A DISCOURSE ON THE EDUCATION OF CHILDREN AND YOUTH. INTRODUCTION. Of the Importance of Education, and the Design of this Discourse, with a Plan of it. THE children of the present age, are the hope of the age to come. We who are now acting our several parts in the busy scenes of life are hosting off the stage apace ; months and days are sweeping us away from the business and surface of this earth, and continually laying some of us asleep under ground. The circle of thirty years will plant another generation in our room '. another set of mortals will be the chief actors in all the greater and lesser affairs of this life, and will fill the world with blessings or with mischiefs, when our heads lie low in the dust. Shall we not then consider with ourselves, what can we do now to prevent those mischiefs, and to entail blessings on our successors ? What shall we do to secure wisdom, goodness and religion among the next generation of men ? Have we any con- cern for the glory of God in the rising age ? any solicitude for the propagation of virtue and happiness to those who shall stand up in our stead? Let us then hearken to the voice of God and Solomon, and we shall 'tarn how this may be done : the all -wise God, and the wisest of men, join to give us this advice ; Train up a child in the way that he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it. The sense of it may be expressed more at large in this proposition, namely, Let children have a good education given them in the younger parts of life, and this is the most likely way to establish them in virtue and piety in their elder years. In this discourse, I shall not enter into any enquiries about the management of children in the two or three first years of their life : I leave that tender age entirely to the care of the mo- ther and the nurse yet not without a wish, that some wiser and happier pen would give advice or friendly notice to nurses and mothers, of what they ought to avoid,- and what they ought to do in those early seasons: and indeed, they may do much to- wards the future welfare of those young buds and blossoms, those lesser pieces of human nature, which are their proper charge. Some of the seeds of virtue and goodness, may be con- veyed)almost into their very constitution betimes, by the pious YDL. vtt. L
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