port that I hear. To perform a duty of such importance with so much indifference was equal to an encouragement of the sin. Eli made use of petitions and exhortations, when he ought to have applied sharp reproofs, and alarming threatenings. He censured and rebuked, when he ought to have anathematised and thundered: accordingly, after the holy spirit had related the reproofs, which Eli, in the words just now cited, addressed to his sons, he tells us in the text, by a seeming contradiction, but in words full of truth and good sense, that Eli restrained them not.

Observe thirdly what terrible punishments this criminal indulgence drew down upon the guilty father, the profligate sons, and even the whole people under their direction. A prophet had before denounced these judgments against Eli, in order to engage him to prevent the repetition of the crimes, and the infliction of the punishments. Wherefore honorest thou thy sons above me? said the man of God. I said, indeed, that thy house, and the house of thy father should walk before me for ever; but behold the days come that I will cut off thine arm, and the arm of thy father's house, that there shall not be an old man in thine house. And thou shalt see an enemy in my habitation, in all the wealth which God shall give Israel. And the man of thine, whom I shall not cut off from mine altar, shall be to consume thine eyes, and to grieve thine heart. And this shall be a sign unto thee, thy two sons, Hophni and Phinehas in one day shall both of them die, chap. ii. 29, &c.

These threatenings were accomplished in all their rigor. The arm is in scripture an emblem of strength, and when the prophet threatened Eli, that the Lord would cut off his arm, and the arm of his father's house, he meant to foretel that the

family of this priest should fall into decay. Hophni and Phinehas perished in battle when the Philistines conquered the Israelites. Ahitub and Ichabod, the sons of Phinehas, lived only a few years after the death of their father. If we believe a tradition of the Jews, this threatening was accomplished many ages after it was uttered. We are told in the Talmud, that there was at Jerusalem a family, in which no one outlived the eighteenth year of his age; and that a famous Rabbi found by enquiring into the origin of that family, that it descended from Eli. A rival, Zadok, was made high priest instead of Abiathar, a descendant of Eli. We are able to prove by very exact registers that the high priest continued in the family of Zadok not only from the building of the temple to the destruction of it, that is to say for the space of four hundred years, but even to the time of Antiochus and Epiphanes. The rest of the misfortunes of Eli, the victory obtained by the Philistines, the taking of the ark, the confusion which brought on the labor and the death of the wife of Phinehas, who expired, saying, name the child Ichabod, for the glory is departed from Israel, chap. iv. 19, &c. the violent death of Eli; all these events are fully known.

I hasten to the chief design of this discourse. The extreme rigor, which God used toward Eli, and the terrible judgments, with which he punished the indulgence of this unhappy parent seem to offend some, who have not attended to the great guilt of a parent, who neglects to devote his children to God by a holy education. I am going to endeavor to remove this offence, and, in order to do so, I shall not confine myself to my text, but shall treat of the subject at large, and shew you, as our time will allow, first, the crimes and miseries of a parent, who neglects the education of his

family; and secondly, the means of preventing them. We will direct our reflections so that they may instruct not only heads of families, but all our hearers, and so that what we shall say on the education of children, by calling to mind the faults committed in our own, may enable us to correct them.

To neglect the education of our children, is to be ungrateful to God, whose wonderful power, created and preserved them. With what marvellous care doth a kind providence watch over the formation of our infants, and adjust all the different parts of their bodies?

With what marvellous care doth a kind providence provide for their wants: for at first they are like those idols, of which a prophet speaks, they have eyes and see not, they have ears and hear not, they have feet and cannot walk. Frail, infirm, and incapable of providing for their wants, they find a sufficient supply in those feelings of humanity and tenderness, with which nature inspires all human kind. Who can help admiring that, at a time when infants have nothing that can please, God enables them to move the compassion of their parents, and to call them to their succor by a language more eloquent and more pathetic than the best studied discourses?

With what marvellous care doth a kind providence preserve them amidst a multitude of accidents, which seem to conspire together to snatch them away in their tenderest infancy, and in all their succeeding years? Who but a being Almighty and all-merciful could preserve a machine so brittle, at a time when the least shock would be sufficient to destroy it?

With what astonishing care doth a kind providence provide for those wants, which old age inca

pacitates us to supply? Who can shut his eyes against all those wonders without sinking into the deepest stupidity, and without exposing himself to the greatest misery.

To neglect the education of our children is to refuse to retrench that depravity, which he communicated to them. Suppose the scriptures had not spoken expressly on the subject of original depravity, yet it would argue great stupidity to question it. As soon as infants discover any signs of reason, they discover signs of depravity, and their malice appears as their ideas unfold themselves. Sin in them is a fire at first concealed, next emitting a few sparks, and at last bursting into a great blaze, unless it be prevented in time. Whence do they derive so great an infection? Can we doubt it, my brethren? They derive it from us, and by communicating our nature we communicate our depravity. It is impossible, being our children, that they should not be depraved, as we are, for, to use the language of scripture, their fathers are Amorites and their mothers are Hittites, Ezek. xvi. 13. Here I wish I could give you some notion of this mortifying mystery; I wish I could remove the difficulties, which prevent your seeing it; I wish I could shew you what a union there is between the brain of an infant and that of its mother, in order to convince you that sin passes

from the parent to the child,

What can we in cool blood behold our children in an abyss, into which we have plunged them; can we be sensible that we have done this evil, and not endeavor to relieve them? Not being able to make them innocent, shall we not endeavor to render them penitent? Ah! victims of my depravity, unhappy heirs of the crimes of your parents, innocent creatures born only to suffer, methinks, I

ought to reproach myself for all the pains you feel, all the tears you shed, and all the sighs you utter. Methinks, every time you cry, you reprove me for my insensibility and injustice. At least, it is right, that, as I acknowledge myself the cause of the evil, I should employ myself in repairing it, and endeavor to renew your nature by endeavoring to renew my own.

This reflection leads us to a third. To neglect the education of our children is to be wanting in that tenderness, which is so much their due. What can we do for them? What inheritance can we transmit to them? Titles? They are often nothing but empty sounds without meaning and reality. Riches? They often make themselves wings, and fly away, Prov. xxiii. 5. Honors? They are often mixed with disagreeable circumstances, which poison all the pleasure. It is a religious education, piety and the fear of God, that makes the fairest inheritance, the noblest succession, that we can leave our families.

If any worldly care may lawfully occupy the mind of a dying parent, when in his last moments the soul seems to be called to detach itself from every worldly concern, and to think of nothing but eternity, it is that, which hath our children for its object. A christian in such circumstances finds his heart divided between the family, which he is leaving in the world, and the holy relations, which he is going to meet in heaven. He feels himself pressed by turns between a desire to die, which is most advantageous for him, and a wish to live, which seems most beneficial to his family. He says, I am in a strait betwixt two, having a desire to depart, and to be with Christ, which is far better; nevertheless to abide in the flesh is more needful for you, Phil. i. 23, 24. We are terrified