Whatever be the fate of my children in this transitory world, about which I hope I am as solicitous as I ought to be, I would, if possible, secure a happy meeting with them in a future and everlasting life. I can well enough bear their reproaches for not enabling them to attain to worldly honors and distinctions; but to have been in any measure accessary, by my neglect, to their final perdition, would be the occasion of such reproach and blame, as would be absolutely insupportable.

OF INSTRUCTION IN THE PRINCIPLES OF MORALS

AND RELIGION.

Ir has been a maxim hastily adopted, and with great plausibility supported, by some men of genius, that nothing should be inculcated upon children which they cannot perfectly understand and see the reason of. But, in fact, it has not been applied to any subject but that of religion, the doctrines of which are said to be too abstruse for their comprehension. Had the application of the maxim been made universal, the absurdity and impracticability of it could not but have been immediately perceived. In reality, we act upon the very contrary maxim in every thing that respects children, especially very young children; and there is not, in the nature of things, a possibility of doing otherwise. Thus the ear of a child is accustomed to the sounds of all kinds of words long before he can possibly have any idea of their meaning.

It is upon this plan that the great business of education at large is conducted by Divine Providence. Appearances are continually presented to our view long before we are able to decypher them or to collect and apply the instruction which they are adapted to give us; and the gradual decyphering of appearances, which we have long contemplated without understanding, contributes considerably to the pleasure of the discovery, and enhances the value and use of it. It is the same with children when they decypher our language; and they are enabled to do it by the very same process, namely, comparing the different circumstances in which we use the same expression.

Besides, the mind may be very usefully impressed, and a foundation may be laid for future instruction, though no determinate ideas be communicated; and if, by accustoming children to the outward forms of religion only, as by making them keep silence, and kneel when others pray, &c. a general notion be gradually impressed upon their minds, that some reverence is due to a power which they do not see, and that there exists an authority to which all mankind, the rich and great, as well as the poor and mean, must equally bow, a good end will be gained. Besides, by this means, a mechanical habit will be formed, which will not be laid aside, till, by degrees, they come to know the reason of it, and to enter into it with understanding and pleasure; whereas they would not have had the same advantage for a rational knowledge and practice without that previous and mechanical habit. Thus a child who is made to bow mechanically upon being introduced into a room, or to persons of certain ranks and characters, before he can be sensible of the full meaning of it, afterwards enters more casily into those sentiments of decency and respect for stations and characters which distinguish the civilized from the uncivilized part of mankind. Thus, also, the custom of making bonfires on the fifth of November, in which children are as active as men, is of use to inspire them, at an earlier period than they would otherwise be capable of it, with an abhorrence of popery and arbitrary power, and makes them enter into those sentiments with much more warmth than they would otherwise have done.

Was the thing itself but of trifling consequence in the conduct of life, children might, without much inconvenience, be suffered to be unacquainted with any principles of religion, till they were capable of a rational inquiry into them, and a regular investigation of them; but, considering that religion is of unspeakable consequence in the conduct of life, inspiring just sentiments concerning God and our fellow-creatures, just notions of the business and end of life, and enforcing the obligations of conscience, in order to our attaining the proper

dignity and true happiness of our rational nature here, and infinitely superior felicity hereafter; we ought not, surely, to neglect any part of a process which is naturally adapted to gain so great an end. Indeed, I believe that no person, who had himself a just sense of the importance of religion, ever imagined that there was any sort of impropriety in the religious instruction of his children.

It may be said that, in this method, we take an unfair advantage of the imbecility of the rational faculties, and inculcate truth by such a kind of mechanical prejudice as would enforce the belief of any thing; and this is readily acknowledged, without any confession of impropriety in the thing. For the whole of our treatment of children is necessarily of a piece with this, prejudicing them in favor of our own opinions and practices; so that there is hardly any thing that a child does not believe before he is acquainted with the proper grounds on which his belief ought to rest. It is sufficient for him that he has the authority of his parent, or tutor, for it; and till he finds that he has been misled by his parent or tutor, he can never entertain any suspicion of them, or see any reason for examining and questioning what they assert. Rational conviction is generally preceded by such doubts and suspicions as a child cannot possibly have entertained. Can there be any reason then why we should avail ourselves of the authority of a parent in other things, and make an exception with respect to religion only?

Besides, when the thing is rightly understood and considered, it will appear not to be so very difficult a matter to give even a child very useful notions of religion, and such as he shall sufficiently understand; as that there is a being called God, who made him and all things; that this Being, though invisible himself, sees us wherever we are, and that he will make us happy if we be good, and miserable if we be wicked. If it should appear that, for some time, a child conceives of God as of a man who lives above the clouds, and from thence sees every thing that is done upon the earth, there will no ma

terial inconvenience attend it; because it is only a sense of the power, the providence, and the government of God that is of principal importance to be inculcated. What else he is, or where he is, signifies very little in this case. A child may also be made to understand that this God gave a commission to a man, called Jesus Christ, to teach mankind his will and to persuade them to practise it; that he was put to death by wicked men who would not hearken to him; but that God raised him from the dead, and will send him again to raise all the dead; when he will take the good with him into heaven, a place of happiness, and send the wicked into hell, a place of punishment.

There is nothing in all this but what a child, who has attained to the use of speech, may be made to understand sufficiently; and yet, in fact, this is the substance of all that is most important in religion. When children come to read, they may easily be taught that the Bible contains several books written by good men, which give an account of the creation of the world, of what God has done for mankind, what he enjoins us to do here, and how he will dispose of us hereafter, together with the history of the prophets, of Jesus Christ, of his apostles, and of good men in all ages; and they may be made to read the Scriptures, with the seriousness and respect that is due to them. No other history was ever written with such plainness and simplicity, no style is so easy as that of the historical books of Scripture; and with a little judgment in selecting, and skill in explaining a few things and expressions, any child that can read may be instructed in the principles of religion from the Bible with peculiar advantage; and his mind will be impressed with greater force by reading the words of God, and of his prophets, than those which proceed from any less authority.

Some may object to the scheme of inculcating the princiles of virtue from a regard to any mere authority, or even rom the consideration of rewards or punishments; thinking it better to have them inculcated at the very beginning, from