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The New Zealand Evangelist

Early Religious Training Necessary.—

Early Religious Training Necessary.—

Coleridge and his friends were once talking on this subject, one of whom maintained that religion should not be instilled into the youthful mind, and Coleridge contending that it should. His friend observed that the page 257 mind should be left to itself upon that subject, and in mature years it would of itself, asume the right direction. After dinner, he walked into his garden, and showed him a spot full of nothing but mustard plants. “There,” said C. “is a fine flower garden.” “Flower garden!” says his friend, “why they are all mustard plants.” “I know that said Coleridge, “but after a while, somehow or other, the mustard will be all rooted out, and we shall have a splendid variety of cultivated flowers. True religion never produced fanaticism or bigotry. The greatest fanatics I ever knew were infidels; the greatest bigots were Deists.