his public lectures on moral
philosophy and logic.

His only remaining publication was an edition of the juvenile works of
the elder of his two sons, who was taken off by a consumption (November
1790), at the age of twenty-two. To the education of this boy he had
attended with such care and discernment as the anxiety of a parent only
could dictate, and had watched his unfolding excellence with fondness
such as none but a parent could feel. At the risque of telling my reader
what he may, perhaps, well remember, I cannot but relate the method
which he had taken to impress on his mind, when a child, the sense of
his dependence on a Supreme Being; of which Porteus well observed, that
it had all the imagination of Rousseau, without his folly and
extravagance.

"The doctrines of religion," said Beattie, "I had wished to impress on
his mind, as soon as it might be prepared to receive them; but I did not
see the propriety of making him commit to memory theological sentences,
or any sentences which it was not possible for him to understand. And I
was desirous to make a trial how far his own reason could go in tracing
out, with a little direction, the great and first principle of all
religion, the being of God. The following fact is mentioned, not as a
proof of superior sagacity in him (for I have no doubt that most
children would, in like circumstances, think as he did), but merely as a
moral or logical experiment. He had reached his fifth or sixth year,
knew the alphabet, and could read a little; but had received no
particular information with respect to the Author of his being: because
I thought he could not yet understand such information; and because I
had learned, from my own experience, that to be made to repeat words not
understood, is extremely detrimental to the faculties of a young mind.
In a corner of a little garden, without informing any person of the
circumstance, I wrote in the mould, with my finger, the three initial
letters of his name; and sowing garden cresses in the furrows, covered
up the seed, and smoothed the ground. Ten days after, he came running to
me, and with astonishment in his countenance told me, that his name was
growing in the garden. I smiled at the report, and seemed inclined to
disregard it; but he insisted on my going to see what had happened.
'Yes,' said I, carelessly, on coming to the place, 'I see it is so; but
there is nothing in this worth notice; it is mere chance;' and I went
away.