or a high social position in this life; he receives a title to and personal meetness for, the undefiled and imperishable inheritance of heaven, composed of glittering crowns of glory, of unspeakable joys, and sweet communion with all the loved and cherished there.  Thus the fruits of a parent’s labor for the salvation of his children constitute an infinitely more valuable patrimony than all the accumulated fruits of his industry in behalf of wealth.  All the wealth, and rank, and reputation which may descend from parent to child, can not supersede the necessity of a spiritual patrimony.  It is only, as we have seen in a former chapter, when you minister to the spiritual wants of your children and tinge all their thoughts and feelings with a sense of eternity; when your home is made a spiritual nursery; and you work for their eternal benefit, and thereby secure for them the fulfillment of those blessed promises which God has given concerning the children of believing parents, that you leave them a patrimony worthy the Christian home.  Such a spiritual patrimony it is within the power of all Christian parents to bestow.  And without its enjoyment by your children, you fail to minister unto them as a faithful steward of God.  You may minister to their bodies and minds; you may amass for them a fortune; you may give them an education; you may establish them in the most lucrative business; you may fit them for an honorable and responsible position; you may leave them the heritage of social and political influence; and you may caress them with all the passionate fondness of the parental heart and hand; yet, without the heritage of true piety,—­of the true piety of the parent reproduced, in the heart and character of the child, all will be worse than vain, yea, a curse to both the parent and the children.

Having thus briefly pointed out some of the essential features of the children’s patrimony, as physical, intellectual, moral, and spiritual, we shall now advert to the principles upon which parents should proceed in the distribution of their property to their children.

They should not give them more than a competency.  That they should lay by something for them is conceded by all.  This is both a right and a duty.  It is included in the obligation to provide for them; and he who does it not “hath denied the faith and is worse than an infidel.”  Natural affection, as well as supernatural faith, stimulates the parent to provide thus for his offspring.

But this does not demand a great fortune; but a simple competency, that is, just enough to meet their immediate wants and emergencies when they enter the world and begin business-life.  This competence should correspond with the social position they occupied under the parental roof.  It should not go beyond this; it should be just enough to meet the social and financial exigencies of the child.  It should be measured also by the peculiar necessities of the child, by his health, abilities and circumstances.  “A parent is justified,” says Paley in his Moral and Political Philosophy, “in making a difference between his children according as they stand in greater or less need of the assistance of his fortune, in consequence of the difference of their age or sex, or of the situations in which they are placed, or the various success which they have met with.”