For the Christian Spectator.

OF CHILDREN.

IT is a great discouragement to parents that many of their instructions are unwelcome to their children. What the child listens to with unwillingness cannot with satisfaction be pressed on his attention. If the child is very reluctant to hear, the parent will find it very painful to teach. Under these circumstances, instructions and counsels are very likely to be discontinued. Doubtless they are often suspended from an opinion of duty. It is thought inexpedient to present even important truths when they are so strongly repelled.

Now, regard is ever to be had to circumstances; and prudence is as useful and necessary in the performance of this duty as of any other. It may even be said that as parental instruction is a most important duty, prudence is eminently necessary in the discharge of it. But it is therefore eminently important to ascertain what is prudent, what is expedient. This question it is proposed to touch at this time, no farther than it is connected with the unwillingness of children to receive religious instruction and advice.

There may be some parents to whom this question seems of little importance; at least, in reference to themselves. They may find their children always willing to listen, always glad to learn, and glad to be advised. It would, perhaps, VOL. VII.-No. 4.

occasion to wish their children more teachable. There may be some parents so happy; but they are so few as to require only a slight exception to the remark that much of parental instruction is unwelcome to the child. And it must be thus while children continue to inherit the weaknesses and perversities of our race, for even the innocent appetites and inclinations must not be allowed an unlimited indul

gence. And there are in every young heart, too, the germs of evil, malignant passions to be checked. These tendencies to evil may in some hearts be less vigorous than in others. Careful and judicious treatment may check their influence, may even seem to have smothered and extinguished the spark. But even in such cases, it will commonly be found breaking out on some unlooked for occasion. If the heart is not inflamed by some of the sinful passions, it will be by others. Whether these fires are kindled up by the breath of temptation from a spark that before lay there nearly inactive, or from one struck out by the collisions of interest, or the violence of the appetites, is not material to the present purpose. Both the conduct and the tempers of children must be restrained; and restraints will be uncomfortable, and sometimes. submitted to with impatience. Attention and study are necessary to the attainment of knowledge; and attention and study will often be

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pleasure. There is a pleasure in carrying, even our distresses to the throne of grace. The groanings of a parent's heart over an ungodly child in the presence of him who hears and answers prayer, are not without a mixture of pleasure. There is a relief found in pouring out our griefs into the bosom of one who knows our pains, and pities them. There is hope of a gracious answer to these supplications. There is a soothing satisfaction found in submitting the objects of our most earnest desires and most painful anxieties to the disposal of heavenly wisdom and goodness. This makes prayer a more pleasing duty than reproof, expostulation, and the constant endeavour to find out and employ opportunities and means of making useful impressions. It will not be strange then if the parent comes to think more of divine aid than of human exertion. There is a sense in which he should do so. But--if it is right to speak of the matter thus-human exertion he can make that divine grace, it may be, he cannot obtain for his child. But it is to be remembered, that this divine aid is much more reasonably expected to be given to accompany and succeed the parent's exertions, than to work the effect without them. Where there is no opportunity for us to exert ourselves in bringing about the events we pray for, our prayers alone constitute our duty, and are sufficient to authorize hope. But where there is room for our hands to work, they must be put to the work, and kept to it. This is necessary to maintain the ardour of our desires and procure acceptance for our prayers.

In all this it is not meant to be maintained that the same exertions are to be perpetually repeated. Wisdom is to be used in the selection and employment of means; and that wisdom is to be perpetually employed. No strong hold is absolutely impregnable: and the failure

of one means of operation, while it discourages the repetition of that, is but the signal for resorting to another.

There is room for mistake in judging of the result of past endeav ours. They may too soon be pronounced useless. We are not to set down our labours as fruitless, because they have not all the success we wished or hoped. Vice is a torrent,-all sin is a stream, down which the impenitent are borne with a perpetual force. It is some. thing to prevent a further descent; or, if that cannot be done, to check the rapidity of that descent, and thus keep them longer within the reach of hope and rescue. If vicious habits cannot be rooted out, nor even be prevented from growing and multiplying, their growth and increase may be checked. If hardness of heart cannot be cured, nor even prevented from increasing, its increase may be retarded. The decay of religious sensibility may be less rapid, the canker of the world may eat into the heart, the pollutions of vice may spread through the soul, more slowly for the exertions of a pious parent under the most discouraging circumstances.

What means may best be employed by the parent for the religious benefit of children far gone in habits of vice, or even growing old in impenitence, is a question too difficult for me at this time; though important enough to have an answer in your columns. The few remarks I shall add have a particular reference to the years of childhood, and to children of moral and regular habits. And what I wish most to urge is the duty of not giving over on account of the child's distaste for religion. It is indeed most hopeful as well as most pleasing to give instruction where it is received with pleasure and attention; to administer reproof when it is listened to with submission and kindness and with purposes of amendment; to point the way of safety to those who are diligently

inquiring for it. But when the 'child possesses this temper, there is comparatively little further need of a parent's instructions. He is already prepared to teach himself, for the most part, by the aid of such means as are every where to be found. The religious improvement of such a child is most hopeful indeed. But, when instructions are unwelcome, the benefit of them is not therefore hopeless. Truth is not useless because it is disagreeable and received with reluctance. Food and medicine do not lose their efficacy by being forced upon the stomach of the patient. If I may carry the analogy a step further, the stomach cannot always be made to reject them at the pleasure of the patient; and even when it can be made to throw them off, they may have remained in the system long enough to work some important effect. This analogy is not wholly set aside by the consideration that in administering religious instruction, it is the will which is to be acted upon, and the affections and volitions of the heart that are to be corrected. The influence of motives upon the will, has mysteries about it not yet explained by the metaphysician. But truths, as well as rules of prudence, and the maxims of common sense, do not lose their power because they are not loved. The thought of death, for instance, is unwelcome to the gay and inconsiderate, but it still has some power to repress unseasonable gaiety, and produce consideration. The suggestion that God is present and witnesses all disobedience, that he is omniscient, and knows even the wrong feelings of the heart, produces some measure of salutary dread in the bosom of almost every sinner, especially in the young. The idea of the divine power, pressed on the attention of a child, must do something to subdue the stubbornness of his heart. The certainty of punishment, and the terribleness of the punishment

of those who disobey God, will, sometimes at least, make the stoutest heart shake with dread. It cannot be easy to find a young man wholly insensible to this consideration. Representations of the divine goodness, especially of the grace and compassion of the Saviour, when properly urged as dissuasives from sin, cannot but have some power over the human heart, and make at least a young sinner feel something of the unworthiness of his conduct, and give him some dissatisfaction with himself. These, and similar considerations, do something to make a course of sin and a state of impenitence unsatisfactory. They clog the sinner's progress. And it must certainly be of great service to let in the light upon the path of the sinner, and compel bim, even against his will, to see both the dark and dreadful gulf, to which it leads, and the ugly and hateful forms that accompany him. It is desirable to strip a life of sin, not only of all its dangerous attractions, by showing of how little value are its forbidden pleasures, but also to show its disadvantages, its dangers, its guilt, its destitution of all that is lovely and honourable.

There is a perpetual struggle going on in the heart of every impenitent man who knows any thing of religious truth. The great motives of duty and final happiness are arrayed against the allurements of the world, and the waywardness of the heart. This struggle must be maintained till truth and duty prevail. The right side must be reinforced continually by the parent, and he must not cease to watch the struggle, and furnish timely succours, because he sees great reason to fear for the issue. For, though he may have great reason to fear, he need not despair, and nothing but absolute despair can justify the parent in abandoning the cause. The contest cannot be considered as finally decided while life lasts; and that should be enough, with a pious

parent, to secure the continuance of his exertions.

It has been said that religious considerations rarely, perhaps never in early life, become absolutely powerless. But great skill and care are sometimes necessary in the employment of them. If presented at a wrong time, or in a wrong manner, they produce less benefit at that time, and lose something of their power to do good at another. A physician may administer a powerful medicine unseasonably, and so not only fail to benefit his patient now, but put his system in such a state that he cannot be benefited by it hereafter. It is of the utmost consequence in religious education, as in medicine, to be seasonable. The parent should seize on the happy moment, the intermissions of the fever of passion, the calm, and quiet, and rational intervals, as furnishing the best opportunities for successful treatment. Let him then use his best judgment and diligence to provide against the return of the violent symptoms, and to break the disease. Let him labour to produce a healthful action of the mind, to increase the strength of the moral constitution.

The greater part of the religious instruction of many a parent, seems to be prompted more by resentment than by kindness. Öffences and improprieties are reproved immediately on being observed. It will commonly be the case, that the parent is not then best prepared to administer reproof. And if his spirit is disturbed, the child is commonly in a less kind and teachable state than it would be afterwards.

Religions instruction and expostulation is also apt to be given on occasions not the most suitable. By some it is given almost exclusively on melancholy occasions-the death of a neighbour, the sickness of a a friend, or some distressing calamity. If it is given only, or principally at such times, besides being too infrequent, it will come of

course to be associated in the mind of the child, with ideas of gloom and heaviness.

It is another fault of many parents, that they dwell most on those religious truths, which are suited to inspire dread and apprehension, and too much neglect all that is pleasing and inviting in religion; others dwell too much on a very small number of religious topics, and present them again and again, with very little variety of manner or connexion. The instructions of such are necessarily dull, and less profitable than they might be. Some parts of religious instruction are best given in private. But the most direct and personal remarks are often made by the parent in the presence of others, before a whole family, and even before a stranger, and so managed as to be felt like a public reproof. Again, parents sometimes err by pushing every subject too Wherever their discourse may begin, it is always brought to such pointed results, as it would be often better the child should be left to arrive at himself.

far.

But even with the most prudent management, it will often be impossible to prevent the child from feeling and betraying a distaste for this part of a parent's instructions. When this is the case, let the parent not seem to notice it too much; and and while he endeavours to choose out acceptable words, and watches for favourable opportunities, let him never abandon, nor long suspend, this important duty. And let him take for his encouragement the testimony of one singularly blessed with pious and faithful parents and instructors in childhood and youth; of one who often listened reluctantly, and sometimes with aversion, to their careful and affectionate counsels; but has since learned to thank them for these very labours of love, and to believe that they have been not without ex'cellent benefits to himself.

E. K.