--Some talk as if a religious education can never be the means of a child's conversion,--that, do for your children what you will, they will still, like others, require a distinct and full conversion when they come of age. I cannot see why a good Christian mother talking to her child from her old arm-chair, and praying with it as it kneels by her side, or the good example and godly training of a pious father, may not be made as effectual to the gradual conversion of a child as the preaching of a pastor from the pulpit. Nor can I see why a gradual elevation of a child to the higher spiritual life should not be as possible and as probable as the sudden elevation of a hardened and inveterate sinner. 'You cannot give your children grace,' it is said: but it is easy to answer, 'GOD can give children grace through the medium of Christian parents, as well as through public preachers and teachers.' I encourage people to bring up their children in Christian knowledge and goodness, by telling them that God may be expected to bless their labors to the sanctification and salvation of their children from their early days. Baxter used to thank God that he was led by his good parents to love God so early that he could not recollect a time when he did not love Him. --Churches exist in this world to remind us of the eternal laws which we are bound to obey. So far as they do this, they answer their end, and are honored in doing so. It would have been better for all of us--it would be better for us now, could churches keep this their peculiar function steadily and singly before them. Unfortunately, they have preferred in later times the speculative side of things to the practical. --There is a tendency in men to corrupt religion; to change it from an aid and incentive to a holy life, into a contrivance to enable men to sin without fear of punishment. Obedience to God's law is dispensed with, if men will diligently profess certain opinions, or practically take part in certain rites. However scandalous the moral life, the profession of a particular belief, or attention to certain forms, at the moment of death, is held to clear the soul. --It would be easy to give a hundred instances of doctrines to be heard in sermons and found in religious books, which are nowhere taught in Scripture. And some of them exert a mighty influence for evil on the church and the world. They check the spread of Christianity. They strengthen the cause of infidelity. They keep people away from Christ. They make an all but impassable gulf between the church and the mass of humanity.