_Means must be Right Means_.

4. We are apt to imagine--or, at least, to act sometimes as if we
imagined--that our dependence upon the Divine aid for what our Saviour,
Jesus, designated as the new birth, makes some difference in the obligation
on our part to employ such means as are naturally adapted to the end in
view. If a gardener, for example, were to pour sand from his watering-pot
upon his flowers, in time of drought, instead of water, he might
make something like a plausible defense of his action, in reply to a
remonstrance, thus: "_I_ have no power to make the flowers grow and bloom.
The secret processes on which the successful result depends are altogether
beyond my reach, and in the hands of God, and he can just as easily bless
one kind of instrumentality as another. I am bound to do something, it is
true, for I must not be idle and inert; but God, if he chooses to do so,
can easily bring out the flowers into beauty and bloom, however imperfect
and ill-adapted the instrumentalities I use may be. He can as easily make
use, for this purpose, of sand as of water."

Now, although there may be a certain plausibility in this reasoning, such
conduct would appear to every one perfectly absurd; and yet many parents
seem to act on a similar principle. A mother who is from time to time,
during the week, fretful and impatient, evincing no sincere and hearty
consideration for the feelings, still less for the substantial welfare and
happiness, of those dependent upon her; who shows her insubmission to the
will of God, by complaints and repinings at any thing untoward that befalls
her; and who evinces a selfish love for her own gratification--her dresses,
her personal pleasures, and her fashionable standing; and then, as a means
of securing the salvation of her children, is very strict, when Sunday
comes, in enforcing upon them the study of their Sunday lessons, or in