On this page

• Text (1)

  Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.

  • 

    Untitled Article

• Transcript

  • Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.

    Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.

    Untitled Article

    t 6 fead our bibles , and we must learn from them the most important truths .. We have only to frequent the house of feligious worship and instruction , op ^ ad such books as are accessible to almost every one , and we shall be able to gain pretty clear and accurate views as to the import and extent

    and connection of those truths . All this is very useful , and it is an excellent foundation for right affections ; and it serves to strengthen and enliven them where they have been formed " : but all will not do

    without the affections themselves , reverence and awe , love and gratitude , desire to please arid obey , fear to offend , &c . Perhaps it may be truly said , that a young person of a good understanding , and a ready retentive memory , maygdin , by a day ' s instruction ,

    an acquaintance with , all the grand leading truths of religion ; but can any one truly affirm , that thus the love and fear of God may be acquired , as habitual affections or dispositions of the mind , that thus they m £ y be made actuating principles of the conduct ? Oh

    no : daily experience , our own daily experience must convince us that it is only by careful and long-continued cultivation of these affections , that vve can give them aufficieiu power to enable them to regulate our conduct and disposiwon ; and this even where they have happily been early and successfully iinplanted by wise and religious parents and friends ; and < iaiiy experience , perhaps , alas ! our own daily experience , must

    conymce us , how difficult this cultivation becomes , where it has oeen ^ ,-iy and long neglected , * fc ^ thi& . in proportion to the decree io which it has bee ^ n neglect-

    Untitled Article

    ed ; in proportion to the degree in which our prevailing habits and dispositions are consistent or inconsistent with religious principle . It appears to me impossible that any parents possessed of the light of the Gospel , and convinced of

    Us truths , should hesitate in considering it as a duty of the first moment , that they should , as a primary object , aim to produce in the minds of their children , lave ta God , and regard to his will , tp give these principles vigour , and

    to make them habitual ; nor do I see how any religious parents , who seriously consider the nature of the religious affections , and the difficulties that oppose their growth ; who pay any attention to what passes within them , and around them can hesitate in endeavouring , as early as possible , to excite those feelings which nature prompts , and revelation

    enjoins towards our heavenly Father and judge—to render them habitual affections , by steadily and frequently calling them into exercise , —and to make them active

    principles by making them a * much as possible the motives of conduct , employing them to ex - * cite to worthy actions , to restrain from sinful ones , to check wrong , passions and dispositions , and ta encourage those which are consistent with the spirit of the Gospel . And yet is it not a fact that even persons who are not destitute of religious principle themselves , and who are convinced of the vast

    importance ot this life as a prepa ~ tion for another , too often leave religion to grow up as it will in the mind $ of their children ; and while they pay the greatest atten- >\ tion to the cultivation of . their understandings , to the acquisition

    Untitled Article

    On early Religious Education * 147

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), March 2, 1811, page 147, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2414/page/19/