e ignorant, being
unfortunately deprived of opportunity for religious instruction, may
with wonder and joy accept the surprising news of pardon, through
Christ, on a dying bed, and soar to the same heights with apostles in
their praises of redeeming love. But if we hear of salvation by Christ
all our life long, and know our duty, but prefer the pleasures of sin
for a season, and think that in the swellings of Jordan we shall find
peace and safety, our conduct deserves all the opprobrious names which
are heaped upon it by inspired tongues and pens. We who are parents must
teach our children that religion does not consist merely in being
pardoned, and, if pardoned, no matter whether early or late; but that it
is the first, the constant, the all-pervading rule of life, God and his
service the chief end of man, and that the pleasures of religion are the
sweetest pleasures, hallowing all others which are innocent, and leading
us to reject those, and only those, which would be unsuitable or
injurious, even if religious custom did not forbid them. We must know
this, and practise upon it, ourselves; else, how can we expect the
children to believe it?

The exceeding relief which a timely preparation for death by an early
consecration of herself to God, imparted to this child and to us, was
felt in this, that she and we had no distressing thoughts at her total
inability, for a long time, to join in prayer with others, or to be
conversed with in any way that excited much feeling. The diseased
throat, where, as we all know, our emotions, even in health and
strength, make such interference with our comfort, prevented her from
joining in any religious exercises, because she would then be liable to
the excitement of feelings which, in the way just intimated, would have
injured her. With such affections of the bronchial passages, efforts of
mind which are not spontaneous are sometimes agony. Connected endeavors
to follow conversation and prayer were impossible, and she told me, on
saying this, that she took great comfort from a remark, in a book,
addressed to a sick person--"Do not think, but pray." She prayed much
herself; her thoughts, too, were prayers, in certain cases. Now, in that
weakened condition, what could she have done, and what would have been
her father's feelings, had she not, in health and strength, arrived at
such a state of religious knowledge and experience as to remove anxiety
for her spiritual welfare, and to make