there is so little prospect of amusement; but I know that it is not with you always necessary to engage the fancy, in order to interest the heart.

When united to such a flow of spirits as you naturally possess, a taste for serious reading, and a relish for serious conversation, become a blessing of the first magnitude; for there is then no reason to apprehend that the youthful mind will lose its sprightly tone, by the force of any impressions made upon it by premature reflection. You know how little friendly I am to aught that is gloomy or austere. You know happiness to be my professed object, and that all to which my arguments tend, is to persuade you never, upon any account, to sacrifice a greater portion of happiness to a lesser.

Children, and men, who are still but children past growing, are, in

some

some respects, upon the same footing. All are alike in training for a state to which they have not yet arrived. Childhood is a state of preparation for youth; youth for maturity; and maturity for that state of existence beyond the grave, of which this very analogy might give us some notion, but of which the goodness of God has in mercy assured us, through Jesus Christ.

Upon a very little consideration you will perceive, that the well-being and happiness of each of these states of existence, depend much upon the preparation made for it in the preceding state. Children who have been very much neglected in infancy, and whose faculties have never been exercised, will find their tasks much more difficult than those who have been early taught to pay attention to objects of improvement. If, through

the

the agency of careless or wicked persons, they have acquired had habits, they will suffer yet more severely; and if these bad habits are not resolutely conquered, they will suffer through life; accumulating in all its stages sin, and reaping in all its stages sorrow. Nor are we authorized, either by reason or scripture, to conclude, that the consequences will with this life end for as you see in the case I have stated, the youth suffers for what was done or neglected in child hood, and the man suffers for having neglected the opportunity of improvement in youth; it seems to be but a continuation of the same chain of consequences, that he should, in the ensuing state suffer, for what he had done or neglected in the last. But this most dreadful penalty, it was in his own power, by timely repentance to have averted. He might in youth,

youth, by application, have made up for the neglect of childhood. He might by self-restraint have controlled the passions which had been fostered by indulgence, and by storing his mind with the best motives, and acting up to the degree of knowledge he possessed, have prepared himself for entering on the future with advantage. Even after he had reached maturity, the sins of his youth might by penitence have been cancelled. But though, while life is granted, the gates of mercy stand open, those who have not in the morning of life been put upon the path that leads to them, will not be apt to explore it when the day draws near its close! To that path there is no certain and infallible guide, but fixed and steady principles.

That much may be done towards the formation of religious and moral principles,

ciples, even in the early years of life, I have always been inclined to believe, and the experience which I obtained during the last summer, has transformed belief into certainty. Το make children sensible of the advantage to be derived from making slight sacrifices of the present will, in order to attain a greater degree of future happiness, seemed much more difficult in theory, than I found it to be in practice. A provision seems indeed to have been made for this necessary part of the education of the human race, through all the successive stages of life, as in none of them are we permitted the gratuitous enjoyment of what appears to our imaginations the greatest good. The unlimited indulgence of the prevailing desire, is in general recompensed by future misery; nor is future happiness in any of the stages of life, to be

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chased