ook upon the moral delinquencies and dangers
which she observes in her children, under an aspect more stern and severe
than seems to be here recommended. But a little reflection must convince
us that the way to true repentance of, and turning from sin, is not
necessarily through the suffering of terror and distress. The Gospel is not
an instrumentality for producing terror and distress, even as means to an
end. It is an instrumentality for saving us from these ills; and the Divine
Spirit, in the hidden and mysterious influence which it exercises in
forming, or transforming, the human soul into the image of God, must be as
ready, it would seem, to sanction and bless efforts made by a mother to
allure her child away from its sins by loving and gentle invitations and
encouragements, as any attempts to drive her from them by the agency of
terror or pain. It would seem that no one who remembers the way in which
Jesus Christ dealt with the children that were brought to him could
possibly have any doubt of this.

CHAPTER XXIV.

CONCLUSION.

Any person who has acquired the art of examining and analyzing his own
thoughts will generally find that the mental pictures which he forms of the
landscapes, or the interiors, in which the scenes are laid of the events or
incidents related in any work of fiction which interests him, are modelled
more or less closely from prototypes previously existing in his own mind,
and generally upon those furnished by the experiences of his childhood.
If, for example, he reads an account of transactions represented as taking
place in an English palace or castle, he will usually, on a careful
scrutiny, find that the basis of his conception of the scene is derived
from the arrangement of the rooms of some fine house with which he was
familiar in early life. Thus, a great many things which attract our
attention, and impress themselves upon our memories in childhood, become
the models and prototypes--more or less aggrandized and improved,
perhaps--of the conceptions and images which we form in later years.

_Nature of the Effect produced by Early Impressions_.

Few persons who have not specially reflected on this subject, or examined
closely the operations of their own minds, are aware what an extended
influence the images thus stored in the mind in childhood have in forming
the basis, or furnishing the elements of the mental structures of future
life. But the truth, when once understood, shows