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mysteries are entitled to his belief; and what duties are worthy of his practice.--And is this the recommendation of the philosopher? Is this the suggestion of genuine liberality? How inconsistent with the plainest dictates of man's vaunted reason! How utterly at variance with all that we know of God's dealings with, and positive injunctions to, his creatures!

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Can the heart exist from infancy to manhood wholly devoid of religious prepossessions ? If the true seed be not early sown, will the soil continue entirely unproductive? If the "householder" delay to sow his wheat, will the ever vigilant enemy within the breast, who during the sleep of the intellect, is fain to scatter his tares among the wheat, abstain altogether from entering upon the fallow ground? Will art and science forbear to occupy the mind, to which religion is yet a stranger, with selfsufficiency and pride? Discourage devotional feelings in the young by withholding religious instruction: and will not prejudices of the darkest kind, and passions of a fearful malignity take possession of the unhallowed temple, and become the idols of their heart?

Knowing whereof we are made, our heavenly

Father delayed not at the creation to breathe into our souls his best gift, the principle of religion; and anticipating our spiritual wants, to cherish it by every external aid. He made the Sabbath for man, even before actual sin had been committed. No sooner had man fallen by disobedience, than in the midst of judgment remembering mercy, he instituted the mystery of sacrifice and thereby, in a manner inconceivable by the limited faculties of finite beings, made the penalty of sin, promptly and duly paid by the repentant sinner, the means under grace of his pardon and reconciliation: thus nurturing mankind, (long before the final purpose of the rite was declared) for the predetermined deliverance, which was in due time to be accomplished.

Throughout the whole course, indeed, of the Mosaic dispensation, the world was in a state of education for the faith which was afterwards to be revealed. The Law in its ordinances, and in its requirements, in its threats, and in its promises, was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ *.

*Galat. iii. 23, 24.

The faith for which the Law prepared mankind, has been revealed for the benefit of all. Freely we have received; let us freely give. As Christians it is our privilege, as ministers it is our duty, to proclaim to all the Gospel of pardon and peace: a duty which, though we may be accused of a wish to instil religious prejudice into the minds of youth, we dare not to forego, for the sake of the praise of liberal feelings. It is our duty to take especial care that all, who are consigned to our charge, be embued at the earliest possible age, with true Christian doctrine.. Not to dwell upon its importance to them in the present world, that they may fill their appointed stations with glory to their Maker, with benefit, or rather without injury to their fellow-creatures, and with peace and comfort to themselves: it is our province more particularly in the exercise of this duty, to contemplate them as heirs of immortality— to exhort, and comfort, and charge every one of them as a father doth his children—that they would walk worthy of God, who hath called them, as he hath called us all, unto his kingdom and glory *. Shall we train the frail * 1 Thess. ii. 11, 12.

body for the few years of its feverish existence upon earth? Shall we educate the perishable mind for its short-lived occupation in the business of a vain world? and leave the undying soul without its proper knowledge? Shall we withhold for any period this knowledge from those who may at any hour be called, whether prepared or unprepared, to enter upon their higher state of being? Was it not the wisest of men, the inspired architect of the first temple, who, possessed of the most extensive earthly knowledge, discovered and deplored its vanity who yet strongly averred, that the soul be without knowledge, it is not good*, Was it not his earnest injunction to train up a child in the way he should go, as the most sure if not the only means of keeping him in the right path, that when he is old, he may not depart from it. How sedulously attentive to this duty were the chosen people of God? chosen indeed for this purpose, that amidst a dark, degenerate, and idolatrous world, they might preserve and manifest the pure light of religion in themselves, and in their families.

*Prov. xix. 2.

+ Prov. xxii. 6.

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This they taught, every father in his own family; the rabbin in the temple, the synagogue, and the academy. He who established a testimony in Jacob, and appointed a law in Israel, commanded, says David, our fathers, that they should make them known to their children. That the generation to come might know them, even the children which should be born; who should arise and declare them to their children *. Abraham in particular had been specially and preternaturally favoured, because God knew that he would command his children and his household after him; and that they should keep the way of the Lord † ; not their own way, according to the light of their own unaided judgment, but the way of the Lord, according to the revelation they would receive of the divine will. St. Paul commends Timothy and augurs favourably of his future usefulness in teaching the Gospel, because from a child he had known the holy Scriptures, not merely garbled extracts from the book of Revelation, selected with an undue tenderness to existing errors, and as an unworthy compromise among

*Psalm lxxviii. 5, 6.

+ Gen. xviii. 19.