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That Providence which has imposed this employment on the febler sex as a task, has most graciously contrived to render it one of the highest and most exquisite of female comforts; as, in truth, all the impositions, nay, the very chastisements of Heaven are really blessings. Let the woman who has given suck tell if she can, "how tender it is to love the babe that milks her." Ask that mother if there be any joy like the joy of hearing her child repeat the lessons which she taught him. Ask her if she recollects or regards her pain and anguish; her anxious days and sleepless nights. Ask her, if all is not forgotten and lost in the progress which expanding faculties have made, and in the richer harvest which they promise. Ask, if she has not already received more than her reward. If the representation of the case be just, let it procure for dutiful mothers the respect and gratitude which they merit; let it reconcile their minds to what is painful and laborious in their lot; let it raise them to their due rank and importance in society; and let it stimulate them to perseverance in well-doing, in the full assurance that they shall in no wise lose their reward. The passage of holy writ, on the consideration of which we are now entering, is a very affecting representation of the effects and consequences of a good and a bad education, exemplified in the conduct of Hannah, the mother of Samuel, and Eli, the father of Hophni and Phinehas. Scripture, instead of multiplying precept upon precept, leads us at once into human life, and exhibits the law written in the event. It instructs us how to bring up children, by delineating the dreadful consequences of excessive lenity and indulgence on the one hand, and the happy fruits of early piety, regularity, and self-government on the other. This theme, being by far the more pleasing of the two, and coming in more regularly in the order of history, shall obtain the preference, in the course of our inquiry. Though, indeed, attention to the one must, of necessity, bring forward the other; and the good fortify and recommend itself by contrast with the evil.

The education of Samuel began in the pious resolution of his mother before he was conceived in the womb. "If thou wilt give unto thine handmaid a man-child, then I will give him unto the Lord all the days of his life." Every parent receives every child under a tacit engagement to the same purpose: and the command of God, from the moment of the birth is, "Rear that child for me. have watched over him while he lay in darkness, "mine eyes saw his substance yet being unperfect; in my book all his members were written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them. I added the immortal principle to the finished limbs: I stamped m image upon

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him. There my hand has scattered the seed of wisdom and happiness; to thy fostering care I commit that tender plant. Cared for, it will abundantly reward thy toil; neglected, it will grow into a sharp thorn to tear thy flesh. Every day, every hour is producing a change in it. Grow it will and must; what it grows into, depends upon thyself. Of thy hand will I require it."

As Samuel was to be a Nazarite to God from the womb, the law prescribed to the mother certain ceremonial observances respecting her own conduct, and the treatment of her own person, which corresponded to that high destination. Abstinence, in particular, from certain kinds of meat and drink, which might eventually affect the bodily or mental constitution of the unborn infant. With these prescriptions we have no room to doubt Hannah punctually complied. And here we fix the second stage, or if you will, erect the second pillar of education. The commands of God are none of them arbitrary and capricious, but founded in reason and the nature of things. Whatever strongly affects the mother during the months of pregnancy, beyond all doubt affects her offspring, whether it be violent liquors, or violent passions. It belongs to another profession than mine to account for this, and to determine how far the sympathy goes. But the general belief of it would most certainly have a very happy effect in procuring attention to female health, regularity and tranquillity in that delicate and interesting situation. The comfort of both parent and child, to the end of life; what do I say? through the whole of their existence, may be concerned in it.

As soon as Samuel was born, we find Hannah devoting undivided attention to the first and sweetest of maternal offices. "The woman tarried at home, and gave her son suck, until she weaned him." Nature and inclination concur in pressing this duty upon every mother. The instances of real inability are too few to merit consideration. The performance of it, carries its own recompense in its bosom; the neglect is, first and last, its own punishment. Without considering at present its connexion with the health and comfort of both parties, let us attend for a moment to its influence on morals, and as constituting a branch of education. Is not parental and filial affection the first bond of society, and the foundation of all virtue? It is this which arms a delicate female with patience which no pain nor labour can exhaust, with fortitude which no calamity can . subdue, with courage which no difficulty or danger can intimidate. It is this which first inspires the infant purpose to excel, which blows the sacred spark of gratitude into a flame, which first awakens and animates the latent seeds of immortality in the human soul. The first perception of the child, is

the sweet sense of obligation and dependence: | brought us out of Egypt, from the house of he feels himself far advanced in a commerce bondage. And it came to pass when Pharaoh of reciprocal affection the moment he be- would hardly let us go, that the Lord slew comes conscious of his existence; and finds all the first-born in the land of Egypt." It himself engaged in habits of goodness, long was probably thus, that Hannah instructed before he understands the meaning of words. her darling son; stored his memory with inAnd is it fit that these kind affections should teresting events, and touched his heart by be transferred to a stranger? Who can be affecting representations of the mercy and so well qualified to communicate these ear- judgment of God, exemplified in the history liest and best lessons, as a mother? Can of his own forefathers. Milk is the proper you complain that your child is cold, indif- food of babes, strong meat belongeth to them ferent or averse to you, when you set the who are full of age. A dry precept is but example of coldness, indifference, and aver- half understood, and is speedily forgotten, but sion, and preferred a little ease or pleasure a tale of distress, the triumph of goodness to his health and comfort, and what is in- over malevolence and opposition; the merited finitely more, to his early, infant morals? shame and punishment of wickedness, is Can you hope from a hireling, who must have easily understood, is long retained, and its renounced nature too, as well as yourself, impression is not to be effaced. what God, and nature, and decency, and regard to your own real well-being have pressed upon you in vain? It was so much a primary duty in the eyes of Hannah, that her attendance on the duties of the sanctuary at Shiloh gave place to it; she revered the ordinance of that God, who says, "I will have mercy and not sacrifice;" and religious service is interrupted for a season, to be resumed with greater ardour and effect, when the duties of life were faithfully discharged.

At what age the child was weaned, the history relates not. He remained under the tuition of his mother till he was of a proper age to be presented to the Lord, in the place which he had chosen to put his name there, and to be put under the instruction of Eli, and prepared for the service of the tabernacle. And we shall presently find that he was infinitely more indebted to the solicitous attentions of a pious mother for his progress in divine knowledge, than he afterwards was to the superintendence of the high-priest of Israel, who knew so ill to rule his own house, and to whom, of a pupil, he became a teacher.

I am well aware of the difficulty of forming a plan of religious instruction for children. Scripture suggests the happiest, the most obvious, and the most effectual. It ought to come from the children themselves. They are desirous of information. If left to themselves, they will think and inquire.Their questions will point out the mode of instruction. Do not be over anxious to take the lead, but carefully follow them. Their ideas will be directed by what they observe and feel; and strong facts and appearances of nature will make a deep and lasting impression upon them. He who knows what is in man, has accordingly given us, in a particular example, a general rule of proceeding in this great article: "And it shall be when thy son asketh thee in time to come, saying, What is this? That thou shalt say unto him, by strength of hand the Lord

We advance to the fourth stage of wise and good education, of which we have the pattern before us. The same principle which induced Hannah to keep her son at home for a season, and to abide with him, constrained her to send him from home, to give up her interest in him, when the service of God, and the greater good of the child demanded the sacrifice. It is just the reverse of what high life, at least with us, daily presents. You shall see a mother who hardly inquired after her child at the time of life when her tenderness was most necessary to him, all at once assuming the parent, exercising an af fected tenderness which he no longer needs, reducing him to childhood after he is becoming a man, and endeavouring to compensate by an after-growth of affection, the unkindness and neglect which blighted the early blossoms of the spring. She can suffer him no longer out of her sight. The discipline which her own wickedness has rendered necessary to his improvement, is reprobated as cruelty, and the poor youth is frequently ruined, by having at one time no mother at all; at another, one too much. I honour the firmness of Hannah, as much as I love her motherly softness and attachment. To possess with gratitude, to cherish a worthy object with tenderness, and to resign it with steadiness and magnanimity, is equally an object of admiration and esteem. Observe the mixed emotions which animate and correct her countenance as she conducts her well beloved son to the altar. The saint speaks in that eye, sparkling with delight, as she devotes what she holds most dear in the world to Him, from whom she had by holy importunity obtained him; the tear rushes to it, and all the mother stands confessed as she retires. Piety has prevailed, and presented the offering: nature feels, but submits.

It is easier to conceive than to describe what was the state of her mind as she re turned from Shiloh to Ramah: the anxiety and regret at leaving her Samuel behind; the satisfaction and delight of reflecting in

cation, will, through the divine permission, be the subject of the next Lecture.

I conclude with addressing myself in a very few words, first, to the parents of the other sex. You see what a heavy burden God and nature have laid upon the weaker of the two. You are bound in justice, in humanity, in gratitude, to alleviate it. To no purpose will the mother watch and toil, un

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reward in her very employment: her recom-
pense will be complete if she obtain your
approbation, and retain your affection.
offence arisen, does calamity press, is the
spirit ruffled, is her person changed? Re-
flect, she is the mother of thy child; perhaps
she lost her looks, her health, it may be her
spirits and temper, in doing the duty of a
mother: she ought to be the more estimable
in your eyes at least.

what hands she had left him, and to what care she had committed him. But we hear of no wild project formed of removing the whole family to reside at Shiloh, in order to indulge a fond mother's partial affection, with the continual presence of her little minion. No, the same spirit of prudence, the same domestic regards, the same sense of duty which once engaged her to prefer attention to Samuel, to attendance on the sacred fes-less you co-operate. She has part of her tival, now engage her to prefer the unostentatious employments of a wife, and the mistress of a family at Ramah, to the sacredness of the tabernacle, and the care of an only son, a first-born. But the heart of a mother finds, and flies to the innocent refuge which nature pointed out. She employs her mind and her hands during the intervals of the feast, about her absent son; "His mother made him a little coat, and brought it to him from year to year, when she came up with her husband to offer the yearly sacrifice." Onuous youth. Young man, superadded to all how pure, how cheap, how satisfying are the the other motives to virtue, if you feel not pleasures of virtue! No words can express the force of this, you are lost indeed. There the inward, the incommunicable joy of that is a worthy woman in the world, who loves mother, as her fingers wove the threads of you as her own soul, who gave your first that little coat, as her eyes saw it grow into nourishment and instruction, who brought shape, and colour, and shade, as the increas-you into life at the risk of her own, to whom ing stature of the wearer rendered the increase of her labour necessary. You must be converted and become a little child, a dutiful, affectionate, and pious child, like Samuel, to conceive the delight of seeing his parents return, of putting on his new garment, of exhibiting his mother's present. These nothings are the bond of affection among virtuous minds, and the source of their felicity.

This we settle as a more advanced stage of education, as far as it depends upon the mother. To part with the child firmly and unreluctantly, when the proper hour of separation comes; to preserve the commerce of affection by works and messages of kindness; and to subject every feeling and pursuit to the known and declared will of God. Let no one, O woman, usurp thy province, step between thee and thy child, steal his affections from thee. What, suffer him to have a step-mother while thou art yet living! Forbid it nature, forbid it decency, forbid it religion. But the hour of separation is arrived, you have done your duty, he must now pass into other hands; as a mother you retained him, as a mother resign him. You have not laboured in vain: you have not Dent your strength for nought and in vain. Be of good cheer, you have trained him up in the way in which he should go, and when od he will not depart from it. Your heart shall rejoice in him many days hence. He shall be to thee a crown of glory when thou art dropping into the grave.

Let me next speak for a moment to inge

nothing that affects you can be a matter of indifference. She is jealous over you with a holy jealousy. If you tread in the ways of wisdom, how her heart will be satisfied within her; if you decline from the right path, if you become "a son of Belial," you will rend her with severer pangs than those which she endured in bringing thee into the world. And can your heart permit you to plunge a dagger into the heart of your own mother? Who does not shudder at the thought of a parricide so detestable, so monstrous? For a mother's sake, renounce that "covenant with death:" retrace thy wandering steps, resume the reins of self-government, and return to real rest and joy.

Young woman, let thine eyes be still toward the nurse, the guide, the comforter, the refuge of thy early years. Alleviate by partaking of the burdens and labours of her station; dissipate her solicitude; soothe her pains; give her cause to bless the day she bare thee. Trust in her as thy most prudent counsellor, as thy most assured friend, as thy most intelligent instructer. Do her good and not evil, all the days of thy life. Rise into usefulness, into importance, into respectability, by marking her footsteps, imbibing her spirit, following her example. A daughter unkind, undutiful, ungrateful to a mother, is of all monsters the most odious and disgusting. Youthful excellence is never more amiable and attractive, than when it seeks retreat and retirement under the maternal wing, and shrinking from the public eye, seeks its reward in a mother's smile of ap

The disorderly state of Eli's family, the consequence of a careless and neglected edu- 'probation.

HISTORY OF HANNAH,

THE MOTHER OF SAMUEL.

LECTURE CVI.

Now the sons of Eli were sons of Belial: they knew not the Lord. And the priest's custom with the people was, that when any man offered sacrifice, the priest's servant came while the flesh was in seeth. ing, with a flesh-hook of three teeth in his hand: and he struck it into the pan, or kettle, or caldron, or pot: all that the flesh-hook brought up, the priest took for himself: so they did in Shiloh, unto all the Israelites that came thither. Also before they burned the fat, the priest's servant came and said to the man that sacrificed, Give flesh to roast for the priest: for he will not have sodden flesh of thee, but raw. And if any man said unto him, Let them not fail to burn the fat presently: and then take as much as thy soul desireth, then he would answer him, Nay, but thou shalt give it me now: and if not, I will take it by force. Wherefore the sin of the young men was very great before the Lord, for men abhorred the offering of the Lord. Now Eli was very old, and heard all that his sons did unto all Israel. And he said unto them, Why do ye such things? for I hear of your evil dealings by all this people. Nay, my sons; for it is no good report that I hear; ye make the Lord's people to transgress.-1 SAMUEL ii. 12—17. 23, 24.

PERFECTION Consists in the happy medium between the too little and too much. It is eminently conspicuous in every thing that comes immediately from God. "He is the rock, his work is perfect, and all his ways are judgment." Contemplate the stupendous whole, or examine the minutest part, and you find no redundancy, no defect. All is good, yea, very good. But man is ever in the extreme. Now, under the power of an indolence which shrinks from every appearance of difficulty or danger, and now hurried on by a zeal which overleaps all the bounds of wisdom and discretion. Now, he cannot be prevailed on to begin, and now nothing can persuade him to stop. He makes his very good to be evil spoken of, by imprudence and excess in the manner of performing it.

of Samuel. We saw in her conduct a happy mixture of tenderness and resolution; of attention to domestic employments, and regard to the offices of religion; of moderated anxiety about the safety and comfort of her son's person, and prudent concern about the culture of his mind. We are, this evening, to meditate on a subject much less pleasing, but not less instructive: the ruinous effects of education neglected; youth licentious and unrestrained, sinking gradually into universal depravity, and issuing in accumulated wretchedness and untimely death. A father weak and indulgent; sons profligate and abandoned; a God holy, righteous, and just.

Observe, in the entrance, the provision which infinite wisdom has been making to supply the breach which was ready to be In nothing is human ignorance and frailty made in the priesthood. The measure of the more apparent, than in the important article iniquity of Eli's sons was nearly full, their of education. It is conducted, at one time, destruction was hastening on; Samuel is with a severity that intimidates and over- already born, instructed in, prepared for, the whelms; at another, with a lenity that flatters, service of the tabernacle; and the care of a encourages, and fosters vice. One is driven pious mother has been employed in the hand into an evil course by despair, another drawn of Providence to counteract the criminal neginto it, and fortified in it, by excessive indul-ligence and carelessness of a too easy father. gence. It is, in truth, no easy task to manage this matter aright. The modes of treatment are as various as the character and dispositions of the young ones, who are the subjects of it. The application of a general rule is impracticable and absurd. The discipline which would oppress one child, is hardly sufficient to restrain another within any bounds of decency. It is happy when the child is inured to habits of restraint and submission from the cradle. If the mother has discharged her duty tolerably, the business of the father and master is half executed. Last Lord's day we had the satisfaction of observing the effects of an early good education, in the example of Hannah the mother

The representation given us of the degeneracy and dissoluteness of the Levitical family, equals, if not exceeds, all that history relates of the irregularity, and impurity of idol worship. The law had made a decent and even an ample provision, for them who ministered at the altar, but had carefully guarded against whatever tended to countenance luxury or excess. But behold every thing confounded. The directors of religious worship are become the patterns of impiety. There is no reverence of God, no regard to man. Before the fat of the sacrifice smokes upon the altar of Jehovah, the choicest pieces of the victim are served up on the abominable table of a luxurious priest. The pious worshipper has his

offering marred, his spirit discomposed, the | position was mild and gentle; his parental festival of his family peace disturbed and de-affection was great; he was unwilling to frauded, and indecencies, too shocking to be render any one unhappy; he thought of prementioned, close the scene of riot and intemperance.

All this is easily to be traced up to early habits of indulgence: men could not have become thus wicked all at once. Had the anthority of the father, had the sanctity of the high priest, had the severity of the judge interposed, to check and punish the first deviation from propriety, it had never come to this. We may judge of the gentleness with which slighter offences were reproved, when the most atrocious transgressions meet with so mild a rebuke as this, "Nay, my sons, it is no good report that I hear." This is rather an invitation to commit iniquity, than the vengeance of a magistrate to expose and suppress it. To point out the aggravation of Eli's offence, is neither malicious nor useless; it is written, among the other things in this book, for our instruction, and by the blessing of God it may prove salutary, as a beacon pointing out the rock on which others have made shipwreck.

vailing by love. He began with overlooking trifling faults; he flattered himself that the reason and reflection of riper years would correct and cure the wildness and irregularity of boyish days; “Surely the young men will by and by see their folly, and grow wiser." Who would not rather attempt to rule by love? But what is the proper conduct and expression of love? What saith the wisest of mankind? "He that spareth the rod, hateth the child." What saith the great Father and Saviour of all men? "As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten." There is no such thing as happiness but in habits of order, decency, and subjection. The man, or the child, who knows no law but that of appetite or caprice, must of necessity be miserable. It is cruelty, not kindness, to give a man up to himself; and to dream of changing habits of indolence, dissipation, and criminal indulgence, by remonstrance and reason, is expecting that reason should survive itself, or that it should effect, when Against his personal virtue no censure is enfeebled, disordered, and corrupted, what it insinuated. He seems to have been one of could not do when clear, and sound, and vigo those quiet, easy, good-natured men, who love rous. But, "the grace of God is almighty, not to have their tranquillity disturbed, and and his mercies are very great." Nay, but are loth to disturb that of others; who, with- who art thou, O man, who darest to expect, out being vicious themselves, by a passive or to ask a miracle of grace, with the contameness, become the undesigned abettors of sciousness of having neglected the means, the sins of other men. The corruption of the which, timely employed, might, through the times must indeed have been very great, divine blessing, have proved effectual withwhen it was supposed possible for the mis-out a miraculous interposition? The one tress of a family, during the solemnity of a talent is justly taken away from him who hid sacred festival, to be disguised with wine, in it in the earth, and it is given to increase the the face of the sun, in the court of God's house. store of the diligent and faithful servant, who But the bare possibility of such a case, griev-by wisdom and industry, had increased his ously enhances his guilt. He had not done five talents into ten. his duty as the public guardian of morals and The human mind, put under early culreligion, or Hannah had not been suspected ture, may be made to produce any thing. It of intemperance, and the suspicion reflects possesses a happy pliancy, which may be the highest dishonour on both his understand-moulded into any form. But the same plant, ing, and his heart; his bitterest enemy could not have devised a severer censure upon his conduct, than that under the priesthood of Eli such enormities were committed and connived at.

which, young and tender, you could with a
touch bend into what shape you pleased;
when grown into a tree, resists every effort
of your strength. Cut it down you may,
break it you may, cleave it asunder you
may, but bend it you cannot.
And alas,
how great a portion of human life is spent
in useless, unavailing regret for opportuni-
ties lost, seasons misspent, mischief done,
misery incurred! Yet men will not profit
even by experience, that plainest, most faith-
ful, and most powerful of all instructers.

Men in power are chargeable not only with the evil which they do, but also with the evil which they might have prevented, but did not. Power is delegated to them, for this very end, that they may be "a terror to evil doers," as well as "a praise to such as do well." The same carelessness runs through the whole of his domestic and public admi- Who can view, without pitying him, that nistration; a disorderly family, a polluted wretched old man, deploring the guilt which church, a distracted, staggering state; no go- he himself had occasioned, which he wants vernment, or what was worse than none. resolution to punish, and wisdom to cure; The best things are the most liable to abuse: which is proceeding from evil to worse, filland we shall give this faulty, unhappy father ing the past with remorse, and overspreadall the credit we can. His errors had their ing the future with despair? Ah, how heaorigin perhaps in goodness. His natural dis-vily he suffers in his age, because these pro

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