Young

who have a true zeal for Christianity, are bound by every obligation to endeavour to promote it in their families, by carefully training up their children to an early acquaintance with its doctrines and its precepts. It is of the utmost consequence to inspire the tender mind with a reverence for things sacred, a love of virtue, and an abhorrence of baseness and impurity. The necessity of a pious education, and the benefits arising from it, have been acknowledged by the best and wisest of men in all ages. And great in this respect is the advantage of those who enjoy the light of the Gospelrevelation. Hence it highly concerns Christian parents, to labour that their children may have the word of Christ dwelling richly in them. minds, thus filled with the great objects of religion, possess the most effectual preservative against the vanities and follies of a sinful world, and the most animating motives to the practice of every thing amiable and good. And for want of such an indispensable preparation it is, that many among us, though bearing the name of Christians, are shamefully ignorant even of the first elements of Christianity. Is it to be wondered at, if such persons become an easy prey to seducers, and are speedily drawn into infidelity and debauchery, losing at once every noble sentiment and every generous affection? And in that case, the higher their condition, the more pernicious is the contagion of their example. Instead of being the ornament and the support, indeed, they become the disgrace and the pest of the community.

On the contrary, how agreeable is it to behold children bred up in the fear of God, their minds carefully stored with sound principles and good

habits! Those of the one sex, not only formed under the influence of religion to a delicate sense of purity and virtue, and to that gentleness of manners and behaviour, which has always been esteemed their loveliest ornament, but also to the hope of an immortal inheritance: and those of the other, trained up by proper discipline to a rational piety, the due government of their appetites and passions, and a manly sense of whatever is honourable and excellent! In short, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report: if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, -thinking on these things!

II.

THE

TRUTH

OF THE

SCRIPTURE HISTORY;

ABRIDGED FROM

MR LESLIE'S

SHORT AND EASY METHOD WITH THE DEISTS;

AND HIS

TRUTH OF CHRISTIANITY DEMONSTRATED.

Let all the nations be gathered together, and all the people be assembled: Who among them can declare this, and show us former things? Let them bring forth their witnesses, that they may be justified; or let them hear "IT is truth."-Isa. xliii. 9.

and say,