noble, great, and good; and leaving the littlenesses of artificial life to vanish into nothing; as they necessarily would, by the mind being stored with materials of a weightier and more sterling nature.
But how is this great and important work to be accomplished? First, I should say, by impressing upon the minds of children a just estimate of all moral qualities. It may occasion greater inconvenience to the mother at the moment, that her child should tear a new dress, than that it should tell a falsehood; but if, from any personal feeling, she allows her disapprobation to be expressed as strongly in one case, as in the other; if she evinces as much dissatisfaction at the fall of a china cup, as at an act of meanness or deception practised by one child toward another; or if her delight is as manifest on the arrival of a new article of furniture, as on some evidence in her family that wrong feeling has been overcome, or noble and generous sentiments called into exercise, she will do incalculable mischief, by destroying what ought to be a clear distinction betwixt the degrees of moral feeling comprehended in these different cases.
It is the same throughout the whole of that discipline to which youth is subjected. We must keep the balance true, not only as regards actions, but motives, so far as they can be ascertained; and never from personal feeling, or momentary impulse, allow undue weight to be thrown into either scale. Above all, we must maintain a constant reference to what is approved by God, rather than by man — to what is consistent with Christian profession, rather than to what may be expedient, creditable, or consistent vnth the usages of the world. We ought to teach children, that having done simply what was right, there is nothing, and there can be nothing, to fear; and we should teach this on the broad foundation, that the habits and customs of ten thousand worlds can not alter one tittle of the Divine law, or make that good which is really evil.
Any one who has paid much attention to the state of society in the present day, will, I think, agree with me, that these are times in which mothers are especially called upon to teach their children, that they are acting not merely with a party for the support of a particular set of opinions, and in opposition to all who hold opinions differing in the slight-
