e knowledge and practice of but one religious truth,
or with the slightest advance in the science of morals.--A child once
possessed of a living soul is born for eternity. Its happiness has been
made to depend, not on the possession of physical good, or of
intellectual power, but entirely on its moral condition;--and the
physical good it receives, and the intellectual power it attains; are
nothing more than means intended by the Almighty to be used for the
purpose of perfecting his moral condition while he is still in this
world. The whole period of his existence here, is but the moment of his
birth for eternity. Care and enlightened attention to his moral
condition during that short period of probation, will usher him
spiritually alive and fully prepared for enjoying an eternal weight of
intelligence and glory;--while inattention, or misdirected activity now,
may no doubt put him prematurely in possession of a few intellectual
morsels of this eternal feast, but it will assuredly shut him out from
its everlasting enjoyment, and will entail on him comparative ignorance,
and a living death for ever.

In this view of the case then,--and what Christian will deny that it is
the correct one,--there cannot be a more short-sighted proposition
suggested in the counsels of men, than that which would sanction a
system of education for an _immortal_ being, that either overlooked, or
deliberately set aside, his well-being in eternity. The very idea is
monstrous. It is a deliberate levelling of man to the rank of mere
sentient animals; and is another form of expressing the ancient advice
of the sensualist, "Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die." By
every person of learning, then, and even by individuals of humbler
attainments, in the exercise of a plain common understanding, the
importance of the rule in education which we are here recommending, must
at once be admitted;--That in the selection of truths and exercises for
educating and training the young, a decided preference should always be
given to those which have a reference to their well-being and happiness,
not in time so much as in eternity.

3. In selecting subjects and exercises for the education of the young,
those are to be preferred, by which _the largest amount of true and
solid happiness is to be secured to the pupil_.--A man's happiness is
his only possession. Every thing else which he has, is only the means
which he employs for the purpose of acquiring or retai