RELIGIOUS EDUCATION. 339 



LETTER 



from Mr. Devereuoc to Dr. Forster, on the necessity of 

 religious education for the happiness of old-age*. 



ALLOW me to call your attention to one point of physio- 

 logy intimately connected with the subject of which you 

 have treated, that it is necessary early to give children 

 religious impressions. I have discovered this fact in pur- 

 suing my researches upon the means of rendering old-age 

 happy. It is a well-known principle that the impressions 

 of childhood are recalled to mind in old age, whilst those 

 of manhood are effaced. It is one of the means by which 

 God, in his goodness, prepares us to receive constantly the 

 action of religion. For if the child, as soon as he stammers 

 the first words, is occupied with religion, the hope which 

 he conceives of being immortal, the animated pictures of 

 heavenly bliss, the end of all trouble, the eternal hallelujahs 

 of the saints, will form the object of his first thoughts, and, 

 through the effect of the law which we have mentioned, 

 the consolation, the support of his old age, and the foun- 

 dations of a happy death, will be derived from the ideas 

 which during childhood shall have filled his mind. As, in 

 proportion as the child grows up, his pleasures are asso- 

 ciated with the festivals, the fasts, the vigils, and the holi- 

 days of the church ; as he hails with a holy joy Christmas, 

 Easter, and Whitsuntide, and the other days of devotion 

 and holiday, so the old man recalls, with his first pleasures, 

 the great events of sacred history, and he descends the 

 steps to the grave with his spirit adorned and quickened 



[* Re-translated.] 



