Page:Great importance of parental instruction.pdf/13

 unknown, or despised. Warning comes too late. The tears of mortified, disappointed parents, are ridiculed. Character, health, fortune, friends, are sacrificed;—to what, to pleasure, shall I say? Nay, but to infamy, disease, remorse, and wretchedness! Melancholy issue!

But this is not all. The subject rises infinitely higher in its importance, when we consider, that the neglect of religious instruction in early youth is an evil which often involves eternal consequences. These consequences are of the most dreadful nature, and calculated to excite in the mind of a thinking parent the most terrific ideas. The evil of this neglect, great as it is in the present life, does not terminate with it; it reaches into another world: and oh, what an awful thought, there it cannot be remedied! While the soul continues in union with the body, the case, however bad, must not be thought desperate. The careless parent may be roused to a sense of his criminal neglect. He may be brought to weep over his abused offspring, and his acute sensations of self-reproach and paternal commiseration may force tears from his eyes, that, through the blessing of God, may soften their hearts, and prove the means of their recovery: But when the immortal spirit is summoned from the clay tenement, to take its trial