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AN ESSAY ON THE BEST METHOD OF COM

MUNICATING RELIGIOUS KNOWLEDGE
TO THE MEMBERS OF CHRISTIAN SO-
CIETIES.

THE

HE fuperficial knowledge, or rather the extreme ignorance of the generality of youth in the prefent age, with refpect to religion, is the fubject of great and just complaint; and for want of being well established in the principles of rational religion, many of them are daily falling a prey to enthusiasm on one hand, and infidelity on the other. In this life we must not expect any good without fome attendant evil. The circumftance of which we now complain has been, in part, the natural effect of the moderation of the present times, in which no person is even questioned about his religion. For as the fubject is never canvassed, nor so much as started in polite company, no person thinks

it

it worth his while to prepare himself for making any reply, and confequently the youth of this age never professedly study the fubject, or ever give more than an occafional and cursory attention to it.

Another fource of this complaint is the little care that is now taken by parents in the religious inftruction of their children. They condemn the feverity with which they recollect that they themselves were treated, and, not confidering the advantage which they derive from it, exclaim against fuch exceffive rigour and aufterity, and throw off not only the tutor, but almoft the mafter too with refpect to their children; not recollecting that, after this, there is little left of the parent that is truly valuable. To this conduct they are, no doubt, at the fame time, fecretly influenced by a regard to their own eafe; for upon the present fashionable plan, a perfon gives himself very little trouble indeed about forming the minds of his offspring; and fome may think that they have fufficiently done their duty in this refpect,

when

when they have provided them with masters, to fuperintend their education in general.

Many persons will not readily adopt my fentiments relating to this fubject. For my own part, however, I have not the least doubt, but that, though the maxims of our forefathers may have been too ftrict, we of the prefent age are already far gone in another extreme, oppofite to theirs, and much more dangerous. Their method, by reftraining the inclinations of youth, might (though, perhaps, upon the whole, it might not) diminish the happiness of that early period of life; and in fome inftances, I doubt not, the exceffive restraints they were under might serve to inflame their passions, and prepare them for the more unbounded and criminal indulgence of them, when they became their own masters; but, in general, habits of fobriety and moderation were, by this means, effectually formed, and a disposition to licentiousness intirely precluded.

On

On the contrary, our greater indul. gence to youth gives them more liberty, but, perhaps, not more real enjoyment even of early life; but whatever good effect this conduct may have upon fome inge-. nuous tempers, I am fatisfied that, in general, it is fatal to virtue and happiness through life. Our youth having had little or no restraint put upon their inclinations, and religious principles not having been fufficiently inculcated, they give the reins to pleasure, at that critical time of life, in which the paffions are peculiarly ftrong, and reafon weak; and the authority of a parent not interpofing, where it is most wanted, a difpofition to licentioufness is compleatly formed, and fuch bad habits are contracted, as too often end in utter profligacy and ruin. At best, their minds not having been feafoned with the principles of religion, they become mere men of the world, without vice, perhaps, but also without virtue.

Alfo, in confequence of the fame fuperficial education, to say the least of it,

our

our youth having never thought upon the fubject of religion, instead of entertaining those enlarged fentiments of religious liberty, which will never be wholly extinct in the breafts of their parents, the slightest inducement is often fufficient to make them abandon the diffenting intereft, the value of which they were never taught to understand; and to make them con- ́ form to the established religion of this, and, for the fame reason, to that of any other country in the world, attended with fufficient temporal encouragement.

With the disuse of family prayer, the regular reading of the fcriptures has also been laid afide; fo that in most of our opulent families, the youth have hardly an opportunity of making themselves acquainted with the contents of those books which are the fource of all religious knowledge. When the bible, if there be one in the family, is wholly neglected by the parent, what inducement can the fon have to look into it?

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