f the physical
does to the senses. This state of pain and disgust is felt, though it
can never be expressed, by children, who are under the management of
inconsistent persons,--that is, persons whose conduct is guided solely
by feeling, (good or bad,) by caprice, or impulse; and how injurious it
is to them, we may easily conceive. If, however, their present comfort
only were endangered by it, the evil would be of comparatively small
magnitude; but it affects their character for life. They cease to trust,
and they cease to venerate; now, trust is the root of faith, and
veneration of piety:--and when the root is destroyed, how can the plant
flourish? Perhaps we may remark that the effect here produced upon
children is the same as that which long intercourse with the world
produces in men: only that the effect differs in proportion to their
differing intellectual faculties. The child is annoyed, and knows not
the cause of annoyance; the man is annoyed, and endeavours to lose the
sense of discomfort in a universal skepticism as to human virtue, and a
resolving of all actions into one principle, self-interest. He thus
seeks to create a principle possessing the stability which he desires,
but seeks in vain to find; for, be it remembered, our love of moral
stability is precisely as great as our love of physical change;--another
of the mysteries of our being. The effects on the man are the same as on
the child,--he ceases to believe, and he ceases to venerate; and the end
is the most degrading of all conditions,--the abnegation of all abstract
virtue, generosity, or love. Now, into this state children are brought
by the inconsistency of parents,--that is, these young and innocent
creatures are placed in a condition, moral and intellectual, which we
consider an evil, even when produced by long contact with a selfish and
unkind world. And thus they enter upon life, prepared for vice in all
its forms,--and skepticism, in all its heart-withering tendencies. How
can parents bear this responsibility? There is something so touching in
the simple faith of childhood,--its utter dependence,--its willingness
to believe in the perfection of those to whom it looks for
protection--that to betray that faith, to shake that dependence, seems
almost akin to irreligion.

The value of principle, then, in itself so precious, is enhanced tenfold
by constancy in its manifestations, and therefore consistency, as a
source of influence, can never be too