ng certain doctrines--a mere thing for the head. Tell
me, is it worse to bias their minds to a particular creed, than to let them
grow up biased to the world, to the Devil and all his works? Is it all of
home, religious culture to bias them to a particular creed? Besides, is it
not the right, yea, the duty of parents to bias their children in favor of
the religious creed of the parental home? It shows, therefore, that those
parents who, for this reason, object to religious training, have but little
love for, and confidence in, their own creed, or they would not shrink from
biasing their children to it.

To encourage Christian parents to give their children a good religious
education, God has given them numerous examples, from both sacred and
profane history, of conversion and eminent piety in the age of childhood,
as the direct fruit of early parental instruction. Look, for instance, at
the child Samuel worshiping the Lord. Look, too, at the case of Moses and
of David, of Joseph and of John the Baptist. Dr. Doddridge, we are told,
"was brought up in the early knowledge of religion by his pious parents."
His mother "taught him the history of the Old and New Testaments before he
could read, by the assistance of some Dutch tiles in the chimney of the
room where they commonly sat; and her wise and pious reflections on the
stories there represented were the means of making some good impressions on
his heart, which never wore out." An eminently pious minister thus writes
to his parents, confirming by his own blessed experience the early fruits
of religious training: "I verily believe that had my religious training
been confined to the gleanings of the Sabbath school, instead of the steady
enforcement of the Mosaic arrangement at home by my parents, I might now be
pursuing a far different course, and living for a far different end. Many,
very many times, as early in childhood as I can recollect, has the Spirit
of God convicted me of sin, as my father at home has taught me out of the
scriptures, and I cannot easily forget that the same high-priest of the
home-church once tore from me the hypocrite's hope. And that dear place had
another to carry on the work; gentler but not weaker; and memory recalls a
mother pressing her face close to mine as she often knelt with me before
the mercy-seat. I will not cast reproach on any institution which has been
productive of good to myself and to others, but with profound gratitude
will say, h