en have been thus destroyed in soul and body by parental
indulgence and neglect of their natural feelings and appetites. The feeling
of cruelty, revenge, malice, falsehood, tale-bearing, dishonesty, vanity,
&c., have, in the same way and by the same indulgence, been engendered in
the children of Christian parents. The same, too, may be said of the
unselfish feelings. These have been called the moral sentiments; and upon
their proper training depends the formation of a positive moral character.
The conscience comes under this head. The parent should train that
important faculty of the child. It should be taught to act from the
standpoint of conscience, and to form the habit of conscientiousness in
word and deed. This includes the training of the motives also, and of all
the cardinal moral virtues, such as justice, honor, chastity, veneration,
kindness, &c. "Teach your children," says Goodrich in his Fireside
Education, "never to wound a person's feelings because he is poor, because
he is deformed, because he is unfortunate, because he holds an humble
station in life, because he is poorly clad, because he is weak in body and
mind, because he is awkward, or because the God of nature has bestowed upon
him a darker skin than theirs."

This early education should commence as soon as the necessities of the
child demand it. A child should be taught what is necessary for it to know
and practice as soon as that necessity exists and the child is capable of
learning. Scripture sanctions this. Our fathers did so. It was the
injunction of Moses to the children of Israel: Deut. vi., 6-9. God commands
you to break up the fallow ground and sow the good seed at the first dawn
of the spring-life of your children, and then to pray for the "early and
the latter rain,"

"Teaching, with pious care, the dawning light
Of infant intellect to know the Lord."

Home-education should be religious. As the child has a religious nature,
religious wants, and a religious end to accomplish, it should receive from
its parents a religious training. Religion is educational. We are commanded
to teach religion to our children. The admonition to "train up a child in
the way he should go," and to "bring him up in the nurture and admonition
of the Lord," is a scripture sanction of religious education. Nature and
the bible are the text-books for such a training. The child should be
taught natural and revealed religion. Such education involves the
development