be watched and regulated! To this end, the nurse or the governess should be impressed with a sense of the very high importance which the parent attaches to good tempers and good habits; to which must be added, good principles, if the child is old enough to understand them. But it will by no means be sufficient to endeavour to make this impression by general declarations. It must be made in detail and by example, and with a persevering, but not a harassing, recurrence to those points which seem to be not sufficiently understood, or not properly carried into practice. The vigilant eye of the parent will always be wanted to keep things in a right course, as well as to put them into it at first. It must be laid down as a principle, that nothing must be concealed by the child. That vile maxim against telling tales out of school (vile, when employed to keep parents in ignorance,) must be utterly proscribed; and openness and confidence must be zealously cultivated, both in the child and in those who have the

charge of him. But the parents must not trust to