AN ADDRESS

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CHRISTIAN PARENTS.

MY DEAR FRIENDS,

It is a situation of tremendous responsibility to be a parent: for the manner in which you discharge the duties of this relation, you must give account in that awful day, when the secrets of all hearts shall be judged by Jesus Christ. With every babe that God intrusts to your care, he in effect sends the solemn injunction, "Take this child, and bring it up for me;" and at the final audit, will inquire, in what manner you have obeyed the command. It will not then be sufficient to plead the strength of your affection, nor the ceaseless efforts to which it gave rise; for if these efforts were not directed to a right end, if all your solicitude was lavished upon inferior objects, you will receive the rebuke of him that sitteth upon the throne.

It is of infinite importance that you should contemplate your children in their proper point of view. They are animal beings, and there

fore it is highly proper that you should use every effort to provide them with suitable food, clothing, habitations, and every thing else that can conduce to the comfort of their present existence. They are social beings, and therefore it is important that you should qualify them to enjoy the comforts, and discharge the duties of social life. They are rational beings, and therefore it is your duty to furnish them with every possible advantage for the culture of their minds. But if you look no farther than this, you leave out of sight the grandest and most interesting lights in which they can be seen, and will of course neglect the most important of your duties towards them; for they are immortal beings; the stamp of eternity is upon them: everlasting ages are before them. They are like all the rest of the human race, depraved, guilty, and condemned creatures, and consequently in danger of eternal misery. Yet are they, through the mercy of God, and the mediation of Christ, creatures capable of attaining to glory, honour, immortality, and eternal life. Looking upon them in this light, and this is the light in which you profess to contemplate them, say, what should be your chief anxiety concerning them, and what your conduct towards them.

Recognising in your children, beings placed in this world in a state of probation, and hastening to eternal happiness or torment, will you be contented to seek for them any thing short of eternal salvation? Even a deist, who has any belief of a future state of reward and punishment, cannot act consistently, unless he is supremely desirous of the everlasting welfare of his children. None but an avowed atheist can,

with the least propriety, fix his aim lower for his children, than the possession of a happy immortality. But in the case of a Christian parent, it is in the highest degree inconsistent, absurd, cruel, and wicked, ever to lose sight of this even for an instant, in the arrangements which he makes for his family, or the manner of conducting himself towards them. Do you really believe in the ruin of the human race by sin, and their recovery by Christ; in the existence of such states as heaven and hell; in the necessity of a life of faith and holiness, in order to escape the one and secure the other? then act up to these solemn convictions, not only in reference to your own salvation, but to the salvation of your children. Let a supreme desire for their immortal interests be at the bottom of all your conduct, and be interwoven in all your parental habits. Let them have, in the fullest sense of the term, a Christian education. towards them, and for them, so that you shall be able to say to them, however they may turn out, "I take you to record that I am clear from your blood.""

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But my principal object in this address is, to point out what appear to me to be the most prevailing obstacles to success, in the religious education of children.

That in many cases the means employed by christian parents for their children's spiritual welfare are unsuccessful, is a melancholy fact, established by abundant, and, I fear, accumulating evidence. I am not now speaking of those families-and are there indeed such ?-where scarcely a semblance of domestic piety or instruction is to be found, where no family altar is

seen, no family prayer is heard, no parental admonition is delivered! What! this cruel, wicked, ruinous neglect of their children's immortal interest in the families of professors!! Mon

strous inconsistency! Shocking dereliction of principle! No wonder that their children go astray. This is easily accounted for. Some of the most profligate young people that I know, have issued from such households. Their prejudices against religion, and their enmity against its forms, are greater than those of the children of avowed worldlings. Inconsistent, hypocritical, negligent professors of religion, frequently excite in their sons and daughters an

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querable aversion and disgust against piety, which seems to inspire them with a determination to place themselves at the farthest possible remove from its influence.

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But I am now speaking of the failure of a religious education, where it has been, in some measure, carried on; instances of which are by no means unfrequent. Too often do we hear the echo of David's sorrowful complaint uttered by the distressed and disappointed Christian father, Although my house be not so with God." Too often do we see the child of many prayers and many hopes forgetting the instructions he has received, and running with the multitude to do evil. Far be it from me to add affliction to affliction, by saying that this is to be traced, in every case, to parental neglect. I would not thus pour as it were nitre and vinegar upon the bleeding wounds, with which filial impiety has lacerated many a father's mind. I would not thus cause the wretched parent to exclaim, Reproach hath broken the heart,

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already half broken by my child's misconduct." I know that in many cases, no blame whatever is to be thrown on the parent; but it was the depravity of the child alone, which nothing couid subdue but the power of the Holy Ghost, that led to the melancholy result. The best possible scheme of Christian education, most judiciously directed, and most perseveringly maintained, has, in some cases, totally failed. God is a sovereign, and he hath mercy on whom he will have mercy. Still, however, there is, in the order of means, a tendency in a religious education, to secure the desired result; and God usually does bless, with his saving influence, such efforts. "Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it." This is certainly true, as a general rule, though there are many exceptions from it.

I shall now lay before you the principal obsta cles to success in religious education, as they strike my mind.

First. It is frequently too negligently and capriciously maintained, even where it is not totally omitted.

It is obvious, that if at all attended to, it should be attended to with anxious earnestness, systematic order, and perpetual regularity. It should not be taken up as a dull form, an unpleasant drudgery, but as a matter of deep and delightful interest. The heart of the parent should be entirely and obviously engaged, A part of every returning sabbath should be spent by him, surrounded by his filial charge; and it should be embodied, more or less, with the whole habit of parental conduct. The father may lead the usual devotions at the family altar the mother