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took all the attention, engulphed all the anxieties of my mind; and the soul that cannot die was sacrificed to the indulgences of this temporary frame. And now it mocks my unavailing solicitude; it reproaches me for a fondness so sinfully misplaced. With a shrewdness which the world approved, I had provided for the temporal interests of my child: Methought I saw into his career in life, and had wisely prepared for all its vicissitudes. Alas, how infatuate! oh, that I had employed half this illdirected care to the religious instruction of the precious, precious soul! Then, with the blessing of God, my child would have been happily prepared for his final change. Then, at least, should I have delivered my own soul, nor felt, as I now do, the unutterable anguish of a self-condemning conscience."
These, and more awful still than these, have, no doubt been the reflections of many parents, who, after having neglected the religious instruction of their children, have not, till too late, been sensible of the guilt they have thus contracted.
I ask any father, or any mother, of religious feeling, whether the above reflections are represented in language too impassioned for the case supposed. Is it not more than probable that a parent whose
