their own choosing and in the most frivolous manner. "What do ye more than others?" is an interrogation which this negligence has frequently suggested. Nay, professing serious piety, if ye do not more than those who profess it not, ye do less.

I took the liberty to remark that though there was no such thing as hereditary holiness, no entail of goodness; yet the Almighty had promised in the Scriptures many blessings to the offspring of the righteous. He never meant, however, that religion was to be transferred arbitrarily like an heir-loom; but the promise was accompanied with conditions and injunctions. The directions were express and frequent, to inculcate early and late the great truths of religion; nay, it was enforced with all the minuteness of detail, "precept upon precept, line upon line, here a little, and there a little"—at all times and seasons, "walking by the way, and sitting in the house." I hazarded the assertion, that it would generally be found that where the children of pious parents turned out ill, there had been some mistake, some neglect, or some fault on the part of the parents; that they had not used the right methods. I observed that I thought it did not at all derogate from the sovereignty of the Almighty that he appointed certain means to accomplish certain ends; and that the adopting these, in conformity to his appointment, and dependence on his blessing, seemed to be one of the cases in which we should prove our faith by our obedience.

I found I had gone too far: she said, with some warmth, that she was not wanting in any duty to her daughters; she set them a good example, and she prayed daily for their conversion. I highly commended her for both, but risked the observation, "that praying without instilling principles, might be as inefficacious as instruction without prayer. That it was like a husbandman who should expect that praying for sunshine should produce a crop of corn in a field where not one grain had been sown. God, indeed, could effect this, but he does not do it; and the means being of his own appointment, his omnipotence is not less exerted, by his directing certain effects to follow certain causes, than it would be by any arbitrary act." As it was evident that she did not choose to quarrel with me, she contented herself with saying coldly, that she perceived I was a legalist, and had but a low view of divine things.

At tea I found the young ladies took no more interest