desire for them, and, in short, as to everything we do concerning them.

4. The DILIGENT AND RIGHT USE OF THE MEANS OF GRACE, is a most important help for children-such as daily reading the scriptures, prayer, habits of self-examination, regular attendance on public worship, and as they grow up, coming forward to the Lord's Supper. But besides all these means, the most important, perhaps, is that constant inculcation of divine truth to which we are so plainly directed in the scriptures: These words which I command thee this day shall be in thine heart; and thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up; and thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes. And thou shalt write them upon the posts of thine house and on thy gates. Particular instruction of the children by themselves, and a mother's private and individual conversation with them, are also of great

moment.

5. DISCIPLINE is a matter of constant necessity. A well-disciplined Christian child is the best gift which a parent can bestow on his country; whilst children left to themselves, and with no settled habits of patient and steady application, are likely to be sources of much trouble to their fellow-creatures. Discipline will seek constantly to restrain, check, and subdue all that is wrong, or leading to wrong, and to animate and encourage in all that is right. Every day brings fresh occasion for its exercise, with regard to appetite, pleasures, temper, coveting the things of others, neglecting duties, disorderly practices, and indeed all the varied events of life.

6. PUNISHMENT must not be withheld, but must be varied according to the degree of the fault. It is important, also, that the scale by which we measure the degrees of wrong should be scriptural. Sins directly against God, and moral faults, such as falsehood, passion, and taking anything that does not belong to them, call for the severest punishment, and should never be passed by without chastisement while accidents from carelessness, though they may occasion us a serious injury, yet should be visited with a lighter penalty, as not being intentional faults. On the mode of punishment the reader will find valuable hints in Mr. Richmond's life.

7. FOSTER AND ENCOURAGE BY WISE AND CHRISTIAN APPROBATION everything that is lovely and excellent. Much may be done in forming the character, by due attention to this; all truth, openness, generosity, self-denial, and love to others; all diligence and application in good pursuits, should have the parental smile of favour; as all those things which are opposite to these should be discouraged by marks of disapprobation.

8. EARNESTLY WATCH AGAINST SEEKING GREAT THINGS for your CHILDREN. Oh, the inexpressible folly of aiming to gain for them high connexions, in classes of society above them; and for this end

placing them in situations of danger, that they may form associations with their superiors! What havoc has this made among the children of pious parents! Mind not high things, should be our plain rule. Seekest thou great things for thyself? Seek them not. God give us grace to attend to these clear directions of his word. If we trust him, his providence will call our children to those scenes in which they may safely and honourably serve others, and glorify his name; and we shall be preserved from the anguish of seeing them bring reproach on the Gospel of Christ.

9. The last thing that I would notice is OUR OWN CONSISTENCY OF CONDUCT, as essential to the full effect of a Christian education. If Christian parents act inconsistently with their blessed principles-if they are irritable, selfish, proud, disorderly, passionate, and covetous -what can be expected but similarly evil tempers in their children. But if they are poor in spirit, meek, mourning for sin, and hungering and thirsting after righteousness, and possess and manifest the other graces of a Christian, it is an immense auxiliary to all their religious instruction. In fact, it is one just retribution of all evil ways, that our children soon manifest similar evil ways; on the other hand, an exhibition of holy conduct enforces every pious exhortation, and strengthens every solid principle which we endeavour to communicate to them.

The writer subjoins a little sketch of principles of education by which he has desired that his own conduct should be governed.

POINTS TO BE KEPT IN VIEW IN A RELIGIOUS EDUCATION.

I. SPIRITUAL PROSPERITY.

1. Pray for them.

2. Ever instil Christian principles.

3. Act in the spirit of the Gospel towards them.

4. Watch over their intercourse with others.

5. Teach them to govern their tempers.

6. See that they diligently attend the means of grace.

II. HEALTH OF BODY.

1. Their minds not to be too much pressed.

2. Exercise to be regularly taken.

3. Watch against their ignorance and carelessness.

4. Temperance in diet to be observed.

5. Things injurious to health to be avoided.

6. Early in bed and early rising.

7. Remember the incessant activity and subtlety of Satan.

III. MENTAL CULTIVATION.

1. To be well grounded in all they learn.

2. Minds to be strengthened by solid works.

3. Habits of reflection to be formed and called forth.

4. See that they understand their lessons.

5. Things useful to be especially attended to.

6. Habits of self-denial to be formed.

IV. MANNERS.

1. Kindness to run through everything, their morals, school-play, walks, behaviour to each other, and all around, parents and servants. 2. To show its true foundation in Christian principle, Romans xii. 10; 1 Peter iii. 8.

3. It is a victory over our natural selfishness.

4. It promotes the happiness of all around us.

V. ACCOMPLISHMENTS.

1. Are of a secondary value.

2. A means of relaxation.

3. They commend religion to others.

4. Be sure that they are innocent.

5. Guard against those which lead them into the world. VI. THE SAVIOUR ALL IN ALL.

1. In every point show them Christ.
HE, the root of spiritual prosperity;
HE, the physician of body and soul;
HE, the giver of mental power;
HE, altogether lovely in all his ways;
HE, full of gifts and full of grace.

2. Let everything turn the mind to him. In every walk, in every lesson, in every event, in every sin, in every mercy, speak of Christ. 3. Let him be the sun and the glory of every day.

VII. MEANS.

1. "My grace is sufficient for thee."

2. "He will give his holy Spirit to them that ask."

3. "I am thy God, I will strengthen thee, yea I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness."

ARTICLE II.

A PARENT'S PRIVATE THOUGHTS.*

BY THE REV. J. W. YEOMANS, D.D., OF DANVILLE, PA.

I AM a parent. To guide and encourage my faithfulness, I have a maxim of Divine wisdom which has the nature of a commandment with promise: Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.

The way in which a child should go, is the way of obedience to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. This is the only way of true life; the way to heaven. I must lead my child in the way of duty to God and man. My first and chief effort must be to teach him the know

* From "The Presbyterian Magazine," 1851.

ledge and the fear of his Maker, and the power and love of his Saviour.

I have been the instrument of Providence in bringing my child into being, and of giving him a life which is never to end. It remains for me to be either the happy instrument of making his endless life an infinite blessing to himself, or the guilty instrument of making it an infinite curse. Shall I train him for everlasting sorrow? In other words, shall I provide for him an education without religion?

An irreligious education for an immortal! What is it? Infinitely worse than the education of an ape for a philosopher. I know what there is of apparent good in an education exclusively secular; what temporal advantages it confers; how it opens a fountain of enjoyment nobler and sweeter than mere sensuality; how it raises reason to its just superiority over brutish instinct, and makes a man seem more like a man. But how can it help a sinner who is astray from God; or what avail towards reconciliation, or what plea prepare for the day of judgment; or what anodyne administer for the pains of hell? It seems to me now, that if I were not a Christian, if I were myself an alien from the commonwealth of Israel and a stranger to the covenant of promise, I could not bear the thought of being charged with the training of an immortal, for whose virtue and everlasting happiness I should be responsible. In that case my own soul would be under condemnation; and that condemnation would be dreadfully aggravated by unfulfilled obligations to my child. How fearful the case of that parent, who is set to be a light to the path of his child, but walks in darkness himself. The parent, by the common laws of the kingdom of grace, is placed between God and the child. Noah had the charge and the covenant in relation to his children, and in his case the law is given and carried out in form. Had Noah neglected to teach his children the word of God concerning the flood, he could not have taken them with him into the ark, and must have seen them perish with the ungodly. So it was with Abraham; and had not Abraham taught the word of God diligently to his children, he could not have realized the promises that he should be the father of many nations, and that in him all the families of the earth should be blessed.

How could I be a cold, dark wall of adamant between the Sun of Righteousness and the soul of my child? I could not pray with him. Nor could I lead him to the Holy Book, to show him the words of eternal life. What though I might fill his memory, and drill his thoughts and his tongue with the words of a formal theology, and hold him to his seat while he repeats a catechism, or a Scripture verse, and shut him in from the street and the field on the Sabbath; or take him with me to the sanctuary, where, perhaps, I should be wont myself, in wandering thoughts or sleep, to while away the hour? What would it profit him? I could not tell him, with the words of the heart, that he is a sinner, and that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures. And what, on such a theme, are words which do

not speak the heart? How could I move him by any motion of my own soul, while speaking to him of the love of Christ; how could I surround him with a holy influence; how engage his sympathetic response to that humble and thankful devotion, which might convey from God to him, through me, a subduing and purifying power?

This is the appointed way of the Lord in the ordinary work of his grace. As the elements of vegetable and animal life are carried from their providential source to their place in the living system by air, light, water, and earth, so the elements of spiritual life are ordinarily carried to the heirs and partakers of it by the religious economy of a pious household. There are other means, indeed; but what other means are known to be so uniformly and so widely effectual as this? How, then, must an ungodly parent who thinks of these things be oppressed by his thoughts;-feeling responsibility, but having no heart for his duty; knowing his Lord's will, but being opposed to it in his own. He knows the way of grace in giving the harvest of spiritual life and joy, but has an inward aversion to sowing the seed. He has a burden which he cannot throw off, and which he knows not how to bear. His child must be untaught in the knowledge of his character and destiny, and unimpressed in favour of the Gospel of Christ, until the gracious God shall reach him by some means not belonging to his home. He must starve unless he can snatch a crumb of the bread of life from his neighbour's table. Through all those tender months and years, while the nucleus of his character is taking its form, that immortal spirit must lie wholly at the mercy of its own sinful propensities, of an ungodly example in the parent, of the world that lieth in wickedness, and of the adversary who goeth about as a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour.

With what amazement and despair must a parent who has lived and died in unbelief and unfaithfulness to his children awake to a sense of his responsibility at the last day. If his children escaped the corruption of the world and the wrath to come, it will only aggravate his shame and woe, that their deliverance was in spite of his parental negligence, his bad example, and the forces of wickedness which his faithless guardianship had let in upon them. If they are lost with himself, it will multiply the curse of his own sin to witness for ever the pain of those whom he brought into being, whom he loved as he loved himself, and whom he led down to the gate of that dreadful death. How can such a parent meet the final judgment?

But I am a Christian. I have given myself to the Lord. I have become a citizen of the kingdom of heaven; a member of the household of God. I must take my child along with me. His place is where I am. Of such is the kingdom of heaven. My obligations in this respect are such as the following:

1. I must consider my child as the Lord's, and daily consult the Lord respecting him with that view. I am but the instrument of doing the work of Christ in this thing. And his giving me the pa