truction_
alone,--that the young are to be guarded against crime, and prepared and
furnished to good works.

3. This leads us to observe another remarkable circumstance,
corroborative also of the above remark, which is, that although the
legislative powers of conscience are but very imperfectly, if at all
developed in children, yet the _executive_ powers are never absent,
where moral instruction has previously been communicated.--A child of
very tender years, and even an infant, may be taught, that certain
actions are good and should be performed, while others are evil and must
be avoided. This is matter of daily experience; and a little attention
to the subject will shew, that moral instruction in the case of the
young, acts the same part that the legislative powers of conscience do
in the adult. But what we wish at present more particularly to remark
is, that whenever such moral instruction has been communicated, Nature
at once sanctions it, and is ever ready to use the executive powers of
the conscience for the purpose of rendering it effective. When therefore
good actions have been pointed out as praiseworthy and deserving of
approbation, there is a strong inducement to practise them, and a
delightful feeling of satisfaction and self-approval after they have
been performed. And when, on the contrary, certain other actions have
been denounced as wicked, and which, if indulged in, will be punished
either by their parents or by God, the child feels all the hesitation
and fear to commit them, that is observable in similar cases among older
persons; and, when committed he experiences the same remorse, and
terror, and self-reproach, which in the adult follow the perpetration of
an aggravated crime. This is a circumstance which must be obvious to
every reader; and it distinctly intimates, that the God of Nature
intends that the legislative powers of conscience should in all cases
be _anticipated_ by the parent and teacher. The moral instruction or the
young is to be the rule; the neglect of it, although in some measure
provided for, is to be the exception. The lesson is as plain as analogy
can teach us, that, while there is written on the heart of man such an
outline of the moral law as will leave him without excuse when called to
judgment, yet it is not the design of the Creator that, in a matter of
such vast importance as the moral perfection of a rational creature, we
should trust to that, and, like savages, leave our c