It is, indeed, painful to see boys, as we sometimes see them, struggling against “wind and tide;” but watch such boys—­follow them—­see how they put forth strength as it accumulates—­apply energies as they increase—­make use of new expedients as they need them, and by-and-by where are they?  Indeed, now and then they are obliged to lift at the gate pretty lustily to get it open; now and then they are obliged to turn a pretty sharp corner, and, perhaps, lose a little skin from a shin-bone or a knuckle-joint, but, at length, where are they?  Why, you see them sitting in “the gate”—­a scriptural phrase for the post of honor.  Who is that judge who so adorns the bench?  My Lord Mansfield, or Sir Matthew Hale, or Chief Justice Marshall?  Why, and from what condition, has he reached his eminence?  That was a boy who some years since was an active, persevering little fellow round the streets, the son of the poor widow, who lives under the hill.  She was poor, but she had the faculty of infusing her own energy into her boy, Matthew or Tommy; and now he has grown to be one of the eminent men of the country.  Yes; and I recollect there was now and then to be seen with Tommy, when he had occasionally a half hour of leisure—­but that was not often—­there was one John Easy, whose mother always kept a servant to wait upon him, to open and shut the gate for him, and almost to help him breathe.  Well, and where is John Easy?  Why there he is, this moment, a poor, shiftless, penniless being, who never loved to open the gate for himself, and now nobody ever desires to open a gate to him.

And the reason for all this difference is the different manner in which these boys were trained in their early days.  “Train up a child,” says the good book, “in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.”  Analyze the direction, and see how it reads.  Train up a child—­what?  Why train him—­i.e., educate him, discipline him.  Whom did you say?  A child.  Take him early, in the morning of life, before bad habits, indolent habits, vicious habits are formed.  It is easy to bend the sapling, but difficult to bend the grown tree.  You said train a child, did you?  Yes.  But how?  Why, in the way in which he ought to go—­i.e., in some useful employment—­in the exercise of good moral affections—­pious duties towards God, and benevolent actions towards his parents, brothers, companions.  Thus train him—­a child—­and what then—­what result may you anticipate?  Why, the royal preacher says that when he is old—­of course, then, during youth, manhood, into old age, through life he means, as long as he lives he will not—­what?  He will not depart from it, he will neither go back, nor go zig-zag, but forward, in that way in which he ought to walk, as a moral and accountable being of God, and a member of society, bound to do all the good he can.  And thus he will come under the conditions of a just