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 hasting off the stage apace: months and days are sweeping us away from the business and the surface of this earth, and continually laying some of us to sleep 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, amongst the next generation of men? Have we any concern 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 learn 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 a 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 mother 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 towards 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 conveyed almost into their very constitution betimes, by the pious prudence of those who have the conduct of them and some forward vices may be nipped in the very bud, which in three years time might gain too firm a root in their heart and practice, and might not easily be plucked up by all the following care of their teachers. But I begin with children when they can walk and talk, when they have learned their mother tongue, when they begin to give some more evident discoveries of their intellectual powers, and are more manifestly capable of having their minds formed and moulded into knowledge, virtue, and piety. Now the first and most universal ingredient which enters into the education of children, is an instruc. tion of them in those things which are necessary and useful for them in their rank and station, and that with regard to this world and the world to come. I limit these instructions, especially such as relate to this world, by the station and rank of life in which children are born and placed by the providence of God. Persons of better circumstances in the world should give their sons and their daughters a much larger share of knowledge, and a richer variety of instruction, than meaner persons can or ought. But since every child that is born into this world hath a body and a soul, since its happiness or misery in this world and the next depends very much upon its instructions and knowledge, it hath a right to be taught by its parents, according to their best ability, so much as is necessary for its well-being both in soul and body here and hereafter. It is true that the great God our creator hath made us reasonable creatures: we are by nature capable of learning a million of objects: but as the soul comes into the world it is unfurnished with knowledge: we are born ignorant of every good and useful thing: we know not God: we know not ourselves, we know not what is our duty and our interest, nor where lies our danger: and, if left entirely to ourselves, should probably grow up like the brutes of the earth; we should trifle away the brighter seasons of life in a thousand crimes and follies, and endure the fatigues and burdens of it surrounded with a thousand miseries; and at last we should perish and die without knowledge and hope, if we have no instructors. All our other powers of nature, such as the will and the various affections, the senses, the appetites, and the limbs, would become wild instruments of madness and mischief, if they are not governed by the understanding; and the understanding itself would run into a thousand errors, dreadful and pernicious, and would employ all the other powers in mischief and madness, if it hath not the happiness to be instructed in the things of God and men. And who is there among all our fellow-creatures so much obliged to bestow this instruction on us as the persons who, by divine providence, have been the instruments to bring us into life and being? It is their duty to give their young offspring this benefit of instruction as far as they are able, or at least to provide such instructors for them, and to put their children under their care. Here let us therefore enquire what are the several things in which children should be instructed; and upon a due survey shall find the most important things which children ought to learn and know are these which follow. 319 SECTION I. Of Instructing Children in Religion. RELIGION, in all the parts of it, both what they are to believe and what they are to practise, is most necessary to be taught. I mention this in the first place, not only because it is a matter of the highest importance, and of most universal concern to all mankind, but because it may be taught even in these very early years of life. As soon as children begin to know almost any thing, and to exercise their reason about matters that lie within the reach of their knowledge, they may be brought to know so much of religion as is necessary for their age and state. For instance, 1. Young children may be taught that there is a God, a great and almighty God, who made them, and gives them every good thing. That he sees them every where, though they cannot see him, and that he takes notice of all their behaviour. 2. They must be told what they should do, and what they should avoid, in order to please God. They should be taught in general to know the difference between good and evil. They may learn that it is their duty to fear, and love, and worship God; to pray to him for what they want, and to praise him for what they enjoy; to obey their parents; to speak truth, and to be honest and friendly to all mankind; and to set a guard upon their own appetites and passions: and that to neglect these things, or to do any thing contrary to them, is sinful in the sight of God. 3. Their consciences are capable of receiving conviction when they have neglected these duties, or broken the commands of God or of their parents; and they may be made sensible that the great and |