peace and happiness in the family.

Should

you, after all, fail in your endeavours, you will have at least the approbation of your own consciences, as well as of Him, who while "to the froward He will shew himself froward," "to the upright will shew Himself upright," by wisely and kindly superintending all their affairs, however gloomy may be their present aspect.

CHAPTER X.

RELIGION.

"For I know him, that he will command his children and his household after him, and they shall keep the way of the Lord." GENESIS, Xviii. 19.

"SEEK first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all other things shall be added to you," is both an appropriate admonition, and an encouraging promise, which may be well applied to parents who are solicitous for the prosperity of their children. The only solid foundation on which they can build a reasonable hope respecting them, is, their being brought up in "the nurture and admonition of the Lord." Yet it is to be deeply regretted that there are some christian parents, who, while they ar

dently desire the salvation of their children, are unskilled in the means best calculated to promote it, and by their injudicious conduct rather retard than accelerate their own pious designs. Parents who attempt to teaze and goad their children into religion, are not likely to convince them that" wisdom's ways are ways of pleasantness, and that all her paths are peace:" attachment to any principles, founded on a rational assent, can never be excited by coercion.

But the most exemplary conduct, the most judicious management, sometimes prove ineffectual." Paul may plant, and Apollos may water, but it is God alone who can give the increase." There are some children of many prayers, who still continue in the gall of bitterness, and strangers to the value of their souls;-whose language to God is, "depart from us, we desire not the knowledge of thy ways:" who say of the Saviour, "we will not have this man to reign over us." When it is even thus, the christian parent will persevere in the use of means, scattering the good seed at every convenient season, and patiently waiting to see it spring up.

As a

parent he is generally favoured with many opportunities, and his zeal should not be surpassed by the people of the world, who spare no pains to give their children temporal advantages, and thereby prove that " they are sometimes wiser in the means they adopt to accomplish their purposes than the children of light."

Let not parents imagine that they are fulfilling the whole of their duty, by inculcating the bare form of religion, while negligent respecting the power; by suffering their children to grow up ignorant of the nature or source of that renovating change of heart which manifests itself in the life, and which characterises the true Christian. There are some professing families, who afford too much reason to fear that they are radically deficient in this. If so, notwithstanding all their pains, their children are as sheep without a shepherd.

There are those too, who while they profess a general belief in Christianity, and affect to conform their conduct to its precepts, go beyond a criminal negligence, and do all in their power to impede the entrance of genu

ine religion into the minds of their children! incurring the censure of our Lord to the enemies of religion in His time, "That they would not enter the kingdom of Heaven themselves, and those who would enter they hinder." They are angry when they perceive a change at which they may have reason to rejoice; but every tree is known by its fruits : if persons who profess any change in their religious views become thenceforward more turbulent, self-willed, or unkind than formerly, there is reason indeed to suspect the genuineness of their new principles, whatever they may be; but if the reverse of this be the case, if on a cool and unprejudiced survey of their conduct it is evident that they are better children, that they are on the whole improved characters (perfect we cannot expect them to be), their parents have the greatest reason to rejoice at the change, however it may have been effected, and the probability is certainly in favour of the supposition that they have exchanged error for truth; for these are effects which the Gospel when rightly understood, and cordially received, never fails to