It may perhaps be objected, that if the moral and religious instruction of children were as much and as closely attended to as I seem to require, no time would be left for any thing else; and consequently, that on the principles here recommended, the mind would soon be miserably contracted by bigotry and fanaticism. Very far should I be, even if I had the privilege, from restraining the powers of the understanding, or limiting their exercise only to moral and religious subjects; although these, if prosecuted to their full extent, embrace quite enough for man's happiness in both worlds. No, God forbid; let these powers be carried to their highest point of attainable perfection—let them be most assiduously, most unceasingly cultivated to the latest period of human life, for such is the divine will of Him who bestowed them all. But I would invariably have it done in perfect accordance _with His will_, and solely for the promotion of human happiness—our own, of course, as well as that of others. _It never should be done_, for the wretchedly selfish, contemptible purpose of surpassing each other, and obtaining the applause of beings equally frail, imperfect, and sinful with ourselves.—Shall I be asked, if I would exclude the love of praise from human motives? Assuredly I would, if it cannot be used without being made a paramount principle. For however pure it may appear, at first, there is always so much impurity mixed with it, especially when it results in active emulation, that almost all who are nurtured upon such diet, soon learn to feed upon the garbage of indiscriminate applause, when they cannot procure the nicer dishes of this species of mental aliment. The taste for it is perpetually becoming more and more depraved by indulgence—whereas the love of God, and of wisdom and virtue as _his_ requirements, can never run to excess, nor can ever operate in any other way than to enrich, improve, and exalt the soul for all the great purposes, both temporal and eternal, to which it was originally destined. Shall we be told that the first motive is so much easier to inculcate than the last, as to produce a necessity for resorting to it? I shall continue to deny the fact until the experiment can fairly be made. This has never yet been done in a sufficient number either of families or schools, to furnish the necessary proof, to say nothing of the utter incompatibility of the two kinds of motive as controlling principles of conduct. Let us endeavor to illustrate this by numbers. If a hundred children under the process of education, are constantly urged on in their course by the stimulants of emulation and ambition, for one who is taught that these are not proper motives of action, (and I believe the proportion is still greater,) ought we to wonder that ninety-nine should be found _both emulous and ambitious_—should be found preferring the _lesser_ to the _greater_ good? Ought we to