Page:Great importance of parental instruction.pdf/19

 ''most emphatically deposits in the hands of the parent. The young mind is the soil intended for cultivation, and the parent the husbandman, under God, to labour upon it. As therefore "the sluggard, who will not plow by reason of the cold," so the parent, who will not afford to his child the religious instruction which he ought to communicate, endangers the immortal interests of his offspring, and prepares for himself nothing but disappointment, rexation, and remorse.''

I knew a parents who had sadly neglected the religious and moral instruetioninstruction [sic] of his children, and who was in consequence exposed to many grievous mortifications. At no period of my life do I remember having been more shocked, than at a scene between him and his son, which I happened to witness. The father had gently reproved the young man for some boastful expressions he had uttered, when he was presently under the pitiable necessity of withdrawing from his infuriate son, who poured upon him the most abusive language, mixed with imprecations too horrid to be repeated! It is worthy of remark, that this unhappy being soon after died in a miserable state, oppressed with poverty, and emaciated with disease.