chastisements are not withheld, but administered in tender love;
judgment being his strange work, and mercy that wherein he delights, and
the peaceable fruits of righteousness the end of his corrections. The
event to which I have referred may appear too trivial a thing to record;
but it is by neglecting trivial things that we ruin ourselves and our
children. The usual mode of training these immortal beings, the plan of
leaving them to servants and to themselves, the blind indulgence that
passes by, with a slight reprimand only, a wilful offence, and the
mischievous misapplication of doctrine that induces some to let nature
do her worst, because nothing but grace can effectually suppress her
evil workings; all these are faulty in the extreme, and no less
presumptuous than foolish: this has produced that "spirit of the age"
which, operating in a "pressure from without," is daily forcing us
further from the good old paths in which we ought to walk, and in which
our forefathers did walk, when they gave better heed than we do to the
inspired word, which tells us, "Foolishness is bound up in the heart of
a child; but the rod of correction shall drive it far from him."

Affectionately yours,

C. E.




LETTER II.

YOUTH.