Ah! what avails superior light, We see the truth, we judge aright, We mark the idolizing throng, Their children's souls we know they wrong;- In spite of our resolves, we fear 16 Our own infirmity; And tremble at the trial near, And cry, O God, to thee! We soon shall do what we condemn, And, down the current borne, Our only help in danger's hour, Us from ourselves thou canst secure, If on thy promised grace alone Thou surely wilt preserve thy own, Wilt keep us tenderly discreet To guard what thou hast given; And bring our child with us to meet At thy right hand in heaven. 70 SERMON XCV. ON THE EDUCATION OF CHILDREN. Train up a child in the way wherein he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.”—PROV. xxii. 6. 1. We must not imagine that these words are to be understood in an absolute sense, as if no child that had been trained up in the way wherein he should go had ever departed from it. Matter of fact will by no means agree with this: so far from it, that it has been a common observation, "Some of the best parents have the worst children." It is true, this might sometimes be the case, because good men have not always a good understanding; and, without this, it is hardly to be expected that they will know how to train up their children. Besides, those who are in other respects good men have often too much easiness of temper; so that they go no farther in restraining their children from evil, than old Eli did, when he said gently, "Nay, my sons, the report I hear of you is not good." This, then, is no contradiction to the assertion; for their children are not "trained up in the way wherein they should go." But it must be acknowledged, some have been trained therein with all possible care and diligence; and yet before they were old, yea, in the strength of their years, they did utterly depart from it. 2. The words, therefore, must be understood with some limitation, and then they contain an unquestionable truth. It is a general, though not a universal promise; and many have found the happy accomplishment of it. As this is the most probable method for making their children pious which any parents can take, so it generally, although not always, meets with the desired success. The God of their fathers is with their children; he blesses their endeavours: and they have the satisfaction of leaving their religion, as well as their worldly substance, to those that descend from them. 3. But what is "the way wherein a child should go?" and how shall we "train him up" therein? The ground of this is admirably well laid down by Mr. Law, in his "Serious Call to a Devout Life.” Part of his words are, "Had we continued perfect, as God created the first man, perhaps the perfection of our nature had been a sufficient self-instructor for every one. But as sickness and diseases have created the necessity of medicines and physicians, so the disorders of our rational nature have introduced the necessity of education and tutors. "And as the only end of a physician is, to restore nature to its own state, so the only end of education is, to restore our rational nature to its proper state. Education, therefore, is to be considered as reason borrowed at second-hand, which is, as far as it can, to supply the loss of original perfection. And as physic may justly be called the art of restoring health, so education should be considered in no other light than as the art of recovering to man his rational perfection. "This was the end pursued by the youths that attended upon Pythagoras, Socrates, and Plato. Their every-day lessons and instructions were so many lectures upon the nature of man, his true end, and the right use of his faculties; upon the immortality of the soul, its relation to God; the agreeableness of virtue to the Divine nature; upon the necessity of temperance, justice, mercy, and truth; and the folly of indulging our pas sions. "Now, as Christianity has, as it were, new-created the moral and religious world, and set every thing that is reasonable, wise, holy, and desirable in its true point of light; so one would expect the education of children should be as much mended by Christianity, as the doctrines of religion are. "As it has introduced a new state of things, and so fully informed us of the nature of man and the end of his creation; as it has fixed all our goods and evils, taught us the means of purifying our souls, of pleasing God, and being happy eternally; one might naturally suppose that every Christian country abounded with schools, not only for teaching a few questions and answers of a catechism, but for the forming, training, and practising children in such a course of life as the sublimest doctrines of Christianity require. "An education under Pythagoras or Socrates had no other end but to teach children to think and act as Pythagoras and Socrates did. "And is it not reasonable to suppose that a Christian education should have no other end but to teach them how to think, and judge, and act according to the strictest rules of Christianity. "At least one would suppose, that in all Christian schools, the teaching them to begin their lives in the spirit of Christianity,-in such abstinence, humility, sobriety, and devotion as Christianity requires,-should not only be more, but a hundred times more, regarded than any or all things else. "For those that educate us should imitate our guardian angels; suggest nothing to our minds but what is wise and holy; help us to discover every false judgment of our minds and to subdue every wrong passion in our hearts. "And it is as reasonable to expect and require all this benefit from a Christian education, as to require that physic should strengthen all that is right in our nature and remove all our diseases." 4. Let it be carefully remembered all this time, that God, not man, is the Physician of souls; that it is he, and none else, who giveth medicine to heal our natural sickness; that all "the help which is done upon earth, he doeth it himself;" that none of all the children of men is able to "bring a clean thing out of an unclean;' and, in a word, that "it is God who worketh in us, both to will and to do of his good pleasure.' But it is generally his pleasure to work by his creatures; to help man by man. He honours men to be, in this sense, "workers together with him." By this means the reward is ours, while the glory redounds to him. 5. This being premised, in order to see distinctly what is the way wherein we should train up a child, let us consider, What are the diseases of his nature? What are those spiritual diseases which every one that is born of a woman brings with him into the world? Is not the first of these atheism? After all that has been so plausibly written concerning "the innate idea of God;" after all that has been said of its being common to all men, in all ages and nations; it does not appear, that man has naturally any more idea of God than any of the beasts of the field; he has no knowledge of God at all; no fear of God at all; neither is God in all his thoughts. Whatever change may afterwards be wrought, (whether by the grace of God, or by his own reflection, or by education,) he is, by nature, a mere atheist. 6. Indeed, it may be said, that every man is by nature, as it were, his own god. He worships himself. He is, in his own conception, absolute lord of himself. Dryden's hero speaks only according to nature, when he says, "Myself am king of me." He seeks himself in all things. He pleases himself. And why not? Who is lord over him? His own will is his only law; he does this or that because it is his good pleasure. In the same spirit as the " son of the morning" said in old time, "I will sit upon the sides of the north," he says, "I will do thus or thus." And do we not find sensible men on every side who are of the self-same spirit? who, if asked, "Why did you this ?" will readily answer, "Because Í had a mind to it." 7. Another evil disease which every human soul brings into the world with him, is pride; a continual |