The child is passionately attached to his home, then to his school, his country, and religion; yet how entirely the particular home, school, country, and religion are a matter of accident!  He is born prepared to attach himself as a climbing plant is naturally disposed to climb, the kind of stick being of little importance.  The models upon whom the child or boy forms himself are the boys or men whom he has been thrown amongst, and whom from some incidental cause he may have learned to love and respect.  The every-day utterances, the likes and dislikes of his parents, their social and caste feelings, their religious persuasions are absorbed by him; their views or those of his teachers become assimilated and made his own.  If a mixed marriage should have taken place, and the father should die while the children are yet young, and if a question arise between the executors of his will and the mother as to the religious education of the children, application is made as a matter of course to the Court of Chancery, who decide that the children shall be brought up as Protestants or as Catholics as the case may be, or the sons one way and the daughters the other; and they are, and usually remain so afterwards when free to act for themselves.

It is worthy of note that many of the deaf-mutes who are first taught to communicate freely with others after they had passed the period of boyhood, and are asked about their religious feelings up to that time, are reported to tell the same story.  They say that the meaning of the church service whither they had accompanied their parents, and of the kneeling to pray, had been absolutely unintelligible, and a standing puzzle to them.  The ritual touched no chord in their untaught natures that responded in unison.  Very much of what we fondly look upon as a natural religious sentiment is purely traditional.

The word religion may fairly be applied to any group of sentiments or persuasions that are strong enough to bind us to do that which we intellectually may acknowledge to be our duty, and the possession of some form of religion in this larger sense of the word is of the utmost importance to moral stability.  The sentiments must be strong enough to make us ashamed at the mere thought of committing, and distressed during the act of committing any untruth, or any uncharitable act, or of neglecting what we feel to be right, in order to indulge in laziness or gratify some passing desire.  So long as experience shows the religion to be competent to produce this effect, it seems reasonable to believe that the particular dogma is comparatively of little importance.  But as the dogma or sentiments, whatever they be, if they are not naturally instinctive, must be ingrained in the character to produce their full effect, they should be instilled early in life and allowed to grow unshaken until their roots are firmly fixed.  The consciousness of this fact makes the form of religious teaching in every church and