tionship of parent and child, so as in some cases to have denied the authority and the right of the parent to overrule and sway and direct the faith of his child; which, indeed, would have been a nice question, had it not been set at rest by the ordinance of infant baptism; and amongst the Anabaptists I do find it to be even so, that parents are at a great loss upon this point, and act with great indecision. But though this doctrine was openly broached, and zealously advocated, by Rousseau, that eminent servant of the beast from the bottomless pit, and adopted and acted upon in this land by not a few, yet it is not in the extreme cases alone that I perceive and lament the dislocation and corruption of family ties: I see it in the decline of authority which is daily going on, and which is openly justified, under the pretence that it is not to treat our children like rational beings to require their obedience until they can see and acknowledge the reasonableness of the command; a principle which, notwithstanding its folly and falsehood, hath obtained such an ascendancy, that almost all the school-books and nurserybooks which have been written since the French Revolution have been written upon that and upon no other principle,—of which I suppose there be some scores in my own house, presented by the generosity of friends, for the future use of my children,—childish catechisms, childish poetry, and childish stories, which I would not for a moment indulge my child with the perusal of,

being resolved, by the grace of God, to feed them upon the food which will nourish men, which our fathers fed upon; as the Proverbs of Solomon, the Psalms of David, and the Shorter Catechism of our Church. From this relaxation of parental discipline, from this doubt even of its foundations, doth it come to pass that children who have been brought up within these thirty years, have nothing like the same reverence and submission to their parents which was wont heretofore to bless this Christian land with a reverent spirit to superiors. This is the cause of juvenile depredation: this is a chief cause of the increase of crime, especially amongst children; of which infant felons, if ye were to banish the present confederacy, you would have within a year as many more to supply it, from the disorganized families of the poor. Hence, also, the trustlessness of apprentices and of domestic servants. It is not that the temptations are increased there are more locks and bars than there were in our fathers' times: but it is, that parental discipline and parental instruction is decreased; that children are fed, but they are not bred; their bodies are nursed, but not their minds; they are brought up ignorant of the fear of God, and unacquainted with the restraints of conscience; the domestication of man's wild spirit is gone; the blessing of a father and a mother's prayers is gone: and think you that twenty-six letters, or the multiplication table, or the marching and countermarching of Lan

castrian schools, or even the panacea of Sunday schools, can fill the fasting spirit of a child, or nurse its nature, deserted of a father and a mother's care? Oh, oh! what a burden hath the Lord laid upon his ministers, to stand amidst the wreck of a dissolving society, and, like Canute, to preach unto the surging waves! But we must proceed with our heavy task.

Now, it is as bad, for it cannot be worse, in the higher orders of the community, where children are often as little, yea far less, seen or nursed by their parents, than are the children of the hard-working poor, who, from morning to night, must be at their labours. If, for the children of the poor, so often neglected, charity hath provided the new invention of infant schools, which all admire, without grieving over the desperate disease for which it is a gentle lenative, but not a remedy, then the children of the rich are kept in the nursery, under the eye and training of hired servants, and seldom see the face of their parents. For, if the children of the poor be sent out to toil, and make money, as soon as they are capable of it, then the children of the rich are sent to preparatory schools, and boarding schools, and schools of every description, until the public schools and the universities receive them, whose undisciplined extravagance, ever breaking out into crime, and whose boundless excess ever leading unto ruin, are, in truth, perhaps more than any thing else, the confirmation of what I say, that the evil has gone to as great a height

amongst the higher classes of the community, as amongst the lower. Only witness the licentiousness of young men of rank and fashion in this city, their vanity in dress, their thoughtlessness, and every thing else which betokens that the reins have been given into their hands before they were able to use them. This formerly was a courtier's excess, or the theme of a moralist's satire; now it is a custom which not only swaggers in our streets but speaks out its foppery and folly in our most approved magazines. It is either voluntary relaxation of the reins by the parents, or fierce uncontrollable disobedience on the part of their children. In either case, it proveth the doctrine of the text, that this is a characteristic of the latter times

And now, though I do not allow the distinction between the religious world and the other world; considering the church, whose minister I am, as alike answerable for both, and counting neither as the world, but both as the covenanted church; yet, because the religious world is for ever taking an exception to themselves from all the blame and censure of the pulpit, thinking in their hearts, But we are the people of God: how far otherwise is it with us!' I take upon me to help their eye to discern the beam that is in it;-which I do, first, by observing how little the devotions of the family are enlightened and instructed by the preaching of the word; how little the sacredness of the family hearth is discoursed of, the obligation of family worship, the duty of

catechising our children, with all the other consequences of the baptismal obligation.-I observe, secondly, how little the practice of clerical visitation formeth a part of the Evangelical or Methodist discipline, and how much meetings for conversation, and evening parties of different kinds, have supplanted them. Their's is not the religion of families, but the religion of coteries or parties. The duty is overlooked and omitted, because the principle of it is not known or acknowledged; I mean, the nature and obligation of baptism, which forms no part of the modern creed of Christian ministers or Christian people. I would lay this down as a test, in any time or any century, of the Christian estate of families, What is the importance attached to infant baptism?'--Now, if any one doubts whether this evil be not present in the religious, as well as in the other world, he hath only to reflect upon the opinions of religious men with respect to the subject of baptism; which, amongst its other excellent effects, doth sanctify the relation of parent and child, by superinducing upon the father the duty of sponsor, and requiring the child to look up to his parent as the link which connecteth him with the church. But, so weak is our faith grown, that fathers, instead of apprehending this privilege which they have under the church, and using it as a means of grace unto their own souls, and a point of advantage from which to exercise parental authority, have allowed it wholly to slip out of their thoughts, and can with difficulty