Page:Great importance of parental instruction.pdf/11

 of folly. And how can it be otherwise? The native darkness of his mind; never penetrated with a single ray of religious instruction, becomes grosser and grosser. Errors multiply and rule the judgement. Having no previous principles to supplant, they gain an easy ascendancy: Every thing is now beheld through the medium of strong delusion. Truth, if it be offered, is rejected with impatience. It has no beauty, nor comeliness, in it to attract a mind of this description. In his childhood, it had not gained his reverence; and as he grows up, he learns to persecute it with ridicule and contempt. How often in the case of a neglected and deluded youth, has a pious friend been forced to close the kindest remonstrances with this despairing exclamation; "Am I therefore become your enemy because I tell the truth?"

Nor is the evil confined to sentiment. The fountain is impure, and the streams which it sends forth cannot be wholesome. This corruption of principle produces all the sad variety of moral turpitude. "Who car bring a clean thing out of an unclean?" It is excellently advised by Solomon, "keep thy heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life." This is the advice of sage experience; for the heart is that important department which commands the whole man.