Page:Great importance of parental instruction.pdf/18

 conscience is thus awakened, must experience a torture of mind which his tongue cannot express,—a terror of soul, beyond the colouring of language to depict?—Merciful God, I beseech thee, let no such case ever occur within my knowledge!—Oh, let not the hand that now writes, ever tremble under the pressure of convictions so awful; nor let the eye that now reads ever weep tears of remorse so bitter!

''It ought, indeed, to be observed, that it is by no means consistent with the right notions of the divine government, to suppose that the eternal state of a human soul his left to the mercy of any creature or creatures, whatever. No, the complexion of eternal things is not so capriciously determined. This momentous article, like all other of God's ways, is settled by a justice, combined with a wisdom and a goodness, each of them perfect, and altogether divine. But the dispensations of grace are regulated in a way generally analogous to the operations of nature. Appropriate means are employed in both, without the application of which, the desirable and cannot legitimately be expected. And surely no means of conveying moral and religious instruction to the young mind can be more natural than those of parental exertion. A child is a precious trust, which God first and''