not operate to the exclusion of more useful acquirements). You would perhaps find in many, a laudable assiduity, in storing the mind with a knowledge of history and lauguages, an acquaintance with the sciences and polite arts, with trade and commerce, but it is to be feared you would often search in vain for the necessary measures to complete the Christian.

Religion points out to men the improvement of the morals of youth, as a most important object of their care. But the education of the fashionable great, seldom carries them to any higher attainment, than that outward polish of manners, which in proportion as it is intended. to conceal, serves only to reflect additional deformity on the vices of the heart. Little foundation then being laid in the juvenile minds of this portion of the community for piety to God, veneration for his sacred laws: little foundation being laid for candour and benevolence towards their fellow-creatures, for humility, modesty, meekness, and temperance in themselves; well may dissipation and irreligion among them, be found of the most luxuriant growth, when sins are too often passed over without censure, and the errors of youth not unfrequently sanctioned and applauded. Too general a negligence prevails among parents, in inculcating those principles on which any solid superstructure can be raised; and the youthful mind, misled by a false and flimsy education, mistakes shadow for substance, and places its point of perfection in exterior accomplishments, rather than in sound, stable, and conscientious rectitude of life.

Can it then be a cause of wonder, that modern youth are destitute of that decency of deportment and propriety of manners, which we denominate respect? No longer do we see that retiring mo

desty, that distant and humble submission, which by keeping each in his proper place, preserved the great fabric of society, firm, and indissoluble. Our youth at present are distinguished by a premature assurance, and a presumptuous independence of manners, which assert an undue exaltation in the scale of the community, and threaten to destroy the subordinate degree subsisting between youth and manhood. From what does this arise but from want of true principle? From the insinuating influence of those pernicious maxims, which the late usurpation of reason over revelation has been so industriously and fatally dissemminating?

Descending to the consideration of those who are immediately beneath them, whom we may consider as equally removed from the dangers attendant on affluence and poverty; you will with reason expect to meet with fewer of those enormities, which lawless indulgences are apt to produce in their superiors. But examine the majority of those men also, with respect to the education of their children, and you will observe a shameful neglect of those Christian duties, which can alone render them happy in themselves, and a means also of happiness and comfort to others. Instead of being brought up the love and fear of God, instead of being introduced to a knowledge of the relation which he bears to them, as their Redeemer and Judge; the season of youth which should be peculiarly set apart for the attainment of the knowledge of salvation, is squandered in the attainment of trifles, if not in the pursuit of evil. The ornamenting of the body, prophaneness and obscenity of conversation, follies and fopperies of every kind, whatever in short has a tendency to reproach, degrade, and sully the purity of the

Christian character; these are the things which are permitted to obtrude themselves into their minds, and engross the whole of their attention.

This truly deplorable misapplication of time and talents during the early period of life, too well accounts for those numerous instances of shipwrecked virtue, which we cannot but observe and bewail in the world around us. A mind unfortified by resolution, a heart unstored with upright principles, may reasonably be expected to fall an easy prey to the artifices of those who lie in wait to deceive. How much, then, has that parent to answer for, who can with composure behold his child proceeding by degrees from thoughtlessness to dissipation, from dissipation to impiety, from impiety to infamy and ruin here, and from these to inevitable condemnation and punisment in the world to come!

Alas, while tending with fondness their little amusements, gazing delighted on their engaging looks, hearing with rapture their harmless prat tle, tracing out with triumph their opening dawn of reason, clasping them eagerly to your breasts, and figuring them in your flattering imaginations as your honour through life, your support in age, and your comfort in death; should the dreadful apprehension come across your hearts, that it is possible they may one day become, through want of a proper education, your shame, your torture, the plague of society, despised and avoided by every honest man. Good God! how would you be shocked and alarmed, how earnestly would you pray to Heaven, that you might never live to see such a mortifying event!

And yet, does not every day present us with some melancholy example of ignorance and depravity! Whence profligacy, beggary, prostitution, disease, bad company, bad houses, an infam

ous life, and ignominous death! Would you see the direful effects of inattention to the manners and principles of youth, pourtrayed in all their ugliness and horror; examine the journals of children and friends, lovely and beloved, who have deceived the fondest expectations of parents and relations, spread ruin and entailed disgrace on all who were near and dear to them, and concluded a round of the grossest indecency and outrage, by falling prematurely into an infamous grave! or patrole the streets when the shadows of the evening invite the sons and daughters of debauchery, to avow their unhallowed purposes, to insult the laws of God and their country, to expose our want of discipline and policy, and to pour the most wanton contempts on every form of public decorum! Or go if you will to places of public confinement and correction, to the cells in Newgate, where vice, in all its filthiness and deformity, visibly triumphs in the wretchedness and degradation of the species!

How powerfully should these awful pictures of guilt and misery operate on the care of your offspring! Is it possible to prevent their adopting such a course of life, by teaching them their duty to their Maker, their neighbours and themselves? And ought you not to do it early, incessantly, and affectually? Can you under this impression, and thus circumstanced, be too cautious what masters you employ to instruct them, what servants you admit into your families, what books you allow them to peruse, what example you purpose to their imitation, what principles you enjoin them to cultivate, what objects you present to their view, what amusements you direct them to prefer; and, above all, what companions you, suffer to become their associates? It is your business, as you regard their happiness

here and hereafter, to keep them innocent, to preserve them unblemished, to guard their growing powers against every vicious or improper bias, and sedulously suppress the least appearance of obstinacy, peevishness, dissimulation, cunning, indolence, extravagance, insignificance, obscene language, turbulence of temper, and es pecially a cruel unpitying disposition to their fellow-creatures, and every thing that lives.

2

Nature only requires a little gentle assistance to perfect all her productions. You have seen a tender plant springing upon a fertile soil, what though tall and straight, and promising to become the pride of the forest, since one unlucky stroke may have crushed its aspiring head, and forced it from its natural direction, from that moment it bended and grew downwards to the earth, instead of towering to the skies. Thus, the human mind while young and pliable, is in perpetual danger of growing luxuriant by too much indulgence, or losing all its strength by the unnatural restraint of too much severity, to be suppressed by misfortune, checked by disappointment, or chilled by penury. How liable is it to deviate from the straight line of rectitude and honour, by the fascination of example, and the influence of imitation; to folly, to vice, and to ruin. Yours is the pleasing, but important task, to rear up, to direct, to defend this young and delicate production! In this manner, you may lead it from lower degrees of perfection to higher, from the nursery to the field of action, till it is adorned with the fairest honours, enriched with the most precious fruit, and ripe for transplanting to the Paradise of God, where it shall bloom. afresh under the immediate sunshine of Heaven, and flourish for ever in immortal beauty and perfection.