For though the best efforts may not universally succeed, we may assume it as a general truth, that " if we bring up a child in the way he should go, when he is old he will not depart from it."]
3. Their souls will be required at our hands —
[This is a truth acknowledged in reference to Ministers : all agree that they must give account of the souls committed to their charge. Why then should not this be the case with those who have the care of children ? Methinks every parent, as soon as ever a child is born, should receive it as it were from the hands of God, with this charge, " Bring this child up for meb." As for the attention which a parent bestows on the temporal advancement of his children, it will not only not excuse his neglect of their better interests, but will be a fearful aggravation of it. The Judge will say to them as he once did to the hypocritical Pharisees, These things ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone.]
If we should feel this concern at all times for the rising generation,
II. We should express it more especially in a dying hour —
Every word acquires weight from the circumstance of its being uttered at the approach of death. We should avail ourselves therefore of that advantage, to impress the minds of young people with a concern for their souls. Two things in particular we should do :
1. We should commend God to them —
[This Jacob did : and we cannot do better than follow Ins example.
Young people are ready to think, that religion is a new tiling, and that the exhortations of their parents are the effects of needless preciseness, or of superstitious fear. On this ac- count, it is well to shew them, that all those eminent charac- ters of old, whom they profess to reverence, were devoted to. the service of their God : and that, in recommending religion to them, we recommend only what all the wise and good in all ages have approved ; that, if God is our God, he was " the God also, before whom Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob walked." Moreover, though it is not always expedient to be talking of our own experience, yet, at such a season, we may do it to good effect. We may declare to others what we have known of God, both as a God of providence and of grace. It is of great importance to make them entertain right sentiments
'° Exod. ii. 9.