progressively, assisting repentances when it can not growths in good. He is thus to be always putting on Christ, as being baptized into Christ, and to live in the washing of regeneration and the renewing of the Holy Ghost, shed on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Saviour. Sentiments of profoundest reverence for his baptism are to be always cherished in him. He is to have it as the one pure thing that has touched, and always touches him. Family government, the family prayers, the saintly mother's kiss, every thing earthly, has the touch and stain of evil; but the sacrament of God's pure Spirit has not. All purest sympathy of God is here with him. He is God's child, and is to be God's man. Using thus his baptism, growing up into his baptism, obligation will be serious, but never oppressive; for he breathes for giving help, and has it for his element.

Now all these subjects of the Sunday conversation-the church, the supper and baptism-being institutes of God, like the day itself, chime with the day, and go to keep alive the same institutional faith, thus to keep alive the faith of a supernatural religion and make it habitual. Nature being all, there is no Sunday, no church, no sacraments. All God's institutes are set up on the world by His immediate authority, never grown out of nature and her causes. And it is just here that the childish affinities are most readily taken hold of by religion. Children want the supernatural; and the Lord's day, used in this manner, or enlivened by this kind of teaching, will prepare an ingrown habit of faith, and will never annoy them, or worry them, by its reasonable restrictions. They will "count the Sabbath a delight, and the holy of the Lord honorable," and will have beside, all the blessings of the prophet that fol

314 PLAYS AND PASTIMES, HOLIDAYS AND SUNDAYS

low. Under such a practice, religion, or faith, will be woven into the whole texture of the family life, and the house will become a truly Christian home. Nothing will be remembered so fondly, or steal upon the soul with such a gladsome, yet sacred, feeling afterward, as the recollection of these dear Sundays, when God's light shone so brightly into the house, and made a holiday for childhood so nearly divine.

VII

THE CHRISTIAN TEACHING OF CHILDREN

"But continue thou in the things which thou hast learned and hast been assured of, knowing of whom thou hast learned them."-II TIMOTHY iii. 14.

This exhortation of the apostle to his young friend Timothy, is the more remarkable that it relates to his training in the Old Testament scriptures, which were the only sacred writings known at the time of his childhood-" And that, from a child, thou hast known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation, through faith which is in Christ Jesus." His father was a Greek, (Acts xvi. 1,) and probably an unbeliever; but his mother was a woman of such piety, that she omitted nothing in the training of her son, and the apostle speaks of her, in the same epistle, even as having let down upon him a kind of piety by entail. But her faithful lessons-these are what he is now calling to mind; and it is affecting to notice that he not only charges it on him to remember what he has learned from the Scriptures, because they are God's word, but also to value the same things the more, "knowing of whom he has learned them"; that is, from his gracious and faithful mother. Under cover of this beautiful example, as it appears in all the parties concerned, the young minister and disciple, the godly mother and her instructions, the apostle and his congratulations, you will perceive that I am going to speak of—

The Christian teaching of children.

And I can not do better than to notice, in the beginning, three points which stand upon the face of the apostle's exhortation.

1. The very great importance of this teaching, when rightly dispensed. It is not indeed the first duty of the parent, for other duties go before, as we have already seen, preceding even the use of language. Neither is it, as a great many parents appear to assume, a matter in which their religious duties to their children are principally summed up. It is not every thing to teach, or verbally instruct their children, least of all to indoctrinate them in the formulas and theoretic principles of the faith. But how very great importance must there be in the teaching, when an apostle, setting his young friend in charge as a preacher of the gospel, bids him continue still in the teachings of his godly mother, and even to remember them for her sake. The New Testament preacher is exhorted still to be an Old Testament son, and is sent forth, in the power of the ancient Scripture, even after Christ has come. And just so it will ever be true of the ripest and tallest of God's saints, who were trained by His truth in their childhood, that however deep in their intelligence or high in spiritual attainments they have grown to be, the motherly and fatherly word is working in them still; and is, in fact, the core of all spiritual understanding in their character.

2. It is to be noted that the teaching of Timothy's mother was scriptural-"And that, from a child, thou hast known the Holy Scriptures." They had, as far as we have been able to learn, no catechisms in that day. The ten commandments and certain selected Psalms, were probably the scriptures in which they were most exercised, and

which probably Timothy had "learned," in the sense of having them stored in his memory. And there is this very great advantage in the scriptural teaching, or training, that it fills the mind with the word and light of the Spirit, and not with any mere wisdoms of opinion. And there is the less reason, now, for going out of the divine word to get lessons for the teaching of children, that our scripture roll is enlarged by the addition of the words and history of Christ himself. In a right use of the Scripture, thus amplified by the gospel, there is no end to the subjects of interest that may be raised. The words are simple, the facts are vital, the varieties of locality, dialogue, incident, character, and topic, endless.

I do not undertake to say that nothing shall be taught which is not in the words of the Scripture. But it must be obvious that very small children are more likely to be worried and drummed into apathy by dogmatic catechisms, than to get any profit from them. If exercised in them at all, it should be at a later period, when their intelligence is considerably advanced; that they may, at least, get some shadow of meaning in them, to repay the labor of committing them to memory. It is generally supposed, in the arguments urged for a training in catechism, that the real advantage to be gained is the fastening or anchoring of the child in some fixed faith. But the deplorable fact is, that what is called a fastening is really the shutting in, or encasing of the soul, in that particular shell of opinion-the training of the child to be a sectarian before he is a Christian. His anchorage in some Christian belief, which is certainly desirable, would be accomplished much more effectually, if he were trained, for example, to recite the Apostles' or the Nicene creed. Here he does not merely memorize, but