Page:Great importance of parental instruction.pdf/10

 in childhood, and if they are bad, as they will undoubtedly be, where religious education is neglected, they harden into habits which are not easily overcome. For the truth of this, may I not appeal to an expression too commonly found in the mouths of adults in wickedness?" I am too old to learn; my habits are fixed, and cannot be changed." Such, indeed, is the confirming power of evil habits, that a prophet places the probability of reformation in a case of this kind, on the same footing with that of a controul over the uniform operations of nature; "Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots?—then may yes also. do good that are accustomed to do evil."

If these, then, are general laws of mind, fairly deducible from daily observation, how great is the danger of neglecting early instruction. For let it be remembered, that: the neglect of virtuous and godly tuition is a positive training to irreligion and vice, He that is not for religion, is against her. There can be no neutrality here. Our Lord in the gospel describes only two ways; the one is broad, and leads to destruction; the other narrow, and leads to life. There is no intermediate path; and the youth who has not been led into the safe and narrow way, will, of necessity, be found in the broad way, running a dangerous and progressive course