SERMON VIII.

CHRISTIAN TRAINING.

PROVERBS, XXII. 6.

"Train up a Child in the way he should go; and when he is old he will not depart from it."

WE have here an injunction and a declaration, a duty prescribed and a fact stated. Because children will not, in their maturity and their old age, depart from the way in which they have been trained, for that very reason we are diligently to train them in the right way. And the truth of this fact daily experience unites with revelation to prove. Individual exceptions there may be, and there are, as there are in all the moral laws of nature; but is it not the fact, generally speaking,

Is

that people continue through life in the same path in which they were originally trained? or if later in life they discover that they have been trained in a wrong path, and they consequently leave it, still do not early prejudices cling to them and prevent them from pursuing the right path without deviation, or, at all events, present difficulties in their way, which nothing but an energy not given to most men, or a degree of grace not commonly vouchsafed, can enable them to overcome? Is it not this that occasions the difference we witness in the customs and modes of thinking in the different nations of the world? it not this that makes the great difference in individual character? Why is one man a good man of business, another a good scholar, another a man of science? It is chiefly because they have been trained in in these several departments of human business or human knowledge. And so also of persons educated Pagans and Mahometans, the mass will remain Pagans and Mahometans all their life long. Of persons abroad, who are brought up as Romanists, the bulk will continue to be Romanists. Of persons at home, educated without the pale of the Church, the greater part will remain seceders all their lives; or if some of them come to church, many will only use the church as a temporary

convenience, because some favourite Apollos is preaching there'; but they will not act from a principle of deference to Church authority, or from a conviction that the Sacraments as by Her administered are the ordinary channels of Grace; they will become frequenters of the church for a while, but they will not become Churchmen. So, if you educate your children without any religious principles, irreligious for the most part they will grow up; if you give them some, but those not fixed, religious principles, they will grow up men and women moved about with every vain wind of doctrine, running now to this sect, then to that, with perhaps religious emotions, but without real, steady, consistent religious conduct.

Now, as I said before, to all this there are exceptions. Men of genius, in spite of a bad education, will distinguish themselves; individual heathens will be converted to Christianity; and among the most devoted Churchmen we may number some who were not brought up within the pale of the Church; some persons also, irreligiously educated, are leading a life of piety. Still, as I have said, instead of destroying the rule, these exceptions only serve to establish

1 1 Cor. i. 3, 4.

Eph. iv. 14.

it, since the difficulty, imposed on them by their originally bad education, has rendered the subsequent triumph of their right principles peculiarly difficult.

It is no objection against all this to urge that we sometimes find the children of pious parents in this land leading impious lives. Too sadly true this is; but GOD, you observe, has in HIS infallible Word declared that if men are "trained in the way that they should go, when they are old they shall not depart from it," and in this faith the Apostle exhorts us to "bring up our children in the nurture and admonition of the LORD"1. We cannot for one half moment, therefore, doubt the truth of this fact as a general rule, subject of course to some few exceptions; and we must account by other means than by denying the Divinely asserted rule for the circumstance that we do find pious parents sometimes deploring the delinquency of their offspring. But it does not follow that, because a man is pious himself, he must "train his children in the way they should go," in the path (that is) which is pointed out by GOD. A man may be pious, and yet be partially in error; and his erroneous views may lead him to adopt an

1 Eph. vi. 4.

erroneous principle of education. He may have intended to educate his children religiously, but for all that, not have trained them in the " right way." He may have trained them in the way he thinks they ought to go, which, after all, however, may not be really the right way; for this is a question, not of opinion, but of fact. It is not the mere excitement of religious feelings that will suffice; there must be habitual religious practice1; not mere doctrine, but Christian discipline2; and not all kinds of discipline, but right discipline3; not discussions on faith, but continuance in well doing1; not mere Christian sentiment, but Christian principle; not a few phrases, but a consistent course of straightforward honourable conduct founded on Christian faith and on Christian charity".

There is, we learn from Scripture, a way in which a child ought to be trained; and to those who are trained in it a blessing is vouchsafed. Surely it becomes each parent, with deliberation, deep thought, and earnest prayer, to inquire for