Page:The Life and Works of Christopher Dock.djvu/105

Rh Ordinary life is similar to a household, the usual thing therein, be it orderly or disorderly, cleaves to the children throughout their lives, so that Solomon may well say in 22 Cap. v. 6, “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.” Can we not similarly plant early a fear of God; when at every opportunity vice is made hateful and virtue and love of God desirable? Therefore parents should be especially careful of the company into which they send their children, and especially what teachers they choose for them; for what they see and hear of these impresses itself deeply upon their tender spirits.

This my beloved father saw clearly, and already almost twenty years ago he felt a desire to meet our wants, as far as possible, in this respect, and as he knew of a man whose whole desire was to seek the children's best advantage in body and soul, to teach godliness as well as the ordinary branches, and in accordance with the advice of the Apostle Paul (Tit. ii, 7), always showed himself a good example, and was also blessed with a natural gift, he was desirous of obtaining a written statement of his school management that he might print and publish it, that other teachers who are anxious to instruct their children well and are not so richly gifted might find something in it to improve themselves. And for others, who care not whether the children learn anything or not, so long as they receive their pay, it should serve as a means of shaming them, when they see that parents too know how a well-planned school should be kept, and finally it is to teach the parents