Let children never forget the debt they owe to maternal tenderness, a debt which the devoted affection and kindness of a whole life can scarcely discharge. Let the fond parent who nursed your infancy, corrected your frowardness, sowed the seeds of knowledge and piety in your heart, watched, wept, and prayed over you, be ever dear, ever respected, and loved. She who has sustained your weakness, may live to need support from your strength; she who hold you up in the helplessness of infancy, may require your supporting arm, and deserves your sympathizing aid in the years of her decrepitude. Young persons need to be reminded, however, that even the impiety of parents is no sufficient reason for disrespecting them _as parents_; and if you possess the inestimable treasure of religion, it will be best evinced in soothing the cares, ministering to the necessities, and setting an example of every duty before the eyes of those who are still so unhappy as to be destitute of it. But you who are born of the children of God, and who have been nourished and educated under the wing of parental piety, can never be too thankful to the God of your salvation, and at some future period may have to adopt the poet's elevated strain: "My boast is not that I deduce my birth From loins enthroned, and rulers of the earth; But higher far my proud pretensions rise-- The son of parents pass'd into the skies." Cowper. Abigail. Chapter XI. Many persons naturally capable of great Attainments and elevated Stations have lived and died unknown--the Dispensations of Providence analogous in this respect to the Arrangements of Nature--Scripture Account of Nabal and Abigail--Sources of Incongruous Marriages--Ambition--Wish to maintain the Respectability of a Family--Persuasion of Friends--early Disappointments--Nabal's Conduct to David--Abigail's Interposition--Death of her Husband--She becomes David's Wife. Millions of the human race, naturally capable of great attainments and mighty exploits, had they been differently circumstanced, or had their mental and moral energies been properly cultivated, have died as they have lived, in a state of obscurity. Unknown to the rest of mankind even by name, they have scarcely wandered from the precincts of their native village, or the cottage that gave them birth; but, like the wild flowers of the untrodden wilderness, have sprung up, and bloomed, and perished upon the same spot. Successive generations have occupied the identical sphere of their ancestors, living in the same unenvied seclusion, and at last carried to the same undistinguished grave.