s not the place to inquire. All
agree that they show an early bias in the wrong direction; and that,
left to grow up without moral culture and restraint, the great majority
would go far astray, and become bad members of society. This is
sufficient for our present argument. The evil bias must be counteracted.
For the safety of the state, as well as for their own sakes, all its
children must be brought under the forming and sanative influence of
religious education. No adequate substitute was ever devised, or ever
can be. 'Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he
will not depart from it.' This is divine; and the opposite is equally
true. Train up a child in the way he should _not_ go, or--which comes to
about the same thing--leave him to take the wrong way of his own accord,
and when he is old he will not depart from that. His tread will be
heavier and heavier upon the broad and beaten track. 'Men do not gather
grapes of thorns, nor figs of thistles.' 'Can the Ethiopian change his
skin, or the leopard his spots? Then may those also do good who are
accustomed to do evil.'

"Moral and religious training ought, undoubtedly, to be commenced in
every family much earlier than children are sent to school, and no
parent can throw off upon the schoolmaster the responsibility of
bringing them up in the 'nurture and admonition of the Lord.' He must
himself teach them the good way, and lead them along in it by his own
example. But few parents, however, have the leisure and ability to do
all that is demanded in this vitally essential branch of education. All
are entitled to the aid of their pastors and religious teachers; and
every good shepherd will feel a tender concern for the lambs of his
flock, and will feed them with the sincere milk of the word both in the
sanctuary and at the fireside. But the work should not stop here. There
ought to be a co-operation of good influences in all the seminaries of
learning, and especially in the primary schools. This co-operation would
be necessary if moral and religious household instruction were
universally given, and if all the children of the state regularly
attended public worship, and enjoyed the benefits of catechetical and
Sabbath-school teaching. But those who would banish religion from our
admirable systems of popular education by the plea that it belongs
exclusively to the family and the Church, ought to remember what
multitudes of children this exclusion would