domestic circle. We will appeal to parents, who will not be apt to pass too severe a judgment on their own children. Do not your own children early exhibit marks of depravity, to which even your fond and partial eye cannot be blind? Do you not detect malice, revenge, deceit, and cunning, perverseness, and obstinacy, at a very tender age? Who taught your child these evil dispositions? Has he learned them, by example? He has not been beyond your own walls; and has seen only the good example of his parents. If they had not sprung up in his own native heart, you never would have seen them. Were his dispositions naturally good, he would always be affectionate, and obedient; because he has every reason to love you. You treat him kindly, particularly when he behaves well; and therefore, he has every inducement to good conduct. But you know that indulgence spoils him; and punishment is often necessary. In short, I have no hesitation in saying, that all candid and judicious parents will acknowledge, that the task of education is an extremely difficult one; that it is a constant struggle with the bad humours of the young; and that, if children are allowed to take their natural course, they become a torment to their parents, a pest to others, and burdens to themselves. Now, why is this? If the heart were not naturally evil, indulgence would have no tendency to spoil a child. We should rather suppose, that the more kindly and tenderly it were treated, the more fervently would it love, and the more promptly would it obey.

When a child is old enough to attend school, or go into the streets, the fears of the parent betray his conviction of the child's proneness to evil. The mother knows, that all her good advice, and affectionate entreaties, are not sufficient to secure him against vice. She is afraid he will learn to swear, to fight, to speak indecent language,

to tell lies, and to be idle. Why? He has been warned against these things, again and again; and that too, from the lips of those whom he most loves and respects. Why should one bad boy have so much power over him, as to destroy the effect of these parental instructions? Ah! Brethren, it must be confessed, that so slight a cause would not counteract the painful work of many years, if it did not fall in with the natural inclinations of the child. A slight impulse will set a large stone to rolling down a hill; but, if it were on level ground, and besides, if it were held back by cords attached to it, it would require great exertion to snap asunder these cords, and urge it forward. So I argue with respect to children if they had no bias to evil, and besides, if they were fortified against it by the instructions of their pa rents, they would not be so easily led into vice as they now are. Watch the parent, when his son is old enough to be sent abroad, to school, or college: How many precautions must be taken to secure his virtue! How many letters must be written, praying for inspection and guardianship over the young man! Tell me, ye anxious parents, who, with heavy hearts, and swimming eyes, are just dismissing the dear son of your hopes from his home, in search of a liberal education, what is the meaning of all your trembling apprehensions, and boding fears? Why your earnest exhortations to good conduct? Why your great anxiety, that he should have, at the seminary where he is to be placed, some guardian eye to overlook him, and some guardian hand to control him? It is because you know that your son has propensities to evil, which must be watched, and checked. It is because you know how frail is that structure of virtue which you have been so diligently rearing within him; and how easily temptations and vicious examples can overturn and demolish it. You send your son to college, with the same

trepidation that would attend you, when you would trust gunpowder near the fire. It is not merely the power of fire you dread, but the extreme combustibility of the material you place near it.

But I need not enlarge, on the evidence of a proneness to evil in the young. Most persons are too well convinced of it, by painful experience, to deny it. However few have a proper sense of the depth and extent of that depravity whose out-breakings they deplore, they do not take notice of that native aversion to God, and religion, and that proud contempt of the humble doctrines of the Gospel, which mark the character of most young people. Indeed, most parents are so insensible of the criminality of these dispositions in themselves, that it is no wonder they do not mark and mourn them in their offspring. In their view, a person may have reached the age of fifty or sixty years, and all that time have lived as negligent of his Maker as if he had none; and yet, be a very good man! No wonder, then, that, provided their children show smartness, and spirit, and not very bad dispositions towards their fellow-creatures, such parents should be very little disquieted, when they discover in their children a total dislike to every thing serious; and a determined bent towards frivolous and pernicious amusements. But, my brethren, blind and dead as we may be, to the criminality of an aversion to religion, it is a most awful symptom of a depraved heart. With every reason to love and be grateful to their Creator-in the morning of life, with elastic health, with cheerful spirits, with warm hearts, with imaginations easily kindled by every thing grand, beautiful, and amiable, youth show a universal distaste to religious duties-a universal sentiment, that the service of God has in it, something melancholy, joyless, and even loathsome, and contemptible. Were not the heart deplorably warped from rectitude,

there would be, in religion, something irresistibly attractive, to the youthful mind. The grandeur of the Being who is the object of it; the nobleness and expansion of those affections which nothing but Heaven and Infinity can satisfy; the purity of heart, and innocence of life, which aim at the approbation of that eye which sees every thing, and can distinguish the real from the false, the precious from the vile ;-such qualities, have in them, something to inflame youthful admiration; and would inevitably provoke their love and their emulation, if the carnal mind were not enmity to God.

Nor is this disinclination to religion, by any means, confined to the young. As the tree takes deeper root in the ground, the older it grows; so, man clings more closely to the world, the longer he continues in it. If persons show somewhat more tendency to pay respect to their duties to God, after the giddiness of youth is over, it is usually the effect of trouble: they learn how uncertain life is, and how full of cares: they want something better than the world to lean upon. It is selfishness, at last, which brings them to their senses. It is not inclination, or taste, which draws them to God. It is fear, and previous disappointment.

The strength of this natural antipathy to godliness will more evidently appear, by considering the strength of the motives which it overcomes. "It is evident," says an able writer, "that the motives to love God and holi“ness, are, in themselves, incomparably greater than any "motives to love any other object whatever. Indeed, all "the just grounds to love in other objects, are just "grounds of love to God; because he is the source of all "that is amiable and desirable in his creatures. All his "works praise him, and excite us to bless him; to love, "to honour, and obey him. All the good in the world, "should convince us how good it is to draw near to God;

"and all the evil in the world, what an evil and bitter 66 thing it is to depart from him. These considerations may give us some sense of the great power of that in"ward depravity, which resists such inducements to "piety; and which hinders the natural heart from yield"ing to them. They prove a strong and obstinate insen"sibility to infinite obligations. They prove an inex "cusable stupidity of the natural heart, to what consti"tutes its true felicity. The favour of God is incom. "parably more desirable, than those things to which our (6 grovelling hearts give the preference. When things "that are in themselves the most absolutely necessary, "which are infinitely desirable and glorious, are the ob

jects, either of the heart's indifference, or only of weak, "confused, and transient desires; while other things, "which bear no proportion to them, and which are com"paratively less than nothing, and vanity, inflame the "heart with ardent desires; and are objects of its most

vigorous and its most steady affections; this proves "such an enormous disproportion, between men's affec"tions, and the worth of their objects; such a powerful perverseness of disposition, as is a very proper object "of amazement, as well as the deepest regret."*

If the disinclination to the duties of religion shown by unregenerate men, strongly exhibits the depravity of the heart, the difficulty which even Christians find, in continuing devout, and faithful, is a further demonstration of the strength of depravity in the human heart. It might be supposed, that men who had had their eyes opened, to see the vileness of sin, and the emptiness of the world, would be in no danger of relapsing into the same sins, and into the same love of that empty world. It might be supposed, that those who had tasted of the Heavenly gift,

* M'Laurin.