AUTHOR OF "RECORDS OF A GOOD MAN'S LIFE," "MONTAGUE," CNEW YORK: PUBLISHED BY THE GEN. PROT EPIS. S. 8. UNION, Depository 20 John Street. 1843. A PREFACE, NOT ADDRESSED TO CHILDREN. MANY years ago, children were brought up not only in the fear of the Lord, but in the dread of their parents. It is said that a young gentlewoman of those days did not feel herself at liberty to sit down in the presence of her father and mother, without first asking their permission. When I was a boy, another system was beginning to be adopted. Children were taught to consider themselves entitled to ask a reason for every command which they were called upon to obey; or it was deemed expedient, when giving advice to a child, to point out the reasons why that advice ought to be followed. There could not well be a more unphilosophical way of making a child a reason. able being. Such a system was but ill calculated to fit the child, when grown up, for a manly encounter with his trials, or a manly submission to his afflictions in this world. It was indeed an ingenious way of unfitting the child of Providence to fulfil the duties of the man under the apparent changes and chances of this mortal life. The child who feels he has an acknowledged right to question the will of his earthly parent, and to give way to something very like murmuring, unless he can see a satisfactory reason for the commands of an earthly parent, will bring his presumptuous and ignorant irreverence into the after life of his manhood. Too many of the mothers of England, gentle and pious as they have ever been, have bowed with an unthinking submission to the teaching of writers well known to be Socinian. The The nurture and admonition of the church of England is directly opposed to such a system, and teaches a far more excellent way. In the Church, the child who professes to have passed by a death unto sin and a new birth unto righteousness into a state of grace, is taught "to bring into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ." Church becomes his spiritual Mother, and opens her arms to him. She feeds him with the sincere milk of the word of God; she guides his first feeble steps in the ways of wisdom, and teaches him a system of Divine Philosophy. The child of the Church of England is then only in his proper sphere, when, under the watchful care of that Holy Church, he is instructed as to the nature of her ordinances, and trained by her wholesome discipline to walk by faith and not by sight, and to count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus. |