Page:Great importance of parental instruction.pdf/8

 and prove perverse in its decisions: unaccustomed to wholesome restraint, the desires will capriciously fix on the most improper objects; never directed to the sublimer beauties of religion, the affections will become grovelling and impure: while the will, a stranger to the power of godliness, grows obstinately disobedient, and is led away captive by the wild and unhallowed passions of a natural mind. Such is the sad, but too probable experience of those whose earliest years have been favoured with no religions tuition. Poor neglected. rationals!—how I pity you!—my heart bleeds for you. I see you in the morning of your days, in all your gaiety, and ask, what are you?—What but so many proofs of original depravity,—embryos of future outrages to your parents, to society, to yourselves;—the victims of moral corruption, and the nurslings of hell!

What a dreadful prospect does this afford! It cannot surely be suggested to an affectionate parent without creating an alarm terminating in a determination to use every effort, under divine assistance, to reverse it. Without this, there is no rational ground to hope that the worst consequences shall not nebe [sic] realized. It is but just to fear that the neglected child will become a vicious youth; and the vicious youth, a hardy and