the spirit of awe will surely lay hold upon him. I do not believe there is any child who cannot be impressed with a serious, plain account of some of the wonders of nature; with a report, ever so meagre, of the immensity of the heavens, whose countless stars, the least of which we cannot understand, are for ever moving, in silent mystery, before our eyes. I do not believe there are many children that may not be deeply impressed by the great mystery of brute life, if their attention be duly fixed upon it. Let the careless and confident child be familiarised, not only with the ant and the bee for their wonderful instinct, but with all living creatures as inhabitants of the same world as himself, and at the same time, of a world of their own, as we have; a world of ideas, and emotions, and pleasures, which we know nothing whatever about,--any more than they know the world of our minds. I do not believe there is any child who would not look up with awe to a man or woman who had done a noble act,--saved another from fire or drowning, or told the truth to his own loss or peril, or visited the sick in plague-time, or the guilty in jail. I do not believe there is any child who would not look up with awe to a man who was known to be wise beyond others; to have seen far countries; to have read books in many languages; or to have made discoveries among the stars, or about how earth, air, and water are made. If it be so, who is there that may not be impressed at last by the evident truth that all that men have yet known and done is as nothing compared with what remains to be known and done: that the world-wide traveller is but the half-fledged bird flitting round the nest: that the philosopher is but as the ant which spends its little life in bringing home half a dozen grains of wheat: and that the most benevolent man is grieved that he can do so little for the solace of human misery, feeling himself like the child who tries to wipe away his brother's tears, but cannot heal his grief! Who is there that cannot be impressed by the grave pointing out of the mystery of life, and the vastness of knowledge which lie around and before him; and by the example of him who did none but noble and generous deeds, and bore the fiercest sufferings, and felt contempt for nothing under heaven! How can it but excite reverence to show that he, even he, was himself full of reverence, and incapable of contempt!
II. Having said thus much about nourishing and balancing the faculty of reverence, I need only point out the directions in which it should be trained.
The point on which a child's veneration will first naturally fix will be Power. It must be the parents' first business to fix that veneration on Authority, instead of mere power. Instead of the power to shut up in a closet, or to whip, the child must reverence the authority which reveals itself in calm control and gentle command. The parents must be the first objects of the child's disciplined reverence. Even here, in this first clear case, the faculty cannot work well without sympathy: and the child must have sympathy from the parents themselves. He must see that his parents respect each other; that they consider one another's authority unquestionable in the household; and that they reverence _their_ parent--if Granny be still among them.
Beyond this, there is no reason why the sympathy between parents and children should not be simple, constant, and true, as to their objects of reverence.
The child may revere as very wise, some person whom the parents know not to be so: but they may join their child in revering the wisdom which they know to be his ideal. The child may go into an enthusiasm about some questionable hero,--the exemplar of some virtue which the parents feel to be of a rather low order: but they will sympathise in the homage to virtue--which is the main point. They may be secretly amused at their child's reverence for the constable: but they feel the same in regard to that of which the constable is the representative to the child--the Law.
They will lead him on with them in their advancing reverence for knowledge; for that moral and intellectual knowledge united which constitute wisdom; and will thus turn away his regards from dwelling too much on outward distinctions, which might otherwise inspire undue awe.
Yet nearer will their hearts draw to his in veneration for goodness; for intrepid truthfulness, for humble fidelity, for cheerful humility, for gentle charity. And at the ultimate point, their hearts must become one with his; in the presence of the Unknown; for there we are all,--the oldest and the youngest--the wisest and the weakest,--but little children, waiting to learn, and desiring to obey.
CHAPTER XVI.
CARE OF THE POWERS.--TRUTHFULNESS.
We come now to consider a moral quality whose importance cannot be overrated, yet about which there is more unsettledness of view and perplexity of heart among parents than about, perhaps, any other. Every parent is anxious about the truthfulness of his child: but whether this virtue is to come by nature, or by gift, or by training, many an one is sorely perplexed to know. So few children are truthful in all respects and without variation, that we may well doubt whether the quality can be inborn. And the cases are so many of children otherwise good--even conscientious in other respects--who talk at random, and say things utterly untrue, that I do not wonder that those who hold low views of human nature consider this a constitutional vice, and a hereditary curse. I am very far from believing this: and I will plainly say what I do believe.
I believe that the requisites of a habit of truthfulness lie in the brain of every child that is born; but that the truthfulness itself has to be taught, as the speech which is to convey it has to be taught; by helping the child to the use of his natural powers. The child has by nature the ear, the lungs, the tongue, the palate, and the various and busy mind,--the requisites for speech: but he does not speak unless incited by hearing it from others, and by being himself led on to attain the power. In a somewhat resembling manner, every child has more or less natural sense of what is just in feeling and action, and what is real in nature, and how to present his ideas to another mind. Here are the requisites to truthfulness of speech: but there is much to be learned, and much to overcome, before the practice of truthfulness can be completely formed, and firmly established. If the case is once understood, we shall know how to set about our work, and may await the event without dismay in the worst cases, though in all with the most careful vigilance.
Is it not true that different nations, even Christian nations, vary more in regard to truthfulness than perhaps any other moral quality? Is it not true that one or two continental nations fall below us in regard to this quality, while they far excel us in kindliness and cheerfulness of temper, and pleasantness of manners? And does not this difference arise from their thinking kindliness and cheerfulness more important than sincerity and accuracy of speech? And is not our national superiority in regard to the practice of truth chiefly owing to its being our national point of honour, and our fixed supposition as a social habit? Do not these facts tend to show that the practice of truthfulness is the result of training? and that we may look for it with confidence as the result of good training?
Now, what are the requisites, and what the difficulties that we have to deal with?
Has not every child a keen sense of right and justice, which he shows from the earliest time that he can manifest any moral judgment at all?
He may be injurious and unjust to another, from selfishness and passion: but can he not feel injustice done to himself with the infallibility of an instinct, and claim his rights with the acuteness of a lawyer? Is there anything more surprising to us in the work of education than every child's sense of his rights, and need of unerring justice, till he is far enough advanced generously to dispense with it? Here we have the perception of moral truth for one requisite.
Another requisite is such good perceptive power as informs a child truly of outward facts. There is no natural power which varies more in different subjects than this. One child sees everything as it is, within its range. Another child sees but little, being taken up with what it thinks or imagines. A third sees wrongly, being easily deceived about colours and forms, and the order in which things happen, from its senses being dull, or its faculties of observation being indolent. I have known a child declare an object to be green when it was grey; or a man in a field to be a giant; or a thing to have happened in the morning which took place in the afternoon: and one need but observe how witnesses in a court of justice vary in their testimony about small matters regarding which they are quite disinterested, to see that the same imperfection in the perceptive faculties goes on into mature age. It is plain that these faculties must be exercised and trained very carefully, if the child is to be made accurate in its statements.
Another and most important requisite is that the child should, from the beginning, believe that truthfulness is a duty. This belief must be given on authority: for the obligation to truth is not, as I have said, instinctive, but a matter of reasoning, such as a child is not capable of entering into. He will receive it, easily and permanently, from the assurance and example of his parents; but he does not, in his earliest years, see it for himself. An affectionate child, thinking of a beloved person, will tell his parent that he has just seen and talked with that person, who is known to be a hundred miles off. The parent is shocked: and truly there is cause for distress; for it is plain that the child has as yet no notion of the duty of truthfulness; but the parent must not, in his fear, aggravate the case, and run into the conclusion that the child loves lying. The case probably is that he says what is pleasant to his affections, without being aware that there is a more serious matter to be attended to first: a thing which he may hereafter be shocked not to have known. I happen to remember at this moment, three persons, now conscientiously truthful, who in early childhood were in the habit of telling, not only wonderful dreams, but most wonderful things that they had seen in their walks, on the high-road or the heath; giants, castles, beautiful ladies riding in forests, and so on. In all these cases, the parents were deeply distressed, and applied themselves accordingly, first to check the practice of narration, and next to exercise the perceptive and reflective powers of the children, so as to enable them to distinguish clearly the facts they saw from the visions they called up before their mind's eye. The appeal to conscience they left for cases where their child had clearer notions of right and wrong.
Any one of these children would, I believe, at that very time, have suffered much rather than say what he knew to be false, from any motive of personal fear or hope. As I said, all these three are now eminently honourable and trustworthy persons.
The chief final requisite is, of course, conscientiousness. When the child becomes capable of self-knowledge and self-government, this alone can be relied on for such a confirmation of the habit of truth telling, or such a correction of any tendency to inaccuracy, as may carry the young probationer through all temptations from within and from without, steady in the practice of strict truth. When all these requisites are combined,--when the child feels truly, sees truly, and is aware of the duty of speaking truly, the practice of truthfulness becomes as natural and unfailing as if it originated in an instinct.
I remember an instance of the strange, unbalanced, unprincipled state of mind of a child, who was capable of telling a lie, and persisting in it, at the very time that she was conscientious to excess about some of her duties, and her sense of justice (in regard to her own rights) ran riot in her. It is an odd and a sad story; but instructive from its very strangeness. She was asked by her mother one day whether she had not played battledore and shuttlecock before breakfast. From some levity or inattention at the moment, she said "No," and was immediately about to correct herself when her mother's severe countenance roused her pride and obstinacy, and she wickedly repeated her denial. Here it was temper that was the snare. There was nothing to be afraid of in saying the truth, no reason why she should not. But she had a temper of such pride and obstinacy that she was aware of even enjoying being punished, as giving her an opportunity of standing out; while the least word of appeal to her affections or her conscience, if uttered before her temper was roused, would melt her in a moment. The question was repeated in many forms; and still she, with a terrified and miserable conscience, persisted that she had not played battledore that morning; whereas her mother had heard it, and knew from her companion who it was that had played. The lying child was sent to her own room, where she was in consternation enough till a mistake of management was made which spoiled everything, and destroyed the lesson to her. She was sent for to read aloud, before the family, the story of Ananias and Sapphira. She was sobbing so that the reading was scarcely possible, till her thoughts took a turn which speedily dried her tears, and filled her with an insolent indignation which excluded all chance of repentance. She well knew the story of Ananias and Sapphira; and she happened to have a great admiration of the plan of the early Christians, of throwing all their goods into a common stock. She knew that the sin of Ananias and his wife lay chiefly in the selfish fraud which was the occasion of their lie, and that their case was therefore no parallel for hers: and in the indignation of having it supposed that she had sinned in their way,--she who longed above everything to have been an early Christian (a pretty subject truly!)--that she could be thought silly enough to suppose that they were struck dead for their fib, and not for their fraud,--in this insolent indignation she put her one sin out of sight, and felt herself an injured person. This adventure certainly did not strengthen her regard to truth. She dared not state her objection to the story in her own case: and perhaps she also disdained to do it: she remained sullen; and her mother had at last to let the matter drop.
This was a case to make any parent's heart sink: but the worse the case, the more instructive to us now. Here was sufficient moral sense and insight, in one direction, to hear an appeal, if any had been made.
Disgrace was the worst possible resort, and especially when untenable ground was taken for it. The best resort would have been a tender and solemn private conversation, in which the entanglement of passionate feelings might have been unravelled, and the seat of moral disease have been explored. When a moral disease so fearful as this appears, parents should never rest till they have found the seat of it, and convinced the perilled child of the deadly nature of its malady. In this case, the child was certainly not half-convinced, and morally worse after the treatment, while the material for conviction, repentance and reformation, was in her.
The method of training must depend much on the organisation of the child in one respect; whether he is ingenuous and frank, or reserved and (I must say it)--sly. Some children are certainly prone to slyness by nature; but there is no reason why, under a wise training, they should not be as honourable as the most ingenuous soul that ever was born. And they may even, when thoroughly principled, be more reliable than some open-minded persons, from being more circumspect.
There is something very discouraging in seeing little creatures who ought to be all fearlessness and confidence hiding things under their pinafores, or slipping out at the back-door for a walk which they might have honestly by asking for it; or putting round-about questions when plain ones would do; or keeping all their little concerns to themselves while spending their whole lives among brothers and sisters. If one looks forward to their maturity, one recoils from the image of what they will be. But they must not grow up with these tendencies. Their fault may turn to virtue, under wise and gentle treatment. Their confidence must be tenderly won, and their innocent desires gratified, while every slyness is quietly shown to be as unavailing as it is disagreeable, and every movement towards ingenuousness cheerfully and lovingly encouraged.
The child's imagination must be engaged on behalf of everything that is noble, heroic, and openly glorious before the eyes of men. His conscience and affections must be appealed to, not in words, but by a long course of love and trust, to return the trust he receives. Of course, the parental example must be that of perfect openness and simplicity; for the sight of mystery and concealment in the house is enough to make even the ingenuous child sly, through its faculty of imitation, and its ambition to be old and wise; and much more will it hinder the expansion of a reserved and cunning child. If these things be all attended to--if he sees only what is open, free, and simple, and receives treatment which is open, free, and encouraging, while it convinces him of a sagacity greater than his own, there is every hope that he will yield himself to the kindly influences dispensed to him, and find for himself the comfort and security of ingenuousness, and turn his secretive ingenuity to purposes of intellectual exercise, where it may do much good and no harm. That ingenuity and sagacity may be well employed among the secrets of history, the complexities of the law, or the mysteries of mechanical construction or chemical analysis, which may make a man vicious and untrustworthy, if allowed to work in his moral nature, and to shroud his daily conduct.
As for the training of the candid and ingenuous child, it is of course far easier and pleasanter; but it must not be supposed that no care is required to make him truthful. He must be trained to accuracy, or all his ingenuousness will not save him from saying many a thing which is not true. Dr. Johnson advised that if a child said he saw a thing out of one window, when in fact he saw it out of another, he should be set right. I think the Dr. was right; and that a child should consider no kind of misstatement a trifle, seeing always that the parents do not. An open-hearted and ingenuous child is likely to be a great talker; and is in that way more liable to inaccuracy of statement than a reserved child. Oh! let his parents guard him well, by making him early the guardian of the "unruly little member" which may, by neglect, deprive him of the security and peace which should naturally spread from his innocent heart through his open and honest life! Let them help him to add perfect truth of speech to his native truth of heart, and their promising child cannot but be a happy man.
It may seem wearisome to say so often over that the example of the parents is the chief influence in the training of the child; but how can I help saying it when the fact is so? Is it not true that when the father of a family comes home and talks before his children, every word sinks into their minds? If he talks banter--banter so broad that his elder children laugh and understand, how should the little one on its mother's lap fail to be perplexed and misled? It knows nothing about banter, and it looks up seriously in its father's face, and believes all he says, and carries away all manner of absurd ideas. Or, if told not to believe what he hears, how is he to know henceforth what to believe; and how can he put trust in his father's words? The turn for exaggeration which many people have is morally bad for the whole family. It is only the youngest perhaps who will believe that "it rains cats and dogs" because somebody says so; but a whole family may be misled by habitual exaggeration of statement. The consequence is clear. Either they will take up the habit, from imitation of father or mother, or they will learn to distrust their fluent parent. But how safe is everything made by that established habit of truth in a household which acts like an instinct! If the parents are, as by a natural necessity, always accurate in what they say, or, if mistaken, thankful to be set right, and eager to rectify their mistake, the children thrive in an atmosphere of such sincerity and truth: and any one of them to whom truthfulness may be constitutionally difficult, has the best chance for the strengthening of his weakness. Such an one must have sunk under the least aggravation of his infirmity by the sin of his parents: and the probability is, that the whole household would have gone down into moral ruin together; for it cannot be expected that any natural aptitude for truth in children should improve, or even continue, if discouraged by the example of the parents who ought to hail it as a blessing upon their house.
Of all happy households, that is the happiest, where falsehood is never thought of. All peace is broken up when once it appears that there is a liar in the house. All comfort is gone, when suspicion has once entered; when there must be reserve in talk, and reservation in belief. Anxious parents, who are aware of the pains of suspicion, will place generous confidence in their children, and receive what they say freely, unless there is strong reason to distrust the truth of any one. If such an occasion should unhappily arise, they must keep the suspicion from spreading as long as possible; and avoid disgracing their poor child, while there is any chance of his cure by their confidential assistance.
He should have their pity and assiduous help, as if he were suffering under some disgusting bodily disorder. If he can be cured, he will become duly grateful for the treatment. If the endeavour fails, means must of course be taken to prevent his example doing harm: and then, as I said, the family peace is broken up, because the family confidence is gone.
I fear that, from some cause or another, there are but few large families where every member is altogether truthful. Some who are not morally guilty, are intellectually incapable of accuracy. But where all are so organised and so trained as to be wholly reliable, in act and word, they are a light to all eyes, and a joy to all hearts. They are a public benefit; for they are a point of general reliance: and they are privately blessed, within and without. Without, their life is made easy by universal trust: and within their home and their hearts, they have the security of rectitude, and the gladness of innocence. If we do but invoke wisdom, she will come, and multiply such homes in our land.
CHAPTER XVII.
CONSCIENTIOUSNESS.
We come now to the greatest and noblest of the Moral Powers of Man; to that power which makes him quite a different order of being from any other that we know of, and which is the glory and crown of his existence:--his Conscientiousness. The universal endowment of men with this power is the true bond of brotherhood of the human race. Any race of beings who possess in common the highest quality of which any of them are capable, are brothers, however much they may differ in all other respects, and however little some of them may care about this brotherhood. For those who do care about it, how clear it is, and how very interesting to trace! How plain it is that while men in different parts and ages of the world differ widely as to what is right, they all have something in them which prompts them to do what they believe to be right! Here is a little boy, permitted to try what he can get by selling five shillings' worth of oranges:--he points out to the lady who is buying his last half dozen, that two of them are spotted.--There was Regulus, the Roman general, who was taken prisoner by the enemy, the Carthaginians. He was trusted to go to Rome, to treat for an exchange of prisoners, on his promise that he would return to Carthage,--which he knew was returning to death,--if the Roman senate would not grant an exchange of prisoners. He persuaded the Roman senate _not_ to agree to the exchange, which he believed would not be for the advantage of Rome: and then he went back to Carthage and to death. There is, at this day, the South Sea Islander,--the young wife who has been told that it is pious and right to give her first child to the gods. She has in her all a mother's feelings, all the love which women long to lavish on their first babe: but she desires that the infant should be strangled as soon as born, because she thinks it her duty. Now, this poor creature is truly the sister of the other two, though her superstition is horrible, and the infanticide it leads to is a great crime. She is shockingly ignorant, and her mind is not of that high order which would perceive that there must be something wrong in going against nature in this way: but, for all that, she is conscientious; and by her conscientiousness she is truly a sister in heart to the honourable Roman general, and the honest orange-seller. What she needs is knowledge: and what the whole human race wants is knowledge, to bring the workings of this great power into harmony all over the world. At present, we see men in one place feeding, and in another place burning one another,--because they think they ought. In one place, we see a man with seventy wives,--in another, a man with one wife,--and in another, a man remaining a bachelor all his life; and each one equally supposing that he is doing what is right. The evil everywhere is in the want of clear views of what is right. This is an evil which may and will be remedied, we may hope, in course of ages.
There is nothing that we may not hope while the power to desire and do what is right is common to all mankind,--is given to them as an essential part of the human frame.
It does not follow, of course, that this power is equal in all. All but idiots have it, more or less; but it varies, in different individuals, quite as much as any other power. No power is more dependant on care and cultivation for its vigour: but none varies more from the very beginning. Some of the worst cases of want of rectitude that I have known have been in persons so placed as that everybody naturally supposed they _must_ be good, and trusted them accordingly. I have known a girl, brought up by highly principled relatives, in a house where nothing but good was seen or heard of, turn out so faulty as to compel one to see that her power of conscientiousness was the weakest she had.
She had some of it. She was uneasy,--truly and not hypocritically,--if she did not read a portion of the bible every day at a certain hour. She was plain, even to prudery, in her dress: she truly honoured old age, and could humble herself before it: and she studiously, and from a sense of duty, administered to the wishes of the elder members of the family, in all matters of arrangement and manners. But that was all. She was tricky to a degree I could never estimate or comprehend. Her little plots and deceptions were without number and without end. Her temper was bad, and she took no pains whatever to mend it, but spent all her exertions in making people as miserable as possible by her vindictiveness. In love matters, she reached a point of malice beyond belief, torturing people's feelings, and getting them into scrapes, with a gratification to her own bad mind which could not be concealed under her demure solemnity of manner. Enough of her! I will only observe that, though she was brought up by good people, it does not follow that she was judiciously managed. The result shows that she was not. A perfectly wise guardian would have seen that her faculty of conscientiousness wanted strengthening, and would have found safe and innocent employment for those powers of secretiveness and defiance, and that inordinate love of approbation, which, as it was, issued in mischief-making.--The opposite case to hers is that which touches one with a deeper pity than almost any spectacle which can be seen on this earth: that of the child whose strong power of conscientiousness is directed to wickedness, before it has ability to help itself. Think of the little child born in a cellar, among thieves! It is born full of human powers; and among these, it has a conscience, and perhaps a particularly strong one.
Suppose it is brought up to believe that its duty is to provide money for its parents by stealing. Suppose that, by five years old, it entirely believes that the most wrong thing it can do is to come home at dark without having stolen at least three pocket-handkerchiefs! Such cases have been known; and not a few of them.--And it is only an exaggerated instance of what we very commonly see in history and the world. The Chief Inquisitor in Spain or Italy really believed that he was doing his duty in burning the bodies of heretics for the good of their souls. Our ancestors thought they were acting benevolently in putting badge dresses on charity children. The Pharisees of old were sincere in their belief that it was wrong to heal a sick man on the Sabbath. And I have no doubt that in a future age it will appear that we ourselves are ignorant and mistaken about some points of our conduct in which we now sincerely believe that we are doing what we ought.
In every household, then, the first consideration is to cherish the faculty of conscientiousness; and the next is, to direct it wisely.
When I speak of cherishing the faculty, I do not mean that it is always to be stimulated, whether it be naturally strong or weak. There are cases, and they are not few, where the power is stronger than perhaps any other. In such cases, no stimulating is required, but only guidance and enlightenment. There are few sadder spectacles than that of a suffering being whose conscience has become so tender as to be superstitious; who lives a life of fear--of incessant fear of doing wrong. It is a healthy conscience that we want to produce; a conscience which shall act naturally, vigorously, and incessantly, like an instinct; so as to leave all the other faculties to act freely, without continual conflict and question whether their action be right or wrong.
A child who is perpetually driven to examine all he thinks and does will become full of himself, prone to discontent with himself, and to servile dependence on the opinion of those whom he thinks wiser than himself.
What is such a child to do when he comes out into the world, and must guide himself? At best, he will go trembling through life, without courage or self-respect: and something worse is to be apprehended. It is to be apprehended that if he makes any slip--and such an one will be sure to think that he does make slips--he will be unable to bear the pain and uncertainty, and will grow reckless. A clergyman, of wide and deep experience, who was the depository of much confidence, told me once (and I have never forgotten it), that some of the worst cases of desperate vice he had ever known were those of young men tenderly and piously reared, who came out from home anxious about the moral dangers of the world and the fears of their parents, and who, having fallen into the slightest fault, and being utterly wretched in consequence, lost all courage and hope, and drowned their misery in indulgence of the worst part of themselves. He felt this so strongly that he solemnly conjured me to use any influence I might ever have over parents in encouraging them to trust their children with their innocence, and to have faith in the best faculties of human nature. This entreaty still rings in my ears, and leads me so to use any influence I may now have over parents.
Is it not true that the strongest delight the human being ever has is in well-doing? Is it not true that this pleasure, like the pleasures of the eye and ear, the pleasures of benevolence, the pleasures of the understanding and the imagination, will seek its own continuance and gratification, if it have fair play? Is it not true that pain of conscience is the worst of human sufferings? and that this pain will be naturally avoided, like every other pain, if only the faculty have fair play?
The worst of it is, the faculty seldom has fair play. The fatal notion that human beings are more prone to evil than inclined to good, and the fatal practice of creating factitious sins, are dreadfully in the way of natural health of conscience. Teach a child that his nature is evil, and you will make it evil. Teach him to fear and despise himself, and you will make him timid and suspicious. Impose upon him a number of factitious considerations of duty, and you will perplex his moral sense, and make him tired of a self-government which has no certainty and no satisfaction in it. It is a far safer and higher way to trust to his natural moral sense, and cultivate his moral taste: to let him grow morally strong by leaving him morally free, and to make him, by sympathy and example, in love with whatever things are pure, honest, and lovely.
What the parent has to do with is the moral habits of the child, and not to meddle with his faculties. Give them fair scope to grow, and they will flourish: and, let it be remembered, man has no faculties which are, in themselves and altogether, evil. His faculties are all good, if they are well harmonised. Instead of talking to him, or leading him to talk in his infancy of his own feelings as something that he has to take charge of, fix his mind on the things from which his feelings will of themselves arise. By all means, lead him to be considerate: but not about his own state, but rather about the objects which cause that state. If he sees at home integrity entering into every act and thought, and trust and love naturally ensuing, he will enjoy integrity and live in it, as the native of a southern climate enjoys sunshine and lives in it. If, as must happen, failure of integrity comes under his notice in one direction or another, he will see the genuine disgust and pain which those about him feel at the spectacle, and dishonesty will be disgusting and painful to him. And so on, through all good and bad qualities of men. And this will keep him upright and pure far more certainly than any warnings from you that he will be dishonest and impure, unless he is constantly watching his feelings, and striving against the danger.
In the beginning of his course, he must be aided,--in the early days when the action of all his faculties is weak and uncertain: and this aid