What indeed can we look for but wretchedness and guilt from that child that has been left by its cruel parents to grow up “darkening in the deeper ignorance of mankind, with all its jealousies, and its narrow-mindedness, and its superstitions, and its penury of enjoyments, poor amid the intellectual and moral riches of the universe; blind in this splendid temple which God has lighted up, and famishing amid the profusions of Omnipotence?” And, parents, let me ask you, if you thus neglect the proper education of your children, and as a consequence, such pauperism of estate, of mind, and of morals, come upon them, will you not have to answer for all this to God?

  “Oh, woe for those who trample on the mind,
  That fearful thing!  They know not what they do,
  Nor what they deal with!”

Your children, thus neglected, will become victims to inordinate passion, without power to discern between reality and illusion, ignorant of what is true happiness, living for mere sense, with their moral nature enclosed in the iron mail of superstition, while the good seeds of truth sown upon their hearts “wither away, because they have no depth of earth.”

Parents cannot, therefore, neglect the education of their children without incurring disgrace and guilt before God and man.  They will meet a merited retribution both here and hereafter.  The justice of this is forcibly illustrated in a law of the Icelanders, which makes the court inquire, when a child is accursed, whether the parents have given the offender a good education?  And if not, the court inflicts the punishment on the parents.  This but expresses the higher law of God which holds parents responsible for the training of their children.  Listen to the threatening voice of God in history.  Crates, an ancient philosopher, used to say that if he could reach the highest eminence in the city, he would make this proclamation:  “What mean ye, fellow-citizens, to be so anxious after wealth, but so indifferent to your children’s education?  It is like being solicitous about the shoe, but neglecting entirely the foot that is to wear it!”

We would reiterate that proclamation in this age of superior intelligence.  To the pious parent there is a pleasure in training the young and tender heart for God.  What a beautiful tribute did Thompson yield to this pleasure in the following lines: 

  “Delightful task! to rear the tender thought,
  To teach the young idea how to shoot,
  To pour the fresh instruction o’er the mind,
  To breathe enlivening spirit, and to fix
  The generous purpose in the glowing breast!”