Page images
PDF
EPUB

and sustaining hope that to heaven they have ascended. You did not consider that the sole or the chief end of their being was to gain the fame of this world or its possessions, and if they are cut off from these, you may be grieved, but your designs and expectations are not blasted. The olive-plants round about your table,* although they come not to maturity, and bear no ripened fruit in this world, still you know that they are not cut down with a hopeless destruction. No-they are transplanted to the Paradise of God, where the river of life shall flow beside them, and the dews of grace shall descend upon them, and the presence of God shall shine around them, and they shall flourish in beauty undecaying, and in glory never ending.

*Psalm cxxviii. 3.

SERMON II.

RELIGIOUS EDUCATION, THE CHIEF OBJECT OF

PARENTAL DUTY.

PROVERBS xxii. 6.

Train up a child in the way he should go; and when he is old, he will not depart from it.

EDUCATION We all acknowledge to be a great good, and when thorough and complete, it is the greatest we can communicate to our children. Without doubt, most of you who are parents, reflect anxiously upon this subject, and are willing to make great personal sacrifices in securing such an advantage for the objects of your parental solicitude. But how many of you, in your various plans and profuse expenditures for your children, have ever set before you a definite object for which you would have them trained; and even when

the object has been definite, how seldom has it been found in correspondence with their destinies as immortal beings? And yet it must be obvious, that without this clear and precise view of the true design of education, your efforts must often prove abortive. Our success in any undertaking, very materially depends upon the well defined ideas we have formed in regard to the object we propose to ourselves. Many of the misfortunes, and most of the disappointments of life, arise from a neglect of this important principle. Most emphatically is this observation true as applied to the question now before us. My effort then, in the present discourse, will be to show what Christian parents should place before them as their chief object in conducting the education of their children.

Instruction and discipline, to be of any value, must have a direct reference to the characters and the future course in life of those who are subjected to them. In the way they should go, must children be trained

up to walk. The practical wisdom of the world acknowledges the justice and the importance of this maxim, and is very uniformly governed by it, in discharging one part of parental duty-preparing children for their worldly occupations or professions. But even in fulfilling this very limited part of the trust committed to them, we may discover amongst parents very serious errors and great deficiencies. Some are indulgent in the extreme; they never repress the ebullitions of passion in their children, nor modify the selfishness of natural disposition, nor control the waywardness of caprice, nor put a restraint on vicious propensities. Other parents are incurably selfish; their children, when young, are degraded into play-things for idle amusement, and, as they advance in years, become the objects of a weak and pernicious vanity, or are made slaves to minister to the temporal comforts of self-indulgent fathers or mothers. Again, we behold those who are utterly worldly-minded, and of course the little beings whose characters they have such

influence in forming, are brought up in ignorance of their immortal nature, are influenced by the heartless maxims and customs of the world, are suffered to devote their hours to irrational and unsatisfying pursuits, and at last, all their noble aspirations after intellectual pleasures or moral purity, which, if encouraged, might reach perhaps unto heavenly things, are quenched by low ambition, avarice, or sensual gratification. I need not say how entirely inconsistent all this is with the great purpose of existence, and how far such ́parents are from having attained just ideas of the design of education. So great is this error, that even amongst those who must be called votaries of the world, we find many intelligent and moral persons, who utterly condemn such defective and pernicious discipline. They feel that man has a loftier destiny to fulfil, and therefore, that children should be educated to promote and sustain the dignity of their future character, and to discharge faithfully those various duties of social life that will accumulate upon them

« EelmineJätka »