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confined to the lower classes.--It is, on the contrary, when we examine
the matter closely, nearly universal. Among ignorant and thoughtless
parents, who are either unable or unwilling to look any further than the
few short years of life, the training of their children to figure
respectably and gracefully during it, may not perhaps excite much
wonder;--but that such conduct should be followed by Christian parents,
who know that both they and their children have souls, and that there is
such a thing as eternity before them both, is truly humbling. Nor is it
much for the credit of the philosophy of the present day, that while its
promoters admit as an axiom the superiority of moral and religious
attainments, they are found in practice to bestow their chief attention,
and to lavish most of their approbation on physical investigations and
on intellectual pursuits. Every sound thinker must see, that by doing
so, the first principles of philosophy are violated; and many well
meaning persons are, by this inverted state of public opinion,
insensibly drawn away from the more valuable food provided for them as
responsible and immortal beings, to feed on the mere chaff and garbage
of temporal and sensual enjoyments; or the more valuable, but still
temporary crumbs of the intellectual table. That this practical abuse of
acknowledged truths should be found among the ignorant and the depraved,
might perhaps be expected; but that it should be witnessed, and yet
winked at, by men of learning and study, whose comprehensive minds,
although still inadequate to comprehend the full import of an eternity
of advancing knowledge, can yet appreciate the comparative
insignificance of seventy--nay of seventy thousand--years' investigation
into the mysteries of Nature, is very painful. We do not, in saying
this, depreciate in the slightest degree the sublime discoveries which
are daily being made of the Almighty and his works;--but we say, upon
the soundest principles of philosophy, that were all these discoveries
multiplied ten thousand times, they could not for a moment compete with
what yet remains to be communicated to the successful aspirant after the
revelations of eternity. Religion and morals are the only means by which
success in that great competition can be gained; and therefore, to a
child, a knowledge of all that man has yet discovered, or can ever know
in this imperfect state of existence, is really as nothing, in
comparison with th