Formal instruction. Solitude. simple expression of it, pleasantly and clearly, in a thousand various ways, and on a thousand different occasions, which will do more than either explanation, illustration, or proof. 7. But, still, though the former is what produces comparatively the greatest effect, the latter must receive attention too. Correct moral principle must not only be exhibited in your conduct and expressed in your conversation; it is also of the utmost importance that it should be, from time to time, formally illustrated and proved. The admission of moral principle to the minds of the young, and the formation of right habits of feeling, may perhaps be most easily received at first, by means of these moral sympathies; but it is only in the calm and intelligent conviction of the reason, that rectitude can have any firm and lasting foundation for its throne. If your habitual conduct does not exhibit, and your conversation express right principles, you can never bring your children to adopt them by any arguments for their truth; but if your habitual conduct and conversation is right, formal and logical instruction is necessary to secure permanently, the conquests which these influences will certainly make. 8. One more practical direction remains. It does not arise very directly from the general views advanced in this chapter, and has in fact, no special connection with them, It relates also more particularly to the duty of parents; but it is so fundamentally important that it ought to be appended here. It is, keep children as much as possible by themselves,-away from evil influences,-separate,—alone. Keep them from bad company, is very common advice. We may go much farther, and almost say, keep them from company, good or bad. Of course, this is to be understood with proper limits and restrictions; for to a certain extent, associating with others is of high advantage to them, both intellectually and morally. But this extent is almost universally far exceeded, and it will be generally found that the Influence of man upon man. Solitude. most virtuous and the most intellectual, are those who have been brought up most by themselves and alone. In fact, all history and experience shows, and it is rather a dark sign in respect to poor human nature, that the mutual influence of man upon man, is an influence of deterioration and corruption. Where men congregate in masses, there depravity thrives, and they can keep near to innocence only by being remote from one another. Thus densely populated cities, are always most immoral: an army, a ship, a factory, a crowded prison, and great gangs of laborers working in common, always exhibit peculiar tendencies to vice. So with the young. Boys learn more evil than good of their playmates at school; a college student who is regular, quiet and docile at home, in his vacations, is often wild, dissipated, idle and insubordinate in term time at college; and how often has the mother found that either one of two troublesome children, seem subdued and softened and dutiful, when the other is away. It seems as if human nature can be safe only in a state of segregation; in a mass, it runs at once to corruption and ruin. So far then, as promiscuous intercommunication among the children of a town or a neighborhood is impeded, so far, within proper limits and restrictions, will the moral welfare of the whole be advanced. Few companions and fewer intimacies, and many hours of solitary occupation and enjoyment, will lead to the development of the highest intellectual and moral traits of character; in fact, his mental resources may be considered as entirely unknown and unexplored, who cannot spend his best and happiest hours alone. It is often said that the young must be exposed to the temptations and bad influences of the world, in order to know what they are, by experience, and learn how to resist them. They must be exposed to them," say these advocates of early temptation, "at some time or Learning by experience. Recapitulation. The other, and they may as well begin in season, so as to get the mastery over them the sooner." But this is not so. exposure, if avoided in youth, is avoided principally for ever. A virtuous man in any honest pursuit of life comes very little into contact or connection with vice. He sees and hears more or less of it, it is true, every day, but his virtuous habits and associates and principles are such, that it is kept, as it were, at a sort of moral distance. It does not possess that power of contamination, which a corrupt school boy exercises over his comparatively innocent companion. A vast proportion of the vicious and immoral are made so before they are of age, and accordingly, he who goes on safely through the years of his minority, will generally go safely for the rest of the way. The principles which we have been inculcating in this chapter, may, then, in conclusion, be summed up thus, Children are eager to exercise continually their opening faculties, and to learn all they can about the world into which they are ushered. Those who aid and sympathize with them in these, their childlike feelings, they will love, and their principles and conduct they will adopt and imitate. This being so, we have, by rendering them this aid and sympathy, an easy way of gaining over them a powerful ascendency. This once gained, we must exemplify in our conduct, and express in our daily conversation, and enforce by formal instructions, the principles which we wish them to imbibe, and they will readily imbibe them. Then, to make our work sure, we must shelter their tender minds from those rude blasts of moral exposure, which howl every where in this wilderness of sin. Any Christian who will act faithfully on these principles, towards the children who are within his reach, will probably save many of them from vice and misery, and he will certainly elevate the temporal virtue and happiness of them all. And if he acts in these duties as the humble, but devoted follower of Jesus Instruction. Plan of the chapter. Christ, sincere, unaffected, honest, childlike himself,there are no labors in which he can engage, for which he may with greater confidence invoke the interposition of the Holy Spirit, to bless them to the salvation of souls. CHAPTER X. INSTRUCTION. Apt to teach, patient." It might perhaps have been expected by the reader, that the subject of religious instruction would have formed a subordinate topic of the last chapter, but it is so extensive and important in its bearings, that it seemed better to give it a more full discussion, and to confine that chapter simply to the character of early childhood, and to the mode of gaining an ascendency over it. Besides, it is not merely to the young, that the principles to be elucidated now, will apply. It is the whole question, of approaching the human intellect with religious truth, that we shall here consider, whether the subjects be old or young,‚—a class in the Sabbath school, or a circle of children around the fireside, on a winter evening, or a younger sister listening to the conversation of an older one, while walking in the fields;—and even the pastor will find these principles and methods, such as in spirit guide him in his course of instruction to the adult congregation, which he leads forward from week to week, in religious knowledge. The following propositions exhibit the view which we shall take of the subject in this chapter. 1. Our success depends upon the fulness and force with which the details of truth and duty are presented, and not Five propositions. Mode of divine instruction. upon the scientific accuracy with which they are condensed into systems of theology. 2. The bible must be resorted to as the great storehouse of moral and religious truth. 3. The field of observation and experience must be explored, for the means of applying and enforcing it. 4. Its hold upon the soul is to be secured mainly by wakening up a testimony in its favor from within. 5. Attempts to remove error by argument and personal controversy, are almost always in vain, These propositions we proceed to consider in their order 1. Our success depends upon the fulness and force with which the details of truth and duty are presented, and not upon the scientific accuracy with which they are condensed into systems of theology. We are in the first place struck, when we look at this subject, at a very remarkable difference between the mode which God has taken to instruct mankind in religious truth and duty,—and that which, in modern times, we almost spontaneously fall upon. His mode and order of instruction, are totally different from ours: I mean are totally different in one respect. He exhibits the principles of truth and duty, one by one, as they occur in connection with the ordinary incidents and events of life. We give them in the order of a well digested and logical system, in fact, we may almost say that we teach the system, rather than the truths themselves, by whose arrangement the system is constituted. God's first lesson to the human race was the first five books of Moses;--the simple story of the Patriarchs, and of the children of Israel; and the institu |