ay or that--decides the direction in which a river
shall run. You can easily make a little stream run this way and feed
the Rhine, or that way and swell the Danube; but after a few miles all
control over the stream is gone. It runs on, and will run on to the
end in the direction you have given it, or which it took by chance when
it started.

It is the same with children. All these little springs of vigorous
life are bubbling up round us, and whither shall they flow? To the
right or to the left? To Life or to Death? We can give them their
direction now. A few years hence, and all power over them will be gone.

SUBJECT.--As a habit is formed in early youth, so it remains to old
years.

I. We take our children and we train them for God. God has given them
to us for this, to train them as citizens of His kingdom. We neglect
our duty if we neglect this. He placed the flexible little characters
in our hands to bend this way or that, expecting us to make them grow
upright and not crooked, to look to Heaven, instead of trailing on
earth. They are a solemn trust for which we must give account.

It would have been one of the chief woes of Hell to Dives, if he had
his five brethren there to reproach him for having set them a bad,
selfish, luxurious example. Think how bitter your future state would
be, if your children in the outer darkness were to be for ever
reproaching you, "You brought us up to the world and not to God, you
fed our bodies but not our souls, you set before us the transitory life
as the one thing to care for, and did not teach us to lay up treasure
and toil for the life eternal!" Think, also, how it will increase your
happiness to have your children in Life Eternal, and to receive their
blessing, and experience their gratitude for having so taught them, by
word and example, that they have through life walked in the narrow path
that leads to the gates of Heaven.

"Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will
not depart from it." You teach your children obedience, in order that
when young they may form the habit of submitting to rule. When they
are old they will not depart from it. God has His laws. God exacts
their obedience. They learn now to bow to the commands of a teacher
whom they can see, they will obey afterwards the invisible Divine
Teacher. You teach your children order and method when young, that
they may live an orderly life when they grow older. You tea