mony. It is only, as we have
seen in a former chapter, when you minister to the spiritual wants of your
children and tinge all their thoughts and feelings with a sense of
eternity; when your home is made a spiritual nursery; and you work for
their eternal benefit, and thereby secure for them the fulfillment of those
blessed promises which God has given concerning the children of believing
parents, that you leave them a patrimony worthy the Christian home. Such a
spiritual patrimony it is within the power of all Christian parents to
bestow. And without its enjoyment by your children, you fail to minister
unto them as a faithful steward of God. You may minister to their bodies
and minds; you may amass for them a fortune; you may give them an
education; you may establish them in the most lucrative business; you may
fit them for an honorable and responsible position; you may leave them the
heritage of social and political influence; and you may caress them with
all the passionate fondness of the parental heart and hand; yet, without
the heritage of true piety,--of the true piety of the parent reproduced, in
the heart and character of the child, all will be worse than vain, yea, a
curse to both the parent and the children.

Having thus briefly pointed out some of the essential features of the
children's patrimony, as physical, intellectual, moral, and spiritual, we
shall now advert to the principles upon which parents should proceed in the
distribution of their property to their children.

They should not give them more than a competency. That they should lay by
something for them is conceded by all. This is both a right and a duty. It
is included in the obligation to provide for them; and he who does it not
"hath denied the faith and is worse than an infidel." Natural affection, as
well as supernatural faith, stimulates the parent to provide thus for his
offspring.

But this does not demand a great fortune; but a simple competency, that is,
just enough to meet their immediate wants and emergencies when they enter
the world and begin business-life. This competence should correspond with
the social position they occupied under the parental roof. It should not
go beyond this; it should be just enough to meet the social and financial
exigencies of the child. It should be measured also by the peculiar
necessities of the child, by his health, abilities and circumstances. "A
parent is justified," says Paley in his Moral and Polit