“ Such is an exact emblem of the heart which is left unguarded by religious principle. A temptation attacks, and no preparation is made for defence. There is no grace to resist, and to say, "How can I do this great wickedness, and sin against God?" Fatal compliance is therefore unavoidable; and the first temptation, like the devil in the parable, brings with it seven others more dreadful than itself, but still more welcome, and still more successful. The passions which now become the tyrants of the soul, must be gratified. God and his laws are unknown, or despised. ”

“ Great, incalculably great, is the evil to be dreaded for our children from the neglect of their religious instruction. It is an evil which may be immediately observed, which spreads increasingly through life, and which involves eternal consequences.
The immediate evil resulting from a neglect of religious instruction is observable, not only in the child's extreme ignorance of whatever is morally good, but in the pernicious habits which he inevitably contracts. That the human mind, as soon as it begins to act, discovers a bias to evil, experience, I think, will not allow us to dispute. ”

“ When I say unto the wicked, thou shalt surely die, and thou givest him not warning, nor speakest to warn the wicked of his way, to save his life; the same wicked man shall die in his iniquity, but his blood will I require at thine hand." What an awful accountableness is here expressed! A parent who appropriates such a charge as this, and whose conscience accuses him of having neglected, till it is too late, to fulfil it; is no enviable case. I believe that it is often the regret of the best of men, when their children are taken from them, that their religious instruction has been so deficient. ”

“ Untaught in moral distinctions, the judgment will be involved in darkness, and prove perverse in its decisions: unaccustomed to wholesome restraint, the desires will capriciously fix on the most improper objects; never directed to the sublimer beauties of religion, the affections will become grovelling and impure: while the will, a stranger to the power of godliness, grows obstinately disobedient, and is led away captive by the wild and unhallowed passions of a natural mind. ”

“ And what parent so insensible as not to feel those thorns and nettles in the untoward disposition of his neglected child? It may be, he is indifferent about the culture of the tender mind but he will often be chagrined with the sad consequences of that indifference. He may not sufficiently feel the importance of religious instruction; but the neglect of it will prove to him a fruitful source of inquietude and pain. The thorns and thistles will not gall him the less that lie is unwilling to acknowledge them the growth of his own negligence. ”

“ The native darkness of his mind; never penetrated with a single ray of religious instruction, becomes grosser and grosser. Errors multiply and rule the judgement. Having no previous principles to supplant, they gain an easy ascendancy: Every thing is now beheld through the medium of strong delusion. Truth, if it be offered, is rejected with impatience. It has no beauty, nor comeliness, in it to attract a mind of this description. In his childhood, it had not gained his reverence; and as he grows up, he learns to persecute it with ridicule and contempt. ”

“ Now, if no wholesome restraint is imposed, if this evil bias is not counteracted, what are we to expect? What, but all that folly, all that deceit, all that disobedience, and all those other vicious propensities, which, alas, we have too frequent reason to lament in the disposition and behaviour of our youth? The mind cannot remain wholly inactive. It has received a productive energy from its Creator, and unless the seeds of virtue are early sown in its soil, that energy will be spent on the weeds and poisonous fruits of vice. ”

“ They usurp the whole surface; and should a single grain of useful seed chance to drop upon it, there is no vacant soil to receive it; or should it be permitted to shoot a green leaf into view, how feebly, how imperfectly does it rise, and how soon does it perish for want of vegetable food! Such is the condition of the neglected mind. The dawn of reason, which is the signal for commencing a rational education, has been suffered to pass away unimproved, and vice obtains an easy and early possession of the heart. ”

“ And it cannot be denied that herein the parent is justly punished. How wisely has God connected duty with reward, and disobedience with punishment! "Take this child, and nurse it for me," is the commission of Heaven to every parent;—obey, and you are rewarded with dutiful and tender returns on the part of your child;—disregard the heavenly voice, and you are punished with contempt of parental authority; for it will be found, in general, that the youth who never hears of his duty to his Creator, is deficient in filial reverence and obedience. ”

“ That the religious education of his children is a concern of the utmost importance, no conscientious parent is disposed to deny. He admits the claim of the infant mind is tender and careful cultivation. He considers himself as standing in a place of high responsibility, and to "train up his child in the way he should go," he feels it to be an imperious duty, which he cannot neglect without incurring a great degree of guilt. ”

“ Sensible objects attract and absorb our attention, while the invisible, though infinitely nobler part, is denied its just regard. A conduct certainly very preposterous. We reverse the order of things. We make that a primary which ought to be a secondary consideration, and teach our children, by our own example, to contradict that excellent rule of christianity, "Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness."
The evil of neglecting the reasonable demands of external nature, strikes us with peculiar force. ”

“ Those evil thoughts accustomed to work in the uncultivated mind, as in their native region, exhibit their respective efficiencies in the conversation and conduct. They are restless traitors, which the infatuated youth carries and fosters in his bosom, till they awaken the baneful passions which impel him to every act of indiscretion and criminality. ”

“ While the soul continues in union with the body, the case, however bad, must not be thought desperate. The careless parent may be roused to a sense of his criminal neglect. He may be brought to weep over his abused offspring, and his acute sensations of self-reproach and paternal commiseration may force tears from his eyes, that, through the blessing of God, may soften their hearts, and prove the means of their recovery: But when the immortal spirit is summoned from the clay tenement, to take its trial before the Judge of all, it is past time to correct the error. ”

“ How often in the case of a neglected and deluded youth, has a pious friend been forced to close the kindest remonstrances with this despairing exclamation; "Am I therefore become your enemy because I tell the truth?" ”

“ Parents have a natural claim on their offspring for support; and relieving aged parents, when bodily strength decays, infirmities and wants increase, is not only an act of mercy, but also an act of justice, an imperious duty,—a repaying in kind, what they did for their children in their tender helpless years, and to "withold from them to whom it is due, when it is in the power of thine hand to do it," and "shut up our bowels of compassion when we see them in need," argues an extreme hardnes of heart. ”

“ If not crushed on its first appearance, it gains increasingly upon the soul, and, shaping into innumerable varieties, seizes on all its powers. Vice is naturally despotic; it aspires to universal dominion; and where motives to virtue are never presented, it will most assuredly obtain it. ”

“ The strongest propensities are formed in childhood, and if they are bad, as they will undoubtedly be, where religious education is neglected, they harden into habits which are not easily overcome. For the truth of this, may I not appeal to an expression too commonly found in the mouths of adults in wickedness?" I am too old to learn; my habits are fixed, and cannot be changed." Such, indeed, is the confirming power of evil habits, that a prophet places the probability of reformation in a case of this kind, on the same footing with that of a controul over the uniform operations of nature ”

“ And surely no means of conveying moral and religious instruction to the young mind can be more natural than those of parental exertion. A child is a precious trust, which God first and most emphatically deposits in the hands of the parent. ”

“ Nor is the evil confined to sentiment. The fountain is impure, and the streams which it sends forth cannot be wholesome. This corruption of principle produces all the sad variety of moral turpitude. "Who car bring a clean thing out of an unclean?" It is excellently advised by Solomon, "keep thy heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life." This is the advice of sage experience; for the heart is that important department which commands the whole man. Our Lord traces from the natural heart all that is morally bad. ”

“ It is, however, too common to limit the provision we make for our children to the wants and conveniences of the present life. Chiefly concerned about "what they shall eat, or what they shall drink, and where withal they shall be clothed," we suffer the demands of the body to drown the cries of the immortal mind for its congenial nourishment. ”

“ For let it be remembered, that: the neglect of virtuous and godly tuition is a positive training to irreligion and vice, He that is not for religion, is against her. There can be no neutrality here. Our Lord in the gospel describes only two ways; the one is broad, and leads to destruction; the other narrow, and leads to life. There is no intermediate path; and the youth who has not been led into the safe and narrow way, will, of necessity, be found in the broad way, running a dangerous and progressive course of folly. ”

“ As in the material world, we uniformly expect the same results from the same combination of circumstances; so, in the affairs of mind, we naturally conclude that the same treatment will operate the same effects. ”

“ Hence a wise and pious tuition in tender years is expected to ensure, for the rest of life, a continuance in wisdom and piety: while, on the other hand, it is proved, by daily experience, that "train up a child in the way he should not go, and when he is old, he will certainly be wicked." ”

“ It ought, indeed, to be observed, that it is by no means consistent with the right notions of the divine government, to suppose that the eternal state of a human soul his left to the mercy of any creature or creatures, whatever. ”

“ Another young man named Jones, was convicted of breaking into a house and robbing it, he was convicted upon the evidence of an accomplice, who thereby saved himself from trial, which may serve to shew this truth, that there is no just ground to depend on the fidelity of an accomplice in crime. ”

“ Left without moral cultivation it resembles the field of the sluggard, and the vineyard of the man void of understanding. The passenger remarks that "it is all grown over with thorns, and nettles have covered the face thereof, and the stone wall thereof is broken down." ”

“ It is impossible for any subject to be more deserving of the serious consideration of young persons, than that alarming depravity which has lately manifested itself among persons of their class, and which called forth the serious determination I am about to state. ”

“ He cannot be indifferent to any thing that concerns him. He follows him while still in the body, through all the probable events of his future life, and anticipates the various turns of Providence which may yet distinguish him. ”

“ Offences like those above described are not accidental, nor such as good children could commit under momentary temptation; they are the effects of most vicious habits of thinking and acting, brought on by long indulged falsehood, idleness, and extravagance ”

“ The public execution of such juvenile offenders is justified upon this principle, that if they are of age to contrive, devise, and secretely to perpetrate crimes of such magnitude, they are old enough to suffer the penalties of the law for the same. ”

“ As the tree falls, so must it lie.” And if the surviving parent is now made conscious of having withheld from that soul means of spiritual life, how shocking must the reflection be! It is now only, but too late, that he feels the weighty importance of that solemn charge given by the Lord to the prophet, as if it had been actually addressed to himself ”

“ In consequence of the prevalence of crimes of the deepest die among children, from ten to eighteen years of age, the Prince Regent had been advised, that it was necessary to make a dreadful example of some of them ”

“ A LADY, in the neighbourhood of Dundee, going to visit a poor woman in the town,'was directed, by mistake, to the lodging of another person, and knocking at the door, was desired, in a low female voice, to come in. ”