Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children | Page 3

advice.
This attention to your religious duties need not be attended by any
preciseness or austerity of manner. On the contrary, I should wish you
to be at all times cheerful and good humoured, ready to take part in any
innocent gaiety. My object is to impress upon you the absolute
necessity of always putting religion in the first place. If you really
believe what you profess to believe, do not hesitate as to shewing it in
your conduct. Never be so weak as to be ashamed of doing what you
know to be your duty. Never be guilty of such unmanly cowardice as to
be ashamed of avowing your allegiance to your Creator and your
Redeemer.
I remain, My dear Nephew, Your affectionate Uncle.

LETTER II.
CHOICE OF FRIENDS, AND BEHAVIOUR IN SOCIETY.
MY DEAR NEPHEW,
Among the many advantages of an University, few rank higher, both in
general estimation and in reality, than the opportunity which it affords
of forming valuable and lasting friendships. Indeed this advantage can
hardly be rated too highly. I look back to the intimacies which I
contracted at college, as among the greatest blessings of a life, which
has been eminently blessed in various ways. I still hold intercourse with
many of my Oxford friends, whose characters and attainments do

honour to the place where their education and their minds were matured.
And even the recollection of most of those, who have been removed
from this lower world, is attended with a soothing melancholy, which
partakes more of pleasure and thankfulness for having enjoyed their
society, than of pain. The memory of the just is blessed[14:1].
I hope, my dear nephew, that you will improve this advantage to the
utmost. In your intimacies, however, endeavour to be guided rather by
judgment than by mere fancy. Sameness of pursuits, similarity of
dispositions and inclinations generally contribute much to throw men
together; but be careful not to attach yourself to any man as a friend,
unless he is a man of moral worth, and of real religious principle.
Intimacy with a man who is unrestrained by religion, must be attended
with great danger. Your own natural appetites will continually solicit
you to forbidden indulgences, and will not be kept in due subjection
without difficulty. If their solicitations are seconded by the example
and by the conversations of an intimate associate, your peril will be
extreme. Intimacy with a man of bad principles and immoral character,
may utterly blast all your prospects of happiness both in this world and
the next.
You will of course have the greater power of selection, if your general
acquaintance is pretty extensive. I acknowledge, that my opinion is
rather in favour of your forming an extensive acquaintance, provided
that you never suffer it to encroach upon your time, or to lead you into
any compromise of religious principle. Going to the University
constitutes a sort of entrance into the world, an introduction to manly
life; but this advantage is lost if you seclude yourself altogether from
society. In order, however, to acquire or to retain such an acquaintance,
your manners and general demeanour must be acceptable or popular.
One of the first requisites, in order to be thus acceptable, is the neglect,
the forgetfulness of self--a readiness to put self in the back-ground. Any
obtrusion of self, any appearance of self-love, self-interest, self-conceit,
or self-applause, tends to expose a man to dislike, perhaps to contempt.
One way in which this disregard, this abandonment of self, must show
itself, is real unaffected humility. Most of the external forms and modes

of modern politeness, its bows and obeisances, its professions of
respect and service, its adulations, are nothing but an affectation of
such humility, and bear witness to its value when it exists in reality.
When it does so exist, and still is free from any servility of manner, any
unworthy compliances, nothing contributes more to make a man
acceptable and popular in society. It inflicts no unnecessary wounds on
any one's pride or self-love. And, you will observe, that it is the temper
and behaviour, inculcated by the general spirit and by the particular
precepts of religion, which bids us in honour to prefer one another; and
says, in lowliness of mind let each esteem others better than himself.
Another requisite is, a willingness to please and to be pleased. Some
men seem to think it beneath them, and a mark of littleness of mind, to
wish or to try to please any body, and wrap themselves up in a cold
superciliousness. Others seem determined never to be pleased with any
thing or any person, but are always finding fault. They have no eye for,
no perception of, merits or beauties, either external or internal, but are
keen and quick-sighted in detecting