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LET all who have children, endeavour to be the beginners and the stock of a new blessing to their family, by blessing their children, by praying much for them, by holy education, and a severe piety, by rare example, and an excellent religion. JEREMY TAYLOR.

ON EARLY RELIGIOUS TEACHING.

I EARNESTLY request all Christian parents, that they would have compassion on the souls of their poor children, and be faithful to the great trust, that God hath put on them. If you cannot do what you would for them, do what you can. Both church and state, city and country, groan under the neglect of this weighty duty. Will you therefore resolve upon it, and neglect it no longer? Remember Eli. Your children are like Moses in the bulrushes, ready to perish, if they have not help. As ever you would not be charged before God, nor have them cry out against you in everlasting fire, see that you teach them how to escape it, and bring them up in holiness and the fear

of God. I charge every one of you upon your allegiance to God, as you will very shortly answer the contrary at your peril, that you will neither refuse nor neglect this most necessary duty. If you are not willing to do it, now you know it to be so great a duty, you are rebels, and no true subjects of Jesus Christ. If you are willing, but know not how, I will add a few words of direction to help you. Lead them, by your examples, to prayer, reading, and other religious duties. Inform their understandings,-store their memories, -rectify their wills,-quicken their affections,keep tender their consciences,—restrain their tongues, and teach them gracious speech,-reform and watch over their outward conversation. these ends, get them Bibles and pious books, and see that they read them. Examine them often what they learn; especially spend the Lord's day in this work, and suffer them not to spend it in sports or idleness. Shew them the meaning of what they read or learn; keep them out of evil company, and acquaint them with the godly. Especially shew them the excellency, necessity, and pleasure of serving God, and labour to fix all upon their hearts. BAXTER.

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ON RELIGIOUS AND MORAL

INSTRUCTION.

RELIGIOUS education should begin in the dawn of childhood. The earliest days, after intelligence is fairly formed in the mind, are incomparably the best for this purpose. The child should be taught, as soon as he is capable of comprehending the instructions which are to be communicated. Nothing should be suffered to preoccupy the place, which is destined to truth.

If the intellect is not filled with sound instruction, as fast as it is capable of receiving it, the enemy, who never neglects to sow tares, when parents are asleep, will imperceptibly fill it with a dangerous and noxious growth.

The great truths of religion should be taught so early, that the mind should never remember when it began to learn, or when it was without this knowledge. Whenever it turns a retrospective view upon the preceeding periods of its existence, these truths should always seem to have been in its possession; to have the character of innate principles, to have been inwoven in its nature, and to constitute a part of all its current thinking. DWIGHT.

THEY talk like emissaries of Satan, who would undervalue parents for enforcing a discipline of knowledge and of action, and, above all, of obedience upon the child, lest forsooth they should cramp the liberty of nature. What do they mean by that word, “liberty of nature?" I know what liberty of will means, but of nature I have no notion, but as a bondage upon the natural liberty of the will: so that, all they do by the sufferance and endurance of childhood of youth, is to permit them to rivet the bonds and iniquity, to confirm and deepen the darkness, into which we are all by nature brought.

Not however deeming these moping sentimentalists worthy the expenditure of good sense, I cannot enough admire, nor could have believed, did I not know it for certain, that many pious people are so far overseen in this matter, as to believe and act upon the faith, that because they cannot change the heart, nor lead the mind to Jesus, nor in any other way bear a part in the work of their children's salvation, it is of little avail to distress themselves, with laborious pains-takings, and it is wicked to think that they can by all their efforts bring them a jot nearer to Christ—all this Antinomian speculation and practice, which goes to a great height with some,

cometh, dear brethren, of this capital defect in their theology; that they know not, or believe not, that there is a soil, as well as Sower of seed, and a Waterer of seed, and a Husbandman, which soil is in man, is in the heart of man; which soil is looked to by God, and is honored with his cultivation, and made fruitful of his harvest. To the formation of which soil, I say again, nothing under heaven contributes so essentially as the right training, and the good-breeding of a father's house-by cultivating in the child many excellent qualities of the mind and heart, whereof by far the best is faith, or a simple reliance upon the word of its parents, and an undoubting confidence in their affection. And next to this, is a reverence of their authority, and an implicit obedience of their commands.

To believe, to revere, and to obey, are the three highest faculties and functions of man; and the three most necessary requisites towards the receiving and fructifying of the Divine seed, which must be believed, and revered, and obeyed, in order to bring forth any fruit. IRVING.

IN combating Infidelity in youth, we must recollect the proverb, that' a man may bring his horse to the water, but cannot make him drink.'

The minds of the young are preoccupied :

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