150

THE RELATIVE DUTIES OF MANKIND. [Part III.

earliest years of their children, to their physical education, —to the unfolding, strengthening, and maturing of their physicalpowers, by suitable diet, air, and exercise. The usefulness andhappiness of many a man has been destroyed, or greatly im-paired, by a feeble constitution of body entailed upon him by theneglect of his physical education. “ Better is the poor,” saysthe Son of Sirach, “being sound and strong of constitution, thana rich man that is afflicted in his body. Health and good estateof body are above all gold, and a strong body above infinitewealth. There is no riches above a sound body, and no joyabove the joy of the heart. Death is better than a bitter life, orcontinual sickness.”* A constitution, firm and vigorous towithstand exposure, and proof against the ordinary inlets of dis-ease, is, in truth, of itself a fortune , and can only be obtainedby inuring the body to the severe training of exercise, labor, andfatigue, in early youth.

The formation of the manners, too, on which usefulness andhappiness in life so much depend, is a part of what parents owetheir children in the way of education. An early familiaritywith the forms of social intercourse, an address uniting dignitywith ease, confidence without arrogance, simplicity and natural-ness without rudeness, and refined cultivation without affectation,are of immense advantage in the intercourse with the world whichevery one must continually hold. A well-disciplined temper,and complete subjection of the appetites, passions, and affectionsto reason and conscience, are essential to personal comfort, tousefulness and to ordinary respectability, and should be the ob-ject of early parental solicitude and watchful care. Moral andreligious impressions, or their opposite, are very early made onthe minds of children, and the seeds of moral habits are veryearly sown, which grow up and bear fruit of a good or evilkind, in the joyful or disastrous increase of a hundred fold. Animportant part, too, of the moral education of children is, to guardthem against injurious prejudices, antipathies, and prepossessions,and to enlist their affections and sympathies on the side of truthand duty. But a man’s principles are the basis of his character, —

Ecclesiasticus xxx. 14 - 17.