The World is Setting in on The Children!

The world is setting in on the children even in very early life, like a mist from the ocean, with a full tide of influences, which you desire to defend against. You know there are a thousand opinions and habits among people from which you would gladly restrain your children. Spiritual you may not be where you now you should be; but you would be willing to see your children walking in the paths of wisdom. You know that there are vices to which they are exposed; and they may meet with companions who would ruin them; and that they will soon be beyond your control; and you would throw around them a protective cover that should shield them from evil. You seek that the influence of a father and mother may be prolonged and live even when you may lie in the grave. You would give to yourself a kind of omnipresent influence, that your example and precepts at least may speak when they are away from you, or when your tongue may no more be able to give utterance to the precepts of experience, or to the tenderness of parental love.

Now contemplate for a moment the influences from the world, against which a parent would guard. There is; at first, the influence of formed plans and employments. The schemes of yesterday travel over the night watches, and meet them in the morning. They are still under the influence of the world which they met yesterday. Their schemes may not be complete. The world which they saw before they went to bed; the opinions which they heard; the temptations which they met, will put a new power in the freshness of the morning. The charm has not been dissolved by the slumbers of the night. The forming habits have not been crushed, or even slept, while they have sought repose. The influence of the world which you feared yesterday, will meet them again in the morning. The enemy that made advances did not lose his hold or even slumber while they rested. The ever sleepless foe is strengthening his power, riveting the chains, and making his prisoner sure.

Can there be any way so likely to break in on this influence, as by a solemn presentation of prayer in the morning, to the God of grace; to bring in the parental power, and suffer them to see that you are influenced by better things; and to bring down all the sacredness of the religious feeling to arrest and wipe out this evil influence?