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composition, (which, as it is to be her guide and model through life, too much pains cannot be bestowed on it,) will have a clearer conception, not only of its individual contents, but of prayer in general, than many ever attain, though their memory has been, perhaps, loaded with long and unexplained forms, which they have been accustomed to swallow in the lump without scrutiny and without discrimination. Prayer should not be so swallowed. It is a regular prescription, which should stand analysis and examination; it is not a charm, the successful operation of which depends on your blindly taking it, without knowing what is in it, and in which the good you receive is promoted by your ignorance of its contents. I would have it understood, that by these little comments, I do not mean that the child should be put to learn dry, and to her unintelligible expositions; but that the exposition is to be colloquial. And here I must remark, in general, that the teacher is sometimes unreasonably apt to relieve herself at the child's expense, by loading the memory of a little creature on occasions in which far other faculties should be put in exercise. The child herself should be made to furnish a good part of this extemporaneous commentary by her answers; in which answers she will be much assisted by the judgment the teacher uses in her manner of questioning. And the youthful understanding, when its powers are properly set at work, will soon strengthen by exercise, so as to furnish reasonable, if not very correct, answers.

Written forms of prayer are not only useful and proper, but indispensably necessary to begin with. But I will hazard the remark, that if children are thrown exclusively on the best forms, if they are made to commit them to memory like a copy of verses, and to repeat them in a dry customary way, they will produce little effect on their minds. They will not understand what they repeat, if we do not early open to them the important scheme of prayer. Without such an elementary introduction to this duty, they will afterwards be either ignorant, or enthusiasts, or both. We should give them knowledge before we can expect them to make much progress in piety, and as a due preparative to it: Christian instruction in this resembling the sun, who, in the course of his communications, gives light before he gives heat. And to labour to excite a spirit of devotion without first infusing that knowledge out of which it is to grow, is practically reviving the popish maxim, that ignorance is the mother of devotion, and virtually adopting the popish rule, of praying in an unknown tongue.

Children, let me again observe, will not attend to their prayers, if they do not understand them; and they will not understand them, if they are not taught to analyze, to dissect them, to know their component parts, and to methodise them.

It is not enough to teach them to consider prayer under the general idea that it is an application to God for what they want, and an acknowledgment to him for what they have. This, though true in the gross, is not sufficiently precise and correct. They should learn to define and to arrange all the different parts of prayer; and as a preparative to prayer itself, they should be impressed with as clear an idea as their capacity and the nature of the subject will admit, of "HIM with whom they have to do." His omnipresence is perhaps, of all his attributes, that of which we may make the first practical use. Every head of prayer is founded on some

great scriptural truths, which truths the little analysis here suggested will materially assist to fix in their minds,

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On the knowledge that "God is," that he is an infinitely holy Being, and that "he is the rewarder of all them that diligently seek him,” will be grounded the first part of prayer, which is adoration. The creature devoting itself to the Creator, or self-dedication, next presents itself. And if they are first taught that important truth, that as needy creatures they want help, which may be done by some easy analogy, they will easily be led to understand how naturally petition forms a most considerable branch of prayer and divine grace being among the things for which they are to petition, this naturally suggests to the mind the doctrine of the influences of the Holy Spirit. And when to this is added the conviction which will be readily worked into an ingenuous mind, that as offending creatures they want pardon, the necessity of confession will easily be made intelligible to them. But they should be brought to understand, that it must not be such a general and vague confession as awakens no sense of personal humiliation, as excites no recollection of their own more peculiar and individual faults. But it must be a confession founded on self-knowledge, which is itself to arise out of the practice of self-examination: for want of this sort of discriminating habit, a well-meaning but ill-instructed girl may be caught confessing the sins of some other person, and omitting those which are more especially her own. On the gladness of heart natural to youth, it will be less difficult to impress the delightful duty of thanksgiving, which forms so considerable a branch of prayer. In this they should be habituated to recapitulate not only their general, but to enumerate their peculiar, daily, and incidental mercies, in the same specific manner as they should have been taught to detail their individual and personal wants in the petitionary, and their faults in the confessional part. The same warmth of feeling which will more readily dispose them to express their gratitude to God in thanksgiving, will also lead them more gladly to express their love to their parents and friends by adopting another indispensable, and, to an affectionate heart, pleasing part of prayer, which is intercession.

When they have been made, by a plain and perspicuous mode of instruction, fully to understand the different nature of all these; and when they clearly comprehend that adoration, self-dedication, confession, petition, thanksgiving, and intercession, are distinct heads, which must not be involved in each other, you may exemplify the rules by pointing out to them these successive branches in any well-written form. And they will easily discern, that ascription of glory to that God to whom we owe so much, and on whom we so entirely depend, is the conclusion into which a Christian's prayer will naturally resolve itself. It is hardly needful to remind the teacher, that our truly scriptural liturgy invariably furnishes the example of presenting every request in the name of the great Mediator. For there is no access to the throne of grace, but by that new and living way. In the liturgy, too, they will meet with the best exemplifications of prayers, exhibiting separate specimens of each of the distinct heads we have been suggesting.

But, in order that the minds of young persons may, without labour or difficulty, be gradually brought into such a state of preparation as to be

benefited by such a little course of lectures as we have recommended; they should, from the time when they were first able to read, have been employing themselves, at their leisure hours, in laying in a store of provision for their present demands. And here the memory may be employed to good purpose; for, being the first faculty which is ripened, and which is indeed perfected when the others are only beginning to unfold themselves, this is an intimation of Providence that it should be the first seized on for the best uses. It should therefore be devoted to lay in a stock of the more easy and devotional parts of Scripture. The Psalms alone are an inexhaustible store-house of rich materials*. Children, whose minds have been early well furnished from these, will be competent at nine or ten years old to produce from them, and to select with no contemptible judgment, suitable examples of all parts of prayer; and will be able to extract and appropriate texts under each respective head, so as to exhibit without help complete specimens of every part of prayer. By confining them entirely to the sense, and nearly to the words of Scripture, they will be preserved from enthusiasm, from irregularity, and conceit. By being obliged continually to apply for themselves, they will get a habit in all their difficulties of" searching the Scriptures," which may be hereafter useful to them on other and more trying occasions. But I would at first confine them to the Bible; for, were they allowed with equal freedom to ransack other books with a view to get helps to embellish their little compositions, or rather compilations, they might be tempted to pass off for their own what they pick up from others, which might tend at once to make them both vain and deceitful. This is a temptation to which they are too much laid open when they find themselves extravagantly commended for any pilfered passage with which they decorate their little themes and letters. But in the present instance there is no danger of any similar deception, for there is such a sacred signature stamped on every scripture phrase, that the owner's name can never be defaced or torn off from the goods, either by fraud of violence.

It would be well, if, in those psalms which children were first directed to get by heart, an eye were had to this their future application; and that they were employed, but without any intimation of your subsequent design, in learning such as may be best turned to this account. In the hundred and thirty-ninth, the first great truth to be imprinted on the young heart, the Divine omnipresence, as was before observed, is unfolded with such a mixture of majestic grandeur, and such an interesting variety of intimate and local circumstances, as is likely to seize on the quick and lively feelings of youth. The awful idea that that Being whom she is taught to reverence, is not only in general "acquainted with all her ways," but that "he is about her path, and about her bed," bestows such a sense of real and present existence on Him of whom she is apt to conceive as having his distant habitation only in heaven, as will greatly help her to realise the sense of his presence.

The hundred and third psalm will open to the mind rich and abundant

This will be so far from spoiling the cheerfulness, or impeding the pleasures of childhood that the author knows a little girl who, before she was seven years old, had learnt the whole Psalter through a second time; and that without any diminution of uncommon gaiety of spirits, or any interference with the elegant acquirements suited to her station.

sources of expression for gratitude and thanksgiving, and it includes the acknowledgment of spiritual as well as temporal favours. It illustrates the compassionate mercies of God by familiar and domestic images, of such peculiar tenderness and exquisite endearment, as are calculated to strike upon every chord of filial fondness in the heart of an affectionate child. The fifty-first supplies an infinite variety of matter in whatever relates to confession of sin, or to supplication for the aids of the Spirit. The twenty-third abounds with captivating expressions of the protecting goodness and tender love of their heavenly Father, conveyed by pastoral imagery of uncommon beauty and sweetness: in short, the greater part of these charming compositions overflows with materials for every head of prayer.

The child, who, while she was engaged in learning these scriptures, was not aware that there was any specific object in view, or any farther end to be answered by it, will afterwards feel an unexpected pleasure arising from the application of her petty labours, when she is called to draw out from her little treasury of knowledge the stores she has been insensibly collecting; and will be pleased to find, that without any fresh application to study, for she is now obliged to exercise a higher faculty than memory, she has lying ready in her mind the materials with which she is at length called upon to work. Her judgment must be set about selecting one, or two, or more texts which shall contain the substance of every specific head of prayer before noticed; and it will be a farther exercise to her understanding to concatenate the detached parts into one regular whole, occasionally varying the arrangement as she likes; that is, changing the order, sometimes beginning with invocation, sometimes with confession; sometimes dwelling longer on one part, sometimes on another. As the hardships of a religious Sunday are often so pathetically pleaded, as making one of the heavy burdens of religion-and as the friends of religion are so often called upon to mitigate its intolerable rigours, by recommending pleasant employment-might not such an exercise, as has been here suggested, help, by varying its occupations, to lighten its load?

The habits of the pupil being thus early formed, her memory, attention, and intellect being bent in a right direction, and the exercise invariably maintained, may we not reasonably hope that her affections also, through divine grace, may become interested in the work, till she will be enabled "to pray with the spirit, and with the understanding also?" She will now be qualified to use a well-composed form, if necessary, with seriousness and advantage; for she will now use it not mechanically, but rationally. That which before appeared to her a mere mass of good words, will now appear a significant composition, exhibiting variety, and regularity, and beauty; and while she will have the farther advantage of being enabled by her improved judgment to distinguish and select for her own purpose such prayers as are more judicious and more scriptural, it will also habituate her to look for plan, and design, and lucid order, in other works.

CHAPTER XIV.

The practical use of female knowledge, with a sketch of the female character, and a comparative view of the sexes.

Their

THE chief end to be proposed in cultivating the understandings of women, is to qualify them for the practical purposes of life. knowledge is not often, like the learning of men, to be reproduced in some literary composition, nor ever in any learned profession; but it is to come out in conduct. It is to be exhibited in life and manners. A lady studies, not that she may qualify herself to become an orator or a pleader; nor that she may learn to debate, but to act. She is to read the best books, not so much to enable her to talk of them, as to bring the improvement which they furnish, to the rectification of her principles and the formation of her habits. The great uses of study to a woman are to enable her to regulate her own mind, and to be instrumental to the good of others.

To woman, therefore, whatever be her rank, I would recommend a predominance of those more sober studies, which, not having display for their object, may make her wise without vanity, happy without witnesses, and content without panegyrists; the exercise of which will not bring celebrity, but improve usefulness. She should pursue every kind of study which will teach her to elicit truth; which will lead her to be intent upon realities; will give precision to her ideas; will make an exact mind. She should cultivate every study which, instead of stimulating her sensibility, will chastise it; which will neither create an excessive or a false refinement; which will give her definite notions; will bring the imagination under dominion; will lead her to think, to compare, to combine, to methodise; which will confer such a power of discrimination, that her judgment shall learn to reject what is dazzling, if it be not solid; and to prefer, not what is striking, or bright, or new, but what is just. That kind of knowledge which is rather fitted for home consumption than foreign exportation, is peculiarly adapted to women*.

It is because the superficial nature of their education furnishes them with a false and low standard of intellectual excellence, that women have too often become ridiculous by the unfounded pretensions of literary vanity; for it is not the really learned, but the smatterers, who have generally brought their sex into discredit by an absurd affectation which has set them on despising the duties of ordinary life. There have not, indeed, been wanting (but the character is not now common) précieuses ridicules, who, assuming a superiority to the sober cares which ought to occupy their sex, have claimed a lofty and supercilious exemption from the dull and plodding drudgeries

Of this dim speck called earth.

There have not been wanting ill-judging females, who have affected to establish an unnatural separation between talents and usefulness, instead

May I be allowed to strengthen my own opinion with the authority of Dr. Johnson, that a woman cannot have too much arithmetic ? It is a solid, practical acquirement, in which there is much use and little display; it is a quiet sober kind of knowledge, which she acquires for herself and her family, and not for the world.

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