In the physical training of children due regard should be had to cleanliness, exercise, diet and dress.  Without this all will be vain.  Many parents keep them within doors, never let them enjoy the pure air, nor exercise the muscular system, keep their bodies cooped in clothing too small, and feasted upon a diet unwholesome; and as a consequence, they show a sickly growth, and become unfit either for the burdens or for the enjoyments of life.

The importance of exercise in the open air, and abstemiousness in diet, is proven from the health of those nations that train their children in all the exercise of riding, leaping, running and fencing, and subject them from infancy to the most frugal diet.  Thus the perfect forms and vigorous health of the Greeks, the Romans and Persians were the fruit of national attention paid to physical education.  Every home should have its suitable gymnasium.  How many parents, by their violation of the laws of health, prostitute the strength of their children to profligacy and indolence.

Home-education must be intellectual.  Much of human character and happiness depends upon the education of the mind, both as respects the development of its faculties and the application of legitimate truth.  The mind is the man.  It is not, as Locke declares, like a blank sheet of paper or a chest of drawers; but has an intuitional as well as a logical consciousness, innate ideas as well as capacities of receiving truth; while all its faculties involve a unity, and exist in the child in a state of involution; the abuse and neglect of one of which will have their bearing upon all the rest; and the mind without proper culture in its undeveloped state in the child, will show the symptoms of its abuse in the man.  The character of the mind in the man will indicate the character of its education in the child.  This education should begin properly with the first symptoms of consciousness.  All the powers of the intellect should be unfolded.  Parents should be the Principals in the mental training of their children.  The manner and means of such training will be considered in another place.  Our purpose here is simply to state this as a part of home-training.  From the important part which the mind acts in the great drama of human life and destiny, we think that no intelligent parent would presume to repudiate its education.

Home-education must be moral.  The family should develop the moral nature of the child.  The will should be educated; the sense of right and wrong trained; the emotions cultivated; the passions and desires ruled; the conscience and faith developed.  The necessity of this is seen in the fact that our nature is fallen and perverted.  The means of educating the moral nature of the child, are natural and revealed.  Both are of divine appointment.  The former are those which lie within the circumference of our abilities, and will be of no avail without the latter, which are found in the scriptures and church.  What are some of these means?