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CHRISTIAN NURTURE 
 
 By nORACE BTISHNELL 
 
 " And all thy children shall be taught of the Lord ; and great shall be 
 the peace of thy children." 
 
 Isaiah^ liv. 13. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER, 124 GRAND STREET, 
 
 1861. 
 
Enteeed according to Act of Congress, in the tear 1860, 
 By CHARLES SCRIBNER, 
 
 In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States fob 
 THE Southern District of New York. 
 
 R. H. H0BB3, STEREOTTPER, HARTFORD, CONW. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PART I —THE DOCTRINE 
 
 I. — What Christian nurture is, 9 
 
 II. — "What Christian nurture is, 33 
 
 III. — The ostrich nurture, 65 
 
 IV. — The organic unity of the family, 90 
 
 Y. — Infant baptism, how developed, 123 
 
 YI. — Apostolic authority of infant baptism, 145 
 
 YII. — Church membership of children, 162 
 
 YIII. — The out-populating power of the Christian stock, 195 
 
 PART II —THE MODE 
 
 I. — "When and where the nurture begins, 227 
 
 II. — Parental qualifications, 252 
 
 III. — Physical nurture, to be a means of grace, 271 
 
 lY. — The treatment that discourages piety, 295 
 
 Y. — Family government, 314 
 
 YI. — Plays and pastimes, holidays and Sundays, 338 
 
 YII. — The Christian teaching of children, 36G 
 
 VIII.— Family prayers, 385 
 
PREFACE 
 
 The subject of this volume is one of the highest, in the 
 order of consequence, both as respects the welfare of relig- 
 ion and of human society. No apology therefore is needed, 
 for the giving to the public of any thing concerning it, which 
 is honestly meant, and thoughtfully prepared. 
 
 I should have preferred, on some accounts, to write a 
 proper treatise on the subject — which this volume is not. 
 The shape it has taken will be sufficiently explained, by the 
 facts and considerations, that have been determining causes, 
 in the process of its construction. Thirteen years ago I was 
 drawn, by solicitation from others, into the publication of two 
 discourses, the first two of this volume, under the title 
 Christian Nurture. Afterwards, these were republished 
 with another, the fourth of the present volume, and with other 
 articles variously related, under the same title. These publi- 
 cations have been out of print for some years ; for I have 
 preferred the discontinuance of publication, till I might be 
 able to present the subject in a more adequate and complete 
 manner. The present volume is th« result. 
 
 In preparing it, I could not easily consent to lay aside, or 
 pass into oblivion, the two discourses above referred to ; for, 
 under the fortune that befel them, they had become a little 
 historical. In this fuller treatment of the subject therefore, I 
 have allowed them to stand, requiring the additions made, to 
 
vi PREFACE 
 
 take their shape or type. Thirteen new essays, in the form 
 of discourses, though never used as such, but written simply 
 for the discussion's sake, are thus added; and the vohime, 
 which virtually covers the ground of a treatise, takes the form 
 of successive topical discussions, or essays, on so many themes 
 included in the general subject. 
 
 As was natural, in this kind of treatment, I have not been 
 careful, always, to remember in one precisely what I have 
 said in another, and so it happens that they sometimes over- 
 lap a little ; the same kind of liberty being taken that is com- 
 monly had in sermons, where there is no delicacy felt, under 
 any particular theme, in saying what may be necessary to the 
 fullest impression of it, even if something like it has been 
 necessary to the impression of some other. But this, which, 
 taking the volume as a treatise, might be a just subject of 
 criticism, may even be an advantage, as respects the conven- 
 ience of use, and the popular and practical impressions to be 
 made by it. 
 
 I need offer no apology for retaining the old title, in a vol- 
 ume that is virtually new; or for reasserting, with more 
 emphasis and deliberation, after an interval of years, what the 
 years have only established and made firm in my Christian 
 convictions. h. b. 
 
PART I -THE DOCTRINE 
 
I 
 
 WHAT CHRISTIAN NURTURE IS 
 
 _ "Bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord." — EpTie- 
 sians^ vi. 4. 
 
 There is then some kind of nurture wliicli is of the 
 Lord, deriving a quality and a power from Him, and 
 communicatiDg the same. Being instituted by Him, it 
 will of necessity have a method and a character peculiar 
 to itself, or rather to Him. It will be the Lord's way 
 of education, having aims appropriate to Him, and, if 
 realized in its full intent, terminating in results impos- 
 sible to be reached by any merely human method. 
 
 What then is the true idea of Christian or. divine nur- 
 ture, as distinguished from that which is not Christian ? 
 "What is its aim? What its method of working? 
 What its powers and instruments ? What its contem- 
 plated results ? Few questions have greater moment ; 
 and it is one of the pleasant signs of the times, that the 
 subject involved is beginning to attract new interest, 
 and excite a spirit of inquiry which heretofore has not 
 prevailed in our churches. 
 
 In ordinary cases, the better and more instructive 
 way of handling this subject, would be to go directly 
 into the practical methods of parental discipline, and 
 show by what modes of government, and instruction we 
 
10 WHAT CHRISTIAN NURTURE IS 
 
 may hope to realize the best results. But unhappily 
 the public mind is preoccupied extensively by a view 
 of the whole subject, which I must regard as a theoret- 
 ical mistake, and one which will involve, as long as it 
 continues, practical results systematically injurious. 
 This mistaken view it is necessary, if possible, to 
 remove. And accordingly what I have to say will 
 take the form of an argument on the question thus put 
 in issue ; though I design to gather round the subj ect, as 
 I proceed, as much of practical instruction as the mode 
 of the argument will suffer. Assuming then the ques- 
 tion above stated. What is the true idea of Christian 
 education? — I answer in the following proposition, 
 which it will be the aim of my argument to establish, 
 viz : 
 
 That the child is to grow up a Christian^ and never 
 hioiu himself as being otherwise. 
 
 In other words, the aim, effort, and expectation should 
 be, not, as is commonly assumed, that the child is to 
 grow up in sin, to be converted after he comes to a 
 mature age ; but that he is to open on the world as one 
 that is spiritually renewed, not remembering the time 
 when he went through a technical experience, but 
 seeming rather to have loved what is good from his 
 earliest years. I do not affi.rm that every child may, in 
 fact and without exception, be so trained that he cer- 
 tainly will grow up a Christian. The qualifications it 
 may be necessary to add will be given in another place, 
 where they can be stated more intelligibly. 
 
WHAT CHRISTIAN NURTURE IS 11 
 
 This doctrine is not a novelty, now rashly and for tlie 
 first time propounded, as some of you may be tempted 
 to suppose. I shall show you, before I have done with 
 the argument, that it is as old as the Christian church, 
 and prevails extensively at the present day in other 
 parts of the world. Neither let your own experience 
 raise a prej udice against it. If you have endeavored to 
 realize the very truth I here afiirm, but find that your 
 children do not exhibit the character you have looked 
 for ; if they seem to be intractable to religious influ- 
 ences, and sometimes to display an apparent aversion to 
 the very subject of religion itself, you are not of course 
 to conclude that the doctrine I here m^aintain is untrue 
 or impracticable. You may be unreasonable in your 
 expectations of your children. 
 
 Possibly, there may be seeds of holy principle in 
 them, which you do not discover. A child acts out 
 his present feelings, the feelings of the moment, without 
 qualification or disguise. And how, many times, would 
 all you appear, if you were to do the same ? Will you 
 expect of them to be better, and more constant and 
 consistent, than yourselves ; or will you rather expect 
 them to be children, human children still, living a 
 mixed life, trying out the good and evil of the world, 
 and preparing, as older Christians do, when they have 
 taken a lesson of sorrow and emptiness, to turn again 
 to the true good ? 
 
 Perhaps they will go through a rough mental strug- 
 gle, at some future day, and seem, to others and to 
 theinselves, there to have entered on a Christian life. 
 
12 WHAT CHRISTIAN NURTURE IS. 
 
 And yet it may be true tliat there was still some root 
 of right principle established in their childhood, which 
 is here only quickened and developed, as when Chris- 
 tians of a mature age are revived in their piety, after a 
 period of spiritual, lethargy ; for it is conceivable that 
 regenerate character may exist, long before it is fully 
 and formally developed. 
 
 But suppose there is really no trace or seed of holy 
 principle in your children, has there been no fault of 
 piety and constancy in your church ? no want of Chris- 
 tian sensibility and love to God ? no carnal spirit visi- 
 ble to them and to all, and imparting its noxious and 
 poisonous quality to the Christian atmosphere in which 
 they have had their nurture? For it is not for you 
 alone to realize all that is included in the idea of Chris- 
 tian education. It belongs to the church of Grod, 
 according to the degree of its social power over you 
 and in you and around your children, to bear a part of 
 the responsibility with you. 
 
 Then, again, have you nothing to blame in your- 
 selves? no lack of faithfulness ? no indiscretion of man- 
 ner or of temper ? no mistake of duty, which, with a 
 better and more cultivated piety, you would have been 
 able to avoid? Have you been so nearly even with 
 your privilege and duty, that you can find no relief but 
 to lay some charge upon God, or comfort yourselves in 
 the conviction that he has appointed the failure you de- 
 plore ? When God marks out a plan of education, or 
 sets up an aim to direct its efforts, you will see, at once, 
 that he could not base it on a want of piety in you, or 
 
WHAT CHRISTIAN NURTURE IS 13 
 
 on any imperfections that flow from a want of piety. 
 It must be a plan measured by Himself and the fullness 
 of his own gracious intentions. 
 
 Besides, you must not assume that we, in this age, 
 are the best Christians that have ever lived, or most 
 likely to produce all the fruits of piety. An assumption 
 so pleasing to our vanity is more easily made than veri- 
 fied, but vanity is the weakest as it is the cheapest of all 
 arguments. "We have some good points, in which we 
 compare favorably with other Christians, and Christians 
 of other times, but our style of piety is sadly deficient, 
 in many respects, and that to such a degree that we have 
 little cause for self-congratulation. With all our activ- 
 ity and boldness of movement, there is a certain hard- 
 ness and rudeness, a want of sensibility to things that 
 do not lie in action, which can not be too much de- 
 plored, or too soon rectified. We hold a piety of con- 
 quest rather than of love. A kind of public piety, that 
 is strenuous and fiery on great occasions, but wants the 
 beauty of holiness, wants constancy, singleness of aim, 
 loveliness, purity, richness, blamelessness, and — if I may 
 add another term not so immediately religious, but one 
 that carries, by association, a thousand religious quali- 
 ties — wants domesticity of characteF; wants them, I 
 mean, not as compared with the perfect standard of 
 Christ, but as compared with other examples of piety 
 that have been given in former times, and others that 
 are given now. 
 
 For some reason, we do not make a Christian atmos- 
 phere about us — do not produce the conviction that we 
 
14 ,\^yHAT CHRISTIAN NURTURE IS. 
 
 are living unto God. There is a marvelous want of 
 savor in our piety. It is a flower of autumn, colored 
 as highly as it need be to the ej^e, but destitute of fra- 
 grance. It is too much to hope that, with such an in- 
 strument, we can fulfill the true idea of Christian 
 education. Any such hope were even presumptuous. 
 At the same time, there is no so ready way of removing 
 the deficiencies just described, as to recall our churches 
 to their duties in domestic life; those humble, daily, 
 hourly duties, where the spirit we breathe shall be a 
 perpetual element of power and love, bathing the life 
 of childhood. 
 
 Thus much it was necessary to say, for the removal 
 of prejudices that are likely to rise up in your minds, 
 and make you inaccessible to the arguments I may 
 offer. Let all such prejudices be removed, or, if this be 
 too much, let them, at least, be suspended till you have 
 heard what I have to advance ; for it can. not be desired 
 of you to believe any thing more than what is shown 
 you by adequate proofs. AVhich also it is right to ask 
 that you will receive, in a spirit of conviction, such as 
 becomes our wretched and low attainments, and with a 
 willingness to let God be exalted, though at the expense 
 of some abasemenl^n ourselves. In pursuing the argu- 
 ment, I shall — 
 
 I. Collect some considerations which occur to 
 us, viewing the subject on the human side, and 
 then — 
 
 II. Show how far and by what methods God has jus- 
 tified, on his part, the doctrine we maintain. 
 
WHAT CHRISTIAN NURTURE IS. 15 
 
 There is then, as the subject appears to ns — 
 1. No absurdity in supposing that children are to 
 grow up in Christ. On the other hand, if there is no 
 absurditjr', there is a very clear moral incongruity in 
 setting up a contrary supposition, to be the aim of a 
 system of Christian education. There could not be a 
 worse or more baleful implication given to a child, than 
 that he is to reject God and all holy principle, till he 
 has come to a mature age. What authority have you 
 from the Scriptures to tell your child, or, by any sign, 
 to show him that you do not expect him truly to love 
 and obey Grod, till after he has spent whole years in 
 hatred and wrong ? What authority to make him feel 
 that he is the most unprivileged of all human beings, 
 capable of sin, but incapable of repentance ; old enough 
 to resist all good, but too young to receive any good 
 whatever ? It is reasonable to suppose that you have 
 some express authority for a lesson so manifestly cruel 
 and hurtful, else you would shudder to give it. I ask 
 you for the chapter and verse, out of which it is derived. 
 Meantime, wherein would it be less incongruous for you 
 to teach your child that he is to lie and steal, and go 
 the whole round of the vices, and then, after he comes 
 to mature age, reform his conduct by the rules of virtue? 
 Perhaps you do not give your child to expect that he 
 is to grow up in sin ; 3^ou only expect that he will your- 
 self That is scarcely better: for that which is your 
 expectation, will assuredly be his ; and what is more, 
 any attempt to maintain a discipline at war with your 
 own secret expectations, will only make a hollow and 
 
16 WHAT CHRISTIAN NURTURE IS. 
 
 worthless figment of tliat wliicli should be an open, 
 earnest reality. You will never practically aim at what 
 you practically despair of, and if you do not practically 
 aim to unite your child to God, you will aim at some- 
 thing less ; that is, something unchristian, wrong, sinful. 
 But my child is a sinner, you will say ; and how can 
 I expect him to begin a right life, until God gives him 
 a new heart ? This is the common way of speaking, 
 and I state the objection in its own phraseology, that it 
 may recognize itself. Who then has told you that a 
 child can not have the new heart of which you speak ? 
 Whence do you learn that if you live the life of Christ, 
 before him and with him, the law of the Spirit of Life 
 may not be such as to include and quicken him also ? 
 And why should it be thought incredible that there 
 should be some really good principle awakened in the 
 mind of a child ? For this is all that is implied in a 
 Christian state. The Christian is one who has simply 
 begun to love what is good for its own sake, and why 
 should it be thought impossible for a child to have this 
 love begotten in him ? Take any scheme of depravity 
 you please, there is yet nothing in it to forbid the pos- 
 sibility that a child should be led, in his first moral act, 
 to cleave unto what is good and right, an}^ more than in 
 the first of his twentieth year. He is, in that case, only 
 a child converted to good, leading a mixed life as all 
 Christians do. The good in him goes into combat with 
 the evil, and holds a qualified sovereignty. And why 
 may not this internal conflict of goodness cover the 
 whole life from its dawn, as well as any part of it? 
 
WHAT CHRISTIAN NURTURE IS. 17 
 
 And wliat more appropriate to the doctrine of spiritual 
 influence itself, than to believe that as the Spirit of Je- 
 hovah fills all the worlds of matter, and holds a presence 
 of power and government in all objects, so all human 
 souls, the infantile as well as the adult, have a nurture 
 of the Spirit appropriate to their age and their wants ? 
 What opinion is more essentiallyvmonstrous, in fact, 
 than that which regards the Holy Spirit as having no 
 agency in the immature souls of children who are grow- 
 ing up, helpless and unconscious, into the perils of 
 time ? 
 
 2. It is to be expected that Christian education will 
 radically differ from that which is not Christian. Now, 
 it is the very character and mark of all unchristian edu- 
 cation, that it brings up the child for future conversion. 
 No effort is made, save to form a habit of outward vir- 
 tue, and, if God please to convert the family to some- 
 thing higher and better, after they come to the age of 
 maturity, it is well. Is then Christian education, or the 
 nurture of the Lord, jio way different from this ? Or is 
 it rather to be supposed that it will have a higher aim 
 and a more sacred character ? 
 
 And, since it is the distinction of Christian parents, 
 that they are themselves in the nurture of the Lord, since 
 Christ and the Divine Love, communicated through 
 him, are become the food of their life, what, will they so 
 naturally seek as to have their children partakers with 
 them, heirs together with them, in the grace of life ? I 
 am well aware of the common impression that Christian 
 education is sufficiently distinguished by the endeavor 
 
 2'^ 
 
18 WHAT CHRISTIAN NURTURE IS. 
 
 of Christian parents to teach their children the lessons 
 of Scripture histor}^, and the doctrines or dogmas of 
 Scripture theology. But if they are given to under- 
 stand, at the same time, that these lessons can be 
 expected to produce no fruit till they are come to a ma- 
 ture age — that they are to grow up still in the same 
 character as other children do, who have no such in- 
 struction — what is this but to enforce the practical 
 rejection of all the lessons taught them? And which, 
 in truth, is better for them, to grow up in sin under 
 Scripture light, with a heart hardened by so many re- 
 ligious lessons; or to grow up in sin, unvexed and 
 unannoyed by the wearisome drill of lectures that only 
 discourage all practical benefit ? Which is better, to be 
 piously brought up in sin, or to be allowed quietly to 
 vegetate in it ? 
 
 These are questions that I know not how to decide ; 
 but the doubt in which they leave us will at least suffice 
 to show that Christian education has, in this view, no 
 such eminent advantages over that which is unchristian, 
 as to raise any broad and dignified distinction between 
 them. We certainly know that much of what is called 
 Christian nurture, only serves to make the subject of 
 religion odious, and that, as nearly as we can discover, 
 in exact proportion to the amount of religious teaching 
 received. And no small share of the difficulty to be 
 overcome afterwards, in the struggle of conversion, is 
 created in just this way. 
 
 On the other hand, you will hear, for example, of 
 cases like the following : A young man, correctly but 
 
WHAT CHRISTIAN NURTURE IS. 19 
 
 not religiously brought up, light and gay in Lis man- 
 ners, and thoughtless hitherto in regard to any thing of 
 a serious nature, happens accidentally one Sunday, 
 while his friends are gone to ride, to take down a book 
 on the evidences of Christianity. His eye, floating over 
 one of the pages, becomes fixed, and he is surprised to 
 find his feelings flowing out strangely into its holy 
 truths. He is conscious of no struggle of hostility, but 
 a new joy dawns in his being. Henceforth, to the end 
 of a long and useful life, he is a Christian man. The 
 love into which he was surprised continues to flow, and 
 he is remarkable, in the churches, all his life long, as 
 one of the most beautiful, healthful, and dignified ex- 
 amples of Christian piety. Now, a very little misedu- 
 cation, called Christian, discouraging the piety it teaches, 
 and making enmity itself a necessary ingredient in the 
 struggle of conversion, conversion no reality without a 
 struo^orle, mio^ht have sufficed to close the mind of this 
 man against every thought of religion to the end of 
 life. 
 
 Such facts (for the case above given is a fact and not 
 a fancy) compel us to suspect the value of much that is 
 called Christian education. They suggest the possi- 
 bility also that Christian piety should begin in other 
 and milder forms of exercise, than those which com- 
 monly distinguish the conversion of adults ; that Christ 
 himself, by that renewing Spirit who can sanctify from 
 the womb, should be practically infused into the child- 
 ish mind ; in other words, that the house, having a 
 domestic Spirit of grace dwelling in it, should become 
 
20 WHAT CHRISTIAN NURTURE IS 
 
 tlie church of childhood, the table and hearth a holy 
 rite, and life an element of saving power. Something 
 is wanted that is better than teaching, something that 
 transcends mere effort and will- work — the loveliness of 
 a good life, the repose of faith, the confidence of right- 
 eous expectation, the sacred and cheerful liberty of the 
 Spirit — all glowing about the young soul, as a warm 
 and genial nurture, and forming in it, by methods that 
 are silent and imperceptible, a spirit of duty and relig- 
 ious obedience to God. This only is Christian nurture, 
 the nurture of the Lord. 
 
 8. It is a fact that all Christian parents would like to 
 see their children grow up in piety ; and the better 
 Christians they are, the more earnestly they desire it ; 
 and, the more lovely and constant the Christian spirit 
 they manifest, the more likely it is, in general, that their 
 children will early display the Christian character. 
 This is current opinion. But why should a Christian 
 parent, the deeper his piety and the more closely he is 
 drawn to God, be led to desire, the more earnestly, 
 what, in God's view, is even absurd or impossible? 
 And, if it be generally seen that the children of such 
 are more likely to become Christians early, what forbids 
 the hope that, if they were riper still in their piety, living 
 a more single and Christ-like life, and more cultivated 
 in their views of family nurture, they might see their 
 children grow up always in piety towards God ? Or, if 
 they may not always see it as clearly as they desire, 
 might they not still be able to implant some holy prin- 
 ciple, which shall be the seed of a Christian character 
 
WHAT CHRISTIAN NURTURE If". 21 
 
 in their children, though not developed fully and visibly 
 till a later period in life ? 
 
 4. Assuming the corruption of human nature, when 
 should we think it wisest to undertake or expect a rem- 
 edy ? When evil is young and pliant to good, or when 
 it is confirmed by years of sinful habit? And when, in 
 fact, is the human heart found to be so ductile to the 
 motives of religion, as in the simple, ingenuous age of 
 childhood ? How easy is it then, as compared with the 
 stubbornness of adult years, to make all wrong seem 
 odious, all good lovely and desirable. If not discour- 
 aged by some ill-temper which bruises all the gentle 
 sensibilities, or repelled by some technical view of re- 
 ligious character which puts it beyond his age, how 
 ready is the child to be taken by good, as it were 
 beforehand, and yield his ductile nature to the truth 
 and Spirit of God, and to a fixed prejudice against all 
 that God forbids. 
 
 He can not understand, of course, in the earliest stage 
 of childhood, the philosophy of religion as a renovated 
 experience, and that is not the form of the first lessons 
 he is to receive. He is not to be told that he must 
 have a new" heart and exercise faith in Christ's atone- 
 ment. "We are to understand, that a right spirit may 
 be virtually exercised in children, when, as yet, it is 
 not intellectually received, or as a form of doctrine. 
 Tlius, if they are put upon an effort to be good, con- 
 necting the fact that God desires it and will help them 
 in the endeavor, that is all which, in a very early age, 
 they can receive, and that includes every thing — re- 
 
22 WHAT CHRISTIAN" NURTURE IS. 
 
 pentance, love, duty, dependence, faitli. Nay, the 
 operative truth necessary to a new life, may possibly 
 be communicated through and from the parent, being 
 revealed in his looks, manners, and ways of life, before 
 they are of an age to understand the teaching of words ; 
 for the Christian scheme, the gospel, is really wrapped 
 up in the life of every Christian parent, and beams out 
 from him as a living epistle, before it escapes from the 
 lips, or is taught in words. And the Spirit of truth 
 may as well make this living truth effectual, as the 
 preaching of the gospel itself 
 
 Never is it too early for good to be communicated. 
 Infancy and childhood are the ages most pliant to good. 
 And who can think it necessary that the plastic nature 
 of childhood must first be hardened into stone, and 
 stiffened into enmity towards God and all duty, before 
 it can become a candidate for Christian character ! 
 There could not be a more unnecessary mistake, and it is 
 as unnatural and pernicious, I fear, as it is unnecessary. 
 
 There are many who assume the radical goodness of 
 human nature, and the work of Christian education is, 
 in their view, only to educate or educe the good that is in 
 us. Let no one be disturbed by the suspicion of a coinci- 
 dence between what I have here said and such a theory. 
 The natural pravity of man is plainly asserted in the 
 Scriptures, and, if it were not, the familiar laws of phys- 
 iology would require us to believe, what amounts to the 
 same thing. And if neither Scripture nor physiology 
 taught us the doctrine, if the child was born as clear of 
 natural prejudice or damage, as Adam before his sin, 
 
WHAT CHRISTIAN NURTURE IS. 23 
 
 spiritual education, or, what is the same, probation, that 
 which trains a being for a stable, intelligent virtue here- 
 after, would still involve an experiment of evil, there- 
 fore a fall and a bondage under the laws of evil ; so 
 that, view the matter as we will, there is no so unrea- 
 sonable assumption, none so wide of all just philosophy, 
 as that which proposes to form a child to virtue, by 
 simply educing or drawing out what is in him. 
 
 The growth of Christian virtue is no vegetable pro- 
 cess, no mere onward development. It involves a 
 struggle with evil, a fall and a rescue. The soul be- 
 comes established in holy virtue, as a free exercise, only 
 as it is passed round the corner of fall and redemption, 
 ascending thus unto God through a double experience, 
 in which it learns the bitterness of evil and the worth 
 of good, fighting its way out of one, and achieving the 
 other as a victory. The child, therefore, may as well 
 begin life under a law of hereditary damage, as to 
 plunge himself into evil by his own experiment, which 
 he will as naturally do from the simple impulse of curi- 
 osity, or the instinct of knowledge, as from any noxious 
 quality in his mold derived by descent. For it is not 
 sin which he derives from his parents ; at least, not sin 
 in any sense which imports blame, but only some preju- 
 dice to the perfect harmony of this mold, some kind of 
 pravity or obliquity which inclines him to evil. These 
 suggestions are offered, not as necessary to be received 
 in every particular, but simply to show that the scheme 
 of education proposed, is not to be identified with 
 another, which assumes the radical goodness of human 
 
24 WHAT CHRISTIAN NURTURE IS. 
 
 nature, and according to which, if it be true, Christian 
 education is insignificant. 
 
 5. It is implied in all our religious philosophy, that 
 if a child ever does any thing in a right spirit; ever 
 loves any thing because it is good and right, it involves 
 the dawn of a new life. This we can not deny or doubt, 
 without bringing in question our whole scheme of doc- 
 trine. Is it then incredible that some really good feeling 
 should be called into exercise in a child ? In all the 
 discipline of the house, quickened as it should be by 
 the Spirit of God, is it true that he can never once be 
 brought to submit to parental authority lovingly and 
 because it is right ? Must we even hold the absurdity 
 of the scripture council — " Children obey your parents 
 in the Lord, for this is right ?" When we speak thus 
 of a love for what is right and good, we must of course 
 discriminate between the mere excitement of a natural 
 sensibility to pleasure in the contemplation of what is 
 good (of which the worst minds are more or less ca- 
 pable,) and a practicable subordination of the soul to its 
 power, a practicable embrace of its law. The child 
 must not only be touched with some gentle emotions 
 toward what is right, but he must love it with a fixed 
 love, love it for the sake of its principle, receive it it as 
 a vital and formative power. 
 
 Nor is there any age, which offers itself to God's 
 truth and love, and to that Quickening Spirit whence 
 all good proceeds, with so much of ductile feeling and 
 susceptibilities so tender. The child is under parental 
 authority too for the very purpose, it would seem, of hav- 
 
WHAT CHRISTIAN NURTURE IS 25 
 
 ing the otherwise abstract principle of all duty imper- 
 sonated in his parents, and thus brought home to his 
 practical embrace ; so that, learning to obey his parents 
 in the Lord, because it is right, he may thus receive, 
 before he can receive it intellectually, the principle of 
 all piety and holy obedience. And when he is brought 
 to exercise a spirit of true and loving submission to the 
 good law of his parents, what will you see, many times, 
 but a look of childish joy, and a happy sweetness of 
 manner, and a ready delight in authority, as like to all 
 the demonstrations of Christian experience, as any thing 
 childish can be to what is mature ? 
 
 6. Children have been so trained as never to remem- 
 ber the time when they began to be religious. Baxter 
 was, at one time, greatly troubled concerning himself, 
 because he could recollect no time when there was a 
 gracious change in his character. But he discovered, 
 at lengtK, that "education is as properly a means 
 of grace as preaching," and thus found the sweeter 
 comfort in *iis love to God, that he learned to love him 
 so early. The European churches, generally, regard 
 Christian piety more as a habit of life, formed under 
 the training of childhood, and less as a marked spiritual 
 change in experience. In Germany, for example, the 
 church includes all the people, and it is remarkable 
 that, under a scheme so loose, and with so much of per- 
 nicious error taught in the pulpit, there is yet so much 
 of deep religious feeling, so much of lovely and simple 
 character, and a savor of Christian piety so generally 
 prevalent in the community. So true is this, that the 
 
26 WHAT CHRISTIAN NURTURE IS 
 
 German people are every day spoken of as a people re- 
 ligious by nature ; no other way being observed of ac- 
 counting for the strong religious bent they manifest. 
 Whereas it is due, beyond any reasonable question, to 
 the fact that children are placed under a form of treat- 
 ment which expects them to be religious, and are not 
 discouraged by the demand of an experience above 
 their years. 
 
 Again, the Moravian Brethren, it is agreed by all, 
 give as ripe and graceful an exhibition of piety, as any 
 body of Christians living on the earth, and it is the rad- 
 ical distinction of their system that it rests its power on 
 Christian education. They make their churches schools 
 of holy nurture to childhood, and expect their children 
 to grow up there, as plants in the house of the Lord. 
 Accordingly it is affirmed that not one in ten of the 
 members of that church, recollects any time when he 
 began to be religious. Is it then incredible that what 
 has been can be? Would it not be wiser and more 
 modest, when facts are against us, to admit that there is 
 certainly some bad error, either in our life, or in our 
 doctrine, or in both, which it becomes us to amend ? 
 
 Once more, if we narrowly examine the relation of 
 parent and child, we shall not fail to discover some- 
 thing like a law of organic connection, as regards char- 
 acter, subsisting between them. Such a connection as 
 makes it easy to believe, and natural to expect, that the 
 faith of the one will be propagated in the other. Per- 
 haps I should rather say, such a connection as induces 
 the conviction that the character of one is actually in- 
 
WHAT CHRISTIAN NURTURE TS. 27 
 
 eluded in that of the other, as a seed is formed in the 
 capsule ; and being there matured, by a nutriment de- 
 rived from the stem, is gradually separated from it. It 
 is a singular fact, that many believe substantially the 
 same thing, in regard to evil character, but have no 
 thought of any such possibility in regard to good. 
 There has been much speculation, of late, as to whether 
 a child is born in depravity, or whether the depraved 
 character is superinduced afterwards. But, like many 
 other great questions, it determines much less than is 
 commonly supposed ; for, according to the most proper 
 view of the subject, a child is really not born till he 
 emerges from the infantile state, and never before that 
 time can he be said to receive a separate and properly 
 individual nature. 
 
 The declarations of Scripture, and the laws of physiol- 
 ogy, I have already intimated, compel the belief that a 
 child's nature is somehow depravated by descent from 
 parents, who are under the corrupting effects of sin. 
 But this, taken as a question relating to the uiGre punc- 
 tum temporis, or precise point of birth, is not a question 
 of any so grave import as is generally supposed ; for 
 the child, after birth, is still within the matrix of the 
 parental life, and will be, more or less, for many years. 
 And the parental life will be flowing into him all that 
 time, just as naturally, and by a law as truly organic, as 
 when the sap of the trunk flows into a limb. We must 
 not govern our thoughts, in such a matter, by our eyes ; 
 and because the physical separation has taken place, 
 conclude that no organic relation remains. Even the 
 
28 WHAT CHRISTIAN NURTURE IS. 
 
 physical being of the child is dependent still for many 
 months, in the matter of nutrition, on organic processes 
 not in itself. Meantime, the mental being and charac- 
 ter have scarcely begun to have a proper individual 
 life. Will, in connection with conscience, is the basis 
 of personality, or individuality, and these exist as yet 
 only in their rudimental type, as when the form of a 
 seed is beginning to be unfolded at the root of a flower. 
 At first, the child is held as a mere passive lump in 
 the arms, and he opens into conscious life under the soul 
 of the parent, streaming into his eyes and ears, through 
 the manners and tones of the nursery. The kind and 
 degree of passivity are gradually changed as life ad- 
 vances. A little farther on it is observed that a smile 
 wakens a smile ; any kind of sentiment or passion, play- 
 ing in the face of the parent, wakens a responsive senti- 
 ment or passion. Irritation irritates, a frown withers, 
 love expands a look congenial to itself, and why not 
 holy love ? Next the ear is opened to the understand- 
 ing of words, but what words the child shall hear, he 
 can not choose, and has as little capacity to select the 
 sentiments that are poured into his soul. Farther on, 
 the parents begin to govern him by appeals to will, ex- 
 pressed in commands, and whatever their requirement 
 may be, he can as little withstand it, as the violet can 
 cool the scorching sun, or the tattered leaf can tame the 
 hurricane. Next they appoint his school, choose his 
 books, regulate his company, decide what form of relig- 
 ion, and what religious opinions he shall be taught, by 
 takinpj him to a church of their own selection. In all 
 
what chkistian nukture is 29 
 
 this, tliey infringe upon no right of the child, they only 
 fulfill an office which belongs to them. Their will and 
 character are designed to be the matrix of the child's 
 will and character. Meantime, he approaches more and 
 more closely, and by a gradual process, to the proper 
 rank and responsibility of an individual creature, dur- 
 ing all which process of separation, he is having their 
 exercises and ways translated into him. Then, at last, 
 he comes forth to act his part in such color of evil, and 
 why not of good, as he has derived from them. 
 
 The tendency of all our modern speculations is to an 
 extreme individualism, and we carry our doctrines of 
 free will so far as to make little or nothing of organic 
 laws ; not observing that character may be, to a great 
 extent, only the free development of exercises previ- 
 ously wrought in us, or extended to ns, when other 
 wills had us within their sphere. All the Baptist theo- 
 ries of religion are based in this error. They assume, 
 as a first truth, that no such thing is possible as an or- 
 ganic connection of character, an assumption which is 
 plainly refuted by what we see with our eyes, and, as I 
 shall by and by show, by the declarations of Scripture. 
 We have much to say also, in common with the Bap- 
 tists, about the beginning of moral ageney, and we seem 
 to fancy that there is some definite moment when a child 
 becomes a moral agent, passing out of a condition where 
 he is a moral nullity, and where no moral agency 
 touches his being. Whereas he is rather to be regarded, 
 at the first, as lying within the moral agency of the 
 parent, and passing out, by degrees, through a course 
 
30 WHAT CHEISTIAN NURTURE IS 
 
 of mixed agency, to a proper independency and self- 
 possession. The supposition tliat he becomes, at some 
 certain moment, a complete moral agent, which a mo- 
 ment before he was not, is clumsy, and has no agree- 
 ment with observation. The separation is gradual. 
 He is never, at any moment after birth, to be regarded 
 as perfectly beyond the sphere of good and bad exer- 
 cises ; for the parent exercises himself in the child, play- 
 ing his emotions and sentiments, and working a charac- 
 ter in him, by virtue of an organic power. 
 
 And this is the very idea of Christian education, that 
 it begins with nurture or cultivation. And the inten- 
 tion is that the Christian life and spirit of the parents, 
 which are in and by the Spirit of Grod, shall flow into 
 the mind of the child, to blend with his incipient and 
 half-formed exercises ; that they shall thus beget their 
 own good within him — their thoughts, opinions, faith, 
 and love, which are to become a little more, and yet a 
 little more, his own separate exercise, but still the same 
 in character. The contrary assumption, that virtue 
 must be the product of separate and absolutely inde- 
 pendent choice, is pure assumption. As regards the 
 measure of personal merit and demerit, it is doubtless 
 true that every subject of God is to be responsible only 
 for what is his own. But virtue still is rather a state of 
 being than an act or series of acts ; and, if we look at 
 the causes which induce or- prepare such a state, the will 
 of the person himself may have a part among these 
 causes more or less important, and it works no absurdity 
 to suppose that one may be even prepared to such a 
 
WHAT CHRISTIAN NURTURE IS 81 
 
 state, by causes prior to his own will ; so that, when he 
 sets off to act for himself, his struggle and duty may be 
 rather to sustain and perfect the state begun, than to 
 produce a new one. Certain it is that we are never, at 
 any age, so independent as to be wholly out of the 
 reach of organic laws which affect our character. 
 
 All society is organic — the church, the state, the 
 school, the family ; and there is a spirit in each of these 
 organisms, peculiar to itself, and more or less hostile, 
 more or less favorable to religious character, and to some 
 extent, at least, sovereign over the individual man. A 
 very great share of the power in what is called a revi- 
 val of religion, is organic power ; nor is it any the less 
 divine on that account. The child is only more within 
 the power of organic laws than we all are. We possess 
 only a mixed individuality all our life long. A pure, 
 separate, individual man, living wholly within, and from 
 himself, is a mere fiction. Wo such person ever existed, 
 or ever can. I need not say that this view of an or- 
 ganic connection of character subsisting between parent 
 and child, lays a basis for notions of Christian educa- 
 tion, far different from those which now prevail, un- 
 der the cover of a merely fictitious and mischievous 
 individualism. 
 
 Perhaps it may be necessary to add, that, in the strong 
 language I have used concerning the organic connection 
 of character between the parent and the child, it is not 
 designed to assert a power in the parent to renew the 
 child, or that the child can be renewed by any agency 
 of the Spirit less immediate, than that which renews the 
 
82 WHAT CHRISTIAN NURTURE IS 
 
 parent himself. When a germ is formed on the stem 
 of any plant, the formative instinct of the plant may be 
 said in one view to produce it ; but the same solar heat 
 which quickens the plant, must quicken also the germ, 
 and sustain the internal action of growth, by a common 
 presence in both. So, if there be an organic power of 
 character in the parent, such as that of which I have 
 spoken, it is not a complete power in itself, but only such 
 a power as demands the realizing presence of the Spirit 
 of God, both in the parent and the child, to give it 
 effect. As Paul said, "I have begotten you through 
 the gospel," so may we say of the parent, who, having 
 a living gospel enveloped in his life, brings it into or- 
 ganic connection with the soul of childhood. But the 
 declaration excludes the necessity of a divine influence, 
 not more in one case than in the other. 
 
 Such are some of the considerations that offer them- 
 selves, viewing our subject on the human side, or as it 
 appears in the light of human evidence — all concurring 
 to produce the conviction, that it is the only true idea 
 of Christian education, that the child is to grow up in 
 the life of the parent, and be a Christian in principle, 
 from his earliest years. 
 
II. 
 
 WHAT CHRISTIAN NURTURE IS. 
 
 _ "Bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord." — Ep7ie~ 
 sians^ vi. 4. 
 
 "We proceed now to inquire — 
 
 II. How far God, in the revelation made of his cliar- 
 acter and will, favors the view of Christian nurture 
 vindicated, in a former discourse, by arguments and 
 evidences of an inferior nature ? And — 
 
 1. According to all that God has taught us concern- 
 ing his own dispositions, he desires on his part, that 
 children should grow up in piety, as earnestly as the 
 parent can desire it ; nay, as much more earnestly, as 
 he hates sin more intensely, and desires good with less 
 mixture of qualification. Goodness, or the production 
 of goodness, is the supreme end of God, and therefore, 
 we know, on first principles, that he desires to bestow 
 whatsoever spiritual grace is necessary to the moral 
 renovation of childhood, and will do it, unless some 
 collateral reasons in his plan, involving the extension 
 of holy virtue, require him to withhold. 
 
 Thus, if nothing were hung upon parental faithful- 
 ness and example, if the child were not used, in some 
 degree or way, as an argument, to hold the parent to a 
 life of Christian diligence, then the good principle in 
 
34 WHAT CHRISTIAN NURTURE IS. 
 
 the parent miglit lack the necessary stimulus to bring it 
 to maturity. Or, if all children alike, in spite of the 
 evil and unchristian example of the house, were to 
 be started into life as spiritually renewed, one of the 
 strongest motives to holy living would be taken away 
 from parents, in the fact that their children are safe 
 as regards a good beginning, without any carefulness 
 in them, or prayerfulness in their life ; and their own 
 virtue might so overgrow itself with weeds, as never to 
 attain to a sound maturity. Let it be enough to know, 
 on first principles in the character of God, that he will 
 so dispense his spiritual agency to you and to your 
 children, as to produce, considering the freedom of you 
 both, the best measure and the ripest state of holy vir- 
 tue. And how far short is this of the conclusion, that 
 if you live as you ought and may yourselves, God will 
 so dispense his Spirit that you may see your children 
 grow up in piety? 
 
 Observe, too, that he expressly pledges his Holy Spirit 
 to you, as one of his first gifts, and, what is more, even 
 commands you to be filled with the Spirit ; and consid- 
 ering the organic relation that subsists, by his own ap- 
 pointment, between you and your children, how far off 
 is he, in this, from pledging you a mercy that accrues 
 to their benefit ? He appoints you also to be a light to 
 the world, and, by the grace he pours into your being, 
 prepares you to be ; how much more a light to minds 
 that are fed by simple nurture from your own ? And 
 when you consider how fond he is, if I may so speak, 
 in the blessings he pours on the good, of gathering their 
 
WHAT CHRISTIAN NURTURE IS. 85 
 
 children with them in the same circle of favor, how 
 many of his promises, in all ages, run — "to you and to 
 your children," what better assurance can you reason- 
 ably ask, to fortify your confidence in whatever spirit- 
 ual grace may be necsssary to your utmost success ? 
 
 2. If there be any such thing as Christian nurture, 
 distinguished from that which is not Christian, which is 
 generally admitted, and, by the Scriptures clearly as- 
 serted, then is it some kind of nurture which God ap- 
 points. Does it then accord with the known character 
 of God, to appoint a scheme of education, the only 
 proper result of which shall be that children are trained 
 up under it in sin ? It would not be more absurd to 
 suppose that God has appointed church education, to 
 produce a first crop of sin, and then a crop of holiness. 
 God appoints nothing of which sin, and only sin, is to 
 be the proper and legitimate result, whether for a longer 
 or a shorter time ; least of all, a mode of training which 
 is to produce sin. Holy virtue is the aim of every plan 
 God adopts, every means he prescribes, and we have no 
 right to look only for sin, in that which he has ap- 
 pointed as a means of virtue. A¥e can not do it under- 
 standingly without great impiety. 
 
 3. God does expressly lay it upon us to expect that 
 our children will grow up in piety, under the parental 
 nurture, and assumes the possibility that such a result 
 may ordinarily be realized. " Train up a child " — how ? 
 for future conversion ? — No, " but in the way he should 
 go, that when he is old he may not depart from it." If 
 it be said that this relates only to outward habits of vir- 
 
36 WHAT CHRISTIAN NURTURE IS. 
 
 tue and vice, not to spiritual life, the Old Testament, I 
 reply, does not raise that distinction, as it is raised in 
 the New. It puts all good together, all evil together, 
 and regards a child trained up in the way he should go, 
 as going in all the ways, and fulfilling all the ideas of 
 virtue. The phraseology of the N"ew Testament carries 
 the same import. " Bring them up in the nurture and 
 admonition of the Lord," a form of expression, which 
 indicates the existence of a Divine nurture, that is to 
 encompass the child and mold him unto God ; so that 
 he shall be brought up, as it were, in Him. 
 
 4. A time is foretold, as our chnrches generally be- 
 lieve, when all shall know God, even from the least to 
 the greatest ; that is, shall spiritually know him, or so 
 that there shall be no need of exhorting one another to 
 know him ; for intellectual knowledge is not carried by 
 exhortation. If such a time is ever to come, then, at 
 least, children are to grow up in Christ. Can it come 
 too soon ? And, if we have the opinion that any such 
 thing is impossible, either we, or those who come after 
 Tis, must get rid of it. A principal reason why the 
 great expectations of the future, that we, in this age, 
 are giving out so confidently, seem only visionary and 
 idle dreams to many, is that we are perpetually assum- 
 ing their impossibility ourselves. Our very theory of 
 religion is, that men are to grow up in evil, and be 
 dragged into the church of God by conquest. The 
 world is to lie in halves, and the kingdom of God is to 
 stretch itself side by side with the kingdom of darkness, 
 making sallies into it, and taking captive those who are 
 
"WHAT CHRISTIAN NURTURE IS. 37 
 
 sufficiently hardened and bronzed in guiltiness to be 
 converted 1 
 
 Thus we assume even the absurdity of all our expect- 
 ations in regard to the possible advancement of human 
 society and the universal prevalence of Christian virtue. 
 And thus we throw an air of extravagance and unrea- 
 son over all we do. Whereas there is a sober and 
 rational possibility, that human society should be "uni- 
 versally pervaded by Christian virtue. The Christian 
 scheme has a scope of intention, and instruments and 
 powers adequate to this : it descends upon the world to 
 claim all souls for its dominion — all men of all climes, 
 all ages from childhood to the grave. It is, indeed, a 
 plan which supposes the existence of sin, and sin will 
 be in the world, and in all hearts in it, as long as the 
 world or human society continues ; but the scheme has 
 a breadth of conception, and has powers and provisions 
 embodied in it, which, apart from all promises and pre^ 
 dictions, certify us of a day when it will reign in all 
 human hearts, and all that live shall live in Christ. Let 
 us either renounce any such confidence, or show, by a 
 thorough consistency in our religious doctrines, that we 
 hold it deliberately and manfully. 
 
 5. We discover in the Scriptures that the organic 
 law, of which I have spoken, is distinctly recognized, 
 and that character in children is often regarded as, in 
 some very important sense, derivative from their parents. 
 It is thus that " sin has passed upon all men." " By 
 the offense of one, judgment came upon all." Christian 
 faith is also spoken of in a similar way — " The un- 
 
38 WHAT CHRISTIAN NURTURE IS. 
 
 feigned faith, whicli dwelt first, in thy grandmother Lois, 
 and thy mother Eunice, and, I am persuaded, that in 
 thee also." Not that, in the bald and naked sense, it 
 had descended thus through three generations. But 
 the apostle conceives a power, in the good life of these 
 mothers, that must needs transmit some flavor of piety. 
 In like manner, God is represented as " keeping cove- 
 nant and mercy with them that love him and keep his 
 commandments, to a thousand generations ;" which, if it 
 signifies any thing, amounts to a declaration that he will 
 spiritually own and bless every succeeding generation, 
 to the end of the world, if only the preceding will live 
 so as to be fit vehicles of his blessing ; for it is not any 
 covenant, as a form of mutual contract, which carries 
 the divine favor, but it is the loving Him rather, and 
 keeping His commandments, by an upright, godly life, 
 which sets the parents on terms of friendship with God, 
 and secures the inhabitation of his power. 
 
 Declarations like those in the eighteenth chapter of 
 Ezekiel, '' the son shall not bear the iniquity of the 
 father," — "the soul that sinneth, it shall die," — are 
 hastily applied by many, not to show that the child is 
 to be punished only for his own sin, which is their true 
 import, but, as if it were the same thing, to disprove the 
 fact of an organic connection, by which children receive 
 a character from their parents. Whereas this latter is 
 a truth which we see with our eyes, and one that is con- 
 stantly af&rmed in the Scriptures, both in respect to bad 
 character and to good. " God layeth up the iniquity of 
 the wicked for his children," — "Visiting the iniquities 
 
WHAT CHRISTIAN NURTURE IS. 89 
 
 of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth 
 generation." By which we are to understand, what is 
 every day exhibited in actual historic proof, that the 
 wickedness of parents propagates itself in the character 
 and condition of their children, and that it ordinarily 
 requires three or four generations to ripen the sad har- 
 vest of misery and debasement. Again, on the other 
 side, " he hath blessed thy children with thee," — " For 
 the good of them and their children after them," — " For 
 the promise is to you and to your children." The Scrip- 
 tures have a perpetual habit, if I may so speak, of asso- 
 ciating children with the character and destiny of their 
 parents. In this respect, they maintain a marked con- 
 trast with the extreme individualism of our modern 
 philosophy. They do not always regard the individual 
 as an isolated unit, but they often look upon men as 
 they exist, in families and races, and under organic 
 laws. 
 
 Something has undoubtedly been gained to modern 
 theology, as a human science, by fixing the attention 
 strongly upon the individual man, as a moral agent, im- 
 mediately related to God, and responsible only for his 
 own actions ; at the same time there was a truth, an 
 important truth, underlying the old doctrine of federal 
 headship and original or imputed sin, though strangely 
 misconceived, which we seem, in our one-sided specula- 
 tions, to have quite lost sight of. And how can we 
 ever attain to any right conception of organic duties, 
 until we discover the reality of organic powers and rela- 
 tions ? And how can we hope to set ourselves in har- 
 
40 WHAT CHKISTIAN NURTURE IS 
 
 mony with the Scriptures, in regard to family nurture, 
 or household baptism, or any other kindred subject, 
 while our theories include, or overlook precisely that, 
 which is the base of their teachings, and appointments ? 
 This brings me to my — ■ 
 
 Last argument, which is drawn from infant or house- 
 hold baptism — a rite which supposes the fact of an or- 
 ganic connection of character between the parent and 
 the child ; a seal of faith in the parent, applied over to 
 the child, on the ground of a presumption that his faith 
 is wrapped up in the parent's faith ; so that he is ac- 
 counted a believer from the beginning. We must dis- 
 tinguish here between a fact and a presumption of fact. 
 If you look upon a seed of wheat, it contains, in itself, 
 presumptively, a thousand generations of wheat, though 
 by reason of some fault in the cultivation, or some speck 
 of diseased matter in itself, it may, in fact, never repro- 
 duce at all. So the Christian parent has, in his charac- 
 ter, a germ, which has power, presumptively, to produce 
 its like in his children, though by reason of some bad 
 fault in itself, or possibly some outward hindrance in 
 the Church, or some providence of death, it may fail to 
 do so. Thus it is that infant baptism becomes an ap- 
 propriate rite. It sees the child in the parent, counts 
 him presumptively a believer and a Christian, and, with 
 the parent, baptizes him also. Furthermore, you will 
 perceive that it must be presumed, either that the child 
 will grow up a believer, or that he will not. The Bap-, 
 tist presumes that he will not, and therefore declares the 
 right to be inappropriate. God presumes that he will. 
 
WHAT CHEISTIAN NURTURE IS. 41 
 
 and therefore appoints it. The Baptist tells the child 
 that nothing but sin can be expected of him ; God tells 
 him that for his parents' sakes, whose faith he is to fol- 
 low, he has written his own name upon him, and ex- 
 pects him to grow up in all duty and piety. 
 
 I have no desire to press the passages in which men- 
 tion is made of household baptism beyond their true 
 import. When Paul is said to have "baptized the 
 household of Stephanas," our Baptist friends reply that 
 the text proves nothing, in respect to infant baptism, 
 because it can not be shown that there were any chil- 
 dren in the household ; and some, who practice infant 
 baptism, have conceded the sufficiency of the objection. 
 But the power of this proof- text does not depend, in 
 the least, on the fact that there were children in the 
 household of Stephanas, but simply on the form of the 
 language. Indeed, it has always seemed to me that the 
 argument for infant baptism is rather strengthened than 
 weakened, by the supposition that there were, in fact, 
 no infants or children in this household ; for a house- 
 hold generally contains children, and a term so inclu- 
 sive in its import, could never come into use, unless it 
 was the practice for baptism to go by households. 
 Under a practice like that of our Baptist brethren, what 
 preacher would ever be heard to speak, in this general 
 inclusive way, of having baptized a household ? In 
 the case of the jailor, too, the same reasoning holds. 
 Here, however, our Baptist brethren go farther, endeav- 
 oring to show positively, from the language used, that 
 there were no infants or children in the household : for 
 
4:2 WHAT CHRISTIAN NURTURE IS. 
 
 when it is said tliat tlie jailor "rejoiced, believing in 
 God with all his house," it is argued that, inasmuch as 
 infant children are incapable of believing, there could 
 have been no infants in the family. Admitting the cor- 
 rectness of the translation, which some have questioned, 
 the argument seems rather plausible as a turn of logic, 
 than just and convincing ; for, if we consider the more 
 decisive position held in that age by the heads of fami- 
 lies, and how, in common speech, they were supposed 
 to carry the religion of the family with them, we shall 
 be convinced that nothing was more natural than the 
 very language here used. It was taken for granted, as 
 a matter of common understanding, that, in a change 
 of religion, the children went with the parents : if they 
 became Jews, that their children would be Jews ; if 
 Christian believers, that their children would be Chris 
 tians. Hence all the terms used, in reference to their 
 religion, took the most inclusive form. If one believed 
 in God, he believed with all his house : the change he 
 suffered, in the common understanding of the age, car- 
 ried the house with him ; and it occurred to no one to 
 question the literal exactness of such like inclusive terms. 
 It has been a fashion, with many modern critics, to 
 surrender both these passages as proofs of infant bap- 
 tism, and they certainly do not prove it, in just the way 
 in which many have used them as proof- texts. But if 
 any one will seek a point of view, whence he may be 
 able to give a natural and easy interpretation to the lan- 
 guage used, or if he will ask, on the simple doctrine of 
 chances, what chance there was that these two house- 
 
WHAT CHRISTIAN" NURTURE IS 43 
 
 holds should include no children, and moreover what 
 chance that, in the only two cases of household baptism 
 mentioned in the Scripture, the households should have 
 been distinguished by this singularity, he will be as 
 little likely as possible, to concede the fact that infant 
 baptism is not adequately proved by these passages. 
 
 But the true idea of these passages, and also of the 
 rite itself, is seen most evidently in the history of its 
 establishment by Christ, in the third chapter of John. 
 The Jewish nation regarded other nations as unclean. 
 Hence, when a Gentile family wished to become Jewish 
 citizens, they were baptized in token of cleansing. Then 
 they were said to be re-born, or regenerated, so as to be 
 accounted true descendants of Abraham. We use the 
 term naturalize^ that is, to make natural born, in the same 
 sense. But Christ had come to set up a spiritual king- 
 dom, the kingdom of heaven ; and finding all men aliens, 
 and spiritually unclean, he applies over the rite of bap- 
 tism, which was familiar to the Jews, (" art thou a Mas- 
 ter in Israel, and knowest not these things ? ") giving it 
 a higher sense. " Except a man be born of water and 
 of the Spirit, he can not enter the kingdom of heaven." 
 But the Gentile proselyte, according to the custom here 
 described — here is the point of the argument — came 
 with his family. They were all baptized together, 
 young and old, all regenerated or naturalized together ; 
 and therefore, in the new application made of the rite 
 to signify spiritual cleansing and regeneration, it is un- 
 derstood, of course, that children are to come with their 
 parents. To have excluded them would have been, to 
 
44: WHAT CHRISTIAN NURTURE IS. 
 
 every Jewish mind, tlie higlit of absurdity. They 
 could not have been excluded^ without express excep- 
 tion, and no exception was made. 
 
 Some have questioned whether proselyte baptism 
 existed at this early age ; but of this the third chapter 
 of John is itself conclusive proof; for how else was 
 baptism familiarly known to the Jews as connected with- 
 regeneration; that is, civil regeneration? There is 
 always a historic reason for religious rites and for usages 
 of language ; and you will find it impossible to suppose 
 that Christ appointed baptism, and set the rite in con- 
 nection with spiritual regeneration, by any mere acci- 
 dent, or without some historic basis, answering to that 
 which I have just described. In "this manner, all his 
 language, in the interview with Xicodemus, becomes 
 natural and easy. 
 
 It follows that the children of Christian disciples, 
 being baptized with their parents, as the children of 
 Grentile proselytes were baptized with theirs, would be 
 taken or presumed by the church to be spiritually 
 cleansed, in the same manner. Accordingly, just as the 
 children of Jews were accounted Jews, and not as un- 
 clean, when one of the parents was a Jew, so Paul tells 
 us, that in the church of God, the believing party sanc- 
 tifies the unbelieving, " else were your children unclean, 
 but now are they holy ; " showing that the Jewish analo- 
 gies, in regard to children, were in fact translated, or 
 passed over to the church, and adopted there — a trans- 
 lation that naturally followed, from the reapplication 
 of proselyte baptism. 
 
WHAT CHRISTIAN NURTURE IS 45 
 
 Then passing into the early history of the church, we 
 hear Justin Martyr saying: "There are some of us, 
 eighty years old, who were made disciples to Christ in 
 their childhood ;" that is, in the age of the apostles, and 
 while they were yet living ; for it was now less than 
 eighty years since their death. And in the expression 
 '''■made disciples ^^^ taken in connection with the baptis- 
 mal formula, " Go disciple all nations, baptizing," &c., 
 we see that he alludes to baptism ; for baptism was the 
 rite that introduced the subject into the Christian school 
 as a disciple ; and what so natural as that the children 
 of disciples should be disciples with them ? 
 
 Then again, Ireneus, who lived within one generation 
 of the apostles, gives us the second mention of this rite 
 which appears in history, when he says: " Christ came 
 to save all persons through himself; all, I say, who 
 through him are regenerated unto God : infants and 
 little ones, and children and youth, and the aged." 
 Which phrase, " regenerated unto God,^^ applied to parents 
 and little ones, alludes to baptism : showing that a no- 
 tion of baptism, as connected with regeneration, coinci- 
 dent with that which we found in the third chapter of 
 John, was then current in the church. 
 
 I have been thus full upon the rite of baptism, not 
 because that is my subject, but because the rite involves, 
 in all its grounds and reasons, the same view of Chris- 
 tion education which I am seeking to establish. One 
 can not be thoroughly understood and received without 
 the other. And it is precisely on this account that we 
 have so great difficulty in sustaining the rite of infant 
 
46 WHAT CHRISTIAN NURTURE IS 
 
 baptism. It oiiglit to be difficult to sustain any rite, 
 after the sense of it is wholly gone from us. You per- 
 ceive, too, in this exposition, that the view of Christian 
 nurture I am endeavoring to vindicate, is not new, but 
 is older, by far, than the one now prevalent — as old as 
 the Christian church. It is radically one with the an- 
 cient doctrine of baptism and regeneration, advanced 
 by Christ, and accepted by the first fathers. 
 
 We have much to say of baptismal regeneration as a 
 great error, which undoubtedly it is, in the form in 
 which it is held ; but it is only a less hurtful error than 
 some of us hold in denying it. The distinction between 
 our doctrine of baptismal regeneration, and the ancient 
 Scripture view, is too broad and palpable to be mis- 
 taken. According to the modern church dogma, no 
 faith, in the parents, is necessary to the effect of the rite. 
 Sponsors, too, are brought in between all parents and 
 their duty, to assume the very office which belongs only 
 to them. And, what is worse, the child is said to be 
 actually regenerated by the act of the priest. Accord- 
 ing to the more ancient view, or that of the Scriptures, 
 nothing depends upon the priest or minister, save that 
 he execute the rite in due form. The regeneration is 
 not actual, but only presumptive, and every thing de- 
 pends upon the organic law of character pertaining be- 
 tween the parent and the child, the church and the child, 
 thus upon duty and holy living and gracious exam- 
 ple. The child is too young to choose the rite for him- 
 self, but the parent, having him as it were in his own 
 life, is allowed the confidence that his own faith and 
 
WHAT CHRISTIAN NURTURE IS 47 
 
 character will be reproduced in the child, and grow up 
 in his growth, and that thus the propriety of the rite as 
 a seal of faith will not be violated. In giving us this 
 rite, on the grounds stated, God promises, in fact, on 
 his part, to dispense that spiritual grace which is neces- 
 sary to the fulfillment of its import. In this way too 
 is it seen that the Christian economy has a place for 
 persons of all ages ; for it would be singular if, after all 
 we say of the universality of God's mercy as a gift to 
 the human race, it could yet not limber itself to man, 
 so as to adapt a place for the age of childhood, but must 
 leave a full fourth part of the race, the part least hard- 
 ened in evil and tenderest to good, unrecognized and 
 unprovided for — gathering a flock without lambs, or, I 
 should rather say, gathering a flock away from the 
 lambs. Such is not the spirit of Him who said, " for- 
 bid them not, for of such is the kingdom of heaven." 
 Therefore we bring them into the school of Christ and 
 the pale of his mercy with us, there to be trained up in 
 the holy nurture of the Lord. And then the result is 
 to be tested afterwards, or at an advanced period of life, 
 by trying their character in the same way as the char- 
 acter of all Christians is tried ; for many are baptized 
 in adult age, who truly do not believe, as is afterwards 
 discovered. And yet our Baptist brethren never re- 
 baptize them, notwithstanding all they say of faith as 
 the necessary condition of baptism. 
 
 But there are two objections to this view of Christian 
 nurture, which, if they are not removed, may even suf- 
 fice to break the force of my argument. 
 
48 WHAT CHRISTIAN NURTURE IS. 
 
 1. A theoretical objection, that it leaves no room for 
 the sovereignty of God, in appointing the moral char- 
 acter of men and families. Thus it is declared that " all 
 are not Israel who are of Israel," and that God, before 
 the children Jacob and Esau had done either good or 
 evil, professed his love to one, and his rejection of the 
 other. But the wonder is, in this case of Rebecca and 
 her children, that such a mother did not ruin them both. 
 A partial mother, scorning one child, teaching the other 
 to lie and trick his blind father, and extort from a starv- 
 ing brother his birthright honor, can not be said to fur- 
 nish a very good test of the power of Christian educa- 
 tion. But show me the case, where the whole conduct 
 of the parents has been such as it should be to produce 
 the best effects, and where the sovereignty of God has 
 appointed the ruin of the children, whether all, or any 
 one of them. The sovereignty of God has always a 
 relation to means, and we are not authorized to think 
 of it, in any case, as separated from means. 
 
 2. An objection from observation — asking why it is, 
 if our doctrine be ^rue, that many persons, remarkable 
 for their piety, have yet been so unfortunate in their 
 children ? Because, I answer, many persons, remark- 
 able for their piety, are yet very disagreeable persons, 
 and that too, by reason of some very marked defect in 
 their religious character. They display just that spirit, 
 and act in just that manner, which is likely to make 
 religion odious — the more odious, the more urgently 
 they commend it, Sometimes they appear well to the 
 world one remove distant from them, they shine well in 
 
WHAT CHRISTIAN NURTURE IS. 49 
 
 their written biography, but one living in their family 
 will know what others do not ; and if their children 
 turn out badly, will never be at a loss for the reason. 
 Many persons, too, have such defective views of the 
 manner of teaching appropriate to early childhood, that 
 they really discourage their children. " Fathers pro- 
 voke not your children to anger," says one, " lest they 
 be discouraged ;" implying that there is such a thing as 
 encouraging, and such a thing as discouraging good 
 principle and piety in a child. And there are other 
 ways of discouraging children besides provoking them 
 to an angry and wounded feeling by harsh ^eatment. 
 
 I once took up a book, from a Sabbath-school library, 
 one problem of which was to teach a child that he wants 
 a new heart. A lovely boy (for it was a narrative) was 
 called every day to resolve that he would do no wrong 
 that day, a task which he undertook most cheerfully, 
 at first, and even with a show of delight. But, before 
 the sun went down, he was sure to fall into some ill- 
 temper or be overtaken by some infirmity. Where- 
 upon, the conclusion was immediately sprung upon 
 him that he " wanted a new heart." We are even 
 amazed that any teacher of ordinary intelligence should 
 not once have imagined how she herself, or how the 
 holiest Christian living, would fare under such kind of 
 regimen ; how she would discover every day, and prob- 
 ably some hours before sunset, that she too wanted a 
 new heart ? And the practical cruelty of the experi- 
 ment is yet more to be deplored, than its want of con- 
 sideration. Had the problem been how to discourage 
 
50 WHAT CHRISTIAN NURTURE IS. 
 
 most effectually every ingenuous struggle of diildhood, 
 no readier or surer method could Have been devised. 
 
 Simply to tell a child, as he just begins to make 
 acquaintance with words, that he " must have a new 
 heart before he can be good," is to inflict a double dis- 
 couragement. First, he can not guess what this tech- 
 nical phraseology means, and thus he takes up the 
 impression that he can do or think nothing right, till 
 he is able to comprehend what is above his age — why 
 then should he make the endeavor ? Secondly, he is told 
 that he must have a new heart hefoi^e he can be good, 
 not that he may hope to exercise a renewed spirit, in 
 the endeavor to be good — why then attempt what must 
 be worthless, till something previous befalls him ? Dis- 
 couraged thus on every side, his tender soul turns hither 
 and thither, in hopeless despair, and finally he consents 
 to be what he must — a sinner against God, and that 
 only. Well is it, under such a process, wearing down 
 his childish soul into soreness and despair of good, seal- 
 ing up his nature in silence and cessation as regards all 
 right endeavors, and compelling him to turn his feel- 
 ings into other channels, where he shall find his good 
 in evil — well is it, I sa}^, if he has not contracted a dis- 
 like to the very subject of religion, as inveterate as the 
 subject is impossible. 
 
 Many teach in this way, no doubt, with the best in- 
 tentions imaginable ; their design is only to be faithful, 
 and sometimes they appear even to think that the more 
 they discourage their children, the better and more faith- 
 ful they are. But the mistake, if not cruelly meant, is 
 
WHAT CHRISTIAN NURTURE IS. 51 
 
 certainly most cruel in the experience ; and it is just 
 this mistake, I am confident, which accounts for a large 
 share of the unhappy failures made by Christian pa- 
 rents, in the training of their children. Eather should 
 they begin with a kind of teaching suited to the age of 
 the child. First of all, they should rather seek to teach 
 a feeling than a doctrine ; to bathe the child in their own 
 feeling of love to God, and dependence on him, and 
 contrition for wrong before him, bearing up their child's 
 heart in their own, not fearing to encourage every good 
 motion they can call into exercise ; to make what is 
 good, happy and attractive, what is wrong, odious and 
 hateful ; then as the understanding advances, to give it 
 food suited to its capacity, opening upon it, gradually 
 the more difficult views of Christian doctrine and 
 experience. 
 
 Sometimes Christian parents fail of success in the 
 religious training of their children, because the church 
 counteracts their effort and example. The church 
 makes a bad atmosphere about the house, and the poi- 
 son comes in at the doors and windows. It is rent by 
 divisions, burnt up by fanaticism, frozen by the chill 
 of a worldly spirit, petrified in a rigid and dead ortho- 
 doxy. It makes no element of genial warmth and love 
 about the child, according to the intention of Christ in 
 its appointment, but gives to religion, rather, a forbid- 
 ding aspect, and thus, instead of assisting the parent, 
 becomes one of the worst impediments to his success. 
 What kind of element the world makes about the child 
 is of little consequence ; for here there is no pretence 
 
52 WHAT CHRISTIAN NURTURE IS. 
 
 of piety. But wlien the school of Christ makes itself 
 an element of sin and death, the child's baptism be- 
 comes as great a fiction as the church itself, and the 
 arrangements of divine mercy fail of their intended 
 power. There are, in short, too many ways of account- 
 ing for the failure of success, in the family training of 
 those who are remarkable for their piety, without being 
 led to doubt the correctness of my argument in these 
 discourses. 
 
 To sum up all, we conclude, not that every child can 
 certainly be made to grow up in Christian piety — noth- 
 ing is gained by asserting so much, and perhaps I could 
 not prove it to be true, neither can any one prove the 
 contrary — I merely show that this is the true idea and 
 aim of Christian nurture as a nurture of the Lord. It 
 is presumptively true that such a result can be realized, 
 just as it is presumptively true that a school will for- 
 ward the pupils in knowledge, though possibly some- 
 times it may fail to do it. And, without such a pre- 
 sumption, no parent can do his duty and fill his ofiice 
 well, any more than it is possible to make a good school, 
 in the expectation that the scholars will learn something 
 five or ten years hence, and not before. 
 
 To give this subject its practical effect, let me 
 urge it — 
 
 1. [Jpon the careful attention of those who neglect, 
 or decline, offering their children in baptism. Some of 
 you are simply indifferent to this duty, not seeing what 
 good it can do to baptize a child ; others have positive 
 theological objections to it. With the former class I 
 
WHAT CHRISTIAN NURTURE IS. 63 
 
 certainly agree, so far as to admit that baptism, as an 
 operation, can do no good to your child ; but, if it has 
 no importance in what it operates, it has the greatest 
 importance in what it signifies ; and, what is more to be 
 tieplored by yon, the withholding it signifies as much, 
 viz : that you yourselves have no sense of the relation 
 that subsists between your character and that of your 
 child, and as little of the mercy that Christ intends for 
 your child, by including him with you in his fold, to 
 grow up there by your side in the same common hopes. 
 Had you any just sense of these things, you would look 
 upon the baptism of your child as a rite of as great 
 importance and spiritual propriety as your own ; for, in 
 neither case, has the form any value beyond what it 
 signifies. The other class among you suffer the same 
 defect ; for it is my settled conviction that no man ever 
 objected to infant baptism, who had not at the bottom 
 of his objections, false views of Christian education — 
 who did not hold a notion of individualism, in regard 
 to Christian character in childhood, which is justified, 
 neither by observation nor by Scripture. 
 
 It is the prevalence of false views, on this subject, 
 which creates so great difficulty in sustaining infant 
 baptism in our churches. If children are to grow up 
 in sin, to be converted -when they come to the age of 
 maturity, if this is the only aim and expectation of 
 family nurture, there really is no meaning or dignity 
 whatever in the rite. They are even baptized into sin, 
 and every propriety of the rite as a seal of faith is vio- 
 lated. And it is the feeling of this impropriety which 
 
54 WHAT CHKISTIAN NUETURE IS. 
 
 lies at tlie basis of all your objections. Eeturning to 
 tlie old Scripture doctrine of an organic law, connecting 
 the cliild morally with the parents, so that he is, as it 
 were, included in them, to grow up in their life ; per- 
 ceiving then that he is a kind of rudimental being, 
 coming up gradually into a separate and complete indi- 
 viduality, having the parental life extended to him, first, 
 with an almost absolutely controlling power, then less 
 and less, till he takes, at length, the helm of his own 
 spirit — every difficulty that you now feel vanishes, and 
 the rite of infant baptism becomes one of the greatest 
 beauty, and perfectly coincident with the spirit and the 
 rules of adult baptism. The very command, " believe 
 and be baptized," of which so much is made, is exactly 
 met, and with no modifications, save what are necessary 
 to suit the peculiar state and age of childhood : for the 
 child, being included as it were in the parental life, is 
 accounted presumptively one with the parents, and 
 sealed with the seal of their faith. 
 
 And it would certainly be very singular if Christ 
 Jesus, in a scheme of mercy for the world, had found 
 no place for infants. and little children: more singular 
 still, if he had given them the place of adults ; and 
 worse than singular, if he had appointed them to years 
 of sin as the necessary preparation for his mercy. But 
 if you see him counting them one with you, bringing 
 them tenderly into his fold with you, there to grow up 
 in him, you will not doubt that he has given them a 
 place exactly and beautifully suited to them. And is 
 it for you to withhold them from that place ? Is it 
 
WHAT CHRISTIAN NURTURE IS. 55 
 
 worttiy of your tenderness, as a Christian parent, to 
 leave tliem outside of the fold, when the gate is open, 
 only taking care to go in yourself? I will not accuse 
 you of intended wrong, but I am quite sure your 
 thoughts are not as God's thoughts, and I ask you to 
 study this question again, and more deeply. You are 
 giving your children, as they grow up, impressions that 
 will assuredly be very injurious to them, and robbing 
 them of impressions that would have great power and 
 value to their minds. What can be worse, what can 
 make them aliens, more sensibly, from Christ's sympa- 
 thies, what can more effectually discourage and chill 
 them to all thoughts of a good life, than to make them 
 feel that Christ has no place for them till their sins are 
 ripe, and they are capable of a grace that is now above 
 their years ? What more persuasive, than to know that 
 he has taken them into his school already, to grow up 
 round him as disciples ? And if God should call you to 
 himself, what will draw upon their hearts more tenderly 
 than to remember that the father and mother whose 
 name they revere, brought them believingly in with 
 themselves, to be owned in that general assembly of the 
 just which occupies both worlds, and become partakers 
 with them there, in the grace which is now their song ? 
 You rob yourselves too of an influence which is nec- 
 essary to a right fulfillment of your duty. Their char- 
 acter, you say, is their own ; let them believe for them- 
 selves and be baptized when they will. You have 
 never the same genial feeling that you would, if you 
 regarded them as morally linked to your character and 
 
56 WHAT CHRISTIAN NURTURE IS. 
 
 drawing from you the mold of their being. You are not 
 kept in the same state of carefulness and spiritual ten- 
 derness. ISTo matter if you are cold to them, at times, 
 and do not always live Christ in the house, they are 
 growing up to be converted, and almost any thing is 
 good enough for conversion I Christ himself, too, has no 
 such relation to you, in your family, as to make your 
 piety a domestic spirit. He has not gathered your chil- 
 dren round you, as a flock of young disciples, pouring 
 all his tenderness into your family ties, to make them ve- 
 hicles of mercy and blessing. Once more I ask you to 
 consider whether God is not better to you than you your- 
 selves have thought, and whether, in withholding your 
 children from God, you are not like to fall as far short 
 of your duty, as you do of the privilege offered you. 
 
 2. What motives are laid upon all Christian parents, 
 by the doctrine I have established, to make the first 
 article of family discipline a constant and careful disci- 
 pline of themselves. I would not undervalue a strong 
 and decided government in families. No family can be 
 rightly trained without it. But there is a kind of vir- 
 tue, my brethren, which is not in the rod — the virtue, I 
 mean, of a truly good and sanctified life. And a reign 
 of brute force is much more easily maintained, than a 
 reign whose power is righteousness and love. There 
 are, too, I must warn you, many who talk much of the 
 rod as the orthodox symbol of parental duty, but who 
 might really as well be heathens as Christians; who 
 only storm about their house with heathenish ferocity, 
 who lecture, and threaten, and castigate, and bruise. 
 
WHAT CHRISTIAN NURTURE IS. 57 
 
 and call this family government. They even dare to 
 speak of this as the nurture of the Lord. So much 
 easier is it to be violent than to be holy, that they sub- 
 stitute force for goodness and grace, and are wholly 
 unconscious of the imposture. It is frightful to think 
 how they batter and bruise the delicate, tender souls 
 of their children, extinguishing in them what they 
 ought to cultivate, crushing that sensibility which is 
 the hope of their being, and all in the sacred name of 
 Christ Jesus. By no such summary process can you 
 dispatch your duties to your children. You are not to 
 be a savage to them, but a father and a Christian. Your 
 real aim and study must be to infuse into them a new 
 life, and, to this end, the Life of God must perpetually 
 reign in you. Grathered round you as a family, they 
 are all to be so many motives, strong as the love you 
 bear them, to make you Christ-like in your spirit. It 
 must be seen and felt with them that religion is a first 
 thing with you. And it must be first, not in words 
 and talk, but visibly first in your love — that which 
 fixes your aims, feeds your enjoyments, sanctifies your 
 pleasures, supports your trials, satisfies your wants, 
 contents your ambition, beautifies and blesses your 
 character. ISTo mock piety, no sanctimony of phrase, 
 or longitude of face on Sundays will sufiice. You must 
 live in the light of God, and hold such a spirit in 
 exercise as you wish to see translated into your chil- 
 dren. You must take them into your feeling, as a 
 loving and joyous element, and beget, if by the grace 
 of God you may, the spirit of your own heart in theirs. 
 
58 WHAT CHEISTIAN NURTUKE IS. 
 
 This is Cliristian education, tlie nurture of the Lord. 
 Ah, how dismal is the contrast of a half- worldly, carnal 
 piety; proposing money as the good thing of life; stimu- 
 lating ambition for place and show ; provoking ill-nature 
 by petulance and falsehood ; praying, to save the rule 
 of family worship ; having now and then a religious fit, 
 and, when it is on, weeping and exhorting the family 
 to undo all that the life has taught them to do ; and 
 then, when^the passions have burnt out their fire, drop- 
 ping down again to sleep in the embers, only hoping 
 still that the family will sometime be converted ! When 
 shall we discover that families ought to be ruined by 
 such training as this ? When shall we turn ourselves 
 wholly to God, and looking on our children as one with 
 us and drawing their character from us, make them 
 arguments to duty and constancy — duty and constancy 
 not as a burden, but, since they are enforced by motives 
 so dear, our pleasure and delight. For these ties and 
 duties exist not for the religious good of our children 
 only, but quite as much for our own. And God, who 
 understands us well, has appointed them to keep us in 
 a perpetual frame of love; for so ready is our bad 
 nature to kindle with our good, and burn with it, that 
 what we call our piety, is, otherwise, in constant danger 
 of Regenerating into a fiery, censorious, unmerciful and 
 intolerant spirit. 
 
 Hence it is that monks have been so prone to perse- 
 cution. Not dwelling with children as the objects of 
 affection, having their hearts softened by no family 
 love, their life identified with no objects that excite 
 
WHAT CHRISTIAN NURTURE IS. 59 
 
 gentleness, their nature hardens into a Christian abstrac- 
 tion, and blood and doctrine go together. Therefore 
 God hath set Israel in families, that the argument to 
 duty may come upon the gentle side of your nature, 
 and fall, as a baptism, on the head of your natural affec- 
 tions. Your character is to be a parent character, in- 
 folding lovingly the. spirits of your children, as birds 
 are gathered in the nest, there to be sheltered and fed, 
 and got ready for the flight. Every hour is to be an 
 hour of duty, every look and smile, every reproof and 
 care, an effusion of Christian love. For it is the very 
 beauty of the work you have to do that you are to 
 cherish and encourage good, and live a better life into 
 the spirits of your children. 
 
 8. It is to be deeply considered, in connection with 
 this view of family nurture, whether it does not meet 
 many of the deficiencies we deplore in the Christian 
 character of our times, and the present state of our 
 churches. We have been expecting to thrive too much 
 by conquest, and too little by growth. I desire to speak 
 with all caution of what are very unfortunately called 
 revivals of religion ; for, apart from the name, which is 
 modern, and from certain crudities and excesses that go 
 with it — which name, crudities, and excesses are wholly 
 adventitious as regards the substantial merits of such 
 scenes — apart from these, I say, there is abundant rea- 
 son to believe that God's spiritual economy includes 
 varieties of exercise, answering, in all important re- 
 spects, to these visitations of mercy, so much coveted 
 in our churches. They are needed. A perfectly uni- 
 
60 WHAT CHRISTIAN NURTURE IS. 
 
 form demonstration in religion is not possible or desira- 
 ble. Nothing is thus uniform but death. Our exercise 
 varies every year and day from cliildhood onward. 
 Society is going through new modes of exercise in the 
 same manner, excited by new subjects, running into 
 new types of feeling, and struggling with new combina- 
 tions of thought. Quite as necessary is it that all holy 
 principle should have a varied exercise — now in one 
 duty, now in another ; now in public aims and efforts, 
 now in bosom struggles ; now in social methods, now 
 in those which are solitary and private ; now in high 
 emotion, now in deliberative thought and study. Ac- 
 cordingly the Christian church began with a scene of 
 extraordinary social demonstration, and the like, in one 
 form or another, may be traced in every period of its 
 history since that day. 
 
 But the difficulty is with us that we idolize such 
 scenes, and make them the whole of our religion. We 
 assume that nothing good is doing, or can be done at 
 any other time. And what is even worse, we often 
 look upon these scenes, and desire them, rather as 
 scenes of victory, than of piety. They are the harvest- 
 times of conversion, and conversion is too nearly every 
 thing with us. In particular we see no way to gather 
 in disciples, save by means of certain marked experi- 
 ences, developed in such scenes, in adult years. Our 
 very children can possibly come to no good, save in 
 this way. Instrumentalities are invented to compass 
 our object, that are only mechanical, and the hope of 
 mere present effect is supposed to justify them. Present 
 
WHAT CHRISTIAN NUllTUPF- TS 61 
 
 effect, in the view of many, justifies any thing and every 
 thing. We strain every nerve of motion, exhaust 
 every capacity of endurance, and push on till nature 
 sinks in exhaustion. We preach too much, and live 
 Christ too little. We do many things which, in a 
 cooler mood, are seen to hurt the dignity of religion, 
 and which somewhat shame and sicken ourselves. 
 Hence the present state of religion in our country. 
 We have worked a vein till it has run out. The 
 churches are exhausted.* There is little to attract 
 them, when they look upon the renewal of scenes 
 through which many of them have passed. They look 
 about them, with a sigh, to ask if possibly there is no 
 better way, and some are ready to find that better way, 
 in a change of their religion. Nothing different from 
 thM ought to have been expected. No nation can long 
 thrive by a spirit of conquest ; no more can a church. 
 There must be an internal growth, that is made by holy 
 industry, in the common walks of life and duty. 
 
 Let us turn now, not away from revivals of religion, 
 certainly not away from the conviction that God will 
 bring upon the churches tides of spiritual exercise, and 
 vary his divine culture by times and seasons suited to 
 their advancement ; but let us turn to inquire whether 
 there is not a fund of increase in the very bosom of the 
 church itself. Let us try if we may not train up our 
 children in the way that they should go. Simply this, if 
 we can do it, will make the church multiply her numbers 
 
 * This was written, I biilieve, m the year, A. D., 1846. 
 
 6 
 
62 WHAT CHRISTIAN NURTURE IS. 
 
 msLDy fold more rapidly tlian now, with the advantage 
 that many more will be gained from without than now. 
 For she will cease to'^hold a mere piety of occasions, a 
 piety whose chief use is to get up occasions ; she will 
 follow a gentler and more constant method, as her duty 
 is more constant, and blends with the very life of her 
 natural affections. Her piety will be of a more even 
 and genial quality, and will be more respected. She 
 will not strive and cry, but she will live. The school 
 of John the Baptist will be succeeded by the school of 
 Christ, as a dew comes after a fire. Families will not 
 be a temptation to you, half the time hurrying you on 
 to get money, and prepare a show, and the other half, a 
 motive to repentance and shame, and profitless exhorta- 
 tion ; but all the time, an argument for Christian love 
 and holy living. _ ♦ 
 
 Then also the piety of the coming age will be deeper, 
 and more akin to habit than ours, because it begun 
 earlier. It will have more of an air of naturalness, and 
 will be less a work of will. A generation will come 
 forward, who will have been educated to all good un- 
 dertakings and enterprises — ardent without fanaticism, 
 powerful without machinery. Not born, so generally, 
 in a storm, and brought to Christ by an abrupt transi- 
 tion, the latter portion of life will not have an unequal 
 war to maintain with the beginning, but life will be 
 more nearly one, and in harmony with itself. Is not 
 this a result to be desired ? Could we tell our Ameri- 
 can churches, at this moment, what they want, should 
 we not tell them this ? Neither, if God, as many fear, 
 
WHAT CHRISTIAN NURTURE IS 63 
 
 istibout to bring -upon his church a day of wrath and 
 stormy conflict, let any one suspect that such a kind of 
 piety will want vigor and nerve to withstand the fiery 
 assaults anticipated. See what turn the mind of our 
 apostle took when he was arming his disciples for the 
 great conflict of their age. Children, obey your parents 
 — Fathers, provoke not your children — Servants, be 
 obedient to your masters — Masters, forbear threaten- 
 ing — Finally, to include all, put on the whole armor 
 of God. As if the first thought, in arming the church 
 for great trials and stout victories, was to fill common 
 life and the relations of the house with a Christian 
 spirit. There is no truer truth, or more sublime. Re- 
 ligion never thoroughly penetrates life, till it becomes 
 domestic. Like that patriotic fire which makes a nation 
 invincible, it never burns with inextinguishable devo- 
 tion till it burns at the hearth. 
 
 4. Parents who are not religious in their character, 
 have reason, in our subject, seriously to consider what 
 effect they are producing, and likely to produce, in 
 their children. Probably you do not wish them to be 
 irreligious ; few parents have the hardihood or indiscre- 
 tion to desire that the fear of God, the salutary restraints 
 of religion, should be removed from their children. 
 Possibly you exert yourselves, in a degree to give 
 them religious council and instruction. But, alas ! 
 how difficult is it for you to convince them, by words, 
 of the value of what you practically reject yourselves. 
 Have I not shown you that they are set in organic con- 
 nection with you, to draw their spirit, and principles, 
 
64 WHAT CHRISTIAN NURTURE IS 
 
 and character from yours ? What then are they daily 
 deriving from you, but that which you yourselves 
 reveal, in your prayerless house, and at your thankless 
 table ? Is it a spirit of duty and Christian love, a faith 
 that has its home and rest in other worlds, or is it the 
 carnal spirit of gain, indifference to God, deadness to 
 Christ, love of the world, pride, ambition, all that is 
 earthly, nothing that is heavenly ? 
 
 Do not imagine that you have done corrupting them 
 when they are born. Their character is yet to be born, 
 and, in you, is to have its parentage. Your spirit is to 
 pass into them, by a law of transition that is natural, 
 and well nigh irresistible. And then you are to meet 
 them in a future life, and see how much of blessing or 
 of sorrow they will impute to you — to share their un- 
 known future, and look upon yourselves as father and 
 mother to their destiny. Such thoughts, I know, are 
 difficult for you to meet ; difficult because they open 
 real scenes, which you are, one day, to look upon. 
 Loving these your children, as most assuredly you 
 do, can you think that you are fulfilling the office that 
 your love requires ? Go home to your Christless house, 
 look upon them all as they gather round you, and ask 
 it of your love faithfully to say, whether it is well 
 between you? And if no other argument can draw 
 you to God, let these dear living arguments come into 
 your soul, and prevail there. 
 
Ill 
 
 THE OSTRICH NURTURE 
 
 " The daughter of my people is become cruel, like the ostriches in the 
 wilderness." — Samuel iv. 3. 
 
 I CITE this comparison for ttie sake of the compari- 
 son itself, and not to make an example of the mothers 
 of Israel represented in it. They are not to be blamed, 
 if, in the terrors of the siege and the wild feverings of 
 starvation, the voice of nature has been stifled in their 
 bosom. Indeed, it is the wonder of the prophet him- 
 self that, while the coarse sea-monsters draw out the 
 breast and faithfully nurse their young, the human 
 mother, so much tenderer and more loving, can be so 
 maddened by distress as to become like the ostrich, and 
 forget the cries of her children. 
 
 The ostrich, it will be observed, is nature's type of 
 all unmotherhood. She hatches her young without in- 
 cubation, depositing her eggs in the sand to be quick- 
 ened by the solar heat. Her ofiice as a mother-bird is 
 there ended. When the young are hatched, they are to 
 go forth untended, or unmothered, save by the general 
 motherhood of nature itself Hence the ostrich is 
 called sometimes the "wicked," and sometimes the 
 " stupid" bird. Job describes her with a feeling of 
 natural dislike — " Which leaveth her eggs in the earth, 
 
66 THE OSTRICH NURTURE 
 
 and warmeth them in the dust, and forgetteth that the 
 foot may crush them, or that the wild beast may break 
 them. She is hardened against her young ones, as 
 though they were not hers, her labor is in vain without 
 care, [in our version, "without fear."] Because God 
 hath deprived her of wisdom, neither hath he imparted 
 unto her understanding." In other words, she is both 
 heartless and senseless ; too heartless to care for her 
 young, and too senseless to maintain a motherhood as 
 genial even as that of the sand. 
 
 Now there is no human mother, unless it be in some 
 terrible stress of siege and starvation, when the mind 
 itself is unsettled by the wild instigation of suffering, 
 who will cease from the bodily care and feeding of her 
 children. And yet there are many forms of nurture for 
 the mind and character of children, that are so far 
 resembled to the ostrich nurture, as to be fitly repre- 
 sented under that type. Practices are adopted, opin- 
 ions accepted, theories of church life and conversion 
 taught, that make a true Christian parentage virtually 
 impossible, and leave the child, in fact, to a kind of 
 nurture in the sands. 
 
 What I propose, accordingly, at the present time, is 
 to characterize these modes of ostrich nurture, mis- 
 called Christian, showing what they are, and the real, 
 though doubtless undesigned, cruelty of them. 
 
 As a curious illustration of the looseness and the un- 
 settled feeling of the times, in regard to this great sub- 
 ject, it is just now beginning to be asserted by some, 
 
THE OSTKICH NURTURE 67 
 
 that the true principle of training for children is ex- 
 actly that of the ostrich, viz : no training at all ; the 
 best government, no government. All endeavors to 
 .fashion them by the parental standards, or to indlict 
 them into the belief of ^eir parents, is alleged to be a 
 real oppression put upon their natural liberty. It is 
 nothing less, it is said, than an effort to fill them with 
 prejudices, and put them under the sway of prejudices, 
 all their lives long. Why not let the child have his 
 own way, think his own thoughts, generate his own 
 principles, and so be developed in the freedom and 
 beauty of the flowers ? Or, if he should sometimes fall 
 into bad tempers and disgraceful or uncomely practices, 
 as flowers do not, let him learn how to correct himself^ 
 and be righted by his own discoveries. Having thus 
 no artificial conscience formed to hamper his natural 
 freedom, no religious scruples and superstitions incul- 
 cated to be a detention, or limitation, upon his impulses, 
 he will grow up as a genuine character, stunted by no 
 cant or afiectation ; a large-minded, liberal, original, and 
 beautiful soul. 
 
 This kind of nurture supposes, evidently, a faith in 
 human nature that is total and complete. As the 
 mother ostrich might be supposed to reason, that her 
 eggs are ostrich's eggs, and must therefore produce 
 genuine ostriches and nothing else, so it assumes that 
 human children will grow up, left to themselves, into 
 the most genuine, highest style of human character. 
 "Whereas, it is the misery of human children that, as 
 free beings, answerable for their choices and their char- 
 
68 THE* OSTRICH NURTURE 
 
 acter, and already touclied with evil, tliey require some 
 training, over and above tlie mere indulgence of their 
 natural instincts. They can not be left to merely blos- 
 som into character ; or, if they are, it will most assur- 
 edly be any sort of character but that which parental 
 love would desire. What they most especially want is, 
 what no ostrich or mere animal nurture can give ; to be 
 preoccupied with holy principles and laws ; to have pre- 
 judices instilled that are holy prejudices; and so to be 
 tempered beforehand by moderating and guiding influ- 
 ences, such as their perilous freedom and hereditary 
 damage require. 
 
 The question here at issue does not really need to be 
 discussed, but it will greatly instruct and impress those 
 parents who allow their minds to fluctuate in such 
 looseness as quite unsettles the feeling of their obliga- 
 tion, just to notice the immense distinction between the 
 relationship of human parents to their offspring, and 
 that of the animals to theirs. It is not given to the ani- 
 mals, they will perceive, as to men, to pass any results 
 matured by their own experience, to their posterity. 
 They prepare no inventions, create no institutions 
 for their offspring; produce no sciences, write no his- 
 tories, preserve no records, accumulate no property or 
 wealth that is to be transmitted; even their thoughts 
 they can perpetuate in no literary treasures. Hence, 
 there is no progress among them, over and above that 
 small physiological improvement that may pass by the 
 laws of natural propagation. So far they are all 
 ostriches. All they can do is to follow their instincts, 
 
THE OSTRICH NURTURE 69 
 
 and leave their posterity to follow them over again, in 
 the same manner, beginning at the same point. But 
 with men, as creatures of reason, it is far otherwise. 
 They are creators, all, for them that are to come after. 
 What they can discover, build, produce, acquire, leatn, 
 think, enjoy, they are to transmit ; giving it to them 
 that come after to begin at the point where they cease, 
 and have the full advantage of their opinions, works, 
 and character. One of their first duties, therefore, is 
 to educate and train their offspring, transmitting to 
 them what they have known, believed, and proved by 
 their experience. If they sometimes transmit their low 
 thoughts, and narrow opinions, and mistaken principles, 
 and so far give their children a great disadvantage, that 
 is but a necessary evil which is incidental manifestly to 
 a system otherwise beneficent, and for that they are of 
 course responsible. If nothing were to pass but mere 
 instincts, the disadvantage would be far greater, and the 
 whole scale of existence lower. How unnatural and 
 monstrous, therefore, is that scheme of nurture which 
 requires it of parents to pass nothing, or as little as pos- 
 sible, to their children. If they have learned wisdom, 
 they are not to inculcate that wisdom, lest it should 
 create a prejudice 1 If they have found their conscience 
 and the principles of virtue, to be their truest friends 
 and the best guardians of their life, they are not to ham- 
 per their children by subjecting them to the same ! If 
 they have found the principal joys that freshen life in 
 God and the faith of his Son, they are still to let their 
 children find their own sources of strength and joy for 
 
70 THE OSTRICH NURTURE 
 
 themselves, and not to train them, or indoctrinate tliem 
 in such ways of blessing, lest perchance they be not 
 sufficiently original and free in their development ! 
 Why, if they were to discover mines and hide the 
 discovery forever, or acquire immense treasures of 
 property appointing them by their will to be sunk 
 in the sea, leaving their children in utter destitution, 
 they would not be as false to their office of parent- 
 age ! God has given it to them, as rational creatures, 
 to transmit all possible benefits to their offspring. And 
 what shall they more carefully transmit than what is 
 valuable above every thing else, their principles and 
 their piety ? 
 
 We find, then, a most solid ground for the obligations 
 of Christian nurture. It is one of the grand distinc- 
 tions of humanity that it has such a power to pass, and 
 is set in such a duty of passing, its gifts, principles, and 
 virtues, on to the ages that come after. Happily, few 
 will need to be convinced of this ; and yet there are a 
 great many, we shall find, who manage, even under 
 what they regard as truly Christian pretexts, to main- 
 tain schemes of nurture so nearly unparental and un- 
 natural, as to have a much closer affinity with the 
 ostrich nurture than they suspect themselves. 
 
 We have many, for example, who have taken up 
 notions of liberty, or free moral agency, in religion, 
 that separate them effectually from the true sense of 
 their power and privilege in regard to their children. 
 Assuming the unquestionable first truth that religious 
 
THE OSTRICH NURTURE, 71 
 
 virtue, or piety, is a matter strictly personal, the free- 
 will offering of obedience and duty to God, they sub- 
 side into the impression that they are of course absolved 
 from any close responsibility for that which lies so en- 
 tirely in the choices of their children themselves. They 
 may not take their absolution by any formal inference, 
 and may not even be aware that they have taken it at 
 all ; but the distinction between manhood and child- 
 hood is so far hidden, or slurred over, under their 
 supposed principle of responsibility grounded in free 
 agency, that their self-indulgence is accommodated, by 
 the pretext, more easily than they know. Sometimes 
 the inference w^ill be half uttered in their feeling ; as 
 when they ask, only not aloud — " after all, must not our 
 children answer for themselves?" So they submit re- 
 signedly, to the supposed necessity, and do it w^ith so 
 much less of compunction, because they consciously 
 have so tender a feeling for their children, and are so 
 much pained by the sense of their religious perils. But 
 the submission they fall into, in this pious way, amounts, 
 in fact, to a real absolution, not seldom, from all the 
 finest, tenderest, most faithful, most unworldly cares of 
 their parental office. They subside thus into a habit of 
 remissness and religious negligence,- and their way of nur- 
 ture becomes unparental even as that of the ostriches. 
 
 Their blame in such defections from duty is greater 
 than they know. For God has probably instituted the 
 reproductive order of existence, including the parental 
 and filial relation, with a special design to mitigate the 
 perils of free agency. One generation is to be ripe in 
 
72 THE OSTRICH NURTURE. 
 
 knowledge and character, and tlie next is to be put in 
 cliarge of tlie former, in the tenderest, most flexible, 
 most dependent state possible, to be by them inducted 
 into the choices where their safety lies. Furthermore, 
 they are bound to fidelity in their charge, by the fact, 
 that, as they have given existence to the subjects of it, 
 so they have also communicated the poison of their 
 own fallen state, to increase the perils of existence. In 
 this manner, God has put it upon them to be the more 
 strenuous in their charge, because of these perils, and 
 expects, by means of their fidelity, to reduce the other- 
 wise disastrous results of free agency to the smallest 
 possible measure. Their responsibility in the parental 
 office is not diminished, but increased even a hundred 
 fold, by the personal liberty and strict individuality of 
 their children. It would be far less cruel to be negli- 
 gent of their bodily wants ; for the body will maintain 
 its growth, and will even manage to increase in robust- 
 ness, when it is poorly clad and fed upon the coarsest 
 fare. But the mind, or soul, born to greater perils than 
 want or the weather, even the tremendous perils of un- 
 taught liberty, and principles unfixed, waits, at the 
 point of its magnificent infancy, to be led into the 
 choices, tastes, affinities, and habits, that are to be the 
 character of its eternity. Tenderness every where else, 
 and remissness here, is only the mockery of kindness. 
 Let the first want be first, and the highest nature have 
 the promptest care ; and if any thing is left to the nur- 
 ture of the sands, let it be the body, where the crime of 
 the desertion will be less and will certainly not be hid. 
 
THE OSTRICH NURTURE. 73 
 
 Many true Christians, again, fall oflP, unwittingly, 
 from the humanly parental modes of nurture, in taking 
 up notions of conversion that are mechanical, and 
 proper only to the adult age. They make a merit of 
 great persistency and firmness, in asserting the univer- 
 sal necessity of a new spiritual birth ; not perceiving 
 under what varieties of form that change may be 
 wrought. The soul must be exercised, they think, in 
 one given way, viz : by a struggle with sin, a conscious 
 self-renunciation, and a true turning to Christ for mercy, 
 followed by the joy and peace of a new life in the 
 Spirit. A child, in other words, can be born of God 
 only in the same way as an adult can be. There is 
 no quickening grace, or new creation of the Spirit, 
 proper to him as a child. K he dies in infancy, God 
 may, it is true, find some way, possibl}^, to save him, 
 but if he stays among the living, he can not be a 
 Christian till he is older. He is therefore left, in this 
 most tender and beautiful and pliant age, in a condition 
 most of all unprivileged, and most sadly unhopeful. 
 The necessity of a great spiritual change is upon him, 
 and yet he is wholly incapable of the change I What 
 other being has the good Lord and Father of the world 
 left in a condition as pitiful as this of a human child ? 
 Even the most wicked and hardened of men has, at 
 least, the gate of conversion left open. And yet there 
 are many Christian parents, living an outwardly decent 
 and fair life, who consent, without difiiculty, and with 
 a kind of consciously orthodox merit, to this very un- 
 natural and truly hard lot of childhood, and fall into 
 
74 THE OSTRICH NURTURE. 
 
 easy conformity with it. Their practically accepted 
 notion of Christian nurture, in which they mean to be 
 piously faithful is, that they are to bring up their chil- 
 dren outside of all possible acceptance with God, till 
 such time as their conversion may be looked for in a 
 church-wise form. And their whole scheme of treat- 
 ment corresponds. They indoctrinate them soundly in 
 respect to their need of a new heart ; tell them what 
 conversion is, and how it comes to pass with grown 
 people ; pray that God will arrest them when they are 
 old enough to be converted according to the manner ; 
 drill them, meantime, into all the constraints, separated 
 from all the hopes and liberties of religion ; turning all 
 their little misdoings and bad tempers into evidences 
 of their need of regeneration, and assuring them that 
 all such signs must be upon them till after they have 
 passed the change. Their nurture is a nurture, thus, of 
 despair ; and the bread of life itself, held before them 
 as a fruit to be looked upon, but not tasted, till they 
 are old enough to have it as grown people do, 
 finally becomes repulsive, just because they have been 
 so long repelled and fenced away from it. And so relig- 
 ion itself, pressed down upon them till they are fatally 
 sored by its impossible claims, becomes their fixed 
 aversion. How plain is it that such kind of nurture is 
 unnatural and, though it be not so intended, unchris- 
 tian. It makes even the loving gospel of Jesus a most 
 galling chain upon the neck of childhood ! — this and 
 nothing more. For so long a time, and that the most 
 ductile and hopeful, as regards all new implantings of 
 
THE OSTRICH NURTURE. 75 
 
 good, it really proposes nothing but to have the depra- 
 vated nature grow, and the plague of sin deepen its bad 
 infection. 
 
 Meantime, it will be strange, if the parents them- 
 selves do not fall away from all that is necessary to 
 their Christian power, when the conversion of their 
 children is postponed, in this manner, by the merely 
 adult possibilities of their gospel. Why should they 
 live so as to gain their children, when their children 
 are not to be gained ? Were they really to live so as 
 to make their house an element of grace, the atmos- 
 phere of their life an element, to all that breathe it, of 
 unworldly feeling and'^all godly aspiration, their me- 
 chanical doctrine of conversion would scarcely suffice to 
 keep away the saving mercies of,, God from their chil- 
 dren. Their children would still be converted even 
 before the permissible time, and burst up through the 
 poor detentions of their bad do ctrine, to cover it with 
 blessed confusion. But alas ! it requires but a yery 
 little of genuine, living godliness in the house, to bring- 
 up children for a future conversion ! This kind of os- 
 trich nurture can be cheaply maintained, and with a 
 very small expenditure of piety. To keep the drill on 
 foot, as a mere legal indoctrination ; to phrase a hope 
 or desire of conversion, in the family prayers ; to be 
 exact, stern, stiff in all church practices, requires no 
 fliith ; or living by faith, no sanctification of the life. 
 A busy, worldly, hard-natured father, a vain, irritable, 
 captious, fashion-loving mother, a house orthodoxly 
 bad and earthly in all the reigning practices, is yet a 
 
76 THE OSTKICH NURTURE. 
 
 good enough scliool to prepare the necessity of a future 
 conversion for the children ! How different the kind 
 of life that is necessary to bring them up in conversion 
 and beget them anew in the spirit of a loving obedience 
 to God, at a point even prior to all definite recollection. 
 This is Christian nurture, because it nurtures Christians, 
 and because it makes an element of Christian grace in 
 the house. It invites, it nourishes hope, it breathes in 
 love, it forms the new life as a holy, though beautiful 
 prejudice in the soul, before its opening and full flower- 
 ing of intelligence arrives. " Suffer little children to 
 come unto me and forbid them not" translates the very 
 economy of the house, and has, in that economy, its 
 living verification. And the promise, " for of such is 
 the kingdom of heaven," wears no look of violence ; 
 for the kingdom of heaven is there. The children grow 
 up in it, as being configured to it. The family prayers 
 have a sound of gladness, and they sing the family 
 hymn with glad voices. The worldliness of the glitter- 
 ing bad world without is set off and made fascinating 
 by no doom of repression within. A firm administra- 
 tion is loved because, like Grod's, it is felt to be the de- 
 fense of liberty. Truth, purity, firmness, love to Jesus, 
 all that belongs to a formal conversion and more, is 
 centralized thus in the soul, as a kind of ingrown habit. 
 The children are all converted by the converting ele- 
 ment of grace they live in. And so it is proved that 
 there is a conversion for children, proper and possible 
 to their age. They are not excluded, walled away from 
 Christ by a mechanical enforcement of modes proper 
 
THE OSTRICH NURTURE. 77 
 
 only and possible to adults. The house itself is a con- 
 verting ordinance. 
 
 Again there is another and different way in which 
 parents, meaning to be Christian, fall into the ostrich 
 nurture without being at all aware of it. They be- 
 lieve in what are called revivals of religion, and have 
 a great opinion of them as being, in a very special sense, 
 the converting times of the gospel. They bring np 
 their children, therefore, not for conversion exactly, but, 
 what is less dogmatic and formal, for the converting 
 times. And this they think is even more evangelical 
 and spiritual because it is more practical; though, in 
 fact, much looser and connected, commonly, with even 
 greater defections from parental duty and fidelity. To 
 bring up a family for revivals of religion requires, alas ! 
 about the smallest possible amount of consistency and 
 Christian assiduity. No matter what opinion may be 
 held of such times, or of their inherent value and pro- 
 priety as pertaining to the genuine economy of the 
 gospel, any one can see that Christian parents may very 
 easily roll off a great part of their responsibilities, and 
 comf(5rt themselves in utter vanity and worldliness of 
 life, by just holding it as a principal hope for their chil- 
 dren, that they are to be finally taken np and rescued 
 from sin, by revivals of religion. As it costs much to 
 be steadily and uniformly spiritual, how agreeable the 
 hope that gales of the Spirit will come to make amends 
 for their conscious defections. If they do not maintain 
 the unworldly and heavenly spirit, so as to make it the 
 
78 THE OSTRICH NURTURE. 
 
 element of life in their house, God will some" time have 
 his day of power in the community, and they piously 
 hope that tbeir children will then be converted to 
 Christ. So they fall into a key of expectation that per- 
 mits, for the present, modes of life and conduct, which 
 they can not quite approve. They go after the world 
 with an eagerness which they expect by and by to 
 check, or possibly, for the time, to repent of. The 
 family prayers grow cold and formal, and are often in- 
 termitted. The tempers are earthly, coarse, violent. 
 Discipline is ministered in anger, not in love. The 
 children are lectured, scolded, scorched by fiery words. 
 The plans are all for money, show, position, not for the 
 more sacred and higher interests of character. The 
 conversation is uncharitable, harsh, malignant, an effu- 
 sion of spleen, a tirade, a taking down of supposed 
 worth and character by low imputations and carping 
 criticisms. In this kind of element the children are to 
 have their growth and nurture, but the parents piously 
 hope that there will some time be a revival of religion, 
 and that so Grod will mercifally make up what they 
 conceive to be only the natural infirmity of their lives. 
 Finally the hoped for day arrives, and there begins to 
 be a remarkable and strange piety in the house. 
 The father choakes almost in his prayer, showing that 
 he really prays with a meaning! The mother, con- 
 scious that things have not been going rightly with the 
 children, and seeing many frightful signs of their cer- 
 tain ruin at hand, warns them, even weeping, of the 
 impending dangers by which she is so greatly distressed 
 
THE OSTRICH NURTURE. 79 
 
 on their account ; adding also bitter confessions of fault 
 in herself. The children stare of course, not knowinjB^ 
 what strange thing has come ! They can not be unaf- 
 fected ; perhaps they seem to be converted, perhaps not. 
 In many cases it piakes little difference which ; for if all 
 this new piety in the house is to burn out in a few days, 
 and the old regimen of worldliness and sin to return, 
 it will be wonderful if they are not converted back 
 again to be only just as neglectful, in the matter of 
 Christian living, as they were brought up to be. Any 
 scheme of nurture that brings up children thus for revi- 
 vals of religion, is a virtual abuse and cruelty. And 
 it is none the less cruel that some pious-looking pretexts 
 are cunningly blended with it. Instead of that steady, 
 formative, new-creating power that ought to be exerted 
 by holiness in the house, it looks to campaigns of force 
 that really dispense with holiness, and it results that all 
 the best ends of Christian nurture are practically lost. 
 
 Again, there is another form of the unchristian nur- 
 ture, over opposite to these just named, which is quite 
 as wide of the true character. I speak of that lower and 
 merely ethical nurture, which undertakes, with great 
 assiduity it may be, to form and whittle the age of 
 childhood into character, by a merely pruning and hu- 
 manly culturing process. It is a kind of nurture that 
 stops short of religion, and atones for the conscious 
 defect, by a drill more or less careful in the moralities. 
 The reason of this defect commonly is that the parents 
 are too far decayed in piety and too much under the 
 
80 THE OSTRICH NURTURE. 
 
 world, to put forth any really religious endeavor ; but 
 it is to their children as if no such interest of religion 
 had existence. They are corrected on this side and on 
 that, by human standards and methods, taught to con- 
 sider what is respectable, or what people will think of 
 them, how to win the honors of character among men, 
 lectured on the wisdom of conduct, and the resulting 
 happiness of a right behavior, but the fact of their rela- 
 tion to God, and the standards and motives furnished 
 by religion are wholly passed by, or omitted. The 
 cruelty of this sort of nurture is that, however delicate 
 and careful it may be of that which lies in mere social 
 character and standing, it exactly copies the ostrich 
 nurture in all that relates to the higher and properly 
 religious life. The world- ward nature is cared for, but 
 the religious, that whict opens God-ward, that which 
 aspires after God, and, occupied by his inspiring im- 
 pulse, mounts into all good character,- as being even 
 liberty itself; that which consummates and crowns the 
 real greatness and future eternity of souls, is virtually 
 ignored, left to the wild, dry, motherhood of the 
 sands. 
 
 Children trained in this mere ethical nurture, are in- 
 ducted into no way of faith or dependence on God. 
 They are taught to look for no spiritual transformation. 
 The virtue they practice is to be prayerless virtue. 
 They grow up thus on the roots of their natural pride 
 and selfishness, bred into the habit of testing their good- 
 ness by their appearances, and their merit by their 
 works. That they should be molded in this manner to 
 
THE OSTRICH NURTURE. ,81 
 
 a Christian life would be wonderful. Their parents 
 may be nominally Christian, but they have, in fact, 
 agreed to omit religion in the training of their children ; 
 and it would be strange if they should compliment their 
 only nominally Christian parentage, by unfolding a 
 really Christian life. It will be well if they have any 
 genuine respect for religion, or even sense of what it is. 
 Trained to have no religious conscience, arid to prac- 
 tice a virtue unblessed by the nobler impulsions of relig- 
 ious inspiration, it will be strange if they maintain 
 even correctness of life ; and more so if their heart, un- 
 developed by religion, does not canker itself away in 
 the sordid vices of meanness, or burn itself out, as re- 
 gards all worthy and great feelings, in the general hatred 
 of God and his truth. There may be many decencies, or 
 even delicacies, in this kind of nurture ; and yet, in the 
 complete oversight or neglect of the religious nature, it 
 becomes profoundly and even cruelly unnatural. 
 
 There is yet another and widely prevalent miscon- 
 ception of childhood which, to a certain extent, involves 
 Christianity itself in the same unnatural methods that 
 are adopted by men. I speak here more especially of 
 the assumed fact that Christ allows no place in the church 
 for such as are only children. Is not the church to be 
 composed of such as really believe ? And what kind 
 of faith can children have who are not yet arrived at 
 the age of intelligence? Hence there is supposed to 
 be a kind of necessity that children, up to that period 
 of advancement and personal maturity when they are 
 
82 THE OSTRICH NURTURE. 
 
 able to choose and believe for themselves, and become 
 the subjects of a genuine Christian experience, should 
 be excluded from the Christian church. It signifies 
 nothing that the seal of faith was anciently applied to 
 children only eight days old, as being presumptively in 
 the faith of their parents, and included with them in 
 the bonds of their covenant. As little does it signify 
 that Christ says "let them come, forbid them not; for 
 of such is the kingdom of heaven." Still they can not 
 believe — are not old enough to believe — how then can 
 they come into the church, or in any conceivable way 
 be included in it ? Is not the church of God assumed 
 to be made up of them that believe ? What then is 
 left for children but to stay without till they are old 
 enough to be intelligently converted, and entered into a 
 new life by their own deliberate choice ? Hence the 
 JBaptist brethren conceive it to be a matter perfectly 
 final, as regards the question of baptism, that infants 
 can not believe, and can not therefore have any fit place 
 among believers in the church. Does not the Scripture 
 say — " Believe and be baptized ?" And how is confes- 
 sion to be made with the mouth, except when the heart 
 belie veth unto righteousness ? 
 
 The result of such arguments and inferences is, that 
 children have no place given them in the church, how- 
 ever modified, to suit the conditions of their age. Their 
 parents are called by Christ to live within and they 
 themselves are left without. There is no church nur- 
 ture for them proper to their tender years ; they can not 
 be in the church till they are sufficiently grown to be- 
 
THE OSTRICH NURTURE. 83 
 
 lieve. And so it is settled tliat there is no cliurcli mercy 
 for tliem. The church tarns her back and leaves them, 
 separated even from their parents, to try their fortunes, 
 like the wild ostriches, in the desert sands without. 
 
 It would seem that the hardness and the monstrous 
 unnaturalness of such conceptions must revolt the mind 
 of almost any thoughtful person. If the grace of our 
 salvation took the ingenuous children away from their 
 sinning, unbelieving parents, and gathered them into 
 the heavenly fold by themselves, we should have less 
 reason to be shocked by the severity. But instead of 
 this, calling home the penitent fathers and mothers and 
 carefully folding them in the church of God's protec- 
 tion, Jesus their shepherd shuts away the lambs, we 
 are told, and forbids them to come in ! The cruelty of 
 such an opinion, or doctrine, is evident, and the cruel 
 effects it must have, in making even childhood feel 
 itself to be an alien from God's mercies, are even more 
 so. It has no conception that there can be a Saviour 
 and salvation for all ages and stages of life ; Christ is 
 the Saviour of adults only ! No ! Christ is a Saviour 
 bounded by no such narrow and meager theories — a 
 Saviour for infants, and children, and youth, as truly as 
 for the adult age; gathering them all into his fold 
 together, there to be kept and nourished together, by 
 gifts appropriate to their years ; even as he himself has 
 shown us so convincingly, by passing through all ages 
 and stages of life himself, and giving us, in that manner, 
 to see that he partakes the want and joins himself to 
 the fallen state of each. Having been a child himself, 
 
84 THE OSTRICH NURTUKE. 
 
 who can imagine, even for one moment, that he has no 
 place in his fold for the fit reception of childhood ? 
 Dreadful insult, both to him and to childhood, and the 
 greater insult, that the gospel even of heaven's love is 
 narrowed to this, by a supposed necessity of evangel- 
 ism ! What a position is given thus to children, grow- 
 ing up to look on an adult church, instructed into the 
 opinion that what they look upon — Christ, ordinances, 
 covenant vows — is only for adult people ! 
 
 I ought perhaps to add, in bringing this argument to 
 a close, that the harsh imputations I may seem to some 
 of you to have indulged, must not be hastily disallowed. 
 Almost all parents are tender, consciously tender of 
 their children. What will not most of you do, to clothe 
 and feed, and educate, and, in all respects, make due 
 provision for your children ? Sacrifices here are noth- 
 ing. Health, rest, ease, comfort, you gladly renounce 
 for their sake, and some of you would not spare the 
 sacrifice even of your soul to serve them. Are you 
 then to be justly charged with a mode of nurture so 
 unnatural as to be fitly resembled to that of the os- 
 triches ? Of what are you more deeply conscious than 
 of your willingness even to die for your children. All 
 your tenderest movings are toward them ; all that you 
 plan, or think, or do, is for them. Yes, doubtless, it is 
 even so, as regards their nurture and comfort in this 
 world — all your tenderest cares and studies center here. 
 Of this there is no question, and far be it from me to 
 suggest a doubt of you here. 
 
THE OSTRICH NURTURE. 85 
 
 No, this defection from nature, of which I have been 
 speaking, relates to a different matter — in quite another 
 field. Doing your full honor as a careful provider, a 
 most faithful and loving guardian, a disinterested, self- 
 sacrificing contriver and laborer for your children's 
 good, the question is whether you do not after all put 
 them off with a mere ostrich nurture in the matter of 
 the soul ? whether you do not let in some one or 
 more of these very misconceptions I have named, to 
 control all your modes of conduct and discipline to- 
 ward them ? Do you never throw off your own Chris- 
 tian responsibilities for them by allowing, as a pretext, 
 the fact of their liberty and personal responsibility for 
 themselves ? Are you never let down in the sense of 
 your most sacred obligations, by simply allowing your- 
 self to think it enough, that your children are brought 
 up for conversion ? Do none of you subside even to a 
 lower point, and bring up your children only for revi- 
 vals of religion ? Are there none of you that make it 
 your whole care to form your children by the mere 
 ethical standards, and finish them in the graces of a 
 mere human culture ? Have none of you theories of 
 salvation and of Christ's way respecting it, such as leave 
 no place for children in the church, however qualified 
 to meet their age ? Little now does it signify that you 
 love your children, or do even slave both body and 
 mind to get a footing of society and comfort for them 
 in this life — even beavers and bears will do as much as 
 that. In giving existence to your child you have set 
 him forth into perils that include his immortality, and 
 
86 THE OSTRICH NURTURE. 
 
 jou have therefore no right to handle him neglectfully 
 in this great concern. On the contrary, you are to accept 
 his immortality, and in a seriously Christian sense, 
 take it on yourself, as being in Christ's name responsi- 
 ble for it ; responsible, that is, for making your house 
 itself such an element of piety, love, faith, unworldly 
 and beautiful living, that your children shall grow up 
 in it, as in the nurture of the Lord. Take no credit to 
 yourselves for any thing which falls short of this. 
 You may be very tender in what falls short, but it is 
 no Christian tenderness. You can not live in a worldly 
 house, you can not make yourself a family drudge to 
 serve a mere family ambition, can not piously hope that 
 God will somehow convert your children after they 
 have got by you and become adults, without being 
 justly chargeable with giving their souls a mere nur- 
 ture of the sands, in which the genuine Christian grace 
 has no part whatever. And be not surprised if these 
 children when they meet you before the Judge of your 
 and their life, have a more severe witness to give against 
 you than if you had merely neglected their bodies. 
 
 Probably enough there may be some of you that, 
 without being Christians yourselves, are yet careful to 
 teach your children all the saving truths of religion, 
 and who thus may take it as undue severity to be 
 charged with only giving your children this unnatural, 
 ostrich nurture of which I have spoken. But how 
 poor a teacher of Christ is any one who is not in the 
 light of Christ, and does not know the inward power 
 of his truth, as a gospel of life to the soul. You 
 
THE OSTRICH NURTURE. 87 
 
 press your child, in this manner, with duties you 
 do not practice, and promises you do not embrace; 
 and if you do not succeed, it only means that you can 
 not impose on him to that high extent. A mother 
 teach by words only ? No ! but more, a great deal 
 more by the atmosphere of love and patience she 
 breathes. Besides, how easy is it for her to make every 
 thing she teaches legal and repulsive, just because 
 she has no liberty or joy in it herself. What is wanted 
 therefore is not merely to give a child the law, telling 
 him this is duty, this is right, this God requires, this he 
 will punish, but a much greater want is to have the 
 spirit of all duty lived and breathed around him ; to 
 see, and feel, and breathe, himself, the living atmos- 
 phere of grace. Therefore it is vain, let all parents so 
 understand, to imagine that you can really fulfill the 
 true fatherhood and motherhood, unless you are true 
 Christians yourselves. I am sorry to discourage you 
 in any good attempts. Kightly taken, what I say will 
 not discourage you, but will only prompt you by all 
 that is dearest to you on earth, to become truly quali- 
 fied for your office. By these dear pledges God has 
 given you, to call you to himself, I beseech you turn 
 yourselves to the true life of religion. Have it first in 
 yourselves, then teach it as you live it ; teach it by 
 living it ; for you can do it in no other manner. Be 
 Christians yourselves, and then it will not be difficult 
 for you to do your true duties to your children. Until 
 then it is really impossible. 
 
88 THE OSTRICH NURTURE. 
 
 I have only to add in the conclusion of this subject — 
 just what is made plain by it — that there is really no 
 great wonder, in the fact often spoken of as a subject 
 of wonder, that Christian parents are so frequently 
 disappointed in their children. Why is it that such 
 correct and apparently Christian people see their chil- 
 dren grow up unaffected by religion, or even hostile to 
 its sacred claims, falling possibly into a character of 
 vice and complete moral abandonment ? The answer 
 is, alas ! too easy. I will not say that, in every case, 
 the result accuses them of crime ; it may be the effect 
 sometimes of their mistaken, or faulty conceptions of 
 parental duty. But no one, it seems to me, can once 
 distinguish these bad faults of nurture, and note the 
 very wide prevalence they have in the Christian homes, 
 without even expecting worse and more fatal results 
 of mischief than actually appear. Sometimes it seems 
 to be imagined that nothing but some dark hindrance 
 of divine sovereignty can account for such results. 
 The less we have to say in that strain the wiser we 
 shall be, and as much less irreverent to God. No, 
 there is reason enough for all such miscarriages without 
 charging them to God. I could not express myself as 
 the truth requires, my brethren, if I did not say, that 
 when I observe the wide-spread delusions of nom- 
 inally Christian parents, their false aims, their worldly 
 pretexts, their habitual separation from any living faith 
 in God, in the ends, plans, practices, and spirit of their 
 administration, I rather wonder that results a great 
 deal worse do not appear. It would even be a fit 
 
THE OSTRICH NURTURE. 89 
 
 subject of wonder, if children trained in this manner, 
 should not turn out badly. If indeed they are so much 
 as converted afterwards, saying nothing of their grow- 
 ing np in a sanctified character, it is well — more than- 
 could be rightly expected. 
 
 No, my friends, these mistaken modes of nurture ought 
 not to make Christians; they must even falsify their 
 own nature to do it. Let us be just to God, and lay 
 our griefs no longer to his charge. If we can not come 
 into his way in the training of our families, let us not 
 complain that we do not succeed in ways of our own. 
 After all, there is no cheap way of making Christians 
 of our children. Nothing but to practically live for it 
 makes it sure. To be Christians ourselves — ah ! there 
 is the difficulty. How can an unchristian, or only non- 
 christian spirit reigning in the house, quicken the spirit 
 of life and holiness in the hearts subjected to its sway ? 
 Even if our false modes of nurture are mistakes, who 
 can expect that mistakes will be as good as verities? 
 O, thou, blessed Son of God, advocate and friend of the 
 little ones, rid us of our falsities, and set us in thy own 
 true spirit, that we may fitly discharge these most 
 sacred and tenderest duties ! 
 
IV. 
 
 THE ORGANIC UNITY OF THE FAMILY. 
 
 " The children gather wood, and the fathers kindle the fire, and the 
 women knead dough, to make cakes to the queen of heaven, and to pour 
 out drink offerings unto other gods, that they may provoke me to anger." 
 — Jereviiah vii. 18. 
 
 In this lively picture, you have the illustration of a 
 great and momentous truth — the Organic Unity of the 
 Family. If it be an idolatrous family, worshipers of 
 the moon, for example, such is the organic relation 
 of the members, that they are all involved together, 
 and the idol worship is the common act of the house. 
 The children gather wood, the fathers kindle the fire, 
 the women prepare the cakes for an offering, and the 
 queen of heaven receives it, as one that is the joint 
 product of the whole family. The worship is family 
 worship ; the god of one is the god of all ; the spirit 
 of one, the spirit of all. 
 
 And so it is with all family transactions and feelings. 
 They implicate ordinarily the whole circle of the house, 
 young and old, male and female, fathers and mothers, 
 sons and daughters. Acting thus together, they take 
 a common character, accept the same delusions, prac- 
 tice the same sins, and ought, I believe, to be sanctified 
 by a common grace. 
 
 This most serious truth is one that is exceedingly 
 
THE ORGANIC UNITY. 91 
 
 remote from tlie present age, and from no part of the 
 Christian world more remote than from ns. All our 
 modern notions and speculations have taken a bent 
 toward individualism. In the state, we have been 
 engaged to bring out the civil rights of the individual, 
 asserting his proper liberties as a person, and vindica- 
 ting his conscience, as a subject of God, from the 
 constraints of force. In matters of religion, we have 
 burst the bonds of church authority, and erected the in- 
 dividual mind into a tribunal of judgment within itself; 
 we have asserted free will as the ground of all proper 
 responsibility, and framed our theories of religion so as 
 to justify the incommunicable nature of persons as 
 distinct units. While thus engaged, we have well nigh 
 lost, as was to be expected, the idea of organic powers 
 and relations. The state, the church, the family, have 
 ceased to be regarded as such, according to their proper 
 idea, and become mere collections of units. A national 
 life, a church life, a family life, is no longer conceived, 
 or perhaps conceivable, by many. Instead of being 
 wrought in together and penetrated, to some extent, by 
 historic laws and forces common to all the members, 
 we only seem to lie as seeds piled together, without 
 any terms of connection, save the accident of proximity, 
 or the fact that we all belong to the heap. And thus 
 the three great forms of organic existence, which God 
 has appointed for the race, are in fact lost out of mental 
 recognition. The conception is so far gone that, when 
 the fact of such an organic relation is asserted, our 
 enlightened public will stare at the strange conceit. 
 
92 THE ORGANIC UNITY 
 
 and wonder what can be meant by a paradox so 
 absurd. 
 
 My design, at tlie present time, is to restore, if pos- 
 sible, the conception of one of these organic forms, 
 viz : the family. For though we have gained immense 
 advantages, in a civil, ecclesiastical, and religions point 
 of view, by our modern development of individualism, 
 we have yet run ourselves into many hurtful misappre- 
 hensions on all these subjects, which, if they are not 
 rectified, will assuredly bring disastrous consequences. 
 And no where consequences more disastrous than in 
 the family, where they are already apparent, though 
 not fully matured ; for the very change of view, by 
 which we have cleared individual responsibility, in our 
 discussions of free will, original sin, and kindred sub- 
 jects, has operated, in another direction, to diminish 
 responsibility, where most especially it needs to be felt ; 
 that is, in Christian families. 
 
 What then do we mean by the organic unity of the 
 family ? It will be understood, of course, that we do 
 not speak of a physical or vascular connection ; for, after 
 birth, there is no such connection existing, any more 
 than there is between persons of different famihes. In 
 so far, however, as a connection of parentage, or deriva- 
 tion has affected the character, that fact must be in- 
 cluded, though it can not be regarded as a chief element 
 in the unity asserted. Perhaps I shall be "understood 
 with the greatest facility, if I say that the family is such 
 a body, that a power over character is exerted thereii)^ 
 
OF THE FAMILY. 93 
 
 which can not properly he called influence. "We com- 
 monly use tlie term influence to denote a persuasive 
 power, or a governmental power, exerted purposely, 
 and with a conscious design to effect some result in the 
 subject. In maintaining the organic unity of the family, 
 I mean to assert, that a power is exerted by parents 
 over children, not only when they teach, encourage, 
 persuade, and govern, but without any purposed control 
 whatever. The bond is so intimate that they do it 
 unconsciously and undesignedly — they must do it. 
 Their character, feelings, spirit, and principles, must 
 propagate themselves, whether they will or not. How- 
 ever, as influence, in the sense just given, can not be 
 received by childhood prior to the age of reason and 
 deliberative choice, the control of parents, purposely 
 exerted, must be regarded, during that early period, as 
 an absolute force, not as influence. All such acts 
 of control therefore must, in metaphysical propriety, 
 and as far as the child is concerned, be classed under 
 the general denomination of organic causes. And thus 
 whatever power over character is exerted in families 
 one side of consent, in the children, and even before 
 they have come to the age of rational choice, must be 
 taken as organic power, in the same way as if the effect 
 accrued under the law of simple contagion. So too 
 when the child performs acts of will, under parental 
 direction, that involve results of character, without 
 knowing or considering that they do, these must be 
 classed in the same manner. 
 
 In general, then^ we find the organic unity of the 
 
94 THE ORGANIC UNITY 
 
 family, in every exertion of power over cliaracter, 
 wliich is not exerted and received as influence ; tliat is, 
 with a design to address tlie choice on one side, and a 
 sense of responsible choice on the other. Or, to use 
 language more popular, we conceive the manners, per- 
 sonal views, prejudices, practical motives, and spirit 
 of the house, as an atmosphere which passes into all 
 and pervades all, as naturally as the air they breathe. 
 This, however, not in any such absolute or complete 
 sense as to leave no room for individual distinctions. 
 Sometimes the two parents will have a very different 
 spirit themselves, though the grace of God is pledged 
 to make the better, if it be truly right, and hindered by 
 no gross inconsistencies, victorious. Sometimes the 
 child, passing into the sphere of other causes, as in the 
 school, the church, neighboring families, or general 
 society, will emerge and take a character partially dis- 
 tinct — ^partially, I say ; never wholly. The odor of the 
 house will always be in his garments, and the internal 
 difficulties with which he has to struggle, will spring 
 of the family seeds planted in his nature. 
 
 Having carefully stated thus what I mean by the 
 organic unity of the family, I next proceed to inquire 
 whether any such unity exists ? And here it is worth 
 noticins; — 
 
 1. That there is nothing in this view which conflicts 
 with the proper individuality of persons and their 
 separate responsibility. We have gained immense ad- 
 vantages, in modern times, as regards society, govern- 
 
OF THE FAMILY. 95 
 
 mcnt, and character, by liberating and exalting the 
 individual man. Far be it from mc to underrate these 
 advantages, or to bring them into jeopardy. But a 
 child manifestly can not be a proper individual, before 
 he is one. Nothing can be gained by assuming that he 
 is ; and, if it is not true, much is sure to be lost. Be- 
 sides, we are never, at any age, so completely individ- 
 ual as to be clear of organic connections that affect our 
 character. To a certain extent and for certain pur- 
 poses, we are individuals, acting each from his own 
 will. Then to a certain extent and for certain other 
 purposes, we are parts or members of a common body, 
 as truly as the limbs of a tree. We have an open 
 side in our nature, where a common feeling enters, 
 where we adhere, and through which we are actua- 
 ted by a common will. There we are many — here we 
 are one. 
 
 It is remarkable too how often, without knowing it, 
 and, as it were instinctively, we assume the fact, and 
 act upon it. We do it, for example, as between na- 
 tions, where jt is not so much the moral life as the 
 national that constructs the supposed unity. One na- 
 tion, for instance, has injured or oppressed another — 
 sought to crush, or actually crushed another by inva- 
 sion. A century or more afterwards, the wrong is 
 remembered, and the injured nation takes the field, still 
 burning for redress. The history of Carthage and 
 Rome gives us an example. But, suppose it had been 
 said^'' This is very absurd in you Carthaginians. The 
 Romans, who did you the injury, are all dead, and 
 
96 THE ORGANIC UNITY 
 
 those who now bear the name are their children's chil- 
 dren. They have done you no injury any more than 
 the people of Britain or India. Neither is it the walls, 
 or streets, or temples of Rome that have injured you. 
 The Roman territory is mere land, and this has not 
 injured you. Why then go to war with the Romans ? 
 How absurd to think of redressing your old injuries by 
 a war with men who have done you no harm!" Now, 
 it was by just this kind of sophistry that Mr. Jefferson 
 proved that a public debt is obligatory for only one 
 generation, and possibly the Carthaginians might have 
 been speculatively stumbled by such reasonings. Still, 
 they could not have been quite satisfied, I think, of 
 their validity. Against all speculation, they would 
 still have felt that the proposed war was somehow 
 reconcilable with reason. The question is not whether, 
 on Christian principles, they were right, but whether, on 
 natural principles, they were absurd. This probably 
 no reader of the history has ever felt. For, whether it 
 squares with our speculative notions or not, we do all 
 tacitly assume the organic unity of nations. The past 
 we behold, living in the present, and all together we 
 regard as one, inhabited by the common life. How 
 much more true is this (though in a different way) in 
 families, where the common life is so nearly absolute 
 over the members ; where they are all inclosed within 
 the four walls of their dwellings, partakers in a com- 
 mon blood, in common interests, wants, feelings, and 
 principles. 
 
 2. We discover the organic unity of families, in the 
 
OF THE FAMILY. 97 
 
 fact that one generation is the natural offspring of an- 
 other. And so much is there in this, that the children 
 almost always betray their origin in their looks and 
 features. The stamp of a common nature is on them, 
 revealed in the stature, complexion, gait, form, and 
 dispositions. Sometimes we seem to see remarkable 
 exceptions. But, in such cases, we should commonly 
 find, if we could bring up to view the ancestors of remo- 
 ter generations, that the family bond is still perpetuated, 
 only by a wider reach of connection. There are said to 
 be two maiden sisters, the last of a distinguished family, 
 now living in England, who, having no resemblance to 
 any near ancestor, have yet a very striking resem- 
 blance to the portrait, still hanging in the family 
 mansion, of an ancestor seven generations back. In- 
 deed, I have myself distinguished, by their looks, the 
 relationship of two persons, connected by a common 
 derivation eight generations back, and who more closely 
 resembled each other in their persons, than either his 
 nearest kindred. So that, in cases where there seems to 
 be no transmission of resemblances, there is yet a proba- 
 ble transmission, only one that is covert and more com- 
 prehensive. Kow, strong external resemblances may 
 coexist with marked external differences, and therefore 
 do not prove a coincidence of character. And yet it 
 can not be denied that, as far as they go, the}^ argue a 
 transmission of capacities and dispositions, which enter 
 into character, as remote causes or occasions. Kor 
 does it make any difference, as regards the matter in 
 question, whether souls or spiritual natures come into 
 
98 THE OKGANIC UNITY 
 
 being tlirough propagation, or not. If tliey are created, 
 as some fancy, by the immediate inbreathing of God, 
 still they are measured by the house they are to live in, 
 and the outward man is, in all cases, a fit organ for the 
 person within. The dispositions, tempers, capacities — 
 the natural, and, to a great extent, the moral character, 
 have the outward frame, as a fit organ of use and ex- 
 pression. It will even be observed too that, in cases 
 where there is a remarkable change of character, it will 
 be signified, in due time, by a change of manner, aspect, 
 and action. 
 
 Besides, it is well understood that qualities received 
 by training, and not in themselves natural, do also pass 
 by transmission. It is said, for example, that the dog 
 used in hunting was originally trained by great care 
 and effort, and that now almost no training is necessary; 
 for the artificial quality has become, to a great extent, 
 natural in the stock. We have also a most ominous 
 example of this fact in the human species. I speak of 
 the Jewish race. The singular devotion of this race to 
 money and traffic is even a proverb. But their ances- 
 tors, of the ancient times, were not thus distinguished. 
 They were a simple, agricultural people, remarkable 
 for nothing but their religious opinions, and, in a late 
 period of the commonwealth, for their fanatical heroism 
 and obstinacy. Whence the change? History gives 
 the mournful answer, showing them to view, for long 
 ages, as a hated and down-trodden people, allowed no 
 rights in the soil, shut up within some narrow and foul 
 precinct in the cities, compelled to subsist by some 
 
OF THE FAMILY. 99 
 
 meager traffic, denied every possession but money, and 
 suffered to keep in security not even that, save as they 
 could hide it in secret places, and cloak the suspicion 
 of wealth under a sordid exterior. They have thus 
 been educated to be misers by the extortions and the 
 hatred of Christendom ; till finally an artificial nature, 
 so to speak, has been formed in the race, and we take 
 it even as the instinct of a Jew, to get money by small 
 traffic and sharp bargains. So there is little room to 
 doubt that every sort of character and employment 
 passes an effect and works some predisposition in those 
 who come after. 
 
 Could we enter into the mental habits of those chil- 
 dren, who are spoken of in my text, and trace out all 
 the threads of their inward character and disposition, 
 we should doubtless find some color of idolatry in the 
 fiber of their very being. They are not such as they 
 would be, if their parents, of this and remote genera- 
 tions, had been worshipers of the true God. Their 
 talents, dispositions, proj)ensities are different. The 
 idol god is in their faces and their bones, and his stamp 
 is on their spirit. Not in such a sense that the sin of 
 idolatry is in them — that is inconceivable ; for no pro- 
 per sin can pass by transmission — ^but that they have a 
 vicious, or prejudicial infection from it, a damage accru- 
 ino; from their historical connection and that of their 
 progenitors with it. 
 
 Nor, with these familiar laws of physiology before 
 us, is it reasonable to doubt that, where there is a long 
 line of godly fathers and mothers, kept up in regular 
 
100 THE ORGANIC UNITY 
 
 succession for many generations, a religious tempera- 
 ment may at length be produced, that is more in the 
 power of conscience, less wayward as regards principles 
 of integrity, and more pliant to the Christian motives. 
 More could be said with confidence, if the godly 
 character were less ambiguous and more thoroughly 
 sanctified. 
 
 8. We shall find that there is a law of connection, 
 after birth, under which power over character is ex- 
 erted, without any design to do it. For a considerable 
 time after birth, the child has no capacity of will and 
 choice developed, and therefore is not a subject of in- 
 fluence, in the common sense of that term. He is not 
 as yet a complete individual ; he has only powers and 
 capacities that prepare him to be, when they are un- 
 folded. They are in him only as wings and a capacity 
 to fly are in the egg. Meantime, he is oj)en to impres- 
 sions from every thing he sees. His character is form- 
 ing, under a principle, not of choice, but of nurture. 
 The spirit of the house is breathed into his nature, day 
 by day. The anger and gentleness, the fretfulness and 
 patience — the appetites, passions, and manners — all the 
 variant moods of feeling exhibited round him, pass into 
 him as impressions, and become seeds of character in 
 him ; not because the parents will, but because it must 
 be so, whether they will or not. They propagate their 
 own evil in the child, not by design, but under a law 
 of moral infection. Before the children begin to gather 
 wood for the sacrifice, the spirit of the idol and his 
 faith has been communicated. The airs and feelings 
 
OF THE FAMILY. 101 
 
 and conduct of idolatry have filled their nature with 
 impressions, which are back of all choice and memory. 
 Go out to them then, as they are gathering faggots for 
 the idol sacrifice, ask them what questions they have had 
 about the service of the god? what doubts? whether 
 any unsatisfied debate or perplexing struggle has vis- 
 ited their minds ? and you will probably awaken their 
 first thoughts on the subject by the inquiry itself. All 
 because they have grown up in the idol worship, from a 
 point back of memory. They received it through their 
 impressions, before they were able to receive it from 
 choice. And so it is with all the moral transactions of 
 the house. The spirit of the house is in the members 
 by nurture, not by teaching, not by any attempt to com- 
 municate the same, but because it is the air the children 
 breathe. 
 
 Now, it is in the twofold manner set forth, under this 
 and the previous head of my discourse, that our race 
 have fallen, as a race, into moral corruption and apos- 
 tasy. In these two methods, the race have been sub- 
 jected, as an organic unity, to evil ; so that when they 
 come to the age of proper individuality, the damage 
 received has prepared them to set forth, on a course of 
 blamable and guilty transgression. The question of 
 original or imputed sin has been much debated in mod- 
 ern times, and the effort has been to vindicate the per- 
 sonal responsibility of each individual, as a moral agent. 
 Nor is any thing more clear, on first principles, than 
 that no man is responsible for any sin but his own. 
 The sin of no person can be transmitted as a sin, or 
 
102 THE ORGANIC UNITY 
 
 charged to the account of another. But it does not 
 therefore follow, that there are no moral connections 
 between individuals, by which one becomes a corrupter 
 of others. If we are units, so also are we a race, and 
 the race is one — one family, one organic whole ; such 
 that the fall of the head involves the fall of all the 
 members. Under the old doctrines of original sin, 
 federal headship, and the like, cast away by many, 
 ridiculed by not a few, there yet lies a great and mo- 
 mentous truth, announced by reason as clearly as by 
 Scripture — that in Adam all die ; that by one man's 
 disobedience many were made sinners ; that death hath 
 passed upon all men, for that all have sinned. Not 
 that this original scheme of unity is any disadvantage. 
 I firmly believe and think 1 could show the contrary 
 even. Enough that so the Scriptures speak, and that 
 so we see, by inspection itself. There can be no 
 greater credulity, than for any man to expect that 
 a sinful and death-struck being, one who has fallen out 
 of the harmony of his mold by sin, should yet com- 
 municate no trace of evil from himself, no diseased 
 or damaged quality, no moral discolor, to the gene- 
 rations that derive their existence from him. To 
 make that possible, every law of physiology must 
 be adjourned, and, what is more, all that we see 
 with our eyes, in the eventful era of impressions, must 
 be denied. 
 
 I am well aware that those who have advocated, in 
 former times, the church dogma of original sin, as well 
 as those who adhere to it now, speak only of a taint 
 
OF THE FAMILY. 103 
 
 derived oy natural or physical propagation, and do not 
 include the taint derived afterwards, under the law of 
 family infection. It certainly can be no heresy to in- 
 clude the latter ; and, since it is manifest that both fall 
 within the same general category of organic connection, 
 it is equally manifest that both ought to be included, 
 and, in all systematic reasonings, must be. If, during 
 the age of impressions in the child, and previous to the 
 development of will, a power is exerted over charac- 
 ter — exerted necessarily, both as regards the sinful 
 parent and the child, and that as truly as if it fell 
 within the laws of propagation itself — it can not be 
 right to attribute the moral taint wholly, or even prin- 
 cipally, to propagation. Until the child comes to his 
 will, we must regard him still as held within the matrix 
 of the parental life ; and then, when he is ripe for re- 
 sponsible choice, as born for action — a proper and com- 
 plete person. Taking this comprehensive view of the 
 organic unity of successive generations of men, the 
 truth we assert of human depravation is not a half-truth 
 exaggerated, (which many will not regard as any truth 
 at all,) but it is a broad, well-authenticated doctrine, 
 which no intelligent observer of facts and principles 
 can deny. It shows the past descending on the pres- 
 ent, the present on the future, by an inevitable law, and 
 yet gives every parent the hope of mitigating the sad 
 legacy of mischief he entails upon his children, by 
 whatever improvements of character and conduct he is 
 able to make — a hope which Christian promise so far 
 clears to his view, as even to allow him the presump- 
 
104 the}organic unity 
 
 tion that his child may be set forth into responsible 
 action, as a Christian person. 
 
 In offering these thoughts, it will be seen that I have 
 not digressed from my subject, but have extended the 
 proof of my doctrine rather, discovering within its 
 scope, the fall of man itself. As a farther proof of the 
 organic unity of the family, I allege — 
 
 4. The fact that, in all organic bodies known to us — 
 states, churches, sects, armies— there is a common spirit, 
 by which they are pervaded and distinguished from 
 each other. And we use this word spirit^ in such cases, 
 to denote a power interfused, a comprehensive will 
 actuating the members, regarding also the common 
 body itself, as a larger and more inclusive individual. 
 How different, for example, is the spirit of France from 
 the spirit of England ? the spirit of both from that of 
 the United States ? and that from the spirit of the Spar- 
 tan or Athenian republic ? This national spirit, too, is, 
 as it were, a common power in each, by which the sub- 
 ordinate individual members are assimilated, and made 
 to have a kind of organic character. And so much is 
 there in this, that an Englishman can not make to him- 
 self a French character, or any one of us an English 
 character. We can not act the character one of another ; 
 for so distant are the feelings, prejudices, and tempera- 
 ments of each, that they can not even be accurately 
 conceived and reproduced, unless we are actually en- 
 veloped in them as an atmosphere. 
 
 In the same manner, there is a peculiar spirit in every 
 church. Whether you take the larger divisions, the 
 
OF THf: FAMILY. 105 
 
 Jewish, the Greek, the Eoman, the Episcopal, the 
 Presbyterian, the Baptist, the Congregational, or de- 
 scend to the particular churches of a given city, you 
 will find something characteristic in each — a common 
 power, which gives a common stamp to the members 
 peculiar to themselves. Or, if you visit a Quaker set- 
 tlement, where a few men and women are gathered into 
 a kind of church family, you will discover that the 
 members are pervaded, all, by a peculiar spirit, as dis- 
 tinct from the world around them as if they were a 
 new discovered people. And these Quaker settlements 
 may be taken as a kind of intermediate link between 
 the church-state and the family. 
 
 Passing then to families, you are not surprised to dis- 
 cover the same thing. This is specially evident where 
 the family is isolated, and does not mingle extensively 
 w^ith the world. You can scarcely open the door, and 
 take a seat in their house, least of all can you go to 
 their table, or spend a night in their hospitality, with- 
 out being impressed by the fact. And this family spirit 
 will sometimes be exceedingly opposite to the spirit of 
 goodness. Here it is money, money, written on every 
 face ; here it is good living ; here show ; here scandal 
 and detraction. Sometimes the sense of religion and 
 of spiritual things will seem to be nearly lost, or obliter- 
 ated. Sometimes a positive hatred of God and all 
 good men and principles will constitute the staple of 
 family feeling. Sometimes a dull and sullen contempt 
 of such things will hold the place of open animosity. 
 
 It is very true that the family spirit does not always 
 
106 THE ORGANIC UNITY 
 
 perfectly master and assimilate all the members. You 
 will find a Christian son or daughter, here and there, in 
 spite of the ruling spirit of the house. This, however, 
 because families are to some extent intermingled; in 
 which it comes to pass that children often fall under the 
 power of another spirit, that masters the spirit reigning 
 at home. The children go into other families, where 
 they are visited by other feelings. They go into the 
 church of God, where the church spirit breathes another 
 atmosphere. In the school, they are penetrated by the 
 school spirit. In the shop, or in the transactions of 
 trade, the same is true. Were it not for this, the fam- 
 ily spirit might almost uniformly rule the character of 
 the members. Who ever expects that an idolatrous 
 religion, in the house, will not uniformly produce idola- 
 ters ? So tlie Mohammedan spirit makes only Moham- 
 medans. In like manner, a thievish house perpetuates 
 a race of thieves. Consider also the ductility and the 
 perfect passivity of childhood. Early childhood resists 
 nothing. What is given it receives, making no selec- 
 tion. To expect therefore that a child will form to 
 himself a spirit opposite to the spirit of the family, 
 without once feeling the power of a counteractive spirit, 
 would be credulous in the highest degree. Doubt- 
 less he has a conscience, which is the law of God, in 
 his breast, and he has a will free to choose what his con- 
 science requires. But his passions are unfolded before 
 his discretion, his prejudices bent before he assumes the 
 function of self-government. He breathes the atmos- 
 phere of the house. He sees the world through his 
 
OF THE FAMILY, 107 
 
 parents' eyes. Their objects become his. Their life 
 and spirit mold him. If they are carnal, coarse, pas- 
 sionate, profane, sensual, devilish, his little plastic 
 nature takes the poison of course. Their very motions, 
 manners, and voices, will be distinguishable in him. 
 He lives and moves and has his being in them. 
 
 I do not say, of course, that he will exactly resemble 
 them in character. Were he to receive a contagious 
 disease, he would, doubtless, be differently handled 
 under it, from the person who gave the infection. I 
 only say, that the moral disease of the family he assur- 
 edly will take, and that, probably, without even a ques- 
 tion, or a cautious feeling started. If some other spirit, 
 from other families, or the church, or the world, do not 
 reach him, the organic spirit of the house will infallibly 
 shape and subordinate his character. 
 
 5. We are led to the same conclusions, by consider- 
 ing what may be called the organic loorhing of a family. 
 The child begins, at length, to develop his character, in 
 and through his voluntary power. But he is still under 
 the authority of the parent, and has only a partial con- 
 trol of himself, in the development of which, he is gradu- 
 ally approaching a complete personality. Now, there 
 is a perpetual working in the family, by which the wills, 
 both of the parents and the children, are held in exer- 
 cise, and which, without any design to affect character 
 on one side or conscious consent on the other, is yet 
 fashioning results of a moral quality, as it were by the 
 joint industry of the house. And these results are to 
 be taken, according to our definition, as included in the 
 
108 THE ORGANIC UNITY 
 
 organic unity of the family. I except, of course, all 
 the voluntary actings that are designed to influence 
 the child, and are yielded to by him, as consciously 
 right or wrong. 
 
 The truth here brought to view is graphically set 
 forth in my text. Whatever working there is in the 
 house, all work together. If the fathers kindle the fire, 
 and the women knead the cakes, the children will 
 gather the wood, and the idol worship will set the whole 
 circle of the house in action. The child being under 
 the law of the parents, they will keep him at work to 
 execute their plans, or their sins, as the case may be ; 
 and, as they will seldom think of what they do, or 
 require, so he will seldom have any scruple concerning 
 it. The property gained belongs to the family. They 
 have a common interest, and every prejudice or ani- 
 mosity felt by the parents, the children are sure to feel 
 even more intensely. They are all locked together, in 
 one cause — in common cares, hopes, offices, and duties ; 
 for their honor and dishonor, their sustenance, their 
 ambition, all their objects are common. So they are 
 trained of necessity to a kind of general working, or 
 cooperation, and, like stones, rolled together in some 
 brook or eddy, they wear each other into common 
 shapes. If the family subsist by plunder, then the 
 infant is swaddled as a thief, the child wears a thief's 
 garments, and feeds the growth of his body on stolen 
 meat ; and, in due time, he will have the trade upon 
 him, without ever knowing that he has taken it up, or 
 when he took it up. If the father is intemperate, the 
 
OF THE FAMILY. 109 
 
 children must go on errands to procure his supplies, 
 lose the shame that might be their safety, be immersed 
 in the fumes of liquor in going and coming, and why 
 not rewarded by an occasional taste of what is so essen- 
 tial to the enjoyment of life ? If the family subsist in 
 idleness and beggary, then the children will be trained 
 to lie skillfully, and maintain their false pretences with 
 a plausible effrontery — all this, you will observe, not 
 as a sin, but as a trade. 
 
 Nor does what I am saying hold, only in cases of 
 extreme viciousness and depravity. Whatever fire the 
 fathers kindle, the children are always found gathering 
 the wood — always helping as accessaries and appren- 
 tices. If the father reads a newspaper, or a sporting 
 gazette, on Sunday, the family must help him find it. 
 If he writes a letter of business on Sunday, he will 
 send his child to the office with the letter. If the 
 mother is a scandal-monger, she will make her children 
 spies and eaves-droppers. If she directs her servant to 
 say, at the door, that she is not at home, she will some- 
 times be overheard by her child. If she is ambitious 
 that her children should excel in the display of finery 
 and fashion, they must wear the show and grow up in 
 the spirit of it. If her house is a den of disorder and 
 filth, they must be at home in it. Fretfulness and ill- 
 temper in the parents are provocations, and therefore 
 somewhat more efficacious than commandments, to the 
 same. The proper result will be a congenial assem- 
 blage, in the house, of petulence and ill-nature. The 
 niggardly parsimony that quarrels with a child, when 
 
110 THE OKGAKIC UNITY 
 
 asking for a book needful for his proficiency at school, 
 is teaching him that money is worth more than knowl- 
 edge. If the parents are late risers, the children must 
 not disturb the house, but stay quiet and take a lesson 
 that is not to assist their energy and promptness in the 
 future business of life. If they go to church only half 
 of the day, they will not send their children the other 
 half If they never read the Bible, they will never 
 teach it. If they laugh at religion, they will put a face 
 upon it, which will make their children justify the con- 
 tempt they express. This enumeration might be indefi- 
 nitely extended. Enough that we see, in the working 
 of the house, how all the members work together. 
 The children fall into their places naturally, as it were, 
 and unconsciously, to do and to suffer exactly what the 
 general scheme of the house requires. "Without any 
 design to that effect, all the actings of business, pleas- 
 ure, and sin, propagate themselves throughout the cir- 
 cle, as the weights of a clock maintain the workings of 
 the wheels. Where there is no effort to teach wrong, 
 or thought of it, the house is yet a school of wrong, 
 and the life of the house is only a practical drill in 
 evil. 
 
 Having sufficiently estabHshed, as I think, by these 
 illustrations, the organic unity of families, it remains 
 to add some practical thoughts of a more specific na- 
 ture. And — 
 
 1. It becomes a question of great moment, as con- 
 nected with the doctrine established, whether it is the 
 
OF THE FAMILY. Ill 
 
 design of the Christian scheme to take possession of the 
 organic laws of the family, and wield them as instru- 
 ments, in any sense, of a regenerative purpose ? And 
 here we are met by the broad principle, that Christian- 
 ity endeavors to make every object, favor, and relation, 
 an instrument of righteousness, according to its original 
 design. What intelligent person ever supposed that 
 the original constitution, by which one generation de- 
 rives its existence and receives the bent of its character 
 from another, was designed of God to be the vehicle 
 only of depravity ? It might as well be supposed that 
 men themselves were made to be containers of deprav- 
 it}^ The only supposition that honors Grod is, that the 
 organic unity, of which I speak, was ordained originally 
 for the nurture of holy virtue in the beginning of each 
 soul's history; and that Christianity, or redemption, 
 must of necessity take possession of the abused vehicle, 
 and sanctify it for its own merciful uses. That an 
 engine of so great power should be passed by, when 
 every other law and object in the universe is appropria- 
 ted and wielded as an instrument of grace, and that in 
 a movement for the redemption of the race, is incon- 
 ceivable. The conclusion thus reached does not carry 
 us, indeed, to the certain inference that the organic 
 unity of the family will avail to set forth every child 
 of Christian parents, in a Christian life. But if we con- 
 sider the tremendous power it has, as an instrument 
 of evil, how far short of such an opinion does it leave 
 us, when computing the reach of its power as an instru- 
 ment of grace? 
 
112 THE ORGANIC UNITY 
 
 Passing next to the Scriptures, we find such reason- 
 ings justified, as explicitly as we can desire. I am not 
 disposed to press the language of Scripture, which is 
 popular, to extreme conclusions. But I observe that 
 Christ is called a second Adam and a last Adam : lan- 
 guage, to say the least, that suits the idea of a proposed 
 union with the race, under its organic laws — as if, en- 
 tering into the Christian family, his design were to fill 
 it with a family spirit, which shall controvert and mas- 
 ter the old evil spirit. The declaration corresponds, 
 that, as by one man's disobedience many were made 
 sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made 
 righteous — language that measures the grace by the 
 mischief, and shows it flowing in a parallel, but fuller 
 stream. It may not be easy to settle, beyond dispute, 
 the relation of the old covenant to the new ; but there 
 can be no question that the church, under Abraham, 
 was measured, in some sense, by the organic unity 
 of the family of Abraham. The covenant was a family 
 covenant, in which God engaged to be the God of the 
 seed, as of the father. And the seal of the covenant 
 was a seal of faitli^ applied to the whole house, as if the 
 continuity of faith were somehow to be, or somehow 
 might be maintained, in a line that is parallel with the 
 continuity of sin, in the family. Nor was the result to 
 depend on mere natural generation, however sanctified, 
 but on the organic causes also, that are involved in fam- 
 ily nurture, after birth. For we are expressly informed, 
 (Gen. xviii. 19,) that God rested his covenant, or engage- 
 ment, on the conduct of Abraham — "for I know him, 
 
OF THE FAMILY. 113 
 
 that lie will command his children and his household 
 after him, and they shall keep the way of the Lord, to 
 do justice and judgment, that the Lord may bring upon 
 Abraham that which he hath spoken of him." And thus 
 we see that the old church, beyond any possible ques- 
 tion, was to have its grounds of perpetuity, in and by the 
 same terms of organic unity, which sin has made the 
 vehicle of depravity. Descending then to the Kew Tes- 
 tament, Jesus the world's Redeemer is declared to have 
 suffered, "that the Messing of Abraham might come on 
 the Gentiles," and the Gentiles are said to be " graffed in." 
 The new "seed," viz., "Christ," are said to be "the seed 
 of Abraham," and "heirs of the promise" made to him. 
 The old rite of proselyte baptism, which made the fam- 
 ilies receiving it Jewish citizens and children of Abra- 
 ham, was applied over directly to the Christian uses, and 
 the rite went by "households;" even as the New Testa- 
 ment promise also was — "to you and to your children." 
 Even the old Jewish law, that one Jewish parent made a 
 Jewish child, is brought into the church, and one believing 
 parent "sanctifies" the child. Li all of which, it seems 
 to be clearly held that grace shall travel by the same 
 conveyance with sin ; that the organic unity, which I 
 have spoken of chiefly as an instrument of corruption, 
 is to be occupied and sanctified by Christ, and become 
 an instrument also of mercy and life. And thence it 
 follows that the seal of faith, applied to households, is 
 to be no absurdity ; for it is the privilege and duty of 
 every Christian parent that his children shall come forth 
 into responsible action, as a regenerated stock. The or- 
 
114 THE ORGANIC UNITY 
 
 ganic unity is to be a power of life. God engages, on 
 his part, tbat it may be, and calls the Christian parent 
 to promise, on his part, that it shall be. Thus the 
 church has a constitutive element from the family in it 
 still, as it had in the days of Abraham. The church 
 life — that is, the Holy Spirit— collects families into a 
 common organism, and then, by sanctifying the laws of 
 organic unity in families, extends its quickening power 
 to the generation following, so as to include the future, 
 and make it one with the past. And so the church, in 
 all ages, becomes a body under Christ the head, as the 
 race is a body under Adam the head — a living body, 
 quickened by him who hath life in himself, fitly joined 
 together and compacted by that which every joint 
 supplieth. 
 
 2. The theological importance of our doctrine of or- 
 ganic unity, when brought up to this point, is exhibited 
 in many ways, and especially in the fact that it gives 
 the only true solution of the Christian church and of 
 baptism as related to membership. I hardly dare at- 
 tempt to speak of the "sacramental grace," supposed to 
 attend the rite of baptism, under the priestly forms of 
 Christianity ; for I have never been able to give any 
 consistent and dignified meaning to the language, in 
 which it is set forth. That there is a grace attendant, 
 falling on all the parties concerned, is quite evident, if 
 they are doing their duty ; for no person, whether laic 
 or priest, can do, or intend what is right, without some 
 spiritual benefit. But the child is said to be "regener- 
 ate, spiritually united to Christ, a new creature in Christ 
 
OF THE FAMILY. 115 
 
 Jesus," under tlie official grace of baptism. Then tliis 
 language, so full of import, is defined, after all, to mean 
 onl}^ that the child is in the church, where the grace of 
 God surrounds him — translated (not internally, but ex- 
 ternally) from the sphere of nature into a new sphere, 
 where all the aids of grace, available for his salvation, 
 are furnished. Sometimes it is added that his sins are 
 remitted, though lio man is likely to believe that he has 
 any sins to remit ; or, if the meaning be that the cor- 
 rupted quality, phj^siologically inherent in his nature, is 
 washed away, he will show in due time that it is not ; 
 and no one, in fact, believes that it is. Then if it be 
 asked, whether the new sphere of grace will assuredly 
 work a gracious character? "no," is the answer. "If 
 the child is not faithful, or hinders the grace, he will lose 
 it " — that is, he will not stay regenerate. And then as 
 the child, in every case, is sure, in some bad sense, not 
 to be faithful, he is equally sure to lose the grace, and 
 be landed in a second state that is worse than the first. 
 And thus it turns out, after all, as far as I can see, that 
 the grace magnified iii the beginning, by words of so 
 high an import, is a thing of no value — it is nothing. 
 It is, in fact, one of our most decided objections to this 
 scheme of sacramental grace, (paradoxical as it may 
 seem,) that, really and truly, there is not enough of im- 
 port in it to save the meaning of the rite. The grace is 
 words only, and an air of imposture is all that remains, 
 after the words are explained. The rite is fertile only 
 in maintaining a superstition. Practically speaking, it 
 only exalts a prerogative. By a motion of his hand, 
 
116 THE ORGANIC UNITY 
 
 the priest breaks in, to interrupt and displace all the 
 laws of character in life — communicating an abrupt, 
 ictic grace, as much wider of all dignity and reason, 
 than any which the new light theology has asserted, as 
 the regenerative power is more subject to a human dis 
 pensation. A superstitious homage collects about his 
 person. The child looks on him as one who opens 
 heaven by a ceremony ! The ungodly parent hurries to 
 him, to get the regenerative grace for his dying child. 
 The bereaved parent mourns inconsolably, and even 
 curses himself, that he neglected to obtain the grace for 
 his child, now departed. The priest, in the eye, dis- 
 places the memory of duty and godliness in the heart. 
 A thousand superstitions, degrading to religion and 
 painful to look upon, hang around this view of baptism. 
 Not to produce them, the doctrine must yield up its 
 own nature. 
 
 In all this, I speak constructively, as reasoning from 
 the doctrine asserted, and as I am able to understand it. 
 Constructive results are never more than partially veri- 
 fied by historic facts ; for great truths, blended with the 
 error, qualify and mitigate its effects. 
 
 Now the true conception is, that baptism is applied 
 to the child, on the ground of its organic unity with 
 the parents; imparting and pledging a grace to sanc- 
 tify that unity, and make it good in the field of re- 
 ligion. By the supposition, however, the child still 
 remains within the known laws of character in the 
 house, to receive, under these, whatever good may 
 reach him; not snatched away by an abrupt, fatv 
 
OF THE FAMILY. 117 
 
 tastica], and therefore incredible grace. He is taken 
 to be regenerate, not historically speaking, but pre- 
 sumptively, on the ground of his known connection 
 with the parent character, and the divine or church 
 life, which is the life of that character. Perhaps I shall 
 be understood more easily, if I say that the child is po- 
 tentially regenerate, being regarded as existing in con- 
 nection with powers and causes that contain the fact, 
 before time and separate from time. For when the fact 
 appears historically, under the law of time, it is not 
 more truly real, in a certain sense, than it was before. 
 And then the grace conferred, being conferred by no 
 casual act, but resting in the established laws of char- 
 acter, in the church and the house, is not lost by un- 
 faithfulness, but remains and lingers still, though abused 
 and weakened, to encourage new struggles. 
 
 Thus it will be seen that the doctrine of organic unity 
 I have been asserting, proves its theologic value, as a 
 ready solvent fbr the rather perplexing difiiculties of 
 this difiicult subject. Only one difficulty remains, viz, 
 that so few can believe the doctrine. 
 
 8. It is evident that the voluntary intention of pa- 
 rents, in regard to their children, is no measure, either 
 of their merit or their sin. Few parents are so base, or 
 so lost to natural affection, as really to intend the injury 
 of their children. However irreligious, or immoral, 
 they more commonly desire a worthy and correct char- 
 acter for their children, often even a Christian character. 
 But, in the great and momentous truth now set forth, 
 you perceive it is not what you intend for your children, 
 
118 THE OEGANIC UNITY 
 
 SO mucli as what you are, that is to have its effect. 
 They are connected, by an organic unity, not with your 
 instructions, but with your Hfe. And your hfe is more 
 powerful than your instructions can be. They might 
 be jealous of intended corruption, and withstand it; 
 but the spirit of the house, which is your spirit, the 
 whole working of the house, which is actuated by you, 
 is what no exercise of will, even if they had more of it 
 than they have, could well resist. Therefore, what you 
 are, they will almost necessarily be ; and then, as you 
 are responsible for what you are, you must also be re- 
 sponsible for the ruin brought on them. And, if you 
 desired better things for them, as you probably say, 
 the more guilty are you that, knowing and desiring 
 better things, you thwarted your desires by your own 
 evil life. 
 
 So there are Christians who intend and do many things 
 for their children, and thus acquit themselves of all 
 blame in regard to their character. Here, alas ! is the 
 perpetual error of Christian parents, so called, that they 
 endeavor to make up, by direct efforts, for the mis- 
 chiefs of a loose and neglectful life. They convince 
 themselves that teaching, lecturing, watch, discipline, 
 things done with a purpose, are the sum of duty. As 
 if mere affectations and will-works could cheat the laws 
 of life and character ordained by God ! Your character 
 is a stream, a river, flowing down upon your children, 
 hour by hour. What you do here and there to carry 
 an opposing influence is, at best, only a ripple that you 
 make on the surface of the stream. It reveals the 
 
OF THE FAMILY. 119 
 
 sweep of the current ; notliing more. If you expect 
 your cliildren to go with the ripple, instead of the 
 stream, you will be disappointed. I beseech you then, 
 as you love your children, to admit other and worthier 
 thoughts, thoughts more safe for them and certainly for 
 you. Understand that it is the family spirit, the or- 
 ganic life of the house, the silent power of a domestic 
 godliness, working, as it does, unconsciously and wdth 
 sovereign effect — this it is which forms your chil- 
 dren to God. And, if this be wanting, all that you 
 may do beside, will be as likely to annoy and harden as 
 to bless. 
 
 4. It seems to be a proper inference from the doctrine 
 I have exhibited, that Christian parents ought to speak 
 freely to their children, at times, of their own faults and 
 infirmities. If they are faithful, if they live as Chris- 
 tians, if the spirit of Christ bears rule in the house, they 
 will yet have faults, and they ought to make no secret 
 of the fact. The impression should be made, that they 
 themselves are struggling with infirmities ; that they are 
 humbled under a sense of these infirmities ; that there 
 is much in them for God to pardon, much for their 
 children to overlook, or even to forgive ; and that God 
 alone can assist them to lead themselves and their family 
 up to a better world. Instead of lecturing their chil- 
 dren, always, on their peccadilloes and sins, it w^ould be 
 better, sometimes, to give a lecture on their own. This, 
 if rightly done, would attract the friendly sympathy of 
 their children, guard them against the injurious impres- 
 sions they make when they trip themselves, and unite 
 
120 THE ORGANIC UNITY 
 
 the wliole family in a common struggle heavenward. 
 There is no other way to correct the mixture of evil 
 you will blend with the family spirit, but to deplore it, 
 and make it an acknowledged truth, that you, too, are 
 only a child in goodness. But if you take a throne of 
 papal infallibility in your family, and endeavor to fight 
 out, with the rod, what you fail in by your misconduct, 
 you may make your children fear you and hate you, 
 but you will not win them to Christ. Alas ! there are 
 too many Christian families that are only little pope- 
 doms. The rule itself is tyranny — infallibility assumed, 
 then maintained, by the holy inquisition of terror and 
 penal chastisement ! God will not smile on such a kind 
 of discipline. 
 
 5. It is evident what rule should regulate the soci- 
 ety and external intercourse of children. It is a very 
 great mercy, as I have said, that the children of a bad 
 or irreligious family are sometimes permitted to be in- 
 mates elsewhere; to go into virtuous and Christian 
 families, where a better spirit reigns. There they see, 
 perhaps, the genuine demonstrations of order, of purity, 
 and of good affections ; they hear the voice of prayer, 
 they come where the spirit of heaven breathes. It is a 
 new world, and they are filled with new impressions. 
 So, if a child may go to a school where order, right 
 principle, virtuous manners, and the love of knowledge 
 reign, and find a respite there from the shiftlessness, 
 vice, and brutality at home, how great is the privilege ! 
 In this view, a good school is almost the only mercy 
 that can be extended to the hapless sons and daughters 
 
OF THE FAMILY. 121 
 
 of vice. Their good — most dismal tliouglit ! — is to be 
 delivered from their home ; to escape the spirit of hell 
 that encompasses their helpless age, and feel, though it 
 be but a few hours a day, the power of another spirit ! 
 
 But I was speaking of the rule to be observed in the 
 society of children. Let every Christian beware how 
 he makes his children inmates in an irreligious family. 
 It will do, sometimes, to allow the children of an irre- 
 ligious family to be inmates, temporarily, in your own. 
 You may do it for their advantage ; and if you can en- 
 list the hearts of your children in the merciful inten- 
 tions you cherish, it may even be a good exercise for 
 them. But it is a very different thing to place your 
 children within the atmosphere of another house. Send 
 them not where the spirit of evil reigns. Understand 
 how plastic their nature is, how easily it receives the 
 contagion of another spirit. You yourselves may have 
 intercourse with ungodly persons ; it may be your duty 
 to seek it for their benefit ; but you may well be cau- 
 tious how far you subject your children, especially in 
 early years, to the intercourse of irreligious families. 
 
 And what shall I say to parents, who are themselves 
 irreligious ? Perhaps you make it your boast that you 
 give your children their liberty; that you mean to 
 allow them to be just as religious as they please. And 
 is that enough, do you think, to discharge your duties 
 to them ? Is it enough to breathe the spirit of evil and 
 sin into them and around them every hour, to give 
 them no Christian counsel, to train them up in a prayer- 
 less house, drill them into conformity with all your 
 
122 THE ORGANIC UNITY. 
 
 worldly ways, and tlien say that you allow them full 
 liberty to be Christians? Having them under your 
 law, determining yourselves that organic spirit, which 
 is to be the element, the very breath of their moral ex- 
 istence, will you then boast that you mean to allow 
 them to be as virtuous as they please ? Ah, if there be 
 any argument, which might compel you to be Chris- 
 tians yourselves, it is these arguments of affection that 
 God has given you. But if you will not be Christians 
 yourselves, then, at least, show your children some de- 
 gree of mercy, by delivering them, as much as possible, 
 from yourselves! Send them, as often as you may, 
 where a better spirit reigns. Make them inmates with 
 Christian families, as you have opportunity. Let them 
 go where they will hear a prayer and see a Christian 
 Sabbath. Send them, or take them with you, to the 
 church of God, and the Sabbath-school. Give them a 
 respite often from the family spirit and the organic law 
 of the house. If you yourselves will not fashion them 
 for the skies, let others, more faithful than you, and 
 more merciful, do it for you. 
 
V. 
 
 INFANT BAPTISM, HOW DEVELOPED. 
 
 " For the promise is imto you and to your children, and to all that aro 
 afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call." — Acts, ii. 39. 
 
 It is a matter of wonder, witli many professed disci- 
 ples of Jesus in our time, that if the baptism of chil- 
 dren and their qualified introduction into the church is 
 any genuine part of the Christian economy, there is so 
 little authority for it, by express mention in the New 
 Testament writings. And yet, over opposite to this, 
 it is quite as fair a subject of wonder that in Peter's 
 first sermon, on the day of Pentecost, when addressing 
 only the adult sinners of the assembly, in terms appro- 
 priate to their age, he should yet have given out, as it 
 were unconsciously, a declaration that can signify noth- 
 ing but the engagement of Christ, in his new and more 
 spiritual economy, to identify children with their pa- 
 rents, even as they had been identified in the coarser 
 provisions of the Old. " To you and to your children," 
 says the apostle, and here, covertly as it were to him- 
 self, are hid infant baptism, infant church relations, 
 potentially present but as yet undeveloped, even in 
 what may be fitly called the seed sermon of the Chris- 
 tian church. This was no time to be thinking of in- 
 fants, or children, as related to church polity ; probably 
 
124 INFANT BAPTISM, 
 
 there is not one present in the great assembly. It will 
 be soon enough to settle the church position of chil- 
 dren, when the question rises practically afterwards. 
 These converted pilgrims, Parthians, Medes, Elamites, 
 and strangers of all names, may not even so much as 
 think of the question till they reach their homes again. 
 But the language, we can see, is Jewish ; language of 
 promise, or covenant, only with a Christian addition — 
 " And to tEem that are afar off, even as many as the 
 Lord our God shall call " — and Peter, as we know, did 
 not really come into the meaning of this language him- 
 self till years after, when the great sheet let down from 
 heaven three times, and the actual ministering to a 
 Gentile convert, showed him whither, and how far off, 
 the call of the Lord might be going, in these times, to 
 run. Let it not surprise us then, that the facts of in- 
 fant baptism, and of infant church relations, covered, 
 as they are, by Peter's language in this first serrfion, 
 are still not yet developed, even to himself — any more 
 than the fact of Christ's call to the Gentiles. 
 
 And when our Baptist brethren reiterate the formula, 
 "believe and be baptized," "believe and be baptized," 
 which they assume to be absolutely conclusive and final 
 on the question of infant baptism because infants can 
 not believe, they have only to make due allowance 
 for the fact that Christianity must needs make its chief 
 address, at the outset, to adult persons, and their argu- 
 ment vanishes. Christianity will of course address itself 
 to the subjects addressed ; and, telling them what they 
 must do to be saved, it will not of course tell them, at 
 
HOW DEVELOPED. 125 
 
 the same breath, every thing else that is fit to be 
 known. In this manner its language was naturally 
 shaped, for a considerable time, so as to meet only the 
 conditions of adult minds. When at length it shall 
 begin to be inquired, what is the condition of imma- 
 ture, or infant minds? it will be soon enough to say 
 something appropriate to them. 
 
 Besides, the formula has another side — " He that be- 
 lieveth not shall be damned." Does it therefore follow, 
 because it is so continually given to adults as the fixed 
 law of salvation — he that believeth shall be saved, and 
 he that believeth not shall be damned — that infants 
 dying in infancy, and too young to believe, must there- 
 fore be inevitably damned ? Wo, it will be answered, 
 even by our Baptist brethren themselves ; for the lan- 
 guage referred to was evidently designed only for adult 
 persons, and is of cours^to be qualified so as to meet the 
 demands of reason, when we come to the case of child- 
 hood. And why not also the language " believe and be 
 baptized?" Say not that the child is not old enough 
 to believe, and therefore can not be baptized. If he is 
 not old enough to believe, how can he better be saved ? 
 Is it a greater, and higher, and more difficult thing to 
 be admitted to baptism, than to be admitted to eternal 
 glory ? 
 
 Now I can most readily admit that the subject of in- 
 fant baptism is not as definitely mentioned and form- 
 ally prescribed in the New Testament, as we might, 
 without any great extravagance, expect. For many 
 will never notice how great a thing it is for Christianity 
 
126 INFANT BAPTISM, 
 
 to pass from the first stage of mere propagation, to the 
 stage of a fixed institution. What worlds of modifi- 
 cation, correction, new arrangement, are necessary to 
 the transition, they have never observed. They see 
 the real figure of Christianity in the day of Pentecost, 
 having never a conception, it may be, that this figure is 
 most intensely occasional and casual, and the whole 
 scene one that has scarcely a vestige of Christian in- 
 stitution in it. 
 
 What I propose, then, is to go over some of the inci- 
 dents of this Pentecostal scene and show you how it 
 will drop out one point after another, as Christianity 
 becomes a fixed institution ; which institutional char- 
 acter, again, will, by a necessary law, bring in other 
 elements whereby to shape itself and complete its 
 organization. 
 
 First of all, we are delighted here at the picture 
 given of a new form of society, and a thing so beauti- 
 ful, so wonderfully hopeful and peculiar, we are ready 
 to think must be the very essence of the new institu- 
 tion itself "And all that believed were together and 
 had all things common ; and sold their possessions and 
 goods and parted them to all men, as every man had 
 need. And they, continuing with one accord in the 
 temple and breaking bread from house to house, did 
 eat their meat with gladness and singleness of heart, 
 praising God and having favor with all the people. 
 And the Lord added daily to the church such as should 
 be saved." What a picture, taken as a mere external 
 description! Saying nothing of internal experiences, 
 
HOW DEVELOPED 127 
 
 it goes to the simple outward demonstrations, and by 
 these it paints the spring-time, or first blossoming of 
 the Christian love. The beauty of the scene consists 
 in the fact, that the disciples hardly know, as yet, what 
 their love signifies. Assembled as pilgrims, from all 
 parts of the world, the Christian love has fallen upon 
 them, and they find, what is altogether new and strange, 
 that rich and poor, honorable and base, despite of all 
 distinctions, they love one another as brethren ! Not 
 knowing what to make of it, or, apparently, whether 
 they are hereafter to have any thing to do but to love 
 one another, they give themselves wholly up to love, 
 as children to a play — come what will, they are all 
 agreed in this, that they want only fellowship with each 
 other, fellowship in doctrine, fellowship in praise, fel- 
 lowship in bread, and why not also in goods ? 
 
 How sad, that a scene so amiable and lovely could 
 not continue, and that all Christian disciples, to the end 
 of the world, could not fall into the same delightful 
 picture in their conduct ! Just as sad, I answer, as it 
 is that children can not always be children ; for these 
 are the children of love, acting out the simple instinct 
 of love, and wholly ignorant, as yet, of the cares, 
 labors, and confused struggles, in which their Christian 
 spirit is to have its trial. Doubtless we are to regret, 
 as a loss, whatever departure we may have suffered 
 from the spirit of these first disciples ; for the spirit of 
 Christian life is one and the same, in all diversities of 
 form and conduct. But it is plain to any one, who will 
 exercise the least consideration, that it was just as im- 
 
128 INFANT BAPTISM, 
 
 possible to perpetuate these first demonstrations, as it 
 is to preserve the infantile airs of children after child- 
 hood is passed, carrying them still on through the 
 sturdy toils and cares of a mature age. The moment 
 we leave these first scenes, following the pilgrims off 
 to their homes, see them entering into the duties of 
 home, see the Christian churches getting body and form 
 in so many places and becoming incorporated as fixed 
 elements of human society, we shall discover that 
 almost all the modes and hospitalities of the Pente- 
 costal society are inevitably discontinued. 
 
 . But we must go deeper into the history and show, 
 by distinct specification, how intensely casual much 
 that belongs to the scene of the Pentecost was even 
 designed to be, and how many things are to be added 
 to give the new gospel a permanently instituted life. 
 We begin with the things casual that were designed to 
 cease. 
 
 The doctrine of the Holy Spirit was here to be inau- 
 gurated, as a Divine Force, entered systematically into 
 the world, to work subjectively in men all the charac- 
 ters of love and beauty that are shown objectively in 
 the life of Jesus. He is to be, in other words, a per- 
 petual indwelling Christ in men's hearts. In times 
 more ancient, good men had been wont to pray for 
 spiritual help in a manner correspondent, but now the 
 kingdom of Help, that kingdom which is righteousness 
 and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost, is to be set up 
 as a Christly dispensation. But, at the beginning, there 
 must be something done before the senses, to waken 
 
HOW DEVELOrKTi. 129 
 
 sensuous impressions. Otherwise, whatever power the 
 Spirit might exert in the recesses of the human soul, 
 it would probably occur to no one to refer the effects 
 wrought to a Divine Agency. Hence the wondrous 
 character of the scene, which here bursts upon the 
 world — a sound from heaven, a rushing, mighty wind 
 sweeping through the hall, lambent tips of fire resting 
 on the heads of the assembly, wondrous utterances or 
 tongues. 
 
 Now, the physical incidents of this scene had noth- 
 ing to do with its substantial import, save as they were 
 added to suggest the idea of a Divine Agency. They 
 hold the same mechanical relation, as a vehicle, to the 
 Spirit, that the human nature of Jesus held to the 
 Divine Word. They are the bod^, the sensible show 
 of the Spirit, the smoke by which the fire was revealed. 
 So of the tongues. They were the sign of a power 
 that was playing the action of the inner man, and mak- 
 ing audible, as it were, the activity within, of a Divine 
 Influence. All these, like the miraculous gifts so con- 
 spicuous in the subsequent history, were manifestations 
 of the Spirit, given to profit withal ; but being only 
 accidents or exponents, were, of course, to be discon- 
 tinued, when the doctrine of a spiritual influence from 
 God was sufl&ciently developed — discontinued and never 
 restored, unless perhaps in cases where the sense of the 
 Spirit is so nearly lost as to require a kind of new de- 
 velopment. Accordingly as these fall off, the spir- 
 itual influence inaugurated by such tokens, may be 
 expected, for much the same reasons, to move upon the 
 
130 INFANT BAPTISM 
 
 world in a less imposing method ; to remit, in some 
 degree, the extraordinary, and, as life is itself ordinary, 
 become, to the human spirit, what the air is to the 
 body — a Perpetual Element of inbreathing love; to 
 dwell in the families, to follow the individual, and 
 whisper holy thoughts in solitary places and silent 
 hours. He is to fill the world, and be a Spirit of Life 
 and love, present to all human hearts. He will pro- 
 duce the same exercises, produced in the first disciples, 
 in the scene of the Pentecost. Sometimes, too, he will 
 glorify himself in scenes of social effect and power. 
 But the grand reality revealed is an Abiding Spirit — 
 not a Scene Spirit, but an Abiding Spirit — accordantly 
 with Christ's own promise — " He shall give you 
 another Comforter, that he may abide with you for- 
 ever." When the sound, therefore, which then shook 
 the air is hushed to be heard no more ; when the rush-* 
 ing, mighty wind that typified so powerfully the breath 
 of the arriving Spirit of God has dropped into calm ; 
 when the fire-tips have ceased to burn on the heads 
 of all assemblies, and all the Pentecostal signs are over ; 
 then is there seen to be left as a result, the fixed con- 
 viction of a Jesus unlocalized, a Spirit of Jesus pres- 
 ent in all places, working in all hearts, present, in con- 
 scious manifestation, to all discerning souls, as the life 
 of their life. How very casual, in this view, is the 
 scene of the Pentecost. And that is very soon dis- 
 covered. One year afterwards, not even the persons 
 present in that scene look upon it as being, in any sense, 
 a properly institutional element of Christianity. The 
 
HOW DEVELOPED 131 
 
 Spirit inaugurated is institutional, the life of all holy 
 institutions, but nothing in the forms of the scene is 
 regarded as having a perpetual character. 
 
 Again, it will be found that the preaching of the 
 day of Pentecost, powerful as the sermon of Peter ap- 
 pears to have been upon the assembly at that time, 
 was not such, either in style or substance, as could 
 be continued after the first day or two of the gos- 
 pel proclamation, and was in fact superseded, in a very 
 short time, by the sturdier methods of argument and 
 instruction. We see this in all the epistles, and as truly 
 in those of Peter as of Paul. The infant churches had 
 scarcely begun to be institutions, before this change was 
 apparent. 
 
 And yet we have many, in our own time, who do 
 not appear to see this, even though the manner of 
 Peter's sermon is so completely gone by, that one can 
 hardly imagine how it had any power at all. " See," 
 they say, "how simple it was, how easy of apprehen- 
 sion — nothing but a recitation of facts — and then what 
 power it had!" As if the telling, over and over, of 
 old news, announcing again facts that have been 
 known to every reader of the New Testament from his 
 childhood up, as familiarly as he knows his right hand, 
 could have the same value and be means to ends for 
 producing the same effects ! Most of us have a better 
 understanding of the subject, perceiving, as clearly as 
 possible, that while Peter's sermon was good for the 
 occasion, it was good for almost no occasion since. It 
 was one of the first things, of which there can not, by 
 
132 INFANT BAPTISM. 
 
 the supposition, be many. A camp meeting, or a band 
 of pilgrims gathered for a single week, a thousand 
 miles from home, may well enough desire such kind 
 of preaching as will serve the zest of the occasion. 
 But it is no design of Christianity to get by the need 
 of intelligence, and fashion a sanctity that has no fel- 
 lowship with dignity. A regularly instituted Christian 
 congregation, who are to live and grow up on the 
 same spot, from age to age, it has long ago been dis- 
 covered, must be compelled to gird up the loins of their 
 mind. They must reject the mere gospel drinks and 
 betake themselves to meat. Their life, it will be found, 
 depends, not on scenes and machineries, not on storms 
 and paroxysms, but on a capacity rather to receive in- 
 struction ; to be exercised in high argument, to bear 
 with patience the discovery how little they know, and 
 on a good healthful appetite for Christian food. To be 
 able to burn in a fire decides nothing. They must know 
 how to supply the fuel of devotion out of their own 
 exercise in God's truth. They must love a ministry 
 of doctrine, or intellectual teaching. Neither is it doc- 
 trine, as many fancy, when they complain of a want 
 of doctrinal preaching, to get a few stale dogmas im- 
 pounded in the head, or stuck in the brain, as dead flies 
 in ointment : all the rich treasures of thought, and high 
 motive, and solemn contemplation, garnered up in 
 God's word, must be brought out, seen, understood, and 
 fall upon the soul, as manna from the skies. Like 
 manna, too, it must be the supply of to-day only. A 
 new shower must be gathered for to-morrow, and the 
 
HOW DEVELOPED 133 
 
 mind of tlie people must be kept in active and pro- 
 gressive motion. 
 
 Such a kind of preaching will feed the intelligence 
 of the hearers, and raise ujd pillars in the churches. 
 And here is the great distinction between the preaching 
 proper to the scene of the Pentecost, and that of an 
 established Christian congregation. It is the difference 
 between Peter, giving news to the pilgrims, and Paul of- 
 ering some "things hard to be understood," to churches 
 of organized disciples. Such preaching is required, in 
 an established congregation, as will exert an educating 
 power. And yet it will, in that way, be a converting 
 power, as efficacious as any other, if only it is expected 
 to be. When the community is more deeply moved 
 by spiritual things, it will, of course, vary its tone and 
 its subjects to suit the occasion, perhaps multiply its 
 efforts ; but never as being in a hurry, lest the grace 
 of the occasion may be capriciously withdrawn, never 
 over-preaching, or preaching out, as if nothing were to 
 be done by thought in the hearers, but all by the power 
 of a commotion round them; for it is not the same 
 thing to fall out of dignity and self-possession as to get 
 rid of sin, neither is a fever or a whirlwind any proper 
 instrument of sanctification. Mournful proofs have we 
 to the contrary. Better is it to reserve a power for the 
 ordinary, even when we are in the extraordinary. It 
 is not wisdom to overwork the harvest, so that we have 
 no strength left for the bread. Rather let the preacher 
 believe in the Abiding Spirit, and count upon a kind 
 of perpetual harvest. Let him think to gain many to 
 
134 INFANT BAPTISM 
 
 Christ imperceptibly, by keeping alive the interest of 
 God's truth, and letting it distill upon the hearers as a 
 dew, and through them on the rising families. What- 
 ever he gains in this way will assuredly remain ; for it 
 is not the birth of an occasion, but of quiet conviction. 
 It partakes the nature of habit. It is the fruit of a 
 godly training. Seldom, therefore, will it fall away, or 
 disappoint expectation. 
 
 There is yet another class of incidents, or demonstra- 
 tions, in the scene of the Pentecost, which are referable 
 to the fact that these first converts are not at home, and 
 all these must, of course, be modified, or discontinued 
 by their simple return. They are pilgrims at the 
 feasts; Parthians, Medes, Elamites — Jewish emigrants, 
 who have returned from every most distant clime of the 
 world, to enjoy the great festivals of their religion. 
 
 Their property, their business, and, more commonly, 
 their families, are left behind. Many of them are poor 
 persons, wholly unable to support the expense even of 
 a short stay at Jerusalem. The others can not, of course, 
 leave them to suffer. So they divide their resources 
 with the poor ; and some, who belong at Jerusalem, are 
 moved by the overflowing love of Christ in their hearts, 
 to part with their whole property, that they may re- 
 lieve the necessities of the brotherhood. Only a few 
 days or weeks are thus spent together. Probably, 
 within three months, they are, every man, at home in 
 his own house, providing for his own family, out of the 
 increase of his own industry and property. During 
 their short stay at Jerusalem, they had nothing to do 
 
HOW DEVELOPED 185 
 
 but to exercise their religion. Accordingly they gave 
 themselves wholly up to it. Now the religious occasion 
 is past ; the extraordinary is over, and the ordinary has 
 returned. By this time, they have learned, probably, 
 and received it even as a Christian maxim, that one 
 who does not provide for Ms oivn, denies the faith, and 
 is worse than an infidel. 
 
 Again, these first disciples had not yet been called to 
 blend their piety with the common cares and duties of 
 life. Quite likely, they did not, for some time, consider 
 whether they should hereafter have any thing more to 
 do with these gross and earthly callings. But we, at 
 least, have learned what they must also have learned 
 very soon, that though we can not live by bread alone, 
 it is yet difficult to live without bread. We have 
 learned that the very church of God itself is perpetu- 
 ated, in part, by industry and production, that it can 
 not live by expenditure, that we have something there- 
 fore to do, besides breaking bread from house to house ; 
 six days to labor, a spectacle of thrift to present to 
 mankind, as a proof that Christian virtue has its bless- 
 ings. "We must shine as good citizens, neighbors, pa- 
 rents, friends. Life is no mere camp-meeting scene; 
 but the greatest of all Christian attainments, we find, is 
 precisely that which the first disciples had not yet 
 thought of, the learning how to blend the spiritual and 
 economical or industrial together ; to live in the world, 
 and not be of it ; to labor in earthly things, and main- 
 tain a conversation in heaven ; to unite thrift with char- 
 ity, and separate gain from greediness ; to use property, 
 
136 INFANT BAPTISM 
 
 and not worship it; to prepare comfort, without pursa- 
 ing pleasure. For it is, by just this kind of trial, that 
 all spiritual strength is gotten, and the Christian life 
 becomes a light to men. i- 
 
 Having glanced, in this manner, at some of the types 
 and conditions of the scene of Pentecost that were, and 
 were inevitably to be, discontinued, let us notice briefly, 
 some of the matters that must also as inevitably be 
 added in the process by which Christianity becomes an 
 institution. 
 
 Thus, first of all, as Christ and his evangelists had 
 given the new facts to the world, so it was inevitable 
 that a grand process of thinking or mental elaboration 
 should begin to work out the import or doctrinal inter- 
 pretation of those facts. In this process, diverse opin- 
 ions, formulas, sects, controversies, must be developed — 
 consequently new modes of duty. 
 
 The simplicity of mere love, displayed, as it was, in 
 the first scenes of the gospel, could not continue, how- 
 ever desirable it may seem. Men must think, as well 
 as love, and thought must make its inroads on mere re- 
 lations of feeling. And thus a long process of forming 
 and reforming must go on, till the Christ of the head 
 becomes as catholic as the Christ of the heart. Mean- 
 time, all must stand for the truth, and there must be no 
 countenance given to error. The happy days of Chris- 
 tian childhood are left far behind, and every church is 
 set in relations of duty that are partly antagonistic. It 
 must take a form required by its new necessities. What 
 
HOW DEVELOPED 187 
 
 to do for the truth, whom to acknowledge, when to re- 
 sist and when to forbear, how much consequence to 
 attribute to opinions, over what errors to spread the 
 mantle of charity, how to maintain a polemic attitude 
 in the unity of the Spirit — these are the grave questions 
 that are to occupy ministers and churches, and, in the 
 right exercise of which, they are to justify their Chris- 
 tian name. And on this will depend the power of 
 religion, quite as much as on the duties done to those 
 who are aliens and unbelievers. 
 
 Next we pass on to a field where the new creating 
 power of the gospel is displayed yet more distinctly. 
 The first disciples had no thought but to swim in the 
 strange joy they felt, as forgiven of God and filled with 
 the love of Jesus. Of Christianity, as a fixed institu- 
 tion, taking the whole society of man into its bosom, 
 and becoming the school of the race, they had probably, 
 at first, no conception. Passing thence to the modern 
 Christian faith, how great is the change ! What a va- 
 riety of means, instruments and arrangements has it 
 created, maintaining all from age to age, by a sacrifice, 
 compared with which, the casual contributions to poor 
 saints at Jerusalem were far less significant in their 
 effects, and, perhaps, not more to be commended, as 
 proofs of a Christian spirit. 
 
 First, a house of worship ; and, in order to this, the 
 new spiritual life must become a holder of real estate, 
 and be acknowledged as such in the laws. To make the 
 place worthy of the cause, genius and taste are to be called 
 into exercise, and a new Christian art developed. 
 
138 INFANT BAPTISM 
 
 To maintain expenses and repairs, and collect and 
 disburse cliarities, there must be officers created, such as 
 deacons and committees of various kinds, and this re- 
 quires elections, bye-laws, records, and a full organized 
 institutional state. 
 
 Mere forms and sacraments being insufficient, preach- 
 ers of the word must be carefully trained for the service, 
 and installed therein, to feed the intelligence of the 
 flock, and lead them in the truth. Their official rights 
 and duties must be ascertained, and, correspondently, 
 the rights and duties of the flock — matters all how dis- 
 tant from the scene of the Pentecost ! 
 
 The times and forms of worship need to be settled ; 
 for, whether a liturgy is used or not, no organic action 
 can be maintained without forms of some kind, to serve 
 as laws of concert and rules of order. 
 
 Christian music, as a new art, must be created, and 
 the children and youth must be trained therein, so that 
 all may bear their part in the worship, and the worship 
 exercise and inspire a devout feeling in all. 
 
 There must be a punctual and regular attendance 
 somehow established and made obligatory ; for the habit 
 of worship is necessary, to its value, as a power over 
 character. Hence there must be a common responsi- 
 bility — all must be enlisted. There must be a church 
 spirit, and, in order to this, a fraternal spirit in the 
 members, verified by mutual sympathy and aid under 
 the common burdens of life — a kind of service, I will 
 add, which is often far more beneficent than a commu- 
 nity of goods would be ; for this latter might be only a 
 
HOW DEVELOPED. 139 
 
 premium given to idleness, while the other is but a good 
 encouragement to the ingenuous struggles of industry. 
 There must, however, be some Christian provision for 
 the poor, that they also may have their part in the 
 Christian flock, and the blessings of charity descend 
 upon it and dwell in it. 
 
 Nor is the article of dress, in a Christian assembly, 
 too insignificant to be a subject of care. Probably no 
 one had a thought of this in the Pentecostal assembly ; 
 but we find the apostles, not long after, giving serious 
 lectures to the disciples upon their dress. Dress and 
 manners, manners and morals, morals and piety, are all 
 connected by an intimate or secret law. A people, 
 therefore, who are careful to appear before God, in a 
 well-chosen, modest, and appropriate dress — one that is 
 neither careless nor ostentatious, one that indicates so- 
 briety, neatness, good sense, and a desire to be approved 
 of God more than to be seen of men — will avoid barba- 
 rous improprieties of every sort. Their manner will 
 express reverence to God. What they express, they 
 will be likely to feel ; and if they become true disciples 
 of Christ, as there is greater reason to hope, their man- 
 ner will huve a nicer propriety, and their whole de- 
 meanor will be more thoughtful, consistent, and lovely. 
 
 It may, by-and-bye, become evident that, in order 
 to maintain the full power of religion, and to gain 
 the neglected youth or children, and such children as 
 would grow up otherwise in the power of vice, that a 
 parish school must be instituted, as in Scotland, in con- 
 nection with every church. And then, at a much later 
 
140 INFANT BAPTISM 
 
 day, it may become evident that Sunday-scliools require 
 to be instituted in the same way, and that these, enlist- 
 ing the more capable and devoted of the churches in 
 Christian studies, and good works — works, that is, of 
 teaching and attention to the poor — are finally regarded 
 every where, though wholly unknown to the apostles 
 and the Pentecostal assembly, as being among the best 
 means for the training of a practically Christian, charac- 
 ter, and the gathering in of the outcast families to God. 
 So far we proceed without difficulty ; all these things, 
 though never preached by apostles, must finally come, 
 we perceive, as outgrowths of the Christian church. 
 Pentecostal incidents will disappear, and these will as 
 certainly grow apace in their time. 
 
 But the particular point for which I have drawn this 
 sketch has been purposely left behind. Infant baptism, 
 the relation of the seminal and undeveloped first period 
 of human existence to Christ and his flock, that which 
 appears only implicitly in the sermon of Peter, on the 
 day of Pentecost — where is this, and what is to come, 
 in the way of development, here ? There was no reason, 
 or even room, among the scenes of the PenteTjost, for so 
 much as thinking on this subject of infants and their 
 church relations, and scarcely more for a considerable 
 time afterward. It could not become a subject of atten- 
 tion, until the church itself began to settle into forms 
 of order and structural organization ; and how soon 
 that came to pass we do not definitely know. It should 
 therefore be no subject of wonder that infant baptism, 
 
HOW DEVELOPED 141 
 
 figures somewliat indistinctly, for so long a time at 
 least ; and scarcely more, that it shows itself only by im- 
 plication and a kind of tacit development, for a brief 
 time afterwards. 
 
 Furthermore, if it came to pass by a transference 
 of Jewish ideas into Christian spheres, Jewish modes 
 and conditions into the Christian order and economy — 
 just as Peter's Jewish language, when he said, in his Pen- 
 tecostal speech, "to you and to your children," finally 
 came back to him in its Christian power, — it would make 
 no bold and staring figure any where. If the Christian 
 teachers looked to see all the better mercies of the old 
 economy transferred into the Christian, and exalted 
 there into some higher and more perfect meaning, we 
 ought certainly not to expect any debate, or any thing 
 but a silent, scarcely conscious flow of transition, when 
 infants are taken to be with their parents, in the church, 
 the covenant, the Christian Israel of their faith. And 
 in just this way the defect of any bold declarations on 
 the subject of infant baptism in the writings of the 
 New Testament, and the fact that it appears only in a 
 few historic glimpses, and occasional modes of speech 
 that are subtle implications of the fact, is suf&ciently 
 accounted for. 
 
 But we are inquiring after the mode in which this 
 rite became an accepted element of the Christian organ- 
 ization, and a part of the church practice, as we cer- 
 tainly know that it did at sometime afterward. Peter 
 probably conceived as little what his language might 
 infer respecting it, as he certainly^ did, what hidden 
 
142 INFANT BAPTISM 
 
 import there was in his testimony, by tlie same words, 
 of a grace to tlie Gentiles ; for lie spoke in prophetic ex- 
 altation, as the ancient prophets did, not knowing what 
 the spirit of Christ that was in them did signify. But 
 suppose one of these adult converts at the Pentecost to 
 have set off, after the few happy weeks of his sojourn 
 are ended, for his home in some remote region of Ara- 
 bia, Parthia, or Greece. He carries Christ with him, he 
 is a new man, filled with a strange joy, burning with a 
 strange, all-sacrificing love to the cause of his new 
 Master, and to every sinner of mankind. He begins to 
 preach the Christ he loves to his friends, tells them all 
 he knows of the new gospel, speaks to them as one 
 whom Christ has endowed with power to speak. He 
 gathers a little circle, which we may call a church, 
 around him, perhaps converts a little obscure synagogue 
 into a church. He knows that he himself was bap- 
 tized as a token of his faith, and he has heard, a thou- 
 sand times repeated, Christ's word, "he that believeth 
 and is baptized," "except a man be born of water and 
 of the Spirit," and he does not scruple to baptize all his 
 new fellow disciples. Then comes the question, what 
 of the families ? what of the infants we have, who are 
 not old enough to believe? This, on the supposition 
 that he had heard nothing of infant baptism before he 
 left Jerusalem, which may or may not be true. But he 
 has heard the whole story of Christ's life many times 
 over, including the fact of his beautiful interest in 
 children, and his declaration — "of such is the kingdom." 
 He recollects also the ancient religion of his people : 
 
HOW DEVELOPED 143 
 
 how it identiiied always the children with the fathers, 
 and included them in the covenant of the fathers, rais- 
 ing doubtless the question, whether the gospel in its no- 
 bler, wider generosity and completer grace, would fall 
 short even of the old religion in its tenderness to the 
 family affections, and its provisions for the religious 
 unity of families. And just here, we will suppose, the 
 words of Peter, in that first sermon flash on his recol- 
 lection — " For the promise is to you and to your chil- 
 dren." They meant almost nothing, it may be, when 
 they were spoken, but how full and clear the meaning 
 they now take. It is like a revelation. The doubt 
 struggling in his bosom is over, the question is settled. 
 "My children," he says, "are with me, one with me in 
 my faith, included with me in all my titles and hopes, and 
 as I came in, out of the defilements of sin, and was bap- 
 tized in token of my cleansing, so too are they to share 
 my baptism and be heirs together with me in the grace 
 of life. 
 
 Thus instructed, he will baptize his children, and 
 make his religion a strictly family gi-ace, expecting them 
 to grow up in it ; others also consenting with him in the 
 same conclusion, and offering their children to God in 
 the same manner. And, as the result, they will no 
 more be Christians with families, but Christian families — 
 all together in the church of God. In this manner the 
 Pentecost itself, when the seeds that are in it are devel- 
 oped, will almost certainly issue the adult baptism there 
 begun, the baptism of the three thousand, in the com- 
 mon baptism of the house. 
 
144 INFANT BAPTISM 
 
 And here we have, in small, just what would most 
 naturally take place in the development of Christian- 
 ity itself. Taken as connected with its own precedent 
 history and preparations, the church could hardly be 
 held back from infant baptism, except by some specific 
 revelation. 
 
VI 
 
 APOSTOLIC AUTHOEITY OF INFANT BAPTISM. 
 
 "And I baptized also the household of Stephanas." — 1 Corinthians^ i. 16. 
 
 We have traced the conditions under which infant 
 baptism would almost certainly be developed. But we 
 do not leave the question here. We have many and 
 distinct evidences for the rite, which are abundantly de- 
 cisive ; some from the nature of the family state, some 
 from the New Testament, and some from the subse- 
 quent history of the church. These I will now under- 
 take to present in the briefest manner possible. And 
 
 1. The organic unity of the family makes a ground for 
 it, and sets it in terms of rational respect. The child that 
 is born, is really not born, in the higher sense of that 
 term, till he has breathed a long time. He does not live 
 in his own will, but is in the will and life of his parents. 
 To bring him forward into his own will and responsi- 
 bility is the problem of years. He is in the matrix 
 still of parental character, where all the graces, faiths, 
 prayers, promises, of the parents are his also. He lives 
 and breathes in them, and is of them, almost as truly as 
 they are of themselves. What we call the house, is the 
 organic life that grows him as a mind or agent, tempers 
 him, works him into his habits, fashions him as by a pre- 
 
146 APOSTOLIC AUTHORITY 
 
 cedent power to be born, and finally take dominion of 
 himself. Why then should religion make no recogni- 
 tion of a fact so profoundly religious ? Why not as- 
 sume that the child is just where he is; in the faith of 
 the house, to grow up there ? It would even be a sup- 
 position against nature to suppose that he will not. It 
 is very true that he may not, because the faith of the 
 house is no faith, or so mixed with sense and passion 
 as to have none of the true power. Still, when the 
 discipleship is assumed to be made by faith, it must 
 also be assumed that, being so made, it will have all the 
 power of faith, shaping the parental life in the molds 
 of that power, and just as certainly including or in- 
 closing in those molds, there to be also shaped, the 
 infant life of the offspring. The father and mother 
 are not merely a man and a woman, but they are a 
 man and woman having children ; and accordingly it 
 is the father and mother, that is, the man and woman 
 and their children, that are to be baptized. 
 
 2. It is precisely this great fact of an organic unity 
 that is taken hold of and consecrated, in the field of 
 religion, by the Abrahamic and other family covenants. 
 And the whole course of revelation, both in the Old 
 and New Testament, is tinged by associations, and sprin- 
 kled over with expressions that recognize the religious 
 unity of families, and the inclusion of the children with 
 the parents. All the promises run — "to you and to 
 your children ;" for Peter's language here is only an 
 inspired transfer and reassertion of the Jewish family 
 ideas, at the earliest moment, in the field of Christianity 
 
OF INFANT BAPTISM 147 
 
 itself. It recognizes the fact that Christianity is just 
 what we know it to be, nothing but a continuation and 
 fuller development of the old religion. It widens out 
 the scope of the old religion, so as to include all na- 
 tions, even as the prophets foretold, and raises all the 
 rites and symbols into a higher spiritual sense, as they 
 were appointed from the first to be raised. Taken all to- 
 gether, the old and the new constitute a perfect whole 
 or system, and the process is neither more nor less than 
 God's way of developing and authenticating a univer- 
 sal religion. In this universal religion, therefore, we 
 are to look for the continuance onward of the old 
 family character and the inclusive oneness of fathers 
 with, their children. The only difference will be that 
 the oneness will be raised into a more spiritual and 
 higher sense, just as every thing else was raised. The 
 children are thus looked upon to be presumptively as 
 believing in the faith, and regenerated in the regenera- 
 tion of the fathers. And here again, 
 
 3. Circumcision comes to our aid, as another and dis- 
 tinct evidence. For it was given to be "a seal of the 
 righteousness of faith," and the application of it, as a 
 seal, to infant children, involves all the precise diffi- 
 culties — neither more nor less — that are raised by the 
 deniers of infant baptism. Let the point here made be 
 accurately understood. The argument is not that infant 
 baptism was directly substituted for circumcision. Of 
 this there is no probable evidence. Such a substitution 
 could not have been made without remark, discussion, 
 oppositions of prejudice, and the raising of contentions 
 
148 ^iPOSTOLIC AUTHORITY 
 
 that would have required distinct mention, many times 
 over, in the apostolic history. But the argument is 
 this: that the Jewish mind was so familiarized by 
 custom with the notion of an inclusive religious unity 
 in families, (partly by the rite of circumcision,) that 
 Christian baptism, being the seal of faith, was natu- 
 rally and by a kind of associational instinct, applied 
 over to families in the same manner. Not to have 
 made such an application would have required some 
 authoritative interposition, some dike of positive hin- 
 drance, to turn aside the current of Jewish preposses- 
 sions. And if there had risen up, somewhere, a man 
 of Baptist notions, to ask, where is the propriety of ap- 
 plying baptism, given as a rite for believers, to infants, 
 who we certainly know are not old enough to believe ? 
 he could not even have begun to raise an impression 
 by it. Was not circumcision given to Abraham to be 
 the seal of faith ? and has it not been applied from his 
 time down to the present, in this way — applied to in- 
 fant children eight day's old ? True it is the doctrine 
 of Christ, .'' he that believeth and is baptized shall be 
 saved," and our apostles too are saying, " if thou be- 
 lievest with all thy heart thou may est." So we all say 
 and think, as relating to adult persons ; but do we not 
 all know that what is given to the father includes the 
 children, and that his faith is the faith of the house ? 
 Nothing, in short, is plainer than that every argument 
 raised to convict infant baptism of absurdity, holds, in 
 the same manner, as convicting circumcision of ab- 
 surdity, and all the religious polity of the former ages. 
 
OF INFANT BAPTISM. 149 
 
 Every such argument, too, mocks the religious feeling 
 and conviction of all these former ages, in a way of 
 disrespect equally presumptuous. 
 
 It is very true, as declared by the apostle Paul, in 
 his epistle to the Romans, that circumcision, seal of 
 faith as it was, did not always have its meaning ful- 
 filled ; "for all are not Israel that are of Israel." Esau 
 and Edom, his posterity, became, thus, an apostate race ; 
 and this, in a certain sense, by Providential appoint- 
 ment. But the scope of God's providential purpose, 
 as every intelligent Christian ought to know, does not 
 correspond with the scope of his grace or the measures 
 of his gifts and promises. For the Providential plan 
 takes in all the perversities of human action, while the 
 grace-plan or promise corresponds with the aims and 
 measures of God's paternal goodness. He means and 
 offers, in other words, more than human perversity will 
 take ; gives a presumption of good, on his part, which 
 he knows that human wrongs will not allow to be 
 actualized. Then, as his Providential purposes and 
 plan are graduated to what will actually be, not to what 
 he means, wishes, and promises, it follows that the facts 
 or issues of his Providential order do not answer to the 
 scope of his gracious intention. And thus it comes to 
 pass that, while he gives a seal of faith, which ought to 
 be answered, by a result in which all are Israel that are 
 of Israel, the fact is different. Had Israel ruled his 
 house as he ought, had Rebekah been an honest woman, 
 loving both her sons impartially, and seeking the true 
 welfare of both — not conspiring with one to rob and 
 
150 APOSTOLIC AUTHORITY 
 
 cheat the other — Esau might have been a different 
 man, and Edom might have been a family of Israel. 
 In circumcision, as a seal of faith, God gave, on his part, 
 the pledge and presumption that so it should be. But 
 Edom was thrown off into apostasy by courses of hu- 
 man perversity that disappointed the seal. And the 
 same is true of infant baptism in all those cases where 
 the faith is narrowed, or denied, by parental miscon- 
 duct. There is yet no falsity in the circumcision, or 
 the baptism, because all which it signified was true; 
 viz., that God, on his part, sought and meant and 
 would have made actual, the whole promise of it. 
 How often is adult baptism itself applied to such as 
 have no faith at all ; but this does not affect the inher- 
 ent truth of the rite, and if they should live so as not 
 to allow it any correspondence with fact, when applied 
 to their children, does it any more affect the truth of it 
 there ? The rite measures God's intent and promise, 
 and refuses to narrow itself by the perversity of the 
 subjects. It says, " this child shall grow up in faith — 
 so it is given." Then if, by unbehef and graceless con- 
 duct in the parents, it grows up to be the stem of an 
 Edomitish stock, it will not disappoint God's providen- 
 tial order and plan, and as little will it disprove God's 
 promise and truth in the baptism. God is honored, and 
 the rite is honored still. It is only the parental faith 
 and life that are not. 
 
 4. It appears that Christian baptism was not a rite 
 wholly new, but a reapplication of proselyte baptism. 
 The custom had been, as the Gentile was an unclean 
 
OF INFANT BAPTISM. 151 
 
 person, to baptize him, as a token of cleansing, wlien tie 
 was received to be a Jew; and his family, of course, 
 were baptized with him, to make the lustration com- 
 plete. So Christ proposes baptism, as the token of that 
 lustration, which is to purify such as become citizens in 
 the kingdom of heaven. And the conversation of 
 Christ with Nicodemus evidently supposes such a rite, 
 previously existing and familiarly known by him. 
 This being true, all that he says of baptism, or the lus- 
 tration by water and the Spirit, supposes a baptism also 
 of children with their parents, according to the custom. 
 The civil regeneration of the proselyte and his family 
 by such ceremonies will be answered, in reapplying the 
 rite, by the spiritual regeneration of the convert and 
 his family. If infants were, in this case, to be excepted, 
 or not baptized, the exception required to be expressly 
 made ; for otherwise, the very transfer of the rite to a 
 spiritual use must, of itself, carry infant baptism with it. 
 Thus Lightfoot says with great force, " the Baptists ob- 
 ject — it is not commanded that infants should be bap- 
 tized, therefore they should not be baptized. But I 
 say it is not prohibited that infants should be baptized, 
 therefore they should be baptized ; for since the baptism 
 of children was familiarly practiced in the admission 
 of proselytes, there was no need that it should be con- 
 firmed by express precept, when baptism come to be 
 an evangelical sacrament. For Christ took baptism as 
 he found it, and the whole nation knew perfectly well 
 that little children had always been baptized. On the 
 contrary, if he had intended that the custom should be 
 
152 APOSTOLIC AUTHOKITY 
 
 abolislied, he would have expressly prohibited it." 
 Wetstein also says, in the same manner — "I do not see 
 how it could enter into their thoughts to expunge boys 
 and infants from the list of disciples, or from baptism, 
 unless they had been excluded by the express injunc- 
 tion of Christ, which we no where find."* 
 
 5. Christ comes very near to a specific and formal 
 command of infant baptism, when we put together, side 
 by side, what he says of baptism in the third chapter 
 of John, and what he says concerning infants elsewhere. 
 There he recognizes baptism as a token of one's en- 
 trance into the kingdom of God; elsewhere he says — 
 suffer little children to come unto me and forbid them 
 not for of such is the kingdom of heave?!. These terms, 
 *' kingdom of God," and "kingdom of heaven," denote, 
 externally, the church ; and the church is also presented 
 under the figure of a school, as here of a kingdom, in 
 all those cases where becoming " a disciple" or learner is 
 spoken of In this latter view or figure, baptism is con- 
 ceived to be one's enrollment openly as a disciple ; and 
 what is more filr than that children should be learners — 
 brought in by their parents to be learners with them — 
 of the Christian grace? This, in fact, was the general 
 significance of faith in those times ; they were called 
 believers who so recognized the truth of Christ's person 
 that they were ready to become learners under him. 
 And the Baptists themselves act on this same principle, 
 never holding the necessity that baptism should actually 
 
 *This subject of proselyte baptism has been spoken of also in the 
 second Sermon, and need not be further dwelt upon here. 
 
OF INFANT BAPTISM. 153 
 
 follow faith, in the high and complete sense of spiritual 
 conversion. Probably half their members, in the 
 church, come into doubt, before they die, of the time 
 when they were really born of the Spirit ; and, in cases 
 of open apostasy, where there is a recovery, and the 
 disciple openly testifies that he was not before a truly 
 converted person, he is not rebaptized. It is enough 
 that, by his baptism, he has openly signified his wish 
 to be a disciple in the school of Christ; where, if he 
 has never learned before, it is only the more necessary 
 that he be a true learner now ; which if he become, the 
 great law, "he' that believeth and is baptized," is suffi- 
 ciently fulfilled. Just so with the child of a Christian 
 parentage ; whatever doubts may be entertained of his 
 certainly growing up in the faith, there is a much bet- 
 ter presumption that he will, if the parents are faithful, 
 than there is, in the case of persons converted from the 
 world, that they will prove to be true believers ; and if 
 he should not grow up in the faith, but afterwards be- 
 comes a Christian, there is just as much greater pro- 
 priety in his baptism as an infant, and no more reason 
 why he should be rebaptized, than there is in the case 
 of apostate professors who become truly converted. 
 
 6. What is said in the New Testament of household 
 baptism, or the baptizing of households, is positive 
 proof that infants were baptized in the times of the 
 apostles — baptized, that is, in and because of the sup- 
 posed faith of the parents. The fact of such baptism 
 is three times distinctly mentioned ; in the case of " the 
 household of Stephanas," of Lydia "and her house- 
 
154 APOSTOLIC AUTHORITY 
 
 hold," and the jailor "and all his." In the first case, 
 nothing is said of faith at all, though doubtless he was 
 baptized as a believer. In, the second, every thing 
 turns on the personal feith of Lydia — "if ye have 
 judged me to be faithful." In the third, it seems to be 
 said, according to an English translation, that all the 
 house believed — "/^e rejoiced, believing in God, with 
 all his house." But the participle, believing, is singu- 
 lar and not plural in the original, and the phrase — 
 " with all his house" — plainly belongs to the verb and 
 not to the participle. Eigidly translated, the passage 
 would read — "he rejoiced with all his house, himself 
 believing." 
 
 It is often objected that, in all these three cases, for 
 aught that appears, the households were made up of 
 adult persons, who were baptized because they all be- 
 lieved. But the chance that this should be true of the 
 only three households said to be baptized, and that 
 there should be three households, as households were 
 commonly made up in that time, in which there were 
 no young children or infants, is not even one in a mil- 
 lion, as computed by what is called the doctrine of 
 chances. Besides, if it was a thing understood that in- 
 fants were never to be baptized, it is important to ob- 
 serve that no such way of speaking could ever come 
 into use. What Baptist could ever be induced, with 
 his view of baptism, to say inclusively, and without 
 some kind of qualification, that he had baptized the 
 household of Eichard or Mary ? We need not stop, in 
 this view, to ask whether certainly there were infants 
 
OF INFANT BAPTISM. 155 
 
 in any one of these households ; the mode of speaking 
 itself shows that baptism went by households, and that 
 when the head was judged to be faithful, his baptism 
 carried the presumptive faith and consequent baptism 
 of all. Of this, too, 
 
 7. We have a distinct indication, in what is said of 
 children, where but one of the parents believes. Thus 
 Paul distinctly teaches, " For the unbelieving husband 
 is sanctified by the wife, and the unbelieving wife is 
 sanctified by the husband ; else were your children 
 unclean, but now are they holy." It is not meant here 
 that the children are actually and inwardly holy per- 
 sons, but that only having one Christian parent is enough 
 to change their presumptive relations to God ; enough 
 to make them Christian children, as distinguished from 
 the children of unbelievers. So strong is the convic- 
 tion, even, in these apostolic times, of an organic unity 
 sovereign over the faith and the religious affinities of 
 children that, w^here but one parent only believes, that 
 faith carries presumptively the faith of the children 
 with it. And upon this grand fact of the religious 
 economy, baptism was, from the first, and properly, 
 applied to the children of them that believe. Hence, 
 too — 
 
 8. It was that the children of believers were famil- 
 iarly addressed with them as believers ; as in the epis- 
 tles of Paul to the Ephesians and Colossians. These 
 epistles are formally inscribed to churches or Christian 
 brotherhoods — " to the saints, which are at Ephesus, 
 and tQ tl^e faithful in Christ Jesus" — "to the saints and 
 
156 APOSTOLIC AUTHORITY 
 
 faithful brethren, which are at Colosse." And yet in 
 both, the children are particularly addressed — "Chil- 
 dren obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right" — 
 Children obey your parents in all things ; for this is 
 well pleasing unto the Lord. In this manner, children 
 are formally included among the "faithful in Christ 
 Jesus." The conception is that children are, of course, 
 included in the religion of their parentage, grow up 
 faithful with their faithful or believing parents. On the 
 ground of this same presumption, they were properly 
 baptized with them, or on their account. Again — 
 
 9. It is a point of consequence to notice that such as 
 reject all these and similar evidences from the Scrip- 
 ture, on the ground that infant baptism can not be 
 rightly practiced, because it is not directly and specifi- 
 cally appointed in the Scripture, do yet make nothing 
 of their own argument in other observances familiarly 
 accepted. Why infant baptism was not and should not 
 be required to have been specifically commanded, I 
 have shown already ; how, for example, it was necessa- 
 rily developed, as from a point distinctly referred to in 
 Peter's first sermon, and how the very institution of 
 baptism carried, of necessity, infant baptism with it, 
 apart from any express mention. In the meantime, it 
 will be found that the objectors themselves are admit- 
 ting and practicing, without difficulty, observances that 
 have comparatively no specific authority at all. At 
 the sacrament of the Supper, they use leavened bread 
 without scruple, when they know that it was not used 
 by Christ himself, and was solemnly forbidden at the 
 
OF INFANT BAPTISM. 157 
 
 festival, he was there, in fact, reappointing for the Chris- 
 tian uses of his disciples in all future ages. Where 
 then is the authority given for a change even in the 
 element of the Holy Supper itself? The Christian 
 Lord's day, too, accepted in the place of the Jewish 
 Sabbath, and that even against a specific command of 
 the decalogue — how readily, and with how little scru- 
 ple, do they accept this Lord's day and let the ancient 
 Sabbath go, when it is only by the faintest, most equivo- 
 cal, or evanescent indications they can make out a shad- 
 ow of authority for the change? "Direct proof! pos- 
 itive command ! specific injunction!" they say, "with- 
 out these, infant baptism has no right." Where then 
 do they get their authority for these other observances ; 
 one of them never referred to in Scripture at all, and 
 the other so doubtfully that infant baptism has, in com- 
 parison, the clear evidence of day ? 
 
 Lastly, it remains to glance at the evidences from 
 church history, or the history of times subsequent to 
 the age of the apostles. It has been the mood of Chris- 
 tian learning, in the generation past — for the learned 
 men have moods and phases, not to say fashions, like 
 others in the less thoughtful conditions — to make large 
 concessions in the matter of baptism, both as regards 
 the manner and the subjects. But a reaction is now 
 begun, and it is my fixed conviction that it will not 
 stop, till the encouragement heretofore given to the 
 Baptist opinions is quite taken away. 
 
 It has never been questioned, however, that infant 
 baptism, became the current practice of the church at 
 
158 APOSTOLIC AUTHOEITY 
 
 a very early date. It is mentioned, incidentally and 
 otherwise, in the writings of the earliest church fathers 
 after the age of the apostles. 
 
 , Thus it is testified by Justin Martyr, who was prob- 
 ably born before the death of the apostle John — " There 
 are many of us, of both sexes, some sixty and some 
 seventy years old, who were made disciples from their 
 childhood." And the word made disciples is the same 
 that Christ himself used when he said, " Go teach [i. e. 
 disciple] all nations, baptizing," &c. ; the same that was 
 currently applied to baptized children afterwards. 
 
 Ireneus, born a few years later, writes — " Christ came 
 to redeem all by himself; all who through him are 
 regenerated unto God ; infants and little children, and 
 young men, and older persons. Hence, he passed 
 through every age, and for the infants he became an 
 infant, sanctifying infants; among the little children, 
 he became a little child, sanctifying those who belong 
 to this age ; and at the same time, presenting them an 
 example of well doing, and obedience; among the 
 3^oung men he became a young man, that he might set 
 them an example, and sanctify them to the Lord." In 
 the phrase, " regenerated to God," which is thus applied 
 to infants, expressly named as distinguished from little 
 children, he refers, it can not be doubted, to baptism ; 
 which, being the outward sign of such inward grace, 
 was naturally and very commonly called regeneration. 
 Infants plainly could be regenerated to God in no other 
 sense ; and therefore his language can not even be sup- 
 posed to have any meaning, if this be rejected. 
 
OF INFANT BAPTISM. 159 
 
 Tertullian follows, urging the delay of baptism, and, in 
 fact, advocating the disuse of infant baptism altogether. 
 But his appeal supposes the current practice of such 
 baptism at the time, and in that way rather augments 
 than diminishes the weight of historic evidence. And 
 the more so that he urges the delay of baptism on 
 grounds that are false and even superstitious, viz. : that 
 baptism carries the forgiveness of sins, and should 
 therefore be postponed to a later period, because the 
 sins committed after baptism must otherwise be cleared 
 by a more purgatorial method. 
 
 Origen, who was born near the close of the second 
 century, or about a hundred years after the time of the 
 apostles, testifies — "According to the usage of the 
 church, baptism is given to infants." And again — " The 
 church received an order from the apostles to baptize 
 infants." 
 
 Somewhere in these first two centuries, the ancient 
 writing called the "Shepherd," or the "Shepherd of 
 Hermas," because it purports to have been written by a 
 teacher of that name, declares the opinion that — " All 
 infants are in honor with the Lord, and are esteemed 
 first of all — the baptism of water is necessary to all." 
 Who this Hermas was, and when he lived, is not ascer- 
 tained, but he is supposed by many to be the very same 
 person mentioned by Paul, Rom. xvi. 14. He is ac- 
 knowledged by ISTeander, as one who " had great author- 
 ity in the first centuries." 
 
 It is a remarkable evidence, too, that inscriptions are 
 found on the monuments of children, considered by 
 
160 APOSTOLIC AUTHOKITY 
 
 antiquarians to be of a very early age, probably of tbe 
 first two or three centuries, in wliich they are called 
 fideks^ that \s faithfuls ; just as children are addressed by 
 Paul among the "faithful brethren" of Ephesus and 
 Colosse. The following is an example — (Buonarotti, 
 17 Fabretti, Cap. 4,) "A faithful among faithfuls, here 
 lies Zosimus. He lived two years one month and 
 twenty-five days." How far they carried the presump- 
 tion of infant baptism, that children are to grow up in 
 the grace of their parents, is here seen. 
 
 It signifies little, therefore, as respects this question, 
 after the authorities cited, that the Bishops of the North 
 African Church, in a council called by Cyprian, about the 
 middle of the third century, decided that baptism should 
 not of course be delayed for eight days, according to 
 the law of circumcision, which many supposed to gov- 
 ern the rite. 
 
 So clear, in short, and decided was the authority of 
 infant baptism, that Pelagius, a man of great learning, 
 who had traveled in Britain, France, Italy, Africa 
 Proper, Egypt, and Palestine, declared, in his contro- 
 versy with Augustine, about the beginning of the fifth 
 century, that "he had never heard of any impious 
 heretic or sectary, who had denied infant baptism." 
 " What," he also asked, " can be so impious as to hinder 
 the baptism of infants?" 
 
 Augustine himself also testifies — " The whole church 
 of Christ has constantly held that infants were baptized. 
 Infant baptism the whole church practices. It was not 
 instituted by councils, but was ever in use." 
 
OF INFANT BAPTISM. 161 
 
 Infant baptism, therefore, is a fact of cliurch history 
 not to be fairly questioned. And accordingly the ar- 
 gument may be summed up thus : beginning at a point 
 previous, we find customs and associations that would 
 almost certainly be issued in such a rite of family relig- 
 ion; in the discourses of Christ and the apostolical 
 writings we find that it actually was ; and then we find 
 the facts of church history correspondent. On the 
 whole, while it may be admitted that baptism itself is a 
 little more positively authenticated, it can not be denied 
 that infant baptism is authenticated by all sufl&cient 
 evidence. 
 
VII. 
 
 CHURCH MEMBERSHIP OF CHILDREN. 
 
 " To tlie saints and faithful brethren in Christ which are at Colosse." — 
 Colossians^ i. 2. 
 
 These "saints and faithful bretliren," it will be seen, 
 include young children ; for the apostle makes a distri- 
 bution of them afterwards, in the third chapter of the 
 epistle, addressing the class of wives, the class of hus- 
 bands, the class of fathers, the class of servants, the 
 class of masters, and, among all these, the class of chil- 
 dren — "Children obey your parents in all things; for 
 this is well pleasing unto the Lord." The Epistle to the 
 Ephesians, too, is inscribed, in the same way — " to the 
 saints which are at Ephesus, and to the faithful in 
 Christ;" and this, again, makes a like distribution; 
 addressing the classes of husbands, wives, fathers, moth- 
 ers, children, servants, an(^ masters, all as being in- 
 cluded in the church at Ephesus — " children obey your 
 parents in the Lord; for this is right. Honor thy 
 father and mother ; for this is the first commandment 
 with promise." Where also it is made clear that he is 
 speaking to quite young children ; for he turns imme- 
 diately to the fathers, exhorting them to bring up their 
 children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. 
 
CHUKCH MEMBERSHIP. 163 
 
 They are children so young, therefore, as to be subjects 
 of nurture, and yet are addressed among the faithful 
 brethren. 
 
 The explanation, then, is not that such children were 
 believers, in the sense of being converts entered into 
 the fold by an adult experience, and distinguished from 
 other children not thus converted. When Lydia 
 speaks of herself as one adjudged to be "faithful," it is 
 probably in this sense. But when Titus, in ordaining 
 elders, is directed to choose such as have "faithful 
 children, not accused of riot, or unruly," it would be 
 very singular, if he was permitted to ordain only such 
 as have all their children thus formally converted. 
 Paul obviously means that the elders shall be such 
 as are under no scandal on account of their fami- 
 lies ; whose children are growing up in the Christian 
 way and grace ; sober, well-behaved, hopefully Chris- 
 tian children. We can see, too, in the language em- 
 ployed, that Paul includes the Colossian and Ephesian 
 children among the faithful brethren of the two cities, 
 in this more presumptive or merely anticipative way. 
 For when he says, " children obey your parents in the 
 Lord," it is not "children in the Lord," or "children 
 obey in the Lord, your parents," but it is " obey them 
 who are parents in the Lord;" as if their very parent- 
 age itself, in the flesh, were a parentage also in the 
 Spirit, communicating both a personal and a Christian 
 life. So, also, when the parents are required to give a 
 nurture in the Lord, we may see that the children are 
 expected to be grown as saints and faithfuls, and to be 
 
164 CHURCH MEMBERSHIP 
 
 presumptively in tlie Lord, apart from all expectations 
 and processes of adult conversion. 
 
 And it was out of such uses that the term '■'■ faitlifuV* 
 grew into the peculiar kind of church use, in which it 
 denotes all the supposed members of the Christian body, 
 whether adults, or only baptized children ; as, for ex- 
 ample, in that very ancient inscription cited by Buona- 
 rotti, where the child "two years, one month, and 
 twenty -five days old," is described as lying among his 
 Christian kinsmen — " a faithful among faithfuls." The 
 very language supposes a membership in the church, 
 or among the faithful brethren, by virtue of baptism 
 and mere Christian nurture ; such as on the footing of 
 strict individualism, held by our Baptist brethren, could 
 never even be thought of. 
 
 What I propose then, at the present time, is a full 
 and careful discussion of this great subject, the church 
 membership of ha2:)tized children. 
 
 And as it has fallen out, in the extreme individualism 
 of our modern era, that multitudes are unable to con- 
 ceive it as being any thing less than a kind of absurdity, 
 or self-evident monstrosit}^, I shall be obliged to show 
 the nature and kind of this membership. 
 
 As it is very commonly disrespected on the ground 
 of its practical insignificance, I must also show the rea- 
 sons why it should exist. 
 
 And then, since it is to the same extent, .disowned as 
 a rightful part of the true church economy, I must also 
 establish the fact of its existence. 
 
OF CHILDREN. 165 
 
 I. I am to show the nature and extent of this mem- 
 bership. 
 
 All those classes of Christian disciples who practice 
 infant baptism conceive it, of course, to have a certain 
 common character with adult baptism, and so to create 
 a supposed, or somehow supposable membership in the 
 church. And jet they often have it as a question, sup- 
 pressed, or openly put without satisfaction — '' who is a 
 member of Christ's body, but one who is able to act 
 and choose for himself, and in that manner to believe?" 
 Many preachers, too, quite pass over the fact of any 
 assignable reality in this relationship, publishing a call 
 of salvation that practically ignores it as having any 
 meaning at all ; addressing young persons and children 
 who have been baptized, in a way that as steadily and 
 unqualifiedly assumes their unregenerate state, as if they 
 were the children of heathenism. The opposers of 
 infant baptism are bolder and more positive, of course, 
 insisting always on the manifest absurdity of this 
 nondescript, unintelligible, unintelligent membership; 
 which makes a child a church member, not to be a 
 voter nor a subject of discipline ; which puts the initia- 
 tory rite of faith upon him, when he does not believe 
 any thing, or even know that there is any to believe ; 
 creating thus a membership that has no rational mean- 
 ing and no sound verity, but supposes a faith that does 
 not exist, and constitutes a relationship that brings into 
 no relation. 
 
 What, then, is this infant membership ? what concep- 
 tion can we take of it, which will justify its Christian 
 
166 CHUKCH MEMBERSHIP 
 
 dignity ? A great many persons who are very sharp at 
 this kind of criticism, appear to have never observed 
 that creatures existing under conditions of growth, allow 
 no such terms of classification as those do which are 
 dead, and have no growth ; such, for example, as 
 stones, metals, and earths. They are certain that gold 
 is not iron, and iron is not silver, and they suppose that 
 they can class the growing and transitional creatures, 
 that are separated by no absolute lines, in the same man- 
 ner. They talk of colts and horses, lambs and sheep, 
 and it, possibly, not once occurs to them, that they can 
 never tell when the colt becomes a horse, or the lamb 
 a sheep ; and that about the most definite thing they 
 can say, when pressed with that question, is that the 
 colt is potentially a horse, the lamb a sheep, even from 
 the first, having in itself this definite futurition ; and, 
 therefore, that, while horses and sheep are not all to be 
 classed as colts and lambs, all colts and lambs may be 
 classed as horses and sheep. And just so children are 
 all men and women; and, if there is any law of futurition 
 in them to justify it, may be fitly classed as believing 
 men and women. And all the sharp arguments that 
 go to cover their membership, as such, in the church, 
 with absurdity, or turn it into derision, are just such 
 arguments as the inventors could raise with equal point, 
 to ridicule the horsehood and sheephood of the young 
 animals just referred to. The propriety of this mem- 
 bership does not lie in what those infants can or can not 
 believe, or do or do not believe, at some given time, 
 as, for example, on the day of their baptism ; but it lies 
 
OF CHILDKEJSr. 167 
 
 in the covenant of promise, wliich makes their parents, 
 parents in the Lord ; their nurture, a nurture of the 
 Lord ; and so constitutes a force of futurition bv which 
 they are to grow up, imperceptibly, into "faithfuls 
 among faithfuls," in Christ Jesus. Perhaps no one can 
 tell when they become such, and it may be that some 
 initiating touch of grace began to work inductively in 
 them, by a process too delicate for human observation, 
 even from their earliest infancy, or from their baptismal 
 day. For there is a nurture of grace, as well as a grace 
 of conversion; that for childhood, as this for the age 
 of maturity, and one as sure and genuine as the other. 
 
 The conception, then, of this membership is, that it 
 is a potentially real one ; that it stands, for the present, 
 in the faith of the parents and the promise which is to 
 them and to their children, and that, on this ground, 
 they may well enough be accounted believers, just as 
 they are accounted potentially men and women. Then, 
 as they come forward into maturity, it is to be assumed 
 that they will come forward into faith, being grown in 
 the nurture of faith, and will claim for themselves, the 
 membership, into which they were before inserted. 
 
 Nor is this a case which has no analogies, that it 
 should be held up as a mark of derision. It is gene- 
 rally supposed that our common law has some basis of 
 common sense. And yet this body of law makes every 
 infant child a citizen ; requiring, as a point of public 
 order, the whole constabulary and even military force 
 of the state to come to the rescue, or the redress of his 
 wrongs, when his person is seized or property invaded 
 
168 CHURCH MEMBERSHIP 
 
 by conspiracy. This infant child can sue and be sued ; 
 for the court of chancery will appoint him a guardian, 
 whose acts shall be the child's acts ; and it shall be a« 
 if he were answering for his own education, dress, 
 board, entertainments, and the damages done by his 
 servants, precisely as if he were a man acting in his 
 own cause. Doubtless it may sound very absurdly to 
 call him a citizen. What can he do as a citizen ? He 
 can not vote, nor bear arms ; he does not even know 
 what these things mean, and yet he is a citizen. In one 
 view, he votes, bears arms, legislates, even in his cra- 
 dle ; for the potentiality is in him, and the state takes 
 him up in her arms, as it were, to own him as her 
 citizen. 
 
 In a strongly related sense, it is, that the baptized 
 child is a believer and a member of the church. There 
 is no unreality in the position assigned him; for the 
 futurition of God's promise is in him, and, by a kind 
 of sublime anticipation, he is accepted in God's super- 
 natural economy as a believer ; even as the law accepts 
 him, in the economy of society, to be a citizen. He is 
 potentially both, and both is actually to be, in a way 
 of transition so subtle and imperceptible that no one 
 can tell, when he begins to be, either one, or the other. 
 
 ITor is it any objection that there might be some dif- 
 ficulty in the exercise of a regular church discipline 
 over baptized children ; or that, if this can not be done, 
 they are really not church members in any sense that 
 ought to be implied in the terms. Is then a child no 
 citizen, because he is not held responsible in the law 
 
OF CHILDREN. 169 
 
 in precisely the same manner as adults ; responsible, in 
 a private action, for slander ; or responsible, in a pub- 
 lic, for murder and treason ? The church membership 
 is, of course, to be qualified and shaded by the grada- 
 tions of age ; just as the law contrives to shade the 
 progress of the citizen child into the citizen man. All 
 the logical or theological bantering we hear, therefore, 
 on one side or the other, showing that the child, being 
 a church member, ought to be held subject to discipline ; 
 or, if he is not held subject to discipline, that he is 
 really no church member, is without reason "*or any 
 proper show of practical dignity. 
 
 It was proposed — 
 
 II. To show the reasons why this relation of infant 
 membership should exist, or be appointed. And here 
 it is very obvious — 
 
 First of all, that, if there is really no place in the 
 church of God for infant children, then it must be said, 
 and formally maintained, that there is none. And what 
 could be worse in its effect on a child's feeling, than to 
 find himself repelled from the brotherhood of God's 
 elect, in that manner. What can the hapless creature 
 think, either of himself or of God, when he is told that 
 he is not old enough to be a Christian, or be owned by 
 the Saviour as a disciple ? 
 
 Again, it would be most remarkable, if Christianity, 
 organizing a fold of grace and love, in the world and 
 for it, had yet no place in the fold for children. It 
 spreads its arms to say — *' For God so loved the world," 
 
170 CHURCH MEMBERSHIP 
 
 and even declares that publicans and harlots shall flock 
 in, before the captious priests and princes of the day ; 
 and yet it has no place, we are told, for children ; chil- 
 dren are out of the category of grace I Jesus himself 
 was a child, and went through all the phases and con- 
 ditions of childhood, not to show any thing by that 
 fact, as the Christian Fathers fondly supposed ; he said, 
 too, " Suffer little children," but this was only his hu- 
 man feeling ; he had no official relationship to such, 
 and no particular grace for them ! They are all outside 
 the salvation-fold, hardening there in the storm, till 
 their choosing, refusing, desiring, sinning power is suf- 
 ficiently unfolded to have a place assigned them within ! 
 Is this Christianity ? Is it a preparation so clumsy, so 
 little human, so imperfectly graduated to man as he is, 
 that it has no place for a full sixth part of the human 
 race; a part also to which the other five-sixths are 
 bound, in the dearest ties of love and care, and all but 
 compulsory expectation ? It would seem that any Chris- 
 tian heart, meeting Christianity at this point, and sur- 
 veying it with only a little natural feeling, would even 
 be oppressed by the sense of some strange defect in it, 
 as a grace for the world. In this view it gives to little 
 children the heritage only of Cain, requiring them to 
 be driven out from the presence of the Lord, and grow 
 up there among the outside crew of aliens and ene- 
 mies. Let no one be surprized that, under such treat- 
 ment, they stiffen into alienated, wrathfal men, ripened 
 for wickedness, by the. ranges of all but reprobate ex- 
 clusion in which they have been classed. 
 
OF CHILDREN. 171 
 
 Nor, again, is it any breach on their liberty, that chil- 
 dren are entered into this qualified membership by 
 their parents. What is it but a being entered into 
 privilege ? Is it a hard thing for human parents to 
 enter their child into the lot of wealth and high 
 society, and a station of family dignity, because it 
 does not leave them to acquire the wealth and the posi- 
 tion of honor in society, by their own original exertion, 
 unassisted? When the order of the Cincinnati took 
 their sons into the grand society of revolutionary honor 
 with them, was it a breach on the liberty of the chil- 
 dren ? Or we may take another view of the question. 
 The church of God is a school, and the members 
 are disciples, or learners. Does not every parent 
 choose the school for his children, giving them no 
 choice in the matter, and taking it to be his own 
 unquestionable right? This, too, on the ground that 
 they are to have the benefit of his maturer judgment, 
 and his more competent choice. Where then is the 
 encroachment, when Christian parents baptize their 
 child into the same discipleship with themselves, and 
 set it in the school of Christ ? It is only a part of their 
 ordinary charge as parents, for it is given them to have 
 the child in their own character, so to speak, and be 
 themselves discipled with it and for it, (and why not it 
 with them?) in all the honors and hopes of the heav- 
 enly kingdom. 
 
 Consider again the remarkable and certainly painful 
 fact that, in the view which excludes infant baptism and 
 the discipleship of children, the conversion itself of a 
 
172 CHURCH MEMBERSHIP 
 
 parent operates a kind of dissolution in the family state, 
 than which nothing could be more unnatural. It is 
 much as if our process of naturalization in the state, 
 were to naturalize the parents and not the children ; 
 leaving these to be foreigners still, and aliens. God's 
 effectual calling is no such unnatural grace; it will 
 never call the parents away from the children ; to be 
 themselves included in the great. family of salvation, 
 and look out, in their joy, to see their children fenced 
 away ! No — " The promise is to you. and to your chil- 
 dren;" not, to you. without your children. Come in 
 hither, then, ye guilty families of man, parents to be 
 parents in the Lord, children to obey in the Lord, all 
 to be circled by the common grace of life and the com- 
 mon fellowship of the saints. Why should we think 
 that our Great Father who has been refusing, ever since 
 the world began, to so much as put into any bird of the 
 air, an instinct that will draw it away from its nest, 
 may yet, as a matter of celestial mercy, be engaged by 
 his Spirit, in the gathering of human parents away 
 from their young ! 
 
 It is a matter, too, of great consequence to parents, as 
 respects their own fidelity in their ofiice, that their chil- 
 dren are not put away, by the Saviour, to hold rank 
 with heathens outside of the fold, but are brought in 
 with them, to be heirs together with them in the grace 
 of life. What will justify, or will naturally produce, a 
 more sullen remissness of duty in parents, than to feel 
 that, for the present, God has shut away, and is holding 
 away their children, and that they are never to be dis- 
 
OF CHILDREN. 173 
 
 ciples of the fold, till after they have been passed round 
 into it, through long detours of estrangement and ripen- 
 ing guiltiness? If there is nothing better for them 
 than to be converted just as heathens are, why should 
 they, as parents, be greatly concerned for their own ex- 
 ample, and the faithfulness of their training, when the 
 conversion is to be every thing and will have power to 
 remedy every defect ? 
 
 How refreshing the contrast, when the children, giv- 
 en to God in baptism, are accounted members of the 
 church with them, as being included in their faith, and 
 having the seal of it upon them. They look upon it 
 now as their privilege to be parents in the Lord. Their 
 prayers, they understand, are to keep heaven open upon 
 their house. Their aims are to be Christian. Their 
 tastes and manners to be flavored by the Christian hope 
 in which they live. There is to be a quickening ele- 
 ment in the atmosphere they make. They will set all 
 things upon a Christian footing for their children's sake ; 
 and their children, growing up in such nurture of the 
 Lord, will, how certainly, unfold what their nurture 
 itself has quickened. 
 
 It is still another consideration, that the church itself, 
 having this infant membership in it, will unfold other 
 aims and tempers, and exert a finer quality of power. 
 It will not be a dry convention of simply grown up 
 men and women ; the men will, some of them, be fath- 
 ers, the women mothers, and the children being also 
 gathered with them in the fold, they will all be gentled 
 together by the tender brotherhood of the little ones. 
 
174 CHURCH MEMBERSHIP 
 
 The parents will learn from the children quite as much 
 as thej teach, and will do their teaching fitly, just be- 
 cause they learn. The church prayers will have a cer- 
 tain paternity and maternity in them, and the children 
 will feel the grace of these prayers warming always 
 round them. Even the church life itself, two, or three, 
 or more, generations deep, will be qualified by the grand- 
 father and grandmother spirit, and the father and 
 mother spirit, and the reverent manners of the little 
 ones, and the whole volume of religious life will be un- 
 folded thus, by taking into itself the whole volume of 
 nature and family feeling. 
 
 Such are some of the reasons, briefly and faintly 
 presented, which determine, as I conceive, God's ap- 
 pointment of the great fact of an infant membership in 
 his church. And yet the reasons, taken by themselves, 
 are hardly a sufficient evidence of the fact. They set 
 us in the mood of respect, and even put us in the ex- 
 pectation of it, but they leave the inquiry still upon our 
 hands — 
 
 Til. Whether the supposed infant membership is a 
 real and true fact? That it is, may be seen from the 
 following proofs : — 
 
 1. Those declarations of Scripture which assert or 
 assume the fact. ' Thus, when the Saviour commands — 
 " Suffer little children to come unto me and forbid them 
 not, for of such is the kingdom of heaven," it would be 
 very singular if they could not come in with the disci- 
 ples, when they may so freely come to the Master him- 
 
OF CHILDREN. 175 
 
 self. And if Christ had been calling his disciples 
 themselves into fraternity with him, what more could 
 he have said for them, than that of such is the king- 
 dom of heaven? Nor is it any objection, as respects the 
 children, that, except a man be born again, he can not 
 be entered into this kingdom ; for potentially, at least, 
 they are thus born again ; and so are as fitly to be 
 counted citizens of the kingdom, as they are to be citi- 
 zens of the state. Besides, there is still less in that 
 kind of objection, that the kingdom of God, taken in its 
 lower sense as identical with the church, is expressly 
 likened by the Saviour to a net that gathers of every 
 kind. And what again does it signify, as regards the 
 apostolic ideas of this matter of infant membership, that 
 the great apostle to the Gentiles, in at least two of his 
 epistles to Christian churches, addresses, directly, chil- 
 dren, as being included among the saints and faithful in 
 Christ Jesus ? I allege as proof, 
 
 2. The analogy of circumcision. This was given to 
 be the seal of faith, and the churcb token, in tbat man- 
 ner, of a godly seed. Baptism can certainly be the 
 same with as little difficulty, or as little charge of ab- 
 surdity. True, they were not all Israel that were of 
 Israel, and so all may not be Israel that are baptized. 
 Enough that God gives the possibility, in both cases, in 
 giving the rite itself; and then it is to be seen, whether 
 the parents will be parents in the Lord, as it is for- 
 mally permitted them to be. Let the true point here 
 be carefully observed ; some kind of presumption must 
 be given by God, in respect to the church position of 
 
176 CHURCH MEMBERSHIP 
 
 children ; for they must either be taken into the church, 
 or else they must be excluded till they are old enough 
 to be admitted on the ground of a religious experience — 
 there is no other alternative. If they are excluded, 
 then it is taken for granted, that they are to grow up 
 as unbelievers and aliens, which is only their public 
 consignment to evil. If they are taken to be in the 
 faith, presumptively, as in the nurture of their parents, 
 and so accepted, then every kind encouragement is 
 given to them, and every pledge of divine help is gra- 
 ciously given to their parents. Which of the two meth- 
 ods is most consonant to nature, and worthiest of 
 God's beneficence, it is not difficult to see. God, on his 
 part, gives no presumption, either to the parents or their 
 child, that he is to be only a transgressor and alien, but 
 he gives the seal of the faith, as a pledge, to raise their 
 expectation of what he will do for them, and to throw 
 the blame of a godless childhood and youth, if such 
 there is to be, on themselves. 
 
 3. The church connection of children is virtually as- 
 sumed, as we may see, by the apostle Paul, when he 
 teaches that the believing wife sanctifies the unbelieving 
 husband, and the believing husband the unbelieving 
 wife — " else were your children unclean, but now are 
 they holy." He refers, in this matter, it is plain, 
 to the effect of a parental faith, on the church position 
 of children. He does not, of course, use the term 
 ^^ sanctify, ^^ in any spiritual sense, as afiirming the regen- 
 eration of character in the children; but he alludes 
 only to the church ideas of clean and unclean, afiirming 
 
OF CHILDREN. 177 
 
 that the unclean state of a godless father, or mother, is 
 so far taken awaj by the clean state of a godly mother, 
 or father, that the children are accounted clean, or 
 holy — so far holy, that is, that they are of the fold, and 
 not aliens, or unclean foreigners without the fold, as the 
 Jews were accustomed to regard all the uncircumcised 
 races. One believing parent, he declares, puts the chil- 
 dren in the church clawssification of believers. 
 
 4. All the reasons I have given for the observance 
 of infant baptism, go to establish also the fact of in- 
 fant membership in the church. And this holds good, 
 especially of that which discovers the origin of the rite 
 in proselyte baptism. For as foreigners, becoming pros- 
 elytes, were baptized and so made clean, thus to be ac- 
 counted natural born citizens, so Christ, reapplying the 
 rite to a spiritual use, makes it the token of that regen- 
 eration which enters the soul into his heavenly king- 
 dom, and gives a divine citizenship there. In which 
 you may see how my comparison of infant membership 
 in the church, to the well-known citizenship of infants 
 in the state, is borne out by Christian authority itself 
 Their very baptism is the figure of their citizenship ; 
 wherein they are shown to be "fellow-citizens of the 
 saints, and of the household of God." 
 
 Now it is to be conceded, as respects all these proofs 
 from the Scripture, that the church membership of chil- 
 dren is not formally asserted in them. According to 
 a certain coarse way of judging, therefore, they are not 
 as strong as they might be. And yet, in a more per- 
 ceptive and really truer mode of judgment, they lack 
 
178 CHURCH MEMBERSHIP 
 
 that kind of strength just because they have too nauch 
 of another, which is deeper and more satisfactory, to 
 suffer it. So familiar is the idea, to all Jewish minds, 
 of a religious oneness in parents and their offspring, 
 that a church institution of any kind, arranged to in- 
 clude parents and not their offspring, would even have 
 been a shocking offense to the nation. Children were . 
 as much expected to be with their parents in their 
 religion, as they were to be in their sustentation. Does 
 any one doubt that children were citizens in the old 
 theocracy ? And yet I recollect no passage where that 
 sort of membership with their parents is instituted, or 
 formally asserted. And the reason, is that it is a fact 
 too familiar, too close to the sentiment or sense of na 
 ture, to be asserted. We can even see for ourselves 
 that they look upon religious faith itself as a kind of 
 hereditament in the family, descending on the child by 
 laws of family connexion, where it is not hindered by 
 some bad fault in the manners and walk of the parents. 
 Thus we hear even Paul himself, the man who knew 
 as well as any other, and taught as powerfully, the sig- 
 nificance ©f Christian faith, addressing his young brother 
 Timothy, as having the greater confidence in his faith 
 because it is hereditary — " When I call to remembrance 
 the unfeigned faith that is in thee, which dwelt first in 
 thy grandmother Lois, and thy mother Eunice, and 1 
 am persuaded that in thee also." This unfeigned, this 
 certainly true Christian faith, he conceives to have even 
 leapt the gulf between the old religion and the new, 
 and so to have come down upon him, through at 
 
OF CHILDREN. 179 
 
 least two generations of godly motherhood under the 
 law and before the coming of Jesus. When such no- 
 tions of family grace are familiar, what does it signify 
 that the church membership of children is not formally 
 asserted ? How could that be instituted by an apos- 
 tolic decree, which no apostle, or man, or woman, had 
 ever thought could be otherwise ? 
 
 Over and above these more direct evidences, for the 
 church membership of baptized children, there is still 
 another kind of evidence to be adduced, which has, and 
 very properly should have, much weight. I allude to 
 the opinions of the church and her most qualified 
 teachers, from the apostolic era downward. In one 
 sense, the mere opinions of men regarding such a ques- 
 tion are of little consequence. But where they coin- 
 cide with the known practice of the church from the 
 earliest times downward, and show the practice to be 
 grounded in the same reasons of organic unity and 
 presumptive grace that we are now asserting, they 
 both show that our doctrine is no novelty, and con- 
 tribute a powerful evidence in support of its original 
 authenticity. 
 
 Thus I have cited already in support of infant bap- 
 tism, passages from Justin Martyr, Ireneus, Tertullian, 
 Origen, the Shepherd of Hermas, and others, which not 
 only show the fact of infant baptism, but discover also, 
 in their phraseology, the same views of church mem- 
 bership that I am now asserting. This whole view of 
 infant membership, as it stood in the first three centu- 
 
180 CHUKCH MEMBERSHIP 
 
 ries of the churcli history, appears to be well summed 
 up, both as regards the facts and the reasons, in the 
 following statement of Neander : — 
 
 " It is the idea of infant baptism that Christ, through 
 the divine life which he imparted to, and revealed in, 
 human nature, sanctified that germ from its earliest de- 
 velopment. The child born in a Christian family was, 
 when all things were as they should be, to have this 
 advantage over others, that he did not come to Chris- 
 tianity out of heathenism or the sinful natural life, but 
 from the first dawning of consciousness unfolded his 
 powers under the imperceptible, preventing influences 
 of a sanctifying, ennobling religion; that with the 
 earliest germinations of the natural self-conscious life, 
 another divine principle of life, transforming the nature, 
 should be brought nigh to him, ere yet the ungodly 
 principle could come into full activity, and the latter 
 should, at once, find here its powerful counterpoise. 
 In such a life, the new birth was not to constitute a new 
 crisis, beginning at some definable moment, but it was 
 to begin imperceptibly, and so proceed through the 
 whole life. Hence baptism, the visible sign of regen- 
 eration, was to be given to the child at the very outset : 
 the child was to be consecrated to the Redeemer from 
 the very beginning of its life."* 
 
 A more popular and practical view of Christianity, 
 as seen in the domestic life of families, and one, at the 
 same time, wholly coincident, is given by Cave : — 
 
 " Gregory Nazianzen peculiarly commends his mother, 
 
 * Neander's Church History, Torrey's translation, pp. 311, 312. 
 
OF CHILDREN. 181 
 
 that not only she herself was consecrated to God, and 
 brought up under a pious education, but that she con- 
 veyed it down, as a necessary inheritance, to her chil- 
 dren ; and it seems her daughter Gorgonia was so well 
 seasoned with these holy principles, that she religiously 
 walked in the steps of so good a pattern ; and did not 
 only reclaim her husband, but educated her children 
 and nephews in the ways of religion, giving them an 
 excellent example while she lived, and leaving this, as 
 her last charge and request when she died. * * * 
 This was the discipline under which Christians were 
 brought up in those times. Eeligion was instilled into 
 them betimes, which grew up and mixed itself with 
 their ordinary labors and recreations. * * * * So 
 that Jerome says, of the place where he lived, you 
 could not go into the field, but you might hear the 
 plowman at his hallelujahs, the mower at his hymns, 
 and the vine-dresser singing David's Psalms.""^ 
 
 I can not answer for an exact agreement of my doc- 
 trine with that of Calvin. It must be sufficient that he 
 recognizes the valid possibility of a regenerate charac- 
 ter, existing long before it is formally developed, and 
 the propriety of infant baptism as the initiatory rite of 
 membership. He says : — 
 
 *' Christ was sanctified from his earliest infancy, that 
 he might sanctify in himself all his elect. But how, it 
 is inquired, are infants regenerated who have no knowl- 
 edge either of good or evil ? We reply that the work 
 of God is not yet without existence because it is not 
 
 * Primitive Christianity, pp. 173, 174. 
 
182 CHUKCH MEMBERSHIP 
 
 observed or understood bj us. Now it is certain 
 that some infants are saved, and that they are pre- 
 viously regenerated by the Lord is beyond all doubt. 
 They are baptized into future repentance arid faith; 
 for though these graces have not yet been formed in 
 them, the seeds of both are nevertheless implanted in 
 their hearts by the secret operations of the Spirit."* 
 
 The mercurial mind of Baxter penetrates directly 
 into all the subtleties of the question, asserting the or- 
 ganic unity of children who stand accepted in the cove- 
 nant of their fathers ; showing how regenerate charac- 
 ter is to begin, seminally, in the children of them that 
 believe, and get the start of sin by a kind of gracious 
 anticipation; and so that, in this view, nurture and 
 growth are God's way of unfolding grace in the church, 
 as preaching and conversion are his method of grace 
 with them that are without. Which three points are 
 successively asserted in the following passages : — 
 
 " Q. — Why then are they baptized who can not 
 covenant ? 
 
 "J.. — As children are made sinners and miserable by 
 the parents, without any act of their own, so they are 
 delivered out of it by the free grace of Christ, upon a 
 condition performed by their parents. Else they who 
 are visibly born in sin and misery should have no cer- 
 tain or visible way of remedy. Nature maketh them, 
 as it were," parts of their parents, or so near as causeth 
 their sin and misery. And this nearness supposed, 
 God, by his free grace, hath put it in the power of the 
 
 * Ins. cap. xvi. § 17, 18, 20. 
 
OF CHILDREN. 183 
 
 parents to accept for them the blessings of the cove- 
 nant, and to enter them into the covenant of God, the 
 parents' will being instead of their own, who have yet 
 no will to choose for themselves."^ 
 
 "Of those baptized in infancy, some do betimes 
 receive the secret seeds of grace, which, by the bless- 
 ings of a holy education, is stirring in them according 
 to their capacity, and working them to God by actual 
 desires, and working them from all known sin, and 
 entertaining further grace, and turning them into actual 
 acquaintance with Christ, as soon as they arrive at full 
 natural capacity, so that they never were actual ungodly 
 persons."f 
 
 " Ungodly parents do serve the devil so effectually, 
 in the first impressions on their children's minds, that 
 it is more than magistrates and ministers and all reform- 
 ing means can afterwards do to recover them from that 
 sin to God. Whereas, if you would first engage their 
 hearts to God by a religious education, piety would then 
 have all those advantages that sin hath now. (Pro v. 
 xxii. 6.) The language which you teach them to speak 
 when they are children, they will use all their life after, 
 if they live with those that use it. And so the opinions 
 which they first receive, and the customs which they 
 are used to at first are very hardly changed afterwards. 
 I doubt not to affirm, that a godly education is God's first 
 and ordinary appointed means, for the begetting of actual 
 faith and other graces in the children of believers. Many 
 
 * Teacher of Householders, fol., vol. ii., p. 135. 
 f Confirmation, fol., vol. iv., p. 267. 
 
184 CHURCH MEMBERSHIP 
 
 have received grace before ; but they can not sooner have 
 actual faith, repentance, love, or any grace than they may 
 have reason itself, in act and exercise. And the preach- 
 ing of the word by public ministers, is not the first 
 ordinary means of grace, to any but those that were 
 graceless till they come to hear such preaching ; that 
 is, to those on whom the first appointed means hath 
 been neglected or proved vain • * * ^ * there- 
 fore it is apparent that the ordinary appointed means 
 for the first actual grace, is parents' godly instruction and 
 education of their children. And public preaching is 
 appointed for the conversion of those only that have 
 missed the blessing of the first appointed means."* 
 
 Our New England fathers, coming out as they did 
 from a mode of church economy which made Chris- 
 tian piety itself to be scarcely more than baptism, and 
 passing through great struggles to settle a scheme of 
 church order that should recognize the strict individual- 
 ity of persons, and the essential personality of spiritual 
 regeneration, fell off for a time, as they naturally might, 
 into a denial of the great underlying principles and facts 
 on which the membership of baptized children in the 
 church must ever be rested. In the Cambridge Plat- 
 form of 1649, they asserted a view of membership, by 
 which it was to be rigidly confined to such as appear to 
 be renewed persons. Meantime none were allowed to 
 be qualified as voters in the commonwealth, except in 
 the Hartford and Providence colonies, who were not 
 members of the church — the same principle with which 
 
 * Christian Director}^, vol. ii., cap. 6, § 4, fol. p. 516. 
 
OF CHILDKEN. 185 
 
 they had been familiar in England. The result was, 
 under their individualizing scheme of membership, 
 that they began to find, as soon as their sons were 
 grown to manhood, that many of them, even though 
 baptized, were, in fact, aliens in the state. They 
 could not vote in the state, and, having no pretense of 
 faith, could not baptize their children, not being in the 
 church themselves. Another synod was convened 
 A. D. 1662, to find some way of relieving these difficul- 
 ties. And they hit upon the rather strange expedient 
 of a half-membership, allowing all baptized persons 
 who live reputably, and give a speculative assent to the 
 gospel, to be so far members that they may be voters 
 and have their children baptized. This decision was 
 stoutly opposed by some of the ablest men in the synod, 
 and great debates followed. And yet as the facts were 
 reported by Cotton Mather, these three positions were 
 asserted and agreed to on all hands — even though the 
 scheme adopted had no systematic and practical agree- 
 ment with them, or ground of reason in them. 
 
 1. That the children of Christian parents, trained in 
 a Christian way, often grow np as spiritually renewed 
 persons, and must indeed be accounted true disciples 
 of Christ, until some evidence conclusive to the con- 
 trary is given by their conduct. 
 
 " Children of the covenant have frequently the begin- 
 ning of grace wrought in them in younger years, as 
 Scripture and experience show. Instance Joseph, Sam- 
 uel, David, Solomon, Abijah, Josiah, Daniel, John 
 Baptist, Timothy. Hence this sort of persons, [bap- 
 
186 CHURCH MEMBERSHIP 
 
 tized persons] showing nothing to the contrary, are, in 
 charity^ or to ecclesiastical reputation, visible believers."* 
 
 2. That baptism supposes an initial state of piety, or 
 some right beginning, in which the child is prepared 
 unto good, by causes prior to his own will. 
 
 " We are to distinguish between faith and the hope- 
 ful beginning of it, the charitable judgment whereof 
 runs upon a great latitude, and faith in the special exer- 
 cise of it, unto the visible discovery whereof, more ex- 
 perienced operations are to be inquired after. The 
 words of Dr. Ames are : * Children are not to be ad- 
 mitted to partake of all church privileges, till first 
 increase of faith do appear, but from those which belong 
 to the beginning of faith and entrance into the church 
 they are not to be excluded.' ""^ 
 
 3. That there is a kind of individualism which runs 
 only to evil ; that the church is designed to be an or- 
 ganic, vital, grace-giving power, and thus a nursery of 
 spiritual life to its children. 
 
 " The way of the Anabaptists, to admit none to mem- 
 bership and baptism but adult professors, is the straitest 
 way; one would think it should be a way of great 
 purity ; but experience hath shewed that it has been an 
 inlet unto great corruption. If we do not keep in the 
 way of a converting^ grace-giving covenant, and keep per- 
 sons under those church dispensations wherein grace is 
 given, the church will die of a lingering though not 
 violent death. The Lord hath not set up churches only 
 that a few old Christians may keep one another warm 
 
 * Magnalia, book v., fol. p. 72. f Magnalia, book v., fol. p. 77. 
 
OF CHILDREN. 187 
 
 while they live, and then carry away the church with 
 them when they die ; no, btit that they might with all 
 care, and with all the obligations and advantages to that 
 care that may be, nurse still successively another gen- 
 eration of subjects to our Lord, that may stand up in 
 his kingdom when they are gone."* 
 
 Under this half-way covenant, and probably in part 
 because of it, practical religion fell into a state of great 
 debility. The churches lost their spirituality, and had 
 well nigh lost the idea of spiritual life itself; when at 
 length the Great Eevival, under Whitfield and Ed- 
 w^ards, inaugurated and brought up to its highest in- 
 tensity the new era of individualism — the same over- 
 wrought, misapplied scheme of personal experience in 
 religion, which has continued with some modifications 
 to the present day. It is a religion that begins explo- 
 sively, raises high frames, carries little or no expansion, 
 and after the campaign is over, subsides into a torpor. 
 Considered as a distinct era, introduced by Edwards, 
 and extended and caricatured by his cotemporaries, it 
 has one great merit, and one great defect. The merit 
 is that it displaced an era of dead formality, and brought 
 in the demand of a truly supernatural experience. The 
 defect is, that it has cast a type of religious individual- 
 ism, intense beyond any former example. It makes 
 nothing of the family, and the church, and the organic 
 powers God has constituted as vehicles of grace. It 
 takes every man as if he had existed alone; presumes 
 that he is unreconciled to God until he has undergone 
 
 * Magnalia, book v., fol, p. 81. 
 
188 CHURCH MEMBERSHIP 
 
 some sudden and explosive experience in adult years, 
 or after the age of reason ; demands that experience, and 
 only when it is reached, allows the subject to be an heir 
 of life. Then, on the other side, or that of the Spirit 
 of God, the very act or ictus by which the change is 
 wrought is isolated or individualized, so as to stand in 
 no connection with any other of God's means or causes 
 — an epiphany, in which God leaps from the stars, or 
 some place above, to do a work apart from all system, 
 or connection with his other works. Eeligion is thus a 
 kind of transcendental matter, which belongs on the 
 outside of life, and has no part in the law^s by which 
 life is organized — a miraculous epidemic, a fire-ball shot 
 from the moon, something holy, because it is from God, 
 but so extraordinary, so out of place, that it can not 
 suffer any vital connection with the ties, and causes, 
 and forms, and habits, which constitute the frame of our 
 history. Hence the desultory, hard, violent, and often 
 extravagant or erratic character it manifests. Hence, 
 in part, the dreary years of decay and darkness, that 
 interspace our months of excitement" and victory. 
 
 Even Edwards himself, fifteen years after the Great 
 Revival, began to be oppressed with sorrowful convic- 
 tions of some great defect in the matter and mode of 
 it, confessing his doubt whether " the greater part of 
 supposed converts give reason, by their conversation, to 
 suppose that they continue converts ;" protesting, also, 
 his special confidence in the fruits of family religion in 
 terms like these — 
 
 " Every Christian family ought to be, as it wer» ' 
 
OF CHILDREN. 189 
 
 little church, consecrated to Christ, and wholly influ- 
 enced and governed by his rules. And family education 
 and order are some of the chief meaiis of grace. If these 
 fail, all other means are likely to prove ineffectual."* 
 
 Dr. Hopkins, a pupil of Edwards, had probably been 
 turned by suggestions from him, to a consideration of 
 the importance of family nurture and piety, as .con- 
 nected with the propagation of religion ; and, as if to 
 supply some defect in this direction, he occupied sixty 
 pages in his System of Divinity, with a careful discus- 
 sion of the " nature and design of infant baptism." In 
 this article, he goes even beyond the notion of a pre- 
 sumptive piety in the children baptized, and says: — 
 " The church receive and look upon them as holy, and 
 those who shall be saved. So they are as visibly holy, 
 or as really holy, in their view, as their parents are."t 
 
 How far his theory of conversion would compel him 
 to isolate the act of Grod by which the spiritual renova- 
 tion of a soul is wrought, I will not undertake to de- 
 cide. Enough, that he asserts an organic connection of 
 character between parents and children, as effectual for 
 good as for evil ; nay, that they may as truly, and in 
 the same sense, transmit holiness as they transmit ex- 
 istence. Thus, after asserting, not more clearly or decid- 
 edly than I have done, the impossibility that parents 
 should spiritually renew their children, considered as 
 acting by themselves, he says : — 
 
 " But it does not follow from this, that God has not 
 so constituted the covenant of grace, that holiness shall 
 
 ♦Vol. i. p. 90. f Vol. ii. p. 319. 
 
190 CHURCH MEMBERSHIP 
 
 be communicated, by Him, to the children, in conse- 
 quence of the faithful endeavors of their parents ; so 
 that, in this sense, and by virtue of such a constitution, 
 they do by their faithful endeavors convey saving bless- 
 ings to their children. In this way they give existence 
 to their children. God produces their existence by his 
 own Almighty energy ; but, by the constitution he has 
 established, they receive* their existence from their pa- 
 rents, or by their means. By an established constitu- 
 tion, parents convey moral depravity to their children. 
 And if God has been pleased to make a constitution 
 and appoint a way, in his covenant of grace with man, 
 by which pious parents may convey and communicate 
 moral rectitude or holiness to their children, they, by 
 using the appointed means, do it as really and effectually 
 as they communicate existence to them. In this sense, 
 therefore, they may convey and give holiness and salva- 
 tion to their children."* 
 
 Dr. Witherspoon, a cotemporary of Dr. Hopkins, 
 held opinions on this subject that were in a high degree 
 coincident, though presented in a more popular and less 
 doctrinal shape. He says : — 
 
 "I will not enlarge on some refined remarks of 
 persons as distinguished for learning as piety, some 
 of whom have supposed that they [children] are capa- 
 ble of receiving impressions of desire and aversion, and 
 even of moral temper, particularly of love or hatred, in 
 the first year of their lives. -5^ * * When the gos- 
 pel comes to a people that have long sitten in darkness, 
 
 ♦Pages 334, 335. 
 
OF CHILDREN. 191 
 
 tliere may be numerous converts of all ages ; but when 
 the gospel has long been preached, in plenty and purity, 
 and ordinances regularly administered, few but those 
 who are called in early life are called at all. A very 
 judicious and pious writer, Eichard Baxter, is of opin- 
 ion that in a regular state of the church, and a tolerable 
 measure of faithfulness and purity in its officers, family 
 instruction and government are the usual means of con- 
 version, public ordinances of edification. This seems 
 agreeable to the language of Scripture ; for we are told 
 that God hath set in the church apostles, prophets, evan- 
 gelists, pastors and teachers, (not for converting sinners, 
 but) for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the 
 ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ."* 
 
 From all these citations, which could be multiplied 
 without limit, it will be seen that the children of Chris- 
 tian parents have been looked upon as being heirs of 
 the parental faith, and presumptively included in that 
 faith ; and so, either with or without a distinct assertion 
 of the proper church membership of children, such 
 opinions have been held in all ages respecting them, 
 as make the denial of their membership a clear impro- 
 priety and even a kind of offense against nature. 
 
 It is hardly necessary to add, in closing this subject, 
 that if children baptized are so far accepted as members 
 of the Christian church, it must be a great fault and a 
 most hurtful dereliction of duty that nothing is practi- 
 cally made of this membership, and that really it f)as.ses 
 
 * Witherspoon, vol. ii., pp. 395, 397. 
 
192 CHURCH MEMBERSHIP 
 
 for a thing of no significance. The rite is appointed 
 because it has a meaning and a value, and then, when 
 it is passed, it is treated in a way that even indicates the 
 possible absurdity of it. That the children will see any 
 thing in such a mode of practice is impossible. And it 
 requires but the smallest possible perception, to see that 
 the rite will, in this manner, be regularly sinking into 
 discredit, till it is quite done away, and the value it 
 might have in the church is lost. To accomplish all 
 that is needed to give full effect to the rite — 
 
 Baptized children ought to be enrolled by name in 
 the catalogue of each church, as composing a distinct 
 class of candidate, or catechumen, members ; and to see 
 that they are held in expectancy, thus, by the church, 
 as presumptively one with them in the faith they 
 profess. 
 
 Then, when they come forward to acknowledge their 
 baptism, and assume the covenant in their own choice, 
 they ought not to be received as converts from the 
 world, as if they were heathens coming into the fold, but 
 there should be a distinction preserved, such as makes 
 due account of their previous qualified membership ; a 
 form of assumption tendered in place of a confession — 
 something answering to the Lutheran confirmation^ 
 passed without a bishop's hands. 
 
 Children, as soon as they are well out of their infancy, 
 ought to be taken also to the stated meetings of fellow- 
 ship and prayer, drawn into all the moods of worship, 
 praise, supplication, reproof, as being rightfully con- 
 cerned in them, on the score of their membership. 
 
OF CHILDEEN. 193 
 
 There ougtit to be a great deal made of singing too in 
 such meetings, that they may join their voices and play 
 into expression their own tribute of feeling and Chris- 
 tian sentiment. 
 
 Whenever there are orphan children, that have been 
 baptized, the church ought to look after them, as being 
 members ; see, if possible, that they are not neglected, 
 but trained up in a Christian manner ; provided, if need 
 be, with a godly fatherhood and motherhood in the 
 church itself; led into the church and out into the 
 world, as disciples beloved according to their years. 
 
 Meantime, it is a matter of prime significance that 
 the Christian father and mother should live so as to indi- 
 cate a sense of their privilege and responsibility ; even 
 as Abraham did when he sojourned in the land of 
 promise, as in a strange country, dwelling in tents with 
 Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him of the same 'promise. It 
 is one thing to live for a family of children, as if they 
 were going possibly to be converted, and a very differ- 
 ent to live for them as church members, training them 
 into their holy profession; one thing to have them 
 about as strangers to the covenant of promise, and an- 
 other to have them about as heirs of the same promise, 
 growing up into it, to fulfill the seal of faith already 
 upon them. One great reason why the children of 
 Christian parents turn out so badly is, that they are 
 taken to be the world, and the manner and spirit of the 
 house are brought down to be of the world too, and 
 partly for their sake. Take them as disciples of Jesus, 
 to be carefully trained for Him ; prepared to no mere 
 
194 CHURCH MEMBERSHIP. 
 
 worldly tastes, and fashions, and pleasures, but kept in 
 purity, saved from tlie world, and led forth under all 
 tender examples of obedience and godly living ; and it 
 will be strange if that nurture of the Lord does not 
 show them growing up in the faith, to be sons and 
 daughters, indeed, of the Lord Almighty. 
 
VIII. 
 
 THE OUT-POPULATING POWER OF THE CHRIS- 
 TIAN STOCK. 
 
 "And did he not make one? Yet had he the residue of the Spirit. 
 And wherefore one ? That he might have a godly seed." — Malachi^ ii. 15. 
 
 The prophet is enforcing here a strict observance of 
 marriage. And lie adverts, in his argament, to the sin- 
 gle and sole state of the first human pair, as a standing 
 proof against polygamy, inconstancy, and all similar 
 abuses of the marriage state. God was not spent, he 
 says, in creating a single man, Adam, and a single 
 woman. Eve, but he had such a residue, or overplus of 
 creative energy left, that he could have created millions 
 if he would. Wherefore then did he cease, producing 
 only just one man and woman, and no more? The 
 answer is — That he might have a godly seed. In that 
 lies the reason, he declares, of God's economy in this 
 family institution. We perceive, accordingly. 
 
 That God is^from thefirst^ looking for a godly seed; or^ 
 what is nowise different^ inserting such laivs of population 
 that piety itself shall finally over-populate the luorld. 
 
 To be more explicit, there are, too, principal modes by 
 which the kingdom of God among men may be, and is 
 to be extended. One is by the process of conversion, and 
 the other by that of fomily propagation ; one by gain- 
 
196 THE OUT-POPULATING POWER 
 
 ing over to the side of faith and piety, the other by the 
 populating force of faith and piety themselves. The 
 former is the grand idea that has taken possession of the 
 churches of our times — they are going to convert the 
 world. They have taken hold of the promise, which 
 so many of the prophets have given out, of a time when 
 the reign of Christ shall be universal, extending to all 
 nations and peoples; and the expectation is that, by 
 preaching Christ to all the nations, they will finally 
 convert them and bring them over into the gospel fold. 
 Meantime very much less, or almost nothing, is made 
 of the other method, viz : that of Christian population. 
 Indeed, as we are now looking at religion, or religious 
 character and experience, we can hardly find a place for 
 any such thought as a possible reproduction thus of 
 parental character and grace in children. They must 
 come in by choice, on their own account ; they must be 
 converted over from an outside life that has grown to 
 maturity in sin. Are they not individuals, and how 
 are they to be initiated into any thing good by inherit- 
 ance and before choice ? It is as if they were all so 
 many Melchisedecs in their religious nature, only not 
 righteous at all — without father, without mother, without 
 descent. Descent brings them nothing. Born of faith, 
 and bosomed in it, and nurtured by it, still there is yet 
 to be no faith begotten in them, nor so much as a con- 
 tagion even of faith to be caught in their garments. 
 
 What I propose, at the present time, is to restore, if 
 possible, a juster impression of this great subject; to 
 show that conversion over to the church is not the only 
 
OF THE CHRISTIAN STOCK. 197 
 
 way of increase ; that God ordains a law of population 
 in it as truly as lie does in an earthly kingdom, or colo- 
 ny, and by this increase from within, quite as much 
 as by conversion from without, designs to give it, finally, 
 the complete dominion promised. 
 
 Nor let any one be repelled from this truth, or set 
 against it, by the prejudice that piety is and must be a 
 matter of individual choice. The same is true of sin. 
 Many of us have no difficulty in saying that mankind 
 are born sinners. They may just as truly and properly 
 be born saints — it requires the self-active power to be 
 just as far developed to commit sin, as it does to choose 
 obedience. This individual capacity of will and choice 
 is one that matures at no particular tick of the clock, 
 but it comes along out of incipiencies, grows by imper- 
 ceptible increments, and takes on a character, in good 
 or evil, or a mixed character in both, so imperceptibly 
 and gradually, that it seems to be, in some sense, pre- 
 fashioned by what the birth and nurture have communi- 
 cated. We may fitly enough call this character a prop- 
 agated quality — in strictest metaphysical definition, it is 
 not ; in sturdiest fact of history, or practical life, it is. 
 
 Nor let any one be diverted from the truth I am 
 going to assert, by imagining that a propagated piety is, 
 of course, a piety without regeneration, dispensing with 
 what Christ himself declared to be the indispensable 
 need of every human creature. For aught that appears, 
 regeneration may, in some initial and profoundly real 
 sense, be the twin element of propagation itself The 
 parentage may, in other words, be so thoroughly 
 
198 THE OUT-POPULATING POWER 
 
 wrouglit in by tlie Spirit of God, as to communicate 
 the seeds or incipiencies of a godly, just as it communi- 
 cates the seeds of a depravated and disordered, char- 
 acter. In one view, the child will be regenerate when he 
 is born ; in another view, he will not be, till the godly 
 life is developed in his own personal choice and liberty. 
 Dismissing these, and other like prepossessions, let us 
 go on to examine some of the evidences by which this 
 doctrine of church population is to be substantiated. 
 
 1. I name, as an evidence, the very important fact 
 that in the matter of infant baptism and infant church 
 membership, grounded as they are in the assumption 
 that a believing parentage sanctifies the offspring, God 
 is seen to frame the order of church economy, so as to 
 bring in the law of increase, or family propagation ; 
 looking to the populating principle for growth, just as 
 the founder of a new colony, on some foreign shore, 
 would look. He declares that parents are to be parents 
 in the Lord, and children to grow up in the nurture of 
 the Lord. The whole scheme of organic unity in the 
 family and of family grace in the church, is just what 
 it should be, if the design were to propagate religion, 
 not by conversions only, but quite as much, or more, 
 by the populating force embodied in it — just that force 
 which, in all states and communities, is known to be the 
 most majestic and silently creative force in their history. 
 
 2. It is a matter of consequence to observe, that the 
 Abrahamic order and covenant stood upon this footing, 
 formally proposing and promising to make the father 
 of the faithful a blessing to mankind, by and through the 
 
OF THE CHRISTIAN" STOCK. 199 
 
 miiltitude of his offspring, " Look now," says tlie word 
 of promise, " toward heaven and tell the stars, if thou be 
 able to number them. So shall thy seed be." Again, 
 "I will make thee a father of many nations." And 
 again, " All the nations of the earth shall be blessed in 
 him." Neither was it to be the only blessing, that 
 Jesus, the Saviour of mankind, was to be born of this 
 honored family. "I will make thee exceeding fruit- 
 ful," was the form of the promise ; and the blessing, as 
 we may see, by all the modes of expression used, was 
 to turn as much on the wonderful populousness of the 
 stock, overspreading the world, as it was, on the new- 
 creating grace to be unfolded in it. For if it be matter 
 of debate, in what precise manner, the Christian church 
 has connection with this more ancient and apparently 
 mere family bond, there is certainly no doubt in the 
 mind of the great Christian apostle, that there is a real 
 and valid connection of some kind, such that the prom- 
 ise passes and spreads, and is to get its fulfillment, only 
 when the godly seed has filled the world. The spread 
 of Christianity is, in his view, the blessing of Abraham 
 come on the Gentiles, through Jesus Christ. These 
 Gentile converts, too, he calls the seed of Abraham — 
 "And if ye be Christ's, then are ye Abraham's seed and 
 heirs according to the promise." He looks, you will 
 perceive, on the Gentile converts as being grafted in 
 upon the ancient stock ; which also he expressly says, 
 in another place, counting them to be so unified with 
 Abraham, as to be the outgrowth of his person. Just 
 as the proselytes were taken to be sons and daughters 
 
200 THE OUT-POPULATING POWER 
 
 of Abraham, naturalized into his stock, so are these 
 converts to become the channel of his over-populating 
 force, till such time as the natural branches, broken oflf, 
 are grafted in again. And, in this view, it is that the 
 Gentile converts are called " a seed^'' that being the word 
 that contemplates the fact of their multiplication as a 
 family of God. 
 
 8. It is an argument which ought to be convinc- 
 ing, that the universal spread of the gospel, and the 
 universal reign of Christian truth — that which proph- 
 ets and apostles promise, and which we, in these last 
 times, have taken up as our fondest, most impelling 
 Christian hope — plainly enough never can be compassed 
 by the process of adult conversions, but must finally be 
 reached, if reached at all, by the populating forces of a 
 family grace in the church. We expect that, in that 
 day, all flesh shall see the salvation of God, and that 
 every thing human will be regenerated by it ; that the 
 glory of God will cover the earth like a baptism of 
 water — even as the waters cover the sea. These are to 
 be the times of the restitution of all things. God, we 
 believe, will put his laws now in the mind, and write 
 them on the heart, and " all shall know him from the 
 least to the greatest." I do not care to press these epi- 
 thets least and greatest — perhaps there is no reference to 
 children in them. It would scarcely make the text 
 more significant if there were; for this universal tri- 
 umph of the word, in which we all believe, this im- 
 printing of it on men's hearts, all over the world, in 
 such manner as to make the day of glory — that great 
 
OF THE CHRISTIAN STOCK. 201 
 
 day of light which figures so grandly in the visions of 
 God's prophets and apostles, and is promised by Christ 
 himself — such a day, I say, can plainly enough never be 
 reached, as long as the children of the world grow "up in 
 sin, as we now assume to be the fact, still to be called 
 and prayed for as now and preached into the kingdom. 
 When the little child shall lead forth in pairs the wolf 
 and the lamb, the leopard and the kid, the calf and the 
 young lion ; when the sucking child shall play on the 
 hole of the asp unstung, and the weaned child shall put 
 his hand unbitten on the cockatrice's den ; we not only 
 take hold of it as the prophet's meaning that there is to 
 be a great universal mitigation of the ferocities of appe- 
 tite, and prey, and passion, in the world, but that the 
 little ones are to have their part in the joy, and be 
 raised in dominion by that all-renewing grace which 
 has now restored and imparadised the world. Otherwise 
 our day of glory would be such a kind of jubilee as 
 shows 'the adult souls only of the race to be gathered 
 into the kingdom, while the poor, unripe sinners of 
 childhood, a full fourth in the total number, are in no 
 sense, in it, but are waiting their conversion-time on 
 the outside ! This is not our millennial day ; we have 
 no such hope. 
 
 We conceive that Christ will then overspread all souls 
 with his glory, and that children, filled according to 
 their age and measure with the divine motions of grace, 
 will be unfolding the heavenly beauty, as they advance 
 in years, even as the flowers unfold their colors in the 
 sun. These colors no one sees in the root, and the 
 
202 THE OUT-POPULATING POWER 
 
 clear, transparent sap it circulates, and yet the color ia 
 there. Just so will God, in that great day of grace, 
 bring out of infancy and childhood, sanctify in gly 
 touched by his Spirit, what creates them children of 
 God, as truly as their parents, though too subtle to be 
 seen, or defined, till it has blushed into color, in the 
 sunlight of their intelligence in the truth. Such a day 
 of glory then contemplates a great in-birth of sanctifi- 
 cation, or renewing life. Conversions from without are 
 to have their part in preparing it, but the consumma- 
 tion hoped for is even impossible, as regards a third or 
 fourth part of the race, save as it is reached by a popu- 
 lating process which enters them into life itself, through 
 the gate of a sanctified infancy and childhood. 
 
 4. Consider a very important fact in human physiol- 
 ogy which goes far to explain, or take away the strange- 
 ness and seeming extravagance of the truth I am en- 
 deavoring to establish, viz., that qualities of education, 
 habit, feeling, and character, have a tendency always 
 to grow in, by long continuance, and become thor- 
 oughly inbred in the stock. We meet humble analo- 
 gies of this fact in the domestic animals. The opera- 
 tions to which they are trained, and in which they 
 become naturalized by habit, become predispositions, in 
 a degree, in their offspring ; and they, in their turn, are 
 as much more easily trained on that account. The 
 next generation are trained still more easily, till what 
 was first made habitual, finally becomes functional in 
 the stock, and almost no training is wanted. That 
 which was inculcated by practice passes into a ten- 
 
OF THE CHRISTIAN STOCK. 203 
 
 dency, and descends as a natural gift, or endowment. 
 The same thing is observable, on a large scale, in the 
 families of mankind. A savage race is a race bred into 
 low living, and a faithless, bloody character. The in- 
 stinct of law, society, and order is substituted, finally, 
 by the overgrown instinct of prey, and the race is lost 
 to any real capacity of social regeneration ; unless they 
 can somehow be kept in ward, and a process of train- 
 ing, long enough to breed in what has been lost. A 
 race of slaves becomes a physiologically servile race in 
 the same way. And so it is, in part, that civilization 
 descends from one generation to another. It is not 
 merely that laws, social modes, and instrumentalities of 
 education descend, and that so the new sprung genera- 
 tions are fashioned after birth, by the forms and princi- 
 ples and causes into which they have been set, but it is 
 that the very type of the inborn quality is a civilized 
 type. The civilization is, in great part, aH inbred 
 civility. There is a something functional in them, 
 which is itself configured to the state of art, order, law, 
 and property. 
 
 The Jewish race are a striking and sad proof of the 
 manner in which any given mode of life may, or rather 
 must, become a functional property in the offspring. 
 The old Jewish stock of the Scripture times, whatever 
 faults they may have had, certainly were not marked 
 by any such miserably, sordid, usurious, garbage-vend- 
 ing propensity, as now distinguishes the race. But the 
 cruelties they have suffered under Christian govern- 
 ments, shut up in the Jews' quarter of the great cities, 
 
204 THE OUT-POPULATING POWER 
 
 dealing in old clothes and other mean articles for their 
 gains, hiding these in the shape of gold and jewels in 
 the crevices of their cellars, to prevent seizure by the 
 emissaries of the governments, and disguising their 
 prosperity itself by the squalid dress of their persons — 
 these, continued from age to age, have finally bred in 
 the character we so commonly speak of with contempt. 
 Our children, treated as they have been for so many 
 generations, would finally reveal the marks of their 
 wrongs in the same sordid, miserly instincts. 
 
 Xow if it be true that what gets power in any race, 
 by a habit or a process of culture, tends by a fixed law 
 of nature to become a propagated quality, and pass by 
 descent as a property inbred in the stock ; if in this way 
 . whole races of men are cultivated into properties that 
 are peculiar — off into a savage character, down into a 
 servile or a mercenary, up into civilization or a high 
 social state — what is to be the effect of a thoroughly 
 Christian fatherhood and motherhood, continued for a 
 long time in the successive generations of a family? 
 What can it be but a general mitigation of the bad 
 points of the stock, and a more and more completely 
 inbred piety. The children of such a stock are born, 
 not of the flesh only, or the mere natural life of their 
 parentage, but they are born, in a sense most emphatic, 
 of the Spirit also ; for this parentage is differed, as we 
 are supposing, age by age, from its own mere nature in 
 Adam, by the inhabiting grace of a supernatural salva- 
 tion. Physiologically speaking, they are tempered by 
 this grace, and it is all the while tending to become, in 
 
OF THE CHRISTIAN STOCK. 205 
 
 some sense, an inbred quality. Hence tlie very fre- 
 quent remark — " How great a privilege and order 
 of nobility to be descended of a pious ancestry!" 
 It is the blessing that is to descend to tlie thou- 
 sandth generation of them that love God and keep his 
 commandments. 
 
 In this view it is to be expected, as the life of Chris- 
 tian piety becomes more extended in the earth, and the 
 Spirit of God obtains a living power, in the successive 
 generations, more and more complete, that finally the 
 race itself will be so thoroughly regenerated as to have 
 a genuinely populating power in faith and godliness. 
 By a kind of ante-natal and post-natal nurture combined, 
 the new-born generations will be started into Christian 
 piety, and the world itself over-populated and taken 
 possession of by a truly sanctified stock. This I con- 
 ceive to be the expectation of Christianity. Not that 
 the bad heritage of depravity will cease, but that the 
 second Adam will get into power with the first, and be 
 entered seminally into the same great process of propa- 
 gated life. And this fulfills that primal desire of the 
 world's Creator and Father, of which the prophet 
 speaks — " That he might have a godly seed." 
 
 And let no one be offended by this, as if it supposed 
 a possible in-growth and propagation of piety, by mere 
 natural laws and conditions. What higher ground of 
 supernaturalism can be taken, than that which sup- 
 poses a capacity in the Incarnate "Word, and Sanctify- 
 ing Spirit, to penetrate our fallen nature, at a point so 
 deep as to cover the whole spread of the fall, and be a 
 
206 THE OUT-POPULATIKG POWER 
 
 grace of life, traveling outward from the earliest most 
 latent germs of our liuman development. It is only 
 saying, with a meaning — " My substance was not hid 
 from Thee, when I was made in secret, and curiously 
 wrought in the lowest parts of the earth." Or, in 
 still another view, it is only conceiving that those 
 sporadic cases of sanctification from the womb, of which 
 the Scripture speaks, such as that of Samuel, Jere- 
 miah, and John, are to finally become the ordinary 
 and common fact of family development. 
 
 In such cases, the faith or piety of a single pair, or 
 possibly of the mother alone, begets a heavenly mold 
 in the predispositions of the offspring, so that, as it .is 
 born of sin, it is also born of a heavenly grace. If 
 then we suppose the heavenly grace to have such 
 power, in the long continuing process of ages, as to 
 finally work the general stock of parentage into its 
 own heavenly mold, far enough to prepare a sanctified 
 offspring for the world, what higher, grander fact of 
 Christian supernaturalism could be asserted ? Nor is 
 it any thing more of a novelty than to say, that " where 
 sin abounded, grace did much more abound." The 
 conception is one that simply fulfills what Baxter, Hop- 
 kins, and others, were apparently struggling after,* 
 when contriving how to let the grace of God in our 
 salvation, match itself by the hereditary damage, or 
 depravation, that descends upon us from our parentage, 
 and the organic unity of our nature as a race. And 
 probably enough they were put upon this mode of 
 
 * See quotations from these writers in the last Discourse. 
 
OF TPIE CHRISTIAN STOCK. 207 
 
 tliought, by the familiar passage of Paul just re- 
 ferred to. 
 
 Christianity then has a power, as we discover, to pre- 
 pare a godly seed. It not only takes hold of the world 
 by its converting efficacy, but it has a silent force 
 that is much stronger and more reliable ; it moves, by 
 a kind of destiny, in causes back of all the eccentric 
 and casual operations of mere individual choice, pre- 
 paring, by a gradual growing in of grace, to become 
 the great populating motherhood of the world. In this 
 conviction, we shall be strengthened — ■ 
 
 5. By the well known fact, that the populating 
 power of any race, or stock, is increased according to 
 the degree of personal and religious character to whicb 
 it has attained. Good principles and habits, intellectual 
 culture, domestic virtue, industry, order, law, faith — 
 all these go immediately tQ enhance the rate and ca- 
 pacity of population. They make a race powerful, not 
 in tlie*mere military sense, but in one that, by century- 
 long reaches of populating force, lives down silently 
 every mere martial competitor. Any people that is 
 physiologically advanced in culture, though it be only 
 in a degree, beyond another which is mingled with it 
 on strictly equal terms, is sure to live down and finally 
 live out its inferior. Nothing can save the inferior 
 race but a ready and pliant assimilation. 
 
 The promise to Abraham depended, doubtless, on 
 this fact for its fulfillment. God was to make his 
 family fruitful, above others, by imparting Himself to 
 it, and so infusing a higher tone of personal life. 
 
208 THE OUT-POPULATING POWER 
 
 Hence also the grand religious fact that this race un- 
 folded a populating power so remarkable. Going 
 down into Egypt, as a starving family, it begins to be 
 evident in about four hundred years, that they are over- 
 populating the great kingdom of Egypt itself " The 
 children of Israel were fruitful and increased abund- 
 antly, and multiplied and waxed exceeding mighty, 
 and the land was filled with them." Till finally the 
 jealousy of the throne was awakened, and the king 
 began to say — " Behold the people of the children of 
 Israel are more and mightier than we !" 
 
 Afterwards little Palestine itself was like a swarm of 
 bees; building great cities, raising great armies, and 
 displaying all the tokens, age upon age, of a great and 
 populous empire. So great was the fruitfulness of the 
 stock, compared with other nations of the time, owing 
 to the higher personality unfolded in them, by their 
 only partial and very crude training, in a monotheistic 
 religion. 
 
 And again, at a still later time, when the nation itself 
 is dismembered, and thousands of the people are driven 
 off into captivity, we find that when the great king of 
 Persia had given out an edict of extermination against 
 them, and would like to recall it but can not, because 
 of the absurd maxim that what the king has decreed 
 must not be changed, he has only to publish another 
 decree, that they shall have it as their right to stand for 
 their lives, and that is enough to insure their complete 
 immunity. ' ' They gathered themselves together in their 
 cities, and throughout all the provinces, and no man 
 
OF THE CHRISTIAN STOCK. 209 
 
 could withstand them, for the fear of them fell upon all 
 people." In which we may see how this captive race 
 had multiplied and spread themselves, in this incredi- 
 bly short time, through all the great kingdom of the 
 Medo-Persian kings. 
 
 Or we may take a more modern illustration, drawn 
 from the comparative history of the Christian and Mo- 
 hammedan races. The Christian development begins 
 at an older date, and the Mohammedan at a later. One 
 is a propagation by moral and religious influences, at 
 least in part ; the other a propagation by military force. 
 Both have religious ideas and aims, but the main dis- 
 tinction is that one is taken hold of by religion as be- 
 ing a contribution to the free personal nature of souls ; 
 and the other is taken hold of by a religion whose grip 
 is the strong grip of fate. For a time, this latter spread 
 like a fire in the forest, propagated by the terrible sword 
 of predestination, and it even seemed about to override 
 the world. But it by-and-bye began to appear, that 
 one religion was creating and the other uncreating 
 manhood ; one toning up a great and powerful charac- 
 ter, and the other toning down, steeping in lethargy, 
 the races it began to inspire; till finally we can now 
 see as distinctly as possible, that one is pouring on great 
 tides of population, creating a great civilization, and 
 great and powerful nations ; the other, falling away into 
 a feeble, half-depopulated, always decaying state, that 
 augurs final extinction at no distant period. Kow the 
 fact is that these two great religions of the world had 
 each, in itself, its own law of population from the be- 
 
210 THE OUT-POPULATING POWER 
 
 ginning, and it was absolutely certain, whether it could 
 be seen or not, that Christianity would finally live 
 down Mohammedanism, and completely expurgate the 
 world of it. The campaigning centuries of European 
 chivalry, pressing it with crusade after crusade, could 
 not bring it under ; but the majestic populating force 
 of Christian faith and nurture can even push it out of 
 the world, as in the silence of a dew-fall. 
 
 What a lesson also could be derived, in the same 
 manner, from a comparison of the populating forces 
 of the Puritan stock in this country, and of the inferior, 
 superstitions, half Christian stock and nurture of the 
 South American states. And the reason of the differ- 
 ence is that Christianity, having a larger, fuller, more 
 new-creating force in one, gives it a populating force as 
 much superior. 
 
 How this advantage accrues, and is, at some future 
 time, to be more impressively revealed than now, it is 
 not difficult to see. Let the children of Christian 
 parents grow np, all, as partakers in their grace, which 
 is the true Christian idea, and the law of family in- 
 crease they are in, is, by the supposition, so far brought 
 into the church, and made operative there. And then 
 comes in also the additional fact, that there are causes 
 and conditions of increase now operative in the church 
 which exist nowhere else. 
 
 Here, for example, there will be a stronger tide of 
 health than elsewhere. In the world without, multi- 
 tudes are perishing continually by vice and extrava- 
 gance, and, when they do not perish themselves, they 
 
OF THE CHRISTIAN STOCK. 211 
 
 are always entailing the effects of their profligacy on the 
 half-endowed constitution of their children. Meantime, 
 in the truly Christian life, there is a good keeping of 
 temperance, a steady sway of the passions, a robust 
 equability and courage, and the whole domain of the soul 
 is kept more closely to God's order; which again is the 
 way of health, and implies a higher law of increase. 
 
 "Wealth, again, will be unfolded more rapidly under 
 the condition of Christian living than elsewhere; and 
 wealth enough to yield a generous supply of the com- 
 mon wants of life, is another cause that favors popula- 
 tion. True piety is itself a principle of industry and 
 application to business. It subordinates the love of 
 show and all the tendencies to extravagance. It rules 
 those licentious passions that war with order and econ- 
 omy. It generates a faithful character, which is the basis 
 of credit, as credit, of prosperity. Hence it is that upon 
 the rocky, stubborn soil, under the harsh and frowning 
 skies of our Kew England, w^e behold so much of high 
 prosperity, so much of physical well-being, and orna- 
 ment. And the wealth created is diffused about as 
 evenly as the piety. A true Christian society has 
 mines opened, thus, in its own habits and principles. 
 And the wealth accruing is power in every direction, 
 power in production, enterprise, education, colonization, 
 influence, and consequent popular increase. 
 
 There will also be more talent unfolded in a Christian 
 people, and talent also takes the helm of causes every 
 where. Christian piety is itself a kind of holy devel- 
 opment, enlarging every way the soul's dimensions. 
 
212 THE OUT-POPULATING POWER 
 
 It will also be found that Christian families abound 
 with influences, specially favorable to the awakening of 
 the intellectual principle in childhood. Keligion itself 
 is thoughtful. It carries the child's mind over directly 
 to unknown worlds, fills the understanding with the 
 sublimest questions, and sends the imagination abroad 
 to occupy itself where angels' wings would tire. The 
 child of a Christian family is thus unsensed, at the ear- 
 liest moment, and put into mental action ; this, too, un- 
 der the healthy and genial influence of Christian prin- 
 ciple. Every believing soul, too, is exalted and empow- 
 ered by union to God. His judgment is clarified, his 
 reason put in harmony with truth, his emotions swelled 
 in volume, his imagination fired by the object of his 
 faith. The church, in short, is God's university, and it 
 lies in her foundation as a school of spiritual life, to 
 energize all capacity, and make her sons a talented and 
 powerful race. 
 
 Here, too, are the great truths, and all the grandest, 
 most fruitful ideas of existence. Here will spring up 
 science, discovery, invention. The great books will be 
 born here, and the highest, noblest, most quickening 
 character will here be fashioned. Popular liberties and 
 the rights of persons will here be asserted. Commerce 
 will go forth hence, to act the preluding of the Christian 
 love, in the universal fellowship of trade. 
 
 And so we see, by this rapid glance along the inven- 
 tories of Christian society, that all manner of causes are 
 included in it, that will go to fine the organization, raise 
 the robustness, swell the volume, multiply the means, 
 
OF THE CHRISTIAN STOCK. 213 
 
 magnify ttie power of the Christian body. It stands 
 among the other bodies and religons, just as any ad- 
 vanced race, the Saxon for example, stands among the 
 feebler, wilder races, like the Aborigines of our conti- 
 nent ; having so much power of every kind that it puts 
 them in shadow, weakens them, lives them down, roll- 
 ing its over-populating tides across them, and sweeping 
 them away, as by a kind of doom. Just so there is, in 
 the Christian church, a grand law of increase by which 
 it is rolling out and spreading over the world. "Whether 
 the feebler and more abject races are going to be regen- 
 erated and raised up, is already very much of a ques- 
 tion. What if it should be God's plan to people the 
 world with better and finer material? Certain it is, 
 whatever expectations we may indulge, that there is a 
 tremendous overbearing surge of power in the Christian 
 nations, which, if the others are not speedily raised to 
 some vastly higher capacity, will inevitably submerge 
 and bury them forever. These great populations of 
 Christendom — what are they doing, but throwing out 
 their colonies on every side, and populating themselves, 
 if I may so speak, into the possession of all countries 
 and climes ? By this doom of increase, the stone that 
 was cut out without hands, shows itself to be a very 
 peculiar stone, viz : a growing stone, that is fast becom- 
 ing a great mountain, and preparing, as the vision shows, 
 to fill the whole earth. 
 
 We are not, of course, to suspend our efforts to con- 
 vert the heathen nations — we shall never become a 
 thoroughly regenerate stock, save as we are trained up 
 
214 THE OUT-POPULATING POWER 
 
 into such eminence, bj our works of mercy to man- 
 kind. It is for God to say what races are to be finally 
 submerged and lost, and not for us. Meantime, we are 
 to gain over and save as many as possible by conver- 
 sion, and so to hasten the day of promise. And what 
 feebler and more pitiful conceit could we fall into, than 
 to assume that we have the grand, over-populating 
 grace in our own stock, and sit down thus to see it ac- 
 complish by mere propagation, that which of itself 
 supposes a glorious inbred habit of faith, and sacrifice, 
 and heavenly charity. I only say that, when we set 
 ourselves to the great work* of converting the world, 
 we are to see that we do not miscondition the state of 
 childhood, and throw quite away from us, meantime, 
 all the mighty advantages that God designs to give us, 
 in this other manner ; viz., in the religious nurture and 
 growth of the godly seed. 
 
 Once more, it is a consideration that will have great 
 weight with all deeply, thoughtful persons, that the vin- 
 dication of God in sin, suffering, punishment, and all 
 evil pertaining to the race, probably depends, to a great 
 degree, on just the truth I am here endeavoring to es- 
 tablish. How constantly is the question raised, why 
 God, as an infinitely good and gracious Father, should 
 put on foot such a scheme of existence as this ; one 
 that unites such oppressive disadvantages, and is to be 
 such a losing concern ? We begin life, it is said, with 
 constitutions depravated and poisoned, and come thus 
 into choice with predispositions that are damaged even 
 beforehand. Idolatry, darkness, and guilt, overspread 
 
OF THE CHRISTIAN STOCK. 215 
 
 the world, in this manner, from age to age, and the vast 
 majorities of the race, rotting away thus into death 
 under sin, are being all the while precipitated into a 
 wretched eternity, which is their end ; for they go hence 
 in a state visibly disqualified for the enjoyment, either 
 of themselves, or of God. The picture is a yery dark 
 one, though I feel a decided confidence that every sin- 
 gle part of God's counsel in it can be sufiiciently vindi- 
 cated. But this is not a matter in the compass of my 
 present inquiry, except so far as the general difiiculty 
 is relieved by the possibility and prospect of great 
 future advantages that are to accrue, in the fact of a 
 grand over-populating righteousness, which is finally to 
 change the aspect of the whole question. We are not 
 to assume, with many, that the world is now just upon 
 its close, but to look upon it as barely having opened 
 its first chapter of history. Its real value, and what is 
 really to come of it, probably does not even yet begin 
 to appear. When its propagations cease to be mere 
 propagations of evil, or of moral damage and disaster, 
 and become propagations of sanctified life, and ages of 
 life ; when the numbers, talents, comforts, powers of the 
 immense godly populations are increased to more than 
 a hundred fold what they now are ; and when, at some 
 incomputable distance of time, whose rate of approach 
 is only hinted by the geologic ages of the planet, they 
 look back upon us as cotemporaries almost of Adam, 
 and forward through ages of blessing just begun, be- 
 holding so many worlds-full of regenerated mind and 
 character, pouring in from hence to over-people, as it 
 
216 THE OUT-POPULATING POWER 
 
 "were, eternity itself; tliey will certainly have a very 
 different opinion of tlie scheme of existence from that 
 which we most naturally take np now. Then it will 
 be confessed that the nurture of the Lord has meaning 
 and force enough to change the aspect of every thing 
 in Grod's plan. Our scheme of propagated and deriva- 
 tive life is no longer a scheme of disadvantage, but a 
 mode of induction that gives to every soul the noblest, 
 safest beginning possible. On the other hand, if we 
 cling to the present way and state as the measure of all 
 highest possibilities, and expect to go on converting 
 over, out of heathenism and death, the sturdy, grown- 
 up aliens of depravity, it will be a most difficult — always 
 growing more and more difficult — thing to vindicate 
 the ways of God in what he has put upon the world. 
 Shall we miss, and give it to the future ages to miss, a 
 a vindication of Grod's way so inspiring in itself and so 
 often promised in his word ? 
 
 Having reached this closing point or consummation 
 of the doctrine of nurture, we are able, I think, to see 
 something of the dignity there is in it. How trivial, 
 unnatural, weak, and, at the same time, violent, in com- 
 parison, is that overdone scheme of individualism, 
 which knows the race only as mere units of will and 
 personal action; dissolves even families into monads; 
 makes no account of organic relations and uses ; and 
 expects the world to be finally subdued by adult con- 
 versions, when growing up still, as before, in all the 
 younger tiers of life, toward a mere convertible state 
 
OF THE CHRISTIAN STOCK. "" 217 
 
 of adult ungodliness. Such a scheme gives a most un- 
 genial and forlorn aspect to the family. It makes the 
 church a mere gathering in of adult atoms, to be in- 
 creased only by the gathering in of other and more 
 numerous adult atoms. It very nearly makes the 
 scheme of existence itself an abortion ; finding no great 
 law of propagative good and mercy in it, and taking 
 quite away the possibility and prospect of that sublime 
 vindication of God which is finally to be developed, and 
 by which God's way in the creation is to be finally 
 crowned with all highest honors of counsel and benefi- 
 cence. Opposite to this, we have seen how it is God's 
 plan, by ties of organic unity and nurture, to let one 
 generation extend itself into and over another, in the 
 order of grace, just as it does in the order of nature ; 
 to let us expect the growing up of children in the Lord, 
 even as their parents are to be parents in the Lord, and 
 are set to bring them up in the nurture of the Lord ; 
 on this ground of anticipation, permitting us to apply 
 the seal of our faith to them, as being incipiently in the 
 quickening of our faith, even before they have intelli- 
 . gence to act it, and consciously choose it ; so accepting 
 them to be members of the church, as being presump- 
 tively in the life of the church ; in this manner incor- 
 porating in the church a great law of grace and sancti- 
 fying power, by which finally the salvation will become 
 an inbred life and populating force, mighty enough to 
 overlive, and finally to completely people the world. 
 And this is what we call the day of glory. It lies, to a 
 great degree, in the scheme of Christian nurture itself, 
 
218 THE OUT-POPULATING POWER 
 
 and is possible only as a consummation of tliat scheme. 
 If I rightly conceive the gospel work and plan, this is 
 the regeneration ["TraXi/^ewstfia] which our Lord prom- 
 ises, viz. : that he will reclaim and resanctify the great 
 principle of reproductive order and life, and people, at 
 last, the world with a godly seed. 
 
 The church, as being made up of souls that are born 
 of the Spirit is a new supernatural order thus in hu- 
 manity ; a spiritual nation, we may conceive, that was 
 founded by a colony from the skies. It alights upon 
 our globe as its chartered territory. Can it overspread 
 the whole planet and take possession ? We see that it 
 can unfold more of health, Y^ealth, talent, than the 
 present living races of inhabitants. It has within itself 
 a stronger law of population, as well as a mighty power 
 to win over and assimulate the nations. Its people 
 have more truth, beauty, weight of character to exalt 
 their predominance. And, what is more, God is in them 
 by his all-informing, all-energizing Spirit, to be Him- 
 self unfolded in their history, and make it powerful. 
 Not to believe that the Heavenly Colony, thus consti- 
 tuted and endowed, will finally overspread and fill the 
 world, is to deny causes, their effects, and to quite in- 
 vert the natural order of strength and weakness. God, 
 too, has testified in regard to this branch of his plant- 
 ing — " They shall inherit the land." 
 
 It is very obvious that this general view of Christian 
 nurture, and its effects is one that, becoming really in- 
 stalled in our faith, and the aims of our piety, would 
 
OF THE CHRISTIAN STOCK. 219 
 
 induce important modifications in our Ciiristian prac- 
 tice, and change, to a considerable degree, the modes 
 of our religious demonstration. Our over-intense indi- 
 vidualism carries with it an immense loss of feeling, 
 affection, sentiment, which hardens the aspect of every 
 thing, and dries away the sweet charities and tender 
 affections that would grace the older generations of 
 souls, when conceiving that the younger live in them, 
 and are somehow folded in their personality. We not 
 only lose our children under this atomizing scheme of 
 piety, which is a loss we can not afford, but a certain 
 misproportion is induced, which distempers all our 
 efforts and demonstrations. 
 
 One principal reason why we are so often deficient in 
 character, or outward beauty, is, that piety begins too 
 late in life, having thus to maintain . a perpetual and 
 unequal war with previous habit. If it was not true 
 of Paul, it is yet too generally true, that one born out 
 of due time will be found out of due time, more often 
 than he should be afterwards — unequal, inconsistent 
 with himself, acting the old man instead of the new. 
 Having the old habit to war with, it is often too strong 
 for him. To make a graceful and complete Christian 
 character, it needs itself to be the habit of existence ; 
 not a grape grafted on a bramble. And this, it will be 
 seen, requires a Christian childhood in the subject. 
 Having this, the gracious or supernatural character be- 
 comes itself more nearly natural, and possesses the pe- 
 culiar charm of naturalness, which is necessary to the 
 highest moral beauty. 
 
220 THE OUT-POPULATING POWER 
 
 It results also from our mistaken views of Christian 
 training, tliat we fall into a notion of religion that is 
 mechanical. We thrust our children out of the cove- 
 nant first, and insist, in spite of it, that they shall grow 
 up in the same spiritual state as if their father and 
 mother were heathens. Then we go out, at least on 
 certain occasions, to convert them back, as if they 
 actually were heathens. Our only idea of increase is of 
 .that which accrues by means of a certain abrupt technical 
 experience. Led away thus from all thought of inter- 
 nal growth in the church, efforts to secure conversions 
 take an external character, becoming gospel campaigns. 
 Accretion displaces growth. The church is gathered as a 
 foundling hospital ; and lest it should not be such, its own 
 children are reduced to foundlings. Immediate repent- 
 ance proclaimed, insisted on, and realized in an abrupt 
 change, proper only to those who are indeed aliens and 
 enemies, is the only hope or inlet of the church. We 
 can not understand how the spiritual nation should grow 
 and populate, and become powerful within itself. 
 
 Piety becomes inconstant, and revivals of religion 
 take an exaggerated character from the same causes. 
 If all Christian success is measured by the count of 
 technical conversigns from without, then it follows that 
 nothing is done when conversions cease to be counted. 
 The harvest closes not with feasting, but with famine. 
 Despair cuts off Christian motive. The tide is spent ; 
 let us anchor during the ebb. It is well indeed to live 
 very piously in the families ; still, there is nothing de- 
 pending on it. The children will be good subjects 
 
OF THE CHRISTIAN STOCK. 221 
 
 enough for conversion without. The piety of the 
 church is thus made to be desultory and irregular by 
 system. The idea of conquest displaces the idea of 
 growth. Whereas, if it were understood that Christian 
 education or training in the families, is to be itself a 
 process of domestic conversion ; that as a child weeps 
 under a frown and smiles at the command of a smile, 
 so spiritual influences may be streaming into his being 
 from the handling of the nursery and the whole man- 
 ner and temperament of the house, producing what will 
 ever after be fundamental impressions of his being ; 
 then the hearth, the table, the society and affections of 
 the house, would all feel the presence of a practical 
 religious motive. The homes would be Christian, the 
 families abodes of piety. 
 
 Here too is the greatest impediment to a true mis- 
 sionary spirit. The habit of conquest runs to dissipa- 
 tion and irregularity. It is as if a nation, forgetting its 
 own internal resources, were scouring the seas, and 
 trooping up and down the world, in pursuit of prize- 
 money and plunder, forsaking the loom and the plow, 
 and all the regular growths of industry. Whereas, if 
 the church were unfolding the riches of the covenant 
 at her firesides and tables ; if the children were identi- 
 fied with religion from the first, and grew up in a 
 Christian love of man, the missionary spirit would not 
 throw itself up in irregular jets, but would flow as a river. 
 
 We suffer also greatly and even produce a somewhat 
 painful evidence of mistake, in our endeavor to be 
 always operating by an immediate influence of the 
 
222 THE OUT-POPULATING POWER 
 
 Holy Spirit, when we make his mediate influence a 
 matter of little account. For there is, I apprehend, a 
 certain fixed relation between those exertions of spir- 
 itual influence which are immediate, and those which 
 flow mediately from the church ; else why has not the 
 Spirit left the church behind, and poured itself, as a 
 rushing, mighty wind, into the bosom of the whole 
 world in a day ? There needed to be an objective in- 
 fluence, as well as one internal ; else the subject of the 
 Spirit would not know or guess to what his internal 
 motions are attributable, and might deem them only 
 nervous or hysteric effects ; or possibly, if a heathen, the 
 work of some enchanter or demon. When the church, 
 therefore, grows and manifests the work of God by the 
 beauty of her life, and the heavenly energy of her 
 spirit, when the sanctification she speaks of visibly 
 strikes through — through the body, through the man- 
 ners and works, into the family state, into the commu- 
 nity — that is the mediate influence necessary to another 
 which is immediate. Looking on her demonstrations, 
 the observer is not only impressed and drawn by the 
 assimilating power of her character, but he distin- 
 guishes in her the type and form of that into which 
 he is himself to be wrought, and so he is ready for the 
 intelligent reception of the Spirit in himself If now 
 there is this fixed relation between God's mediate and 
 immediate agency in souls, how great is the mistake, 
 when we virtually assume, in our efforts and expecta- 
 tions, that he will come upon souls, only as the light- 
 ning is bolted from the sky. How desultory and 
 
OF THE CHRISTIAN STOCK. 223 
 
 irruptive is the grace hie ministers, how little respective 
 of the work he has already begun in others, whom he 
 might employ to be the medium of his power ! On 
 the other hand, if we are right in this view — if there is 
 a fixed relation between the mediate and immediate 
 influences of the Spirit — such that one measures the 
 other, (and we could urge many additional reasons for 
 the opinion,) then are we brought fairly out upon the 
 sublime conclusion, that the growth or progress of 
 Christian piety in the church, if it shall take place, 
 offers the expectation of a correspondent progress in 
 the development of those spiritual influences that are 
 immediate. The mediate and immediate are both iden- 
 tical at the root. If therefore the church unfolds her 
 piety as a divine life, which is one, the divine life will 
 display its activity as much more potently and victo- 
 riously without, which is the other. And as the king- 
 dom of heaven, which was at first as a grain of mustard 
 seed, advances in the last days toward the stature of 
 a tree, the more it may advance ; for the Holy Spirit 
 will pour himself into the world, as much more 
 freely and powerfully. Grant, God! that we may 
 not disappoint ourselves of a hope so glorious, by at- 
 tempts to extend thy church without that holy growth 
 of piety, on which our success depends ! Pour thyself, 
 in thy fullness and as a gale of purity, into our bosom ! 
 Expel all schemes that are not begun in Thee ! Let 
 there be good desires in us, that our works may be 
 good ! And that Thou mayest do thy will in the earth, 
 do it in us perfectly ! 
 
PART II -THE MODE, 
 
I, 
 
 WHEN AND WHERE THE NURTURE BEGINS. 
 
 " When I call to remembrance the unfeigned faith that is in thee, which 
 dwelt first in thy grandmother Lois, and thy mother Eunice, and I am 
 persuaded that in thee also." — 2 Timothy^ i. 5. 
 
 This faith of Timotliy, whicli is but another name 
 for the grace of life in his character, the apostle speaks 
 of here, it will be seen, as a kind of personal heredita- 
 ment, or heir-loom in the family. He does not mean to 
 say, as I understand him, that it is literally such, or in 
 what sense, and how far, it is such. He only recog- 
 nizes a godly parentage, doing godly things in him and 
 for him, for one, two, three, or he knows not how many, 
 generations back. He regards his young friend as born 
 of godliness, nurtured and trained by godliness, and 
 indulges a certain pleasant conviction that his present, 
 full developed faith in Jesus, was a seed somehow 
 planted in him by the believiDg motherhoods of the 
 past, and began to live and grow in him, thus, long be- 
 fore he knew it himself, or others observed it in him. 
 So by a short method, which includes and covers all, the 
 apostle cajls it his heir-loom ; complimenting his godly 
 motherhood in the figure, and testifying the greater 
 confidence in his piety, that it was so near to being the 
 inborn nobility of his Christian stock. 
 
228 WHEN AND WHERE 
 
 I use the text, accordingly, not to draw some definite 
 conclusion or truth, from the evidently well understood 
 indefiniteness of the terms of it, but simply to head a 
 discussion of the question, when and where^ at what pointy 
 and how early ^ does the office of a genuine nurture begin ? 
 
 Having settled our conceptions of the scheme, or doc- 
 trinal import, of Christian nurture, finding what place 
 it has, and is to have, in the Christian plan, we are 
 come now to a matter farther in advance, and, in one 
 view, more practical, viz: to a consideration of the 
 modes and means, by which the true idea of a godly 
 nurture may be realized in the training of families. 
 And here it becomes our first endeavor to rectify, or ex- 
 pel a whole set of false impressions, that have grown 
 up round the gate of responsibility itself, turning off, 
 and pushing aside all due concern, till the time of 
 greatest facility and advantage is quite gone by. The 
 very common impression is that nothing is to be done 
 for the religious character of children, till they are old 
 enough, to form religious judgments, put forth religious 
 choices, take the meaning of the Christian truths, and 
 perceive what is in them as related to the wants of 
 sin, consciously felt and reflected on. There could not 
 be a more sad or, in fact, more desolating mistake, in 
 any matter, either of duty or of privilege. And it is 
 the more wonderful, the closer in appearance to real fa- 
 tuity, that it holds its ground so firmly, where all the 
 tenderest pressures of affection might be expected to 
 force it aside, and clear the field of its really cruel 
 usurpations. 
 
THE NURTURE BEGINS. 229 
 
 In discussing tlie question proposed, 1 should not 
 properly cover ttie whole ground of it, and could not 
 really be said to answer it, if I did not — 
 
 1. Bring into view tlie very important, but rather 
 delicate fact, suggested or distinctly alluded to in the 
 apostle's words, that there is even a kind of ante-natal 
 nurture which must be taken note of, as having much 
 to do with the religious preparations or inductive mer- 
 cies of childhood. We are physiologically connected 
 and set forth in our beginnings, and it is a matter of 
 immense consequence to our character, what the connec- 
 tion is. In our birth, we not only begin to breathe and 
 circulate blood, but it is a question hugely significant 
 whose the blood may be. For in this we have whole 
 rivers of predispositions, good or bad, set running in 
 us — as much more powerful to shape our future than all . 
 tuitional and regulative influences that come after, as 
 they are earlier in their beginning, deeper in their inser- 
 tion, and more constant in their operation. It is a great 
 mistake to suppose that men and women, such as are to 
 be fathers and mothers, are affected only in their souls 
 by religious experience, and not in their bodies. On 
 mere physiological principles it can not be true, for the 
 mind must temper the body to its own states and 
 changes. Living, therefore, in the peace and purity, 
 holding the equilibrium, flowing in the liberty, reigning 
 in the confidence, of a genuine sanctification, the sub- 
 jects of such grace are penetrated bodily, all through, 
 by the work of the Spirit in their life. Their appetites 
 are more nearly, in heaven's order, their passions more 
 
230 WHEN AND WHERE 
 
 tempered by reason, their irritabilities more sweetened 
 and calmed, and so far they are entered bodily into the 
 condition of health. "Where the constitution was poi- 
 soned originally by descent, or has since been broken 
 down by excess and abuse, it may not be wholly re- 
 stored in this life. I do not suppose that it will ; but 
 since the soul is acting itself always into and through 
 the body, when it becomes a temple of the Spirit, the 
 body also must be, just as the Scriptures explicitly 
 teach ; undergoing, with the soul, a remedial process in 
 its tempers and humors, and prospering in heaven's or- 
 der, even as the soul prospereth. This being true, it is 
 impossible, on mere physiological principles, that the 
 children of a truly sanctified parentage should not be 
 advantaged by the grace out of which they are born. 
 And, if the godly character has been kept up in a long 
 line of ancestry, corrupted by no vicious or untoward 
 intermarriages, the advantage must be still greater and 
 more positive. Even temporary changes in the Chris- 
 tian state of character and attainment, will have their 
 effect ; how much more the godly keeping of a thor- 
 oughly and evenly sanctified life; how much more 
 such a keeping of inbred grace and faith, in a long line 
 of godly ancestors. 
 
 I might even state the case more strongly, bringing 
 into the comparison a godly and a vicious parentage. 
 Take a parentage that has in it all the dyspeptic woes 
 of gluttony and self-indulgence, one that is stung and 
 maddened by the fiery pains of intemperance, one that 
 is poisoned and imbruted by the excesses of lust, one 
 
THE NURTURE BEGINS. 231 
 
 that is broken by domestic wrongs or exasperated by 
 domestic quarrels, one that is fevered by ambitions, one 
 that is soured by the morbid humors of envy and de- 
 feat — lengthen out the catalogue, take in all the sins, 
 which, in some true sense, are also vices and have their 
 effect on the body, how is it possible, on any principle 
 of rational physiology, that the children who are sprung 
 of this distempered heritage, should be as pure in their 
 af&nities, as close to the order of truth, as ready for the 
 occupany of all good thoughts, as well governed before 
 all government, as ductile in a word to God, as they 
 that are born of a glorious lineage in faith and prayer 
 and God's indwelling peace. Nothing could be more 
 improbable antecedently, or farther off from the actual 
 fact afterward. On the contrary, it is a most dismal and 
 hard lot, as every one knows, to be in the succession of 
 a bad, or vicious parentage. No heritage of wealth 
 could repay, or more than a little soften the bitterness 
 of it. 
 
 It is somewhat dif&cult to investigate the facts of this 
 subject, because of the complexities induced by unpro- 
 pitious and exceptional marriages. But when such 
 marriages are reduced by the more general, and finally 
 universal, spread of Christian piety, and when the pitch 
 of Christian sanctification is raised, as it will be, by the 
 fuller inspiration from God, breaking into his saints all 
 over the world, it will be found that children are born 
 as much closer to God, and with predispositions that~ 
 waft them as much more certainly into the ways of duty 
 and piety. It will be as if the faith-power of the past 
 
232 WHEN AND WHERE 
 
 were descending into the present, flowing on down tlie 
 future, and the general account of the world will be, 
 that, as it has been corrupted, so also it is in some 
 equally true sense, regenerated from the womb. Pre- 
 cisely that which is named in Scripture, as the fact ex- 
 traordinary, will become at last the ordinary and even 
 the universal fact. 
 
 Here, then, is the real and true beginning of a godly 
 nurture. The child is not to have the sad entail of any 
 sensuality, or excess, or distempered passion upon him. 
 The heritage of love, peace, order, continence and holy 
 courage is to be his. He is not to be morally weakened 
 beforehand, in the womb of folly, by the frivolous, 
 worldly, ambitious, expectations of parents-to-be, con- 
 centrating all their nonsense in him. His af&nities are 
 to be raised by the godly expectations, rather, and 
 prayers that go before ; by the steady and good aims of 
 their industry, by the great impulse of their faith, by 
 the brightness of their hope, by the sweet continence 
 of their religiously pure love in Christ. Born, thus, of 
 a parentage that is ordered in all righteousness, and 
 maintains the right use of every thing, especially the 
 right use of nature and marriage, the child will have 
 just so much of heaven's life and order in him before- 
 hand, as have become fixed properties in the type of his 
 parentage ; and by this ante-natal nurture, will be set 
 ofiP in a way of noblest advantage, as respects all safety 
 and success, in the grand experiment he has come into 
 the world to make. 
 
 Having called your attention to this very important 
 
THE NURTURE BEGINS. 233 
 
 but strangely disregarded cliapter, in the economy of 
 Christian nurture, I leave it to be more fully and circum- 
 stantially developed by your own thoughtful considera- 
 tion ; for it is a matter which will open itself readily, 
 and prove itself by striking and continually recurring 
 facts to such as have it in their hearts to watch for the 
 truth and the duties it requires. We pass now — 
 
 2. To that which is the common field of inquiry, and 
 here we raise again the question, where and how early 
 does the work of nurture begin ? here to set forth and 
 maintain still another answer, which antedates the com- 
 mon impression, about as decidedly as the one just 
 given. The true, and only true answer is, that the 
 nurture of the soul and character is to begin just when 
 the nurture of the body begins. It is first to be infan- 
 tile nurture — as such, Christian; then to be a child's 
 nurture; then to be a youth's nurture — advancing 
 by imperceptible gradations, if possible, according to 
 the gradations and stages of the growth, or progress 
 toward maturity. 
 
 There is, of course, no absolute classification to be 
 made here, because there are no absolute lines of dis- 
 tinction. A kind of proximate and partly ideal dis- 
 tinction may be made, and I make it simply to serve the 
 convenience of my subject — otherwise impossible to be 
 handled, so as to secure any right practical conviction 
 respecting it. It is the distinction between the age of 
 impressions and the age of tuitional influences; or be- 
 tween the age of existence in the will of the parent^ and 
 the age of ivill and personal choice in the child. If the 
 
234 WHEN AND WHERE 
 
 distinction were laid, between the age previous to lan- 
 guage and tlie age of language, it would amount to 
 nearly the same thing; for the time of personal and 
 responsible choice depends on the measure of intelli- 
 gence attained to, and the measure of intelligence 
 is well represented, outwardly, by the degree of de- 
 velopment in language. Of course it will be under- 
 stood that we speak, in this distinction, of that which 
 is not sharply defined, and is passed at no precise date 
 or age. The transition is gradual, and it w^ill even be 
 doubtful, when it is passed. ISTo one can say just where 
 a given child passes out of the field of mere impression 
 into the field of responsible action. It will be doubtful, 
 in about the same degree, when it can be said to have 
 come into the power of language. We do not even 
 know that there is not some infinitesimal development 
 of will in the child's first cry, and some instinct of lan- 
 guage struggling in that cry. Our object in the dis- 
 tinction is not to assume any thing in respect to such 
 matters, but simply to accommodate our own ignorance, 
 by raising a distribution that enables us to speak of 
 times and characteristics truly enough to serve the con- 
 ditions of general accurary, and to assist, in that man- 
 ner, the purposes of our discussion. 
 
 ISTow the very common assumption is that, in what 
 we have called the age of impressions, there is really 
 nothing done, or to be done, for the religious character. 
 The lack of all genuine apprehensions, in respect to this 
 matter, among people otherwise intelligent and awake, 
 is really wonderful; it amounts even to a kind of 
 
THE NUETURE BEGINS. 235 
 
 coarseness. Full of all fondness, and all highest expect- 
 ation respecting their children, and having also many 
 Christian desires for their welfare, they seem never to 
 have brought their minds down close enough to the 
 soul of infancy, to imagine that any thing of conse- 
 quence is going on with it. What can they do, till 
 they can speak to it ? what can it do, till it speaks ? As 
 if there were no process going on to bring it forward 
 into language ; or as if that process had itself nothing 
 to do with the bringing on of intelligence, and no deep, 
 seminal working toward a character, unfolding and to 
 be unfolded in it. The child, in other words, is to 
 come into intelligence through perfect unintelligence ! 
 to get the power of words out of words themselves, 
 and without any experience whereby their meaning 
 is developed ! to be taught responsibility under moral 
 and religious ideas, when the experience has unfolded 
 no such ideas ! In this first stage, therefore, which 
 I have called the stage of impressions, how very 
 commonly will it be found that the parents, even 
 Christian parents, discharge themselves, in the most in- 
 nocently unthinking way possible, of so much as a con- 
 ception of responsibility. The child can not talk, what 
 then can it know? So they dress it in all fineries, 
 practice it in shows and swells and all the petty airs 
 of foppery and brave assumption, act it into looks 
 and manners not fit to be acted any where, provoking 
 the repetition of its bad tricks by laughing at them, 
 indulging freely every sort of temper towards it, or, it 
 may be, filling the house with a din of scolding between 
 
236 WHEN AND Where 
 
 the parents^all this in simple security, as if their child 
 were only a thing, or an ape ! What hurt can the sim- 
 ple creature get from any thing done before it, toward 
 it, or upon it, when it can talk of nothing, and will not 
 so much as remember any thing it has seen or heard ? 
 Doubtless there is a wise care to be had of it, when it 
 is old enough to be taught and commanded, but till 
 then there is nothing to be done, but simply to foster 
 the plaything kindly, enjoy it freely, or abuse it pet- 
 tishly, at pleasure ! 
 
 Just contrary to this, I suspect, and I think it can 
 also be shown by sufficient evidence, that more is done 
 to affect, or fix the moral and religious character of 
 children, before the age of language than after; that the 
 age of impressions, when parents are commonly wait- 
 ing, in idle security, or trifling away their time in mis- 
 chievous indiscretions, or giving up their children to 
 the chance of such keeping as nurses and attendants 
 may exercise, is in fact their golden opportunity ; when 
 more is likely to be done for their advantage or damage, 
 than in all the instruction and discipline of their minor- 
 ity afterward. 
 
 And something like this I think we should augur 
 beforehand, from the peculiar, full-born intensity of the 
 maternal affection, at the moment when it first embraces 
 the newly arrived object. It scarcely appears to grow, 
 never to grow tender and self-sacrificing in its care. It 
 turns itself to its charge, with a love that is boundless 
 and fathomless, at the first. As if just then and there, 
 some highest and most sacred office of motherhood 
 
THE NUKTURE BEGINS. 237 
 
 were required to begin. Is it only mat the cliild de- 
 mands her physical nurture and carefulness ? That is 
 not the answer of her consciousness. Her maternity 
 scorns all comparison with that of the mere animals. 
 Her love, as she herself feels, looks through the body 
 into the inborn personality of her child, — the man or 
 woman to be. Nay, more than that, if she could sound 
 her consciousness deeply enough, she would find a cer- 
 tain religiousness in it, measurable by no scale of mere 
 earthly and temporal love. Here springs the secret of 
 her maternity, and its semi-divine proportions. It is 
 the call and equipment of God, for a work on the 
 impressional and plastic age of a soul. Christianized 
 as it should be, and wrought in by the grace of the 
 Spirit, the minuteness of its care, its gentleness, its 
 patience, its almost divine faithfulness, are prepared for 
 the shaping of a soul's immortality. And, to make the 
 work a sure one, the intrusted soul is allowed to have 
 no will as yet of its own, that this motherhood may 
 more certainly plant the angel in the man, uniting him 
 to all heavenly goodness by predispositions from itself, 
 before he is united, as he will be, by choices of his own. 
 Nothing but this explains and measures the wonderful 
 proportions of maternity. 
 
 It will be seen at once, and will readily be taken* as 
 a confirmation of the transcendent importance of what 
 is done, or possible to be done, for children, in their 
 impressional and plastic age, that whatever is impressed 
 or inserted here, at this early point, must be profoundly 
 seminal, as regards all the future developments of the 
 
238 WHEN AND WHl^RE 
 
 character. And though it can not, by the supposition, 
 amount to character, in the responsible sense of that 
 term, it may be the seed, in some very important sense, 
 of all the fnture character to be unfolded; just as we 
 familiarly think of sin itself, as a character in blame 
 when the will is ripe, though prepared, in still another 
 view, by the seminal damages and misafiections derived 
 from sinning ancestors. So when a child, during the 
 whole period of impressions, or passive recipiencies, 
 previous to the development of his responsible will, 
 lives in the life and feeling of his parents, and they in 
 the molds of the Spirit, they will, of course, be shaping 
 themselves in him, or him in themselves, and the eifects 
 wrought in him will be preparations of what he will 
 by-and-bye do from himself; seeds, in that manner pos- 
 sibly, even of a regenerate life and character. 
 
 That we ma}^ conceive this matter more adequately 
 and exactly, consider, a moment, that whole contour of 
 dispositions, affections, tempers, afiinities, aspirations, 
 which come into power in a soul after the will is set 
 fast in a life of duty and devotion. These things, we 
 conceive, follow in a sense the will, and then become 
 in turn a new element about the will — a new heart, as 
 we say, prompting to new acts and a continued life of 
 new*obedience. Kow what I would af&rm is, that just 
 this same contour of dispositions and affinities may be 
 prepared under, and come after, the will of the parents, 
 when the child is living in their will, and be ready as a 
 new element, or new heart, to prompt the child's will, 
 or put it forward in the choice of all duty, whenever it 
 
THE NURTURE BEGINS. 239 
 
 is SO matured as to clioose for itself. Of course these 
 regenerated dispositions and affinities, this general dis- 
 posedness to good, which we call a new heart, supposes 
 a work of the Spirit ; and, if the parents live in the 
 Spirit as they ought, they will have the Spirit for the 
 child as truly as for themselves, and the child will be 
 grown, so to speak, in the molds of the Spirit, even 
 from his infancy. 
 
 This will be yet more probable, if we glance at some 
 of the particular facts and conditions involved. Thus 
 if we speak of impressions, or the age of impressions, 
 and of that as an age prior to language, what kind of 
 religious impressions can be raised in a soul, it may be 
 asked, when the child is not far enough developed in 
 language to be taught any thing about God, or Christ, 
 or itself, that belongs to intelligence ? And the suffi- 
 cient answer must be, that language itself has no mean- 
 ing till rudimental impressions are first begotten in the 
 life of experience, to give it a meaning. Words are 
 useful to propagate meanings, or to farther develop and 
 combine meanings, but a child would never know the 
 meaning of any word in a language, just by hearing 
 the sound of it in his ears. He must learn to put the 
 meaning into it, by having found that meaning in his 
 impressions, and then the word becomes significant. 
 And it requires a certain wakefulness and capacity of 
 intelligent apprehension, to receive or take up such 
 impressions. Thus a dog would never get hold of any 
 religious impression at the family prayers, all his life- 
 time ; but a child will be fast gathering up, out of his 
 
240 WHEN AND WHERE 
 
 little life and experience, impressional states and asso- 
 ciations, that give meanings to the words of prayer, as 
 they, in turn, give meanings to the facts of his experi- 
 ence. All language supposes impressions first made. 
 The word liglit does not signify any thing, till the eye 
 has taken the impression of -light. The word love is 
 unmeaning, to one who has not loved and received love. 
 The word God., raises no conception of God, till the 
 idea of such a being has been somehow generated and 
 associated with that particular sound. How far off is it 
 then from all sound apprehensions of fact, to imagine 
 that nothing religious can be done for a child till after 
 he is far enough developed in language to be taught ; 
 when in fact he could not be thus developed in lan- 
 guage at all, if the meanings of language were not 
 somehow started in him by the impressions derived 
 from his experience. 
 
 Observe, again, how very quick the child's eye is, in 
 the passive age of infancy, to catch impressions, and 
 receive the meaning of looks, voices, and motions. It 
 peruses all faces, and colors, and sounds. Every senti- 
 ment that looks into its eyes, looks back out of its 
 eyes, and plays in miniature on its countenance. The 
 tear that steals down the cheek of a mother's suppressed 
 grief, gathers the little infantile face into a respon- 
 sive sob. With a kind of wondering silence, which is 
 next thing to adoration, it studies the mother in her 
 prayer, and looks up piously with her, in that explor- 
 ing watch, that signifies unspoken prayer. If the child 
 is handled fretfully, scolded, jerked, or simply laid aside 
 
THE NUETURE BEGINS. 241 
 
 unaffectionatelj, in no warmth of motherly gentleness, 
 it feels the sting of just that which is felt towards it ; 
 and so it is angered by anger, irritated by irritation, 
 fretted by fretfulness; having thus impressed, just that 
 kind of impatience or ill-nature, which is felt towards 
 it, and growing faithfully into the bad mold offered, as 
 by a fixed law. There is great importance, in this man- 
 ner, even in the handling of infancy. If it is unchris- 
 tian, it will beget unchristian states, or impressions. 
 If it is gentle, even patient and loving, it prepares a 
 mood and temper like its own. There is scarcely room 
 to doubt, that all most crabbed, hateful, resentful, pas- 
 sionate, ill-natured characters; all most even, lovely, 
 firm and true, are prepared, in a great degree, by the 
 handling of the nursery. To these and all such modes 
 of feeling and treatment as make up the element of the 
 infant's life, it is passive as wax to the seal. So that if 
 we consider how small a speck, falling into the nucleus 
 of a crystal, may disturb its form ; or, how even a mote 
 of foreign matter present in the quickening egg, will 
 suffice to produce a deformity ; considering, also, on the 
 other hand, what nice conditions of repose, in one case, 
 and what accurately modulated supplies of heat in the 
 other, are necessary to a perfect product ; then only do 
 we begin to imagine what work is going on, in the 
 soul of a child, in this first chapter of life, the age of 
 impressions. 
 
 It must also greatly affect our judgments on this 
 point, to observe that, when this first age of impres- 
 sions is gone by, there is, after that, no such thing any 
 
242 WHEN AND WHERE 
 
 more as a possibility of absolute control. Thus far the 
 child has been more a candidate for personality than 
 a person. He has been as a seed forming in the cap- 
 sule of the parent-stem, getting every thing from that 
 stem, and fashioned, in its kind, by the fashioning kind 
 of that. But now, having been gradually and imper- 
 ceptibly ripened, as the seed separates and falls off, to 
 be another and complete form of life in itself, so the 
 child comes out, in his own power, a complete person, 
 able to choose responsibly for himself. Now he is no 
 more in the power of the parent, as before ; the domin- 
 ion of the older life is supplanted, by the self-asserting 
 competency of the younger ; what can the old stalk do 
 upon the seed that is already ripe ? The transition here 
 is very gradual, it is true, covering even a space of 
 years ; and something may be done for the child's char- 
 acter by instruction, by the skillful management of mo- 
 tives, and the tender solicitudes of parental watching 
 and prayer ; but less and less, of course, the older the 
 child becomes, and the more completely his personal 
 responsibility is developed. But how very fearful the 
 change, and how much it means, that the child, once 
 plastic and passive to the will of the parent, has gotten 
 by the point of absolute disposability, and is never 
 again to be properly in that will ! The perilous power 
 of self-care and self-assertion has come, and what is to 
 be the result ? And how much does it signify to the 
 parent, when he feels his power to be thus growing dif- 
 ficult, weak, doubtful, or finally quite ended ! What a 
 conception it is, that he once had his child in abso- 
 
THE NURTURE BEGINS. 243 
 
 lute direction, and the fashioning of his own superior 
 will, to dress, to feed, to handle, to plaj himself into 
 his sentiments, be the disjDOsition of his dispositions, 
 the temper of his tempers. Was there not something 
 great to be done then, when the advantage was so 
 great — now to be done no more ? It will be difficult 
 to shake off that impression ; impossible to a really 
 thoughtful Christian soul. And if the will, now ma- 
 tured and gone over into complete self-assertion, rushes 
 into all wildness and profligacy, unrestrained and "un- 
 restrainable, the recollection of a time when it was 
 restrainable and could have been molded, even as wax 
 itself, will return with inevitable certainty upon the pa- 
 rents, and taunt, O how bitterly, the neglectfulness and 
 lightness, by which they cast their opportunity away ! 
 
 I bring into view accordingly, just here, a considera- 
 tion that goes further to establish the position I am as- 
 serting, than any other, and one that is naturally sug- 
 gested by the topic just adverted to. We call this first 
 chapter of life the age of impressions ; we speak of the 
 child as being in a sense passive and plastic, living in 
 the will of the parents, having no will developed for 
 responsible action. It might be imagined from the use 
 of such terms, that the infant or very young child has 
 no will at all. But that is not any true conception. It 
 has no responsible will, because it is not acquainted, as 
 yet, with those laws and limits and conditions of choice 
 that make it responsible. Kevertheless it has will, 
 blind will, as strongly developed as any other facult}^, 
 and sometimes even most strongly of all. The mani- 
 
244 WHEN AND WHERE 
 
 festations of it are sometimes even frightful. And pre- 
 cisely this it is which makes the age of impressions, the 
 age prior to language and responsible choice, most pro- 
 foundly critical in its importance. It is the age in 
 which the will-power of the soul is to be tamed or sub- 
 ordinated to a higher control ; that of obedience to pa- 
 rents, that of duty and religion. And, in this view, it is 
 that every thing most important to the religious char- 
 acter turns just here. Is this infant child to fill the 
 universe with his complete and total self-assertion, own- 
 ing no superior, or is he to learn the self-submission 
 of allegiance, obedience, duty to God ? Is he to become 
 a demon let loose in Grod's eternity, or an angel and 
 free prince of the realm ? 
 
 That he may be this, he is now given, will and all, 
 as wax, to the wise molding-power of control. Begin- 
 ning, then, to lift his will in mutiny, and swell in self- 
 asserting obstinacy, refusing to go or come, or stand, or 
 withhold in this or that, let there be no fight begun, or 
 issue made with him, as if it were the true thing now 
 to break his will, or drive him out of it by mere terrors 
 and pains. This willfulness, or obstinacy, is not so 
 purely bad, or evil, as it seems. It is partly his feeling 
 of himself and you, in which he is getting hold of the 
 conditions of authority, and feeling out his limitations. 
 N'o, this breaking of a child's will to which many well- 
 meaning parents set themselves, with such instant, 
 almost passionate resolution, is the way they take to 
 make him a coward, or a thief, or a hypocrite, or a 
 mean-spirited and driveling sycophant — nothing in fact 
 
THE NURTUKE BEGINS. 245 
 
 is more dreadful to thought than this breaking of a 
 will, when it breaks, as it often does, the personality 
 itself, and all highest, noblest firmness of manhood. The 
 true problem is different ; it is not to break, but to 
 bend rather, to draw the will down, or away from self- 
 assertion toward self-devotion, to teach it the way of 
 submitting to wise limitations, and raise it into the great 
 and glorious liberties of a state of loyalty to God. See 
 then how it is to be done. The child has no force, 
 however stout he is in his will. Take him up then, 
 when the fit is upon him, carry him, stand him on his 
 feet, set him here or therej do just that in him which 
 he refuses to do in himself — all this gently and kindly, 
 as if he were capable of maintaining no issue at all. 
 Do it again and again, as often as may be necessary. 
 By-and-bye, he will begin to perceive that his obstinacy 
 is but the fussing of his weakness ; till finally, as the 
 sense of limitation comes up into a sense of law and 
 duty, he will be found to have learned, even before- 
 hand, the folly of mere self-assertion. And when he 
 has reached this point of felt obligation to obedience, 
 it will no longer break him down to enforce his com- 
 pliance, but it will even exalt into greater dignity and 
 capacity, that sublime power of self-government, by 
 which his manhood is to be most distinguished. 
 
 By a different treatment at the point or crisis just 
 named, that is by raising an issue to be driven straight 
 through by terror and storm, one of two results almost 
 equally bad were likely to follow ; the child would 
 either have been quite broken down by fear, the lowest 
 
246 WHEN AND WHERE 
 
 of all possible motives when separated from moral con- 
 victions, or else would have been made a hundred fold 
 more obstinate bj his triumph. Nature provided for 
 his easy subjugation, by putting him in the hands of a 
 superior strength, which could manage him without 
 any fight of enforcement — to have him schooled and 
 tempered to a customary self-surrender which takes 
 nothing from his natural force and manliness. And so 
 is accomplished what, in one view, is the great problem 
 of life ; that on which all duty and allegiance to God, 
 in the state even of conversion, depends. 
 
 It only remains to add that we are not to assume the 
 comparative unimportance of what is done upon a child, 
 in his age of impressions, because there is really no 
 character of virtue or vice, of blame or praise, devel- 
 oped in that age. Be it so — it is so by the supposi- 
 tion. But the power, the root, the seed, is implanted 
 nevertheless, in most cases, of what he will be. Not in 
 every case, but often, the seed of a regenerate life is 
 implanted — that which makes the child a Christian in 
 God's view, as certainly as if he were already out in 
 the testimony and formal profession of his faith. I 
 was just now speaking of the dreadful power of will 
 or willfulness, some times manifested even in this first 
 age, that we have called the age of impressions, and of 
 the ways in which, by one kind of mismanagement or 
 another, the character may be turned to vices that are 
 ais opposite, as the vices of meanness and the crimes of 
 violence and blood. So it will be found that almost 
 every sort of mismanagement, or neglect, plants some 
 
THE NUETUEE BEGINS. 247 
 
 seed of vice and misery that grows out afterwards into 
 a cliaracter in its own kind. Thus the child by a con- 
 tinually worry of his little life, under abusive words, 
 and harsh, flashy tempers, grows to be a bed of nettles 
 in all his personal tempers, and will so be prepared to 
 break out, in the age of choice, into almost any vice of 
 ill-nature. A child can be pampered in feeding, so as 
 to become, in a sense, all body ; so that, when he comes 
 into choice and responsible action, he is already a con- 
 firmed sensualist, showing it in the lines of his face, 
 even before it appears in his tastes, habits and vices. 
 Thus we have a way of wondering that the children of 
 this or that family should turn out so poorly, but the 
 real fact is, probably, if we knew it, that what we call 
 their turning out, is only their growing out, in just that 
 which was first grown in, by the mismanagement of 
 their infancy and childhood. What they took in as 
 impression, or contagion, is developed by choice — not 
 at once, perhaps, but finally, after the poison has had 
 time to work. And in just the same way, doubtless, 
 it may be true, in multitudes of Christian conversions, 
 that what appear to be such to others, and also to the 
 subjects themselves, are only the restored activity and 
 more fully developed results of some predispositional 
 state, or initially sanctified property, in the tempers and 
 subtle affinities of their childhood. They are now 
 born into that by the assent of their own will, which 
 they were in before, without their will. What they 
 do not remember still remembers them, and now claims 
 a right in them. What was before unconscious, flames 
 
248 WHEN AND WHERE 
 
 out into consciousness, and thej break forth into praise 
 and thanksgiving, in that which, long ago, took them 
 initially, and touched them softly without thanks. For 
 there is such a thing as a seed of character in religion, 
 preceding all religious development. Even as Calvin, 
 speaking of the regenerative grace there may be in the 
 heart of infancy itself, testifies — "the work of God is 
 not yet without existence, because it is not observed 
 and understood by us." 
 
 By these and many other considerations that might 
 be named, it is made clear, I think, to any judicious 
 and thoughtful person, that the most important age of 
 Christian nurture is the first ; that which we have called 
 the age of impressions, just that age, in which the du- 
 ties and cares of a really Christian nurture are so com- 
 monly postponed, or assumed to have not yet arrived. 
 I have no scales to measure quantities of effect in this 
 matter of early training, but I may be allowed to ex- 
 press my solemn conviction, that more, as a general fact, 
 is done, or lost by neglect of doing, on a child's immor- 
 tality, in the first three years of his life, than in all his 
 years of discipline afterwards. And I name this partic- 
 ular time, or date, that I may not be supposed to lay the 
 chief stress of duty and care on the latter part of what I 
 have called the age of impressions ; which, as it is a mat- 
 ter somewhat indefinite, may be taken to cover the space 
 of three or four times this number of years ; the devel- 
 opment of language, and of moral ideas being only par- 
 tially accomplished, in most cases, for so long a time. 
 Let every Christian father and mother understand, when 
 
THE NUKTURE BEGINS. 249 
 
 their child is three years old, that they have done more 
 than half of all they will ever do for his character. 
 "What can be more strangely wide of all just apprehen- 
 sion, than the immense efficacy, imputed by most pa- 
 rents to the Christian ministry, compared with what 
 they take to be the almost insignificant power conferred 
 on them in their parental charge and duties. Why, if 
 all preachers of Christ could have their hearers, for 
 whole months and years, in their own will, as parents 
 do their children, so as to move them by a look, a mo 
 tion, a smile, a frown, and act their own sentiments and 
 emotions over in them at pleasure ; if, also, a little 
 farther on, they had them in authority to command, 
 direct, tell them whither to go, what to learn, what to 
 do, regulate their hours, their books, their pleasures, 
 their company, and call them to prayer over their own 
 knees every night and morning, who could think it 
 impossible, in the use of such a power, to produce 
 almost any result ? Should not such a ministry be ex- 
 pected to fashion all who come under it to newness of 
 life ? Let no parent, shifting off his duties to his chil- 
 dren, in this manner, think to have his defects made 
 up, and the consequent damages mended afterwards, 
 when they have come to their maturity, by the compar- 
 atively slender, always doubtful, efficacy of preaching 
 and pulpit harangue. 
 
 If now I am right in the view I have been trying to 
 establish, it will readily occur to you that irreparable 
 damage may be and must often be done by the self- 
 indulgence of those parents, who place their children 
 
250 WHEN AND WHERE 
 
 mostly in tlie charge of nurses and attendants for 
 just those years of their life, in which the greatest and 
 most absolute effects are to be wrought in their charac- 
 ter. The lightness that prevails, on this point, is really 
 astonishing. Many parents do not even take pains to 
 know any thing about the tempers, the truthfulness, 
 the character generally, of the nurses to whom their 
 children are thus confidingly trusted. ISTo matter — the 
 child is too young to be poisoned, or at all hurt, by 
 their influence. And so they give over, to these faith- 
 less and often cruelly false hirelings of the nursery, to 
 be always with them, under their power, associated with 
 their persons, handled by their roughness, and im- 
 printed, day and night, by the coarse, bad sentiments 
 of their voices and faces, these helpless, hapless beings 
 whom they call their children, and think they are really 
 making much of, in the instituting of a nursery for 
 them and their keeping. Such a mother ought to see 
 that she is making much more of herself than of her 
 child. This whole scheme of nurture is a scheme of 
 self-indulgence. Now is the time when her little one 
 most needs to see her face, and hear her voice, and feel her 
 gentle hand. Now is the time when her child's eternity 
 pleads most entreatingly for the benefit of her motherly 
 charge and presence. What mother would not be dis- 
 mayed by the thought of having her family grow up 
 into the sentiments of her nurse, and come forward into 
 life as being in the succession to her character ! And 
 yet how often is this most exactly what she has 
 provided for. 
 
THE NURTURE BEGINS. 251 
 
 Again, it is very clear that, in this early kind of nur- 
 ture, faithfully maintained, there is a call for the great- 
 est personal holiness in the parents, and that just those 
 conditions are added, which will make true holiness 
 closest to nature, and most beautifully attractive — saving 
 it from all the repulsive appearances of severity and sanc- 
 timony. In this charge and nurture of infant children, 
 nothing is to be done by an artificial, lecturing process ; 
 nothing, or little by what can be called government. 
 We are to get our effects chiefly by just being what we 
 ought, and making a right presence of love and life to 
 our children. They are in a plastic age that is receiv- 
 ing its type, not from our words, but from our spirit, 
 and whose character is shaping in the molds of ours. 
 Living under this conviction, we are held to a sound 
 verity and reality in every thing. The defect of our 
 character is not to be made up here, by the sanctity of 
 our words ; we must be all that we would have our 
 children feel and receive. Thus, if a man were to be 
 set before a mirror, with the feeling that the exact im- 
 age of what he is, for the day, is there to be produced 
 and left as a permanent and fixed image forever, to what 
 carefulness, what delicate sincerity of spirit would he 
 be moved. And will he be less moved to the same, 
 when that mirror is the soul of his child ? 
 
 Inducted, thus, into a more profoundly real holiness, 
 we shall, at the same time, grow more natural in it. 
 The family quality of our piety, living itself into our 
 children, will moisten the dry individualism we suffer, 
 relieve the eccentricities we display, set purity in the 
 
252 WHEN AND WHERE. 
 
 place of bustle and presumption, growth in the place of 
 conquest, sound health in the place of spasmodic exalt- 
 ations ; for when a conviction is felt in Christian fami- 
 lies, that living is to be a means of grace, and as God will 
 suffer it, a regenerating power, then will our piety be- 
 come a domestic spirit, and as much more tender, as it 
 is closer to the life of childhood. Now, we have a 
 kind of piety that contains, practically speaking, only 
 adults, or those who are old enough to reflect and act 
 for themselves, and it is as if we lived in an adult worM^ 
 where every one is for himself. If we could abolish 
 also distinctions of age, and sex, and of&ce, we should 
 only make up a style of religion somewhat drier and 
 farther off from nature than we now have. We can 
 never come into the true mode of living that God has 
 appointed for us, until we regard each generation as 
 hovering over the next, acting itself into the next, and 
 casting thus a type of character in the next, before it 
 comes to act for itself. Then we shall have gentle cares 
 and feelings ; then the families will become bonds of 
 spiritual life; example, education and government, 
 being Christian powers, will be regukted by a Christian 
 spirit ; the rigidities of religious principle will be soft- 
 ened by the tender affections of nature twining among 
 them, and the common, life of the house dignified by 
 the sober and momentous cares of the life to come. 
 And thus Christian piety, being oftener a habit in the 
 soul than a conquest over it, will be as much more 
 respectable and consistent as it is earlier in the birth 
 and closer to nature. 
 
11. 
 
 PARENTAL ttUALIFICATIONS. 
 
 " For I know him, that he will command his children and his house- 
 hold after him, and they shall keep the way of the Lord." — Genesis^ 
 xviii. 19. 
 
 The real point of tlie declaration, here, is not that 
 Abraham will command his children, but that he is 
 such a man, having such qualities or qualifications as 
 to be able to command, certain to command, and train 
 them into an obedient and godly life. The declaration 
 is, you will observe — "For I know Aim;" not simply 
 and directly — "For I know the fact." Every thing 
 turns on what is m him, as a father and householder — 
 his qualifications, dispositions, principles, and modes of 
 life — and the declaration is, that what he is to do, will 
 certainly come out of what he is. He will certainly 
 produce, or train a godly family, because it is in him, 
 as a man, to do nothing else or less. The subject raised 
 then by the declaration is, not so much family training 
 and government, as it is — 
 
 The ^personal and religious qualifications, or qualifica" 
 tions of character, necessary to success in such family 
 training and government. 
 
 There is almost no duty or work, in this world, that 
 does not require s'ome outfit of qualifications, in order 
 to the doing of it welL We all understand that some 
 
 22 
 
254 PARENTAL QUALIFICATIONS. 
 
 kind of preparation is necessary to fill the place of a 
 magistrate, teacli a school, drill a troop of soldiers, or 
 do any such thing, in a right manner. Nay, we admit 
 the necessity of serving some kind of apprenticeship, 
 in order to become duly qualified for the calling, only 
 of a milliner, or a tailor. And yet, as a matter of fact, 
 we go into what we call the Christian training of our 
 children, without any preparation for it whatever, and 
 apparently without any such conviction of negligence 
 or absurdity, as at all disturbs our assurance in what we 
 do. Wot that young parents, and especially young 
 mothers, are not often heard lamenting their conscious 
 insufiiciency for the charge that is put upon them, but 
 that, in such regrets, they commonly mean nothing 
 more than that they feel very tenderly, and want to do 
 better things than, in fact, any body can. It does not 
 mean, as a general thing, that they are practically en- 
 deavoring to get hold of such qualifications as they 
 want, in order to their Christian success. After all, it 
 is likely to be assumed that they have their sufficient 
 equipment in the tender instinct of their natural affec- 
 tion itself So they go on, as in a kind of venture, to 
 command, govern, manage, punish, teach, and turn 
 about the way of their child, in just such tempers, and 
 ways of example and views of life, as chance to be the 
 element of their own disfigured, ill-begotten character, 
 at the time. This, in short, is their sin — the undoing, 
 as it^ill by-and-bye appear, of their children — that they 
 undertake their most sacred office, without any sacred 
 qualifications; govern without self-government, dis- 
 
PARENTAL QUALIFICATIONS. 255 
 
 charge the holiest responsibilities irresponsibly, and 
 thrust their children into evil, by the evil and bad mind, 
 out of which their training proceeds. 
 
 I know not any thing that better shows the utter in- 
 competency of mere natural affection as an equipment 
 for the parental office, or that, in a short way, proves 
 the fixed necessity in it, of some broader competency 
 and higher qualification, than just to glance at the 
 real cruelties, even commonly perpetrated, under just 
 those tender, faithful instigations of natural affection, 
 that we so readily expect to be a kind of infallible 
 protection to the helplessness of infancy. How often is 
 it a fact, that the fondest parents, owing to some want 
 of insight, or of patience, or even to some uninstructed, 
 only half intelligent desire to govern their child, will 
 do it the greatest wrongs — stinging every day and hour, 
 the little defenseless being, committed to their love, 
 with the sense of bitter injustice; driving in the 
 ploughshare of abuse and blame upon its tender feeling, 
 by harsh words and pettish chastisements, when, in fact, 
 the very thing, in the child that annoys them is, that 
 they themselves have thrown it into a fit of uneasiness 
 and partial disorder, by their indiscreet feeding ; or that 
 in some appearance of irritability, or insubjection, it has 
 only not the words to speak of its pain, or explain its 
 innocence. The little child's element of existence be- 
 comes, in this manner, not seldom, an element of bitter 
 wrong, and the sting of wounded justice grows in, so 
 to speak, poisoning the soul all through, by its immed- 
 icable rancor. The pain of such wrong goes deeper, 
 
256 PAKENTAL QUALIFICATIONS. 
 
 too, than many fancy. No other creature suffers under 
 conscious injury so intensely. And the mischief done 
 is only aggravated by the fact that the sufferer has no 
 power of redress, and has no alternative permitted, but 
 either to be cowed into a weak and cringing submission, 
 or else, when his nobler nature has too much stuff in it 
 for that, to be stiffened in hate and the bitter grudges 
 of wrong. I know not any thing more sad to think of, 
 than the cruelties put upon children in this manner. 
 It makes up a chapter which few persons read, and 
 which almost every body takes for granted can not 
 exist. For the honor of our human nature, I wish it 
 could not ; and that what we call maternal affection, the 
 softest, dearest, most self-sacrificing of all earthly forms 
 of tenderness and fidelity, were, at least, sufficient to 
 save the dishonor, which, alas! it is not; for these 
 wrongs are, in fact, the cruelties of motherhood, and as 
 often, I may add, of an even over-fond motherhood, as 
 any — wrongs of which the doers are unconscious, and 
 which never get articulated, save by the sobbings of 
 the little bosom, where the sting of injury is felt. 
 
 Here, then, at just the point where we should, least 
 of all, look for it, viz : at the point of maternal affec- 
 tion itself, we have displayed, in sadly convincing evi- 
 dence, the need and high significance of those better 
 qualifications of mind and character, by which the 
 training of children becomes properly Christian, and 
 upon which, as being such, the success of that training 
 depends. Few persons, I apprehend, have any concep- 
 
PARENTAL QUALIFICATIONS. 257 
 
 tion, on the. other hand, of the immense nnmber and 
 sweep of the disqualifications that, in nominally or 
 even really Christian parents, go in to hinder, and spoil 
 of all success, the religious nurture of their children. 
 Sometimes the disqualification is this, and sometimes it 
 is that; sometimes conscious, sometimes unconscious; 
 sometimes observable by others and well understood, and 
 sometimes undiscovered. The variety is infinite, and 
 the modes of combination subtle, to such a degree, that 
 persons taken to be eminently holy in their life, will 
 have all their prayers and counsels blasted, by some 
 hidden fatality, whose root is never known, or sus- 
 pected, whether by others, or possibly by themselves. 
 The wonder that children, whose parents were in high 
 esteem for their piety, should so often grow up into a 
 vicious and ungodly life, would, I think, give way to 
 just the contrary wonder, if only some just conception 
 were had of the various, multifarious, unknown, unsus- 
 pected disqualifications, by which modes of nurture, 
 otherwise good, are fatally poisoned. 
 
 Sometimes, for example, it is a fatal mischief, going 
 before on the child, but probably unknown to the 
 world, that the parents, one or both, or it may be the 
 mother especially, does not accept the child willingly, 
 but only submits to the maternal office and charge, as 
 to some hard necessity. This charge is going to detain 
 her at home, and limit her freedom. Or it will take her 
 away from the shows and pleasures for which she is liv- 
 ing. Or it will burden her days and nights with cares 
 that weary her self-indulgence. Or she is not fond of 
 
 22^ 
 
258 PARENTAL QUALIFICATIONS. 
 
 cliildren, and never means to be fond of them — they are 
 not worth the trouble they cost. Indulging these and 
 such like discontents, unwisely and even cruelly pro- 
 voked, not unlikely, by the unchristian discontents and 
 foolish speeches of her husband, she poisons both her- 
 self and her child beforehand, and receives it with no 
 really glad welcome, when she takes it to her bosom. 
 Strange mortal perversity that can thus repel, as a harsh 
 intrusion, one of God's dearest gifts ; that which is the 
 date of the house in its coming, and comes to unseal a 
 new passion, whereby life itself shall be duplicated in 
 meaning, as in love and duty ! This abuse of marriage 
 is, in fact, an offense against nature, and is no doubt 
 bitterly offensive to God. Though commonly spoken of, 
 in a way of astonishing lightness, it is just that sin, by 
 which every good possibility of the family is corrupted. 
 What can two parents do for the child, they only sub- 
 mit to look upon, and take as a foundling to their care ? 
 If they have some degree of evidence in them that they 
 are Christian disciples, they will have fatally clouded 
 that evidence, by a contest with God's Providence, so 
 irreverent to Him, and so cruel to their child. If now, 
 at last, they somewhat love the child, which is theirs 
 by compulsion, what office of a really Christian nurture 
 can they fill in its behalf? They are under a complete 
 and total disqualification, as respects the duties of their 
 charge. They are out of rest in God, out of confidence 
 toward Him, hindered in their prayers, lost to that 
 sweetness of love and peace which ought to be the ele- 
 ment of their house. Delving on thus, from such a 
 
PARENTAL QUALIFICATIONS. 259 
 
 point of beginning, and assuming tlie possible cliance 
 of success, in what they may do in the spirit of such 
 a beginning, is simply absurd. What can they do in 
 training a child for God, which they have accepted, 
 at his hands, only as being thrust upon them by 
 compulsion ? 
 
 I might speak of other disqualifications that have a 
 similar character, as implying some disagreement with 
 Providence. But it must suffice to say generally, that 
 there can be no such thing as a genuine Christian nur- 
 ture that is out of peace with God's Providence — in 
 any respect. On the contrary, it is when that peace is 
 the element of the house, and sweetens every thing in 
 it — pain, sickness, loss, the bitter cup of poverty, 
 every ill of adversity or sting of wrong — then it is, and 
 there, as nowhere else, that children are most sure to 
 grow up into God's beauty, and a blessed and good life. 
 The child that is born to such keeping, and lovingly 
 lapped in the peaceful trust of Providence, is born to a 
 glorious heritage. On the other hand, where the en- 
 deavor and life-struggle of the house is, at bottom, a 
 fight with Providence ; envious, eager, anxious, out of 
 content, out of rest, full of complaint and railings, it 
 is impossible that any thing Christian should grow in 
 such an element. The disqualification is complete. 
 
 Another whole class of disqualifications require to be 
 named by themselves ; those I mean which are caused 
 by a bad or false morality in the parties, at some point 
 where the failure is not suspected, and misses being 
 
260 PARENTAL QUALIFICATIONS. 
 
 corrected by tlie slender and very partial experience 
 of their discipleship. 
 
 They are persons, for example, who make much of 
 principles in their words, and really think that they are 
 governed by principles, when, in fact, they do every 
 thing for some reason of policy, and value their princi- 
 ples, more entirely than they know, for what they are 
 worth in the computations of policy. Contrivance, 
 artifice, or sometimes cunning, is the element of the 
 house. A subtle, inveterate habit of scheming creeps 
 into all the reasons of duty ; and duty is done, not for 
 duty's sake, but for the reasons, or prudential benefits 
 to be secured by it. Even the praying of the house 
 takes on a prudential air, much as if it were done for 
 some reason not stated. A stranger in the house, see- 
 ing no scandalous wrong, but a fine show of principle, 
 has a certain sense of coldness upon him, which he can 
 not account for. How much of true Christian nurture 
 there may be in such a house, it is not difficult to 
 judge. Here, probably, is going to be one of the 
 cases, where everybody wonders that children brought 
 up so correctly, turn out so badly. It is not under- 
 stood that such children were brought up to know prin- 
 ciples, only as a stunted undergrowth of prudence, and 
 that now the result appears. 
 
 Again there is, in some persons, who appear, in all 
 other respects, to be Christian, a strange defect of truth 
 or truthfulness. They are not conscious of it. They 
 would take it as a cruel injustice, were they only to 
 suspect their acquaintances of holding such an estimate 
 
PARENTAL QUALIFICATIONS. 261 
 
 of them. And yet there is a want of truth in every 
 sort of demonstration they make. It is not their words 
 only that lie, but their voice, air, action, their every 
 puttiug forth has a lying character. The atmosphere 
 they live in is an atmosphere of pretense. Their vir- 
 tues are affectations. Their compassions and sympa- 
 thies are the airs they put on. Their friendship is their 
 mood and nothing more. And yet they do not know 
 it. They mean, it may be, no fraud. They only cheat 
 themselves so effectually as to believe, that what they 
 are only acting is their truth. And, what is difficult to 
 reconcile, they have a great many Christian sentiments, 
 they maintain prayer as a habit, and will sometimes 
 speak intelligently of matters of Christian experience. 
 But how dreadful must be the effect of such a charac- 
 ter, on the simple, trustful soul of a little child. When 
 the crimen falsi is in every thing heard, and looked 
 upon, and done, he may grow up into a hypocrite, or a 
 thief, but what shall make him a genuine Christian ? 
 
 In the same manner, I could go on to show a multi- 
 tude of disqualifications for the office of a genuine 
 Christian nurture, that are created by a bad or defect- 
 ive morality, in parents who live a credibly Christian 
 life. They make a great virtue, it may be, of frugality 
 or economy, and settle every thing into a scale of insup- 
 portable parsimony and meanness. Or, they make a 
 praise of generous living, and run it into a profligate 
 and spendthrift habit. Or, they make such a virtue of 
 honor and magnanimity, as to set the opinions and 
 principles of men in deference, above the principles of 
 
262 PARENTAL QUALIFICATIONS. 
 
 God. Or, tliej get their chief motives of action out of 
 the appearances of virtue, and not out of its reali- 
 ties. There is no end to the impostures of bad mo- 
 rality, that find a place in the lives of reputably Chris- 
 tian persons. They are generally too subtle to be 
 detected by the inspection of their consciousness, and 
 very commonly pass unobserved by others. And yet 
 they have power to poison the nurture of the house, 
 even though it appears to be, in some respects. Chris- 
 tian. Hence the profound necessity that Christian pa- 
 rents, consciously meaning to bring up their children 
 for God, should make a thorough inspection of their 
 morality itself, to find if there be any bad spot in it ; 
 knowing that, as certainly as there is, it will more or 
 less fatally corrupt their children. 
 
 We have still another whole class of disqualifications 
 to speak of, that belong, as vices, to the Christian life 
 itself, and will, as much more certainly, be ruinous in 
 their effects. Some of them would never be thought 
 of as disqualifications for the Christian training of chil- 
 dren, and yet they are so, in a degree to even cut off 
 the reasonable hope of success. Probably a great part 
 of the cases of disaster, that occur in the training of 
 Christian families, are referable to these Christian vices, 
 which are commonly not put down as evidences of 
 apostasy, or any radical defect of Christian principle, 
 because they are not supposed to imply a discontinu- 
 ance of prayer, or a fatal subjection to the spirit of this 
 world. 
 
PARENTAL QUALIFICATIONS. 263 
 
 Sanctimony, for example, as we commonly use the 
 term, is one of these vices. It describes what we con- 
 ceive to be a saintly, or over-saintly air and manner, 
 when there is a much inferior degree of sanctity in the 
 life. There is no hypocrisy in it, for there is no inten- 
 tion to deceive ; but there is a legal, austere, conscien- 
 tiousness, which keeps on all the solemnities and longi- 
 tudes of expression, just because there is too little of 
 God's love and joy in the feeling, to play in the smiles 
 of gladness and liberty. Now it is the little child's 
 way, to get his first lessons from the looks and faces 
 round him. And what can be worse, or do more to 
 set him off from all piety, by a fixed aversion, than to 
 have gotten such impressions of it only, as he takes 
 from this always unblessed, tedious, look of sanctimony. 
 What can a poor child do, when the sense of nature 
 and natural life, the smiles, glad voices, and cheerful 
 notes of play, are all overcast and gloomed, or, as it 
 were, forbidden, by that ghostly piety in which it is 
 itself being brought up ? And yet the world will won- 
 der immensely at the strange perversity of the child 
 that grows up under such a saintly training, to be 
 known as a person mortally averse to religion ! Why, 
 it would be a much greater wonder if he could think 
 of it even with patience ! 
 
 Bigotry is another of these Christian vices, and yet 
 no one will assume his infallible capacity, in the matter 
 of Christian training, as confidently as the bigot. Has 
 he not the truth? is he not opposite, as possible, to 
 all error? has any man a greater abhorrence of all 
 
264 PARENTAL QUALIFICATIONS. 
 
 laxity and all variation from the standards ? Is he not 
 in a way of speaking out always, and giving faithful 
 testimonies in his house ? Yes, that must be admitted ; 
 and yet he is a man that mauls every truth of God, and 
 every gentle and lovely feeling of a genuinely Chris- 
 tian character. His intensities are made by his nar- 
 rowness and hate, and not by his love. He fills the 
 house with a noise of piety, and may dog his children 
 possibly into some kind of conformity with his opin- 
 ions. But he is much more likely, by this brassy din, 
 to only stun their intelligence and make them incapable 
 of any true religious impressions. There is no class of 
 children that turn out worse, in general, than the chil- 
 dren of the Christian bigots. 
 
 The vice of Christian fanaticism operates, in another 
 and different way, but with a commonly disastrous 
 effect. The fanatic is a man who mixes false fire with 
 the true, and burns with a partly diabolical heat. He 
 means to be superlatively Christian, but it happens that 
 what he gets, above others, is the addition of something 
 to his passions, which would be more genuine, if it 
 were in his affections. He scorches, but never melts. 
 He is most impatient of what is ordinary and common, 
 and does not sufficiently honor the solid works and ex- 
 periences of that goodness which is fixed and faithful. 
 This kind of character makes a fiery element for child- 
 ish piety to grow in. "What can the child become, or 
 learn to be, where every thing is in this key of excess ? 
 It is as if there were a simoon of piety blowing through 
 the house, and it dries away all gentle longings and 
 
PARENTAL QUALIFICATIONS. 265 
 
 holiest sympathies of the child's affectionate nature, so 
 that all attractions God- ward are suspended. A certain 
 violence and harshness in the parental fanaticism, 
 wakens often the sense of injustice too, or hate, and 
 makes the superlative piety appear to be no better, 
 after all, than it might be. 
 
 Another Christian vice is created by a censorious 
 habit. Not by that habit of judging and condemning, 
 which takes a pleasure in condemnation itself — that is 
 the vice of a Christless character, not of a Christian — 
 but there is a large class of disciples who think it a 
 kind of duty, and a just acknowledgment of the fact 
 of human depravity, to be seeing always dark things. 
 They judge evil judgments because they will be more 
 faithful, and will be only doing to others just as they 
 do to themselves. This habit is like a poisonous atmos- 
 phere in the house. It kills all springing sentiments 
 of confidence and esteem. That charity which believ- 
 eth all things, and hopeth all things, appears to be 
 already stifled in it. What shall a child aspire to, when 
 there is no really estimable growth, and good, and 
 beauty, any where ? 
 
 It is a great vice also, as regards the Christian train- 
 ing of a family, that there is a habit in the parents of 
 receiving nothing by authority, and really disowning 
 authority in all matters of religious. God reigns him- 
 self by authority, and because he is God ; and parents 
 are to govern by authority, partly, in the same manner. 
 If the parent is a debater with God in every thing, say- 
 ing always No, to God, till he has gotten his proofs, the 
 
 23 
 
266 PARENTAL QUALIFICATIONS. 
 
 spirit will go through the house. The children will 
 demand a reason for every thing required, and will put 
 the parents always on trial, instead of being put under 
 authority themselves. Kothing breaks down faster the 
 religious conscience, or untones more completely the 
 divine afiinities of the childish nature, than to have lost 
 the feeling, ceased to hear the ring, of authority. Abra- 
 ham couM believe God's words, and so it was in him to 
 command his children after him. 
 
 Anxiousness is another infirmity, or vice of charac* 
 acter, that has always a noxious effect in the training 
 of Christian families. Where there is but a little faith, 
 there is apt to be great anxiousness. And nothing will 
 so dreadfully torment the life of a child, as to be per- 
 petually teased by the anxious words and looks and in- 
 terferences of this unhappy superintendcDce. And if 
 the pretext given is a concern for the child's piety, the 
 effect is only so much more disastrous. What can he 
 think of piety, when it has only worried him at every 
 play and every natural pleasure of his life ? Just con- 
 trary to this feeble, half-believing, half-Christian vice 
 of anxiety, the parental habit should be one of confi- 
 dence ; gladdened always in the faith that God is the 
 child's covenanted keeper, and will never fail to guard 
 the trust that is faithfully committed to his hands, never 
 allow to grow up in sin what parental fidelity is train- 
 ing, by all reasonable diligence, for a godly life. 
 
 This enumeration of the moral and religious vices, 
 that spot the beauty and mar the completeness of char- 
 
PARENTAL QUALIFICATIONS. 267 
 
 acter, in one way or another, of almost all merely ordi- 
 nary Christians, could be indefinitely extended. Noth- 
 ing, in fact, is farther off, generally, from the truth, than 
 the assumption, by nominally Christian parents, of their 
 sufficiency, or their properly qualified state, as regards 
 the training of their children. They are almost all dis- 
 qualified, or under-qualified, to such a degree to make 
 their work perilous, and as ought to fill them with real 
 concern for their success. What are we all, in the 
 merely initial state of Christian living, but diseased pa- 
 tients, just entered into hospital? We are not all in 
 the same sort of weakness and defect, but all weak and 
 defective — one-sided, passionate, broken in principle, 
 corrupted by mixed motive, lame in faith. How foolish 
 then is it for us to be assuming that, because we have 
 come to Christ and begun to be disciples, we are ready, 
 of course, for the holy nurture and safe ordering of our 
 families. How foolish, also, to be wondering, as we so 
 often do, that the children of one or another Christian, 
 or reputedly good Christian fiamily, turn out so ill — 
 as if it were some evidence of a singularly perverse and 
 reprobate nature in such children. Little do we know 
 what subtle poisons were hid in what we took to be the 
 good Christian piety of those families. After all, it 
 may have been much less good, or more exceptionably 
 good, than we thought. 
 
 It may occur to some of you, as a discouraging dis- 
 advantage, that, where one parent is duly qualified for 
 the training of the children in piety, the other is not, 
 but is in fact, a real hindrance to the right and safe pro- 
 
268 PARENTAL QUALIFICATIONS. 
 
 ceeding of tlie endeavor. The parents are never equally 
 well qualified ; and one, or the other of them, is likely 
 to be a good deal out of line, in some kind of personal 
 defect, or obliquity of practice. Sometimes one of 
 them will be a purely worldly-minded person, or an 
 unbeliever, or, it may be, even fatally corrupted by 
 vicious habits. There is, accordingly, no hope of concert 
 in the endeavor to train the children up in piety. And 
 this, the other party, who is more commonly the mother, 
 may be tempted in some hour of discouragement to 
 think, amounts to a fatal disqualification, such as quite 
 takes away the rational confidence of success. Let me 
 come to her aid, in the assurance that God connects 
 Himself even the more certainly with one party, if only 
 there is, in that one, a believing and truly faithful 
 spirit, prepared for the work. He pledges himself in 
 formal promise to one party, in all such conditions, 
 declaring that the believing wife sanctifies, takes away 
 the defect of, the unbelieving husband. Let her also 
 consider what is said of young Timothy — how the 
 apostle figures the faith of the good grandmother, and 
 her daughter the good mother, descending on Timothy 
 in the third generation, when his father, all this time, 
 was a Greek, probably an unbeliever and idolater. 
 There was not force enough, you perceive, in all that 
 father's influence to break the descent of the faith of 
 these two godly mothers upon his son. 
 
 This, then, is the conclusion to which we are brought ; 
 that qualifications are wanted for this work as for almost 
 no other, and that where they are really had, if it be 
 
PARENTAL QUALIFICATIONS. 269 
 
 only by one party, they are not likely to fail. But 
 how shall they be obtained ? that is the question. Who 
 is subtle enough to go through this hunt of the charac- 
 ter, and actually find every loose joint of morality in 
 his practice, every vice of defect, or distemper, in 
 in his Christian life ? No one, I answer — that is impos- 
 sible. N"o weeding process, carried on by ourselves, 
 ever did or can extirpate our evils. The only true 
 method here is the method of faith ; to be more per- 
 fectly and wholly trusted to God, more singly, simply 
 Christian. God's touch in us can feel out every thing ; 
 every most subtle spot of wrong or weakness he can 
 heal. The reason why we have so many of these spots 
 and disqualifying vices is, that we are only a little 
 Christian. Whereas, if we could be fully entered into 
 Christ's keeping, and have our whole consciousness 
 overspread and clothed by his righteousness, we should 
 live, in every part, and be kept in holy equilibrium 
 above our defects and disorders, all the time. Put ye 
 on the Lord Jesus Christ then as a complete investiture, 
 and there will be no poison flowing down upon your 
 children, from any thing in your life and example. If 
 Christ is made, to those who trust in him, wisdom, 
 righteousness, sanctification, and redemption, what is 
 there that he can not and will not be made ? Wonder- 
 ful is the completeness of any soul that is complete 
 in him. How pure and perfect the morality, how 
 wise the discretion, how gentle and full, and free, the 
 life in which he lives ! The house and its discipline 
 become a most joyous element to children, when thus 
 
 23* 
 
270 PARENTAL QUALIFICATIONS. 
 
 administered. Every thing good in it is welcome, even 
 tlie restraints and supervisions ; for they have a general 
 air of confidence and hope and gentle feeling, that wins 
 and not repels. Even authority itself is welcome, be- 
 cause it is enforced by character, and not by tones of 
 violence, or dictatorial airs of heat and menace. Who- 
 ever comes thus into God's full love, to be in it and of 
 it, has a true equipment for the family administration. 
 If it can be said — Herein is Love, what else can really 
 be wanting? This bond of perfectness, brings all 
 needed qualifications with it, so that when the love or 
 the faith working by it, really reigns and tempers the 
 man by its impulse, it can truly be said, as of Abra- 
 ham — For I know him, that he will command his chil- 
 dren and his household after him, and they shall keep 
 the way of the Lord. 
 
III. 
 
 PHYSICAL NURTURE, TO BE A MEANS OF 
 
 GRACE. 
 
 " Feed me with feed convenient for me, lest I be full and deny thee, 
 and say, who is the Lord?" — Proverbs, xxx. 8-9. 
 
 A MOST fit subject of prayer ! And if the feeding 
 of an adult person, such as Agur, has a connection so 
 intimate with his religious life and character, how 
 much more the feeding and the physical nurture of a 
 child. I use the text, therefore, to introduce, for our 
 present consideration, as a kind of first point, the food 
 or feeding of children, and their physical treatment 
 generally. 
 
 It will not be incredible to any thoughtful person, 
 least of all to any genuinely philosophic person, that 
 the treatment and fare of the body has much to do with 
 the quality of the soul, or mind — its affinities, passions, 
 aspirations, tempers ; its powers of thought and senti- 
 ment, its imaginations, its moral and religions develop- 
 ment. For the body is not only a house to the mind 
 as other houses are, which we may live in for a time 
 with no perceptible effect on our character, but it is a 
 house in the sense of being the mind's own organ ; its 
 external life itself, the medium of all its action, the in- 
 strument of its thought and feeling, the inlet also 
 
272 PHYSICAL NURTURE 
 
 of all its knowledges and impressions, and the instiga- 
 tor, by a thousand reactions, of all sucli spiritual riot 
 and corruption as have had their leaven brewed in as 
 many physical abuses and disorders. So intimate is 
 this connection of mind and body, so very close to real 
 oneness are they, that no one can, by any possibility, 
 be a Christian in his mind, and not be in some sense a 
 Christian in his body. If his soul is to be a temple of 
 the Holy Ghost, then his body must be. If his soul is 
 under government, then his body will be. And if his 
 body is not under government, then his soul, by no 
 possibility, can be ; save that, in every such case, it 
 will and must be under the government of the body ; 
 subject to its power, swayed by all its excesses and 
 distempers. 
 
 Hence that most determined, almost proud, resolve 
 of the apostle, when he declares — "I will not be 
 brought under the power of any." Under the body ? 
 ISTo ! he will scorn that low kind of thraldom. Meats, 
 drinks, appetites — none of these shall have the mastery 
 in him. He will assert the supreme right of the soul 
 or person, above the house it lives in ; so God's pre- 
 eminent right in the soul. He will say to the body — 
 "stay thou down there" — as they that fast do, in fast- 
 ing ; and, what is more profoundly, more scientifically 
 rational than fasting, when it is practiced in the real 
 insight of its reasons? It is the soul rising up, in 
 God's name, to assert herself over the body ; over its 
 appetites, passions, tempers, and, if possible, distempers. 
 And how often the poor, coarse, stupid, sensual, fast- 
 
TO BE A MEANS OF GRACE. 273 
 
 bound slaves of the body, calling tbemselves disciples, 
 need this kind of war, and a regular campaign of it, to get 
 their souls uppermost and trim themselves for the race. 
 
 One must be a very inobservant person, not to have 
 noticed, that all his finest and most God-ward aspira- 
 tions are smothered under any load of excess, or over- 
 indulgence. It is as if the body were calling down all 
 the other powers, even those of poetry, magnanimity, 
 and religion, to help it do the scarcely possible work 
 of digestion. At that point they gather. The sense of 
 beauty is there, and the soul's angel of hope, and the 
 testimony of God's peace, and the music of devotion, 
 and the thrill of sermons, dosing, all together, and sough- 
 ing in dull dreams round the cargo of poppies in the 
 hold of the body. To raise any fresh sentiment is now 
 impossible. Even prayer itself is mired, and can not 
 struggle out. The news of some best friend's death 
 can only be answered by dry interjections, and forced 
 postures of grief, that will not find their meaning till 
 to-morrow. 
 
 And much the same thing holds true, only under a 
 different form, when the body is prematurely diseased 
 and broken, by the excesses of self-indulgence. Its 
 distempers will distemper the higher nature ; its pains 
 prick through into the sensibilities, even of the spiritual 
 nature. Out of the pits of the body, dark clouds will 
 steam up into the chambers of the soul, and all the 
 devils of dyspepsia will be hovering in them, to scare 
 away its peace, and choke the godlike possibilities, out 
 of which its better motions should be springing. 
 
274 PHYSICAL NURTURE 
 
 So important a thing, for tlie religious life of the 
 soul, is tlie feeding of the body. Vast multitudes of 
 disciples have no conception of the fact. Living in 
 a swine's body, regularly over -loaded and oppressed 
 every day of their lives, they wonder that so great dif- 
 ficulties and discouragements rise up to hinder the 
 Christian clearness of their soul. Could they but look 
 into Agur's prayer, and take the meaning — feed me 
 with food convenient for me, lest I be full, and deny 
 thee, and say, who is the Lord ? — they would find a 
 real gospel in it. And making it truly their own, 
 they would dismiss, at once, whole armies of doubts ; 
 their faith would get wings to rise ; they would rest 
 their soul in an element of power, and peace, and sweet- 
 ness, and would run the way of God's commandments 
 with a wonderful clearness and liberty. 
 
 I have spoken, thus briefly, to a fact of adult expe- 
 rience, because it is adult conviction which my subject 
 needs to obtain. To simply look on children from 
 without, and tell what effects will be wrought on their 
 religious tempers and habit by their feeding, and the 
 general nurture of their body, will not carry any depth 
 of conviction by itself; for there is no creature of Grod 
 less adequately understood, or conceived, than a child. 
 And therefore it is that I appeal to parents, in this 
 manner, requiring them to make some observation of 
 themselves ; to notice what becomes of them, and their 
 sentiments, and senses of Christ and of God, when they 
 are down under the burdens of an overloaded, or per- 
 manently diseased body. 
 
TO BE A MEANS OF GRACE. 275 
 
 The principle I am liere asserting, as regards the re- 
 ligious import of feeding and bodily nurture, in the case 
 of children, is the same on which the child Daniel and 
 his friends acted, in the choice of their very simple and 
 temperate diet. Whether Daniel had been brought up 
 from his infancy in this manner does not appear. He 
 may have been prompted to this choice, by a purely 
 divine impulse. But whether he came into it by one 
 method or the other, makes little difference; for, in 
 either case, the most important matter is to observe the 
 result, and that such kind of feeding was chosen, or in- 
 stituted, for the sake of the result that would follow, 
 on perfectly natural principles, viz: to give greater 
 clearness to the religious perceptions and sentiments of 
 the soul. The body grew toward perfect health, be- 
 cause it was burdened and distempered by no excesses. 
 And the soul was just as much more open to God and 
 the sense of unseen things, as the body was more 
 serenely and blissfully well, in its physical condition. 
 In this manner the child's nature grew apace, in the 
 molds of a perfectly evened judgment, and was also 
 wonderfully opened to God and all highest discoveries 
 of his will. In a certain sense, he became a great 
 prophet by his physical nurture — "God gave him knowl- 
 edge, thus, and skill, in all learning and wisdom, and 
 he had understanding in all visions and dreams." His 
 feeding stood with his health, and with all purest affin- 
 ities and deepest openings toward God. 
 
 Let us glance a moment, now, at some of the points 
 
276 PHYSICAL NURTURE 
 
 here involved, and distinguish, if we can, the results 
 that are always depending on the right feeding of 
 children. 
 
 The child is taken, when his training begins, in a 
 state of naturalness, as respects all the bodily tastes and 
 tempers, and the endeavor should be to keep him in 
 that key ; to let no stimulation of excess, or delicacy, 
 disturb the simplicity of nature, and no sensual pleas- 
 uring, in the name of food, become a want or expecta- 
 tion of his appetite. Any artificial appetite begun, is 
 the beginning of distemper, disease, and a general dis- 
 turbance of natural proportion. Intemperance! the 
 woes of intemperate drink ! how dismal the story, when 
 it is told ; how dreadful the picture, when we look 
 upon it. From what do the father and mother recoil, 
 with a greater and more total horror of feeling, than 
 the possibility that their child is to be a drunkard? 
 Little do they remember that he can be, even before he 
 has so much as tasted the cup; and that they them- 
 selves can make him so, virtually, without meaning it, 
 even before he has gotten his language ! Nine-tenths 
 of the intemperate drinking begins, not in grief and 
 destitution, as we so often hear, but in vicious feeding. 
 Here the scale of order and simplicity is first broken, 
 and then what shall a distempered or distemperate life 
 run to, more certainly, than to what is intemperate? 
 False feeding genders false appetite, and when the soul 
 is burning, all through, in the fires of false appetite, 
 what is that but a universal uneasiness ? and what will 
 this uneasiness more naturally do, than betake itself to 
 
TO BE A MEANS OF GRACE. 277 
 
 the pleasurable excitement of drink ? What is wanted 
 is a sensation — the soul is aching for a sensation ; for 
 it is one of the miseries of food that the tasting pleas- 
 ure is soon over and the cloj'^ed body turns away in dis- 
 gust ; one of the excellencies of drink, that the sensa- 
 tion is a long one, and may be easily drawn out so as 
 to cover whole hours of duration. Food, sleep, friends, 
 the self-enjoyment of character — what an excellent and 
 easy substitute it is for them all ! Thus, for example, 
 when a very young child, taken by the captivating 
 flavor of some dainty or confectionery, has refused 
 to restrain itself, and has kept on, as by a kind of spell, 
 repeating the sensation again and again, till the organs, 
 dried and cloyed by excess, refuse to give it longer, 
 you will see that a wonderful uneasiness follows, ask- 
 ing what sensation next ? and really there is nothing 
 that can till the vacant space, or quiet the uneasiness. 
 One toy or another will be seized and thrown into the 
 fire. The plays that before satisfied look insipid and 
 do not please. The world goes ill because there is 
 nothing good enough in it, and a general cry finishes 
 the overdone pleasure of the day. And here you have 
 in small, as in a single view, just that misery of distem- 
 per and uneasiness which is wrought, by the bad feed- 
 ing of childhood, and prepares the vice of intemper- 
 ance, even before it appears. 
 
 It is only a larger and more comprehensive mischief 
 of the wrong feeding of children, that it puts them 
 under the body, teaches them to value bodily sensa- 
 tions, makes them sensual every way, and sets them 
 
278 PHYSICAL NURTURE 
 
 lusting in every kind of excess. The vice of impurity 
 is taught, how commonly, thus, at the mother's table. 
 The finer sentiments and wits of children are smoth- 
 ered also and deadened, by this same anim^alizing pro- 
 cess. They make a dull figure at school. Their feel- 
 ing is coarse, their conscience weak, their passions low 
 and violent. Their higher af&nities, those which ally 
 them to God and character and unseen worlds, appear 
 to be closed up, and the lines of their faces, particu- 
 larly about the mouth, give a low sensual expression, 
 even when the upper-head is large and full. A certain 
 degree of selfishness is likely to be somehow developed 
 in children, for sin of every kind is selfish, but the 
 lowest, meanest, and most utterly degraded type of 
 selfishness, is the sensual ; that which centers in the 
 body, and makes every thing bend to bodily sensation. 
 And yet the early feeding and growth of children 
 tends, how often, to just this and nothing higher. Say- 
 ing nothing of genius and great action, impossible to 
 be developed in this manner out of the finest possible 
 organization, what hope is there under such abuse of 
 nature, that religion will there begin to loosen her 
 noble aspirations, and claim her sonship with God? 
 What place can the love of God find open, in a soul 
 that is shut up under the bruitishness of sensuality ? 
 What sensibility is left for Christ and God, when the 
 body has become the total manhood ? 
 
 And exactly this it will most certainly be, if first it 
 becomes the total childhood. We have a way of say- 
 ing, continually, that children are creatures of the 
 
TO BE A MEANS OF GRACE 279 
 
 senses, and we please ourselves in making allowances 
 for them in this manner, and raising expectations of 
 them that suppose the likelihood of their, by-and-bye, 
 coming out of their senses, into the higher ranges of 
 thought and spiritual impulse. But we do not remem- 
 ber, always, the immense distinction between being in 
 the senses and being in the sensualities ; between going- 
 after the eyes, and going after the stomach ; between the 
 almost divine curiosity of intelligence, exploring all 
 objects, sounds, and colors, to get in the stock of its 
 mental furniture, and the totally incurious hankering of 
 appetite, for some finer, freer indulgence of the animal 
 sensation. Little hope is there of a child, who is in the 
 senses, after this latter fashion. This he will quite sel- 
 dom or never outgrow ; on the contrary, it will over- 
 grow him, and subjugate all nobler impulse in him, by 
 a kind of natural law ; even as disease propagates more 
 disease and not health. In this manner, a child can be 
 fairly put under the body for life, by the time he is five 
 years old. And just this, I verily believe, is often true. 
 Kindness, it may be, has done it, but it is that kindness 
 which is better called cruelty. Coarseness of feeling, 
 lowness of impulse, gluttony, dissipation, drunkenness, 
 adultery — all foul passions that kennel in a sensual 
 soul, it has cherished as a foster-mother ; not once imag- 
 ining the fact, in the indiscreet feeding of the hapless 
 creature trusted to its care. 
 
 This, too, will be rendered yet more probable by 
 reviewing, briefly, some of the methods by which a 
 
280 PHYSICAL NUKTURE 
 
 more judicious, and more properly Christian feeding 
 will conduce toward a different and happier result. 
 
 First of all, it will not be a permitted practice, to 
 quiet the child in states of irritation, or stop it in cry- 
 ing, or pacify it in fits of ill-nature, by dainties that 
 please the taste. What is this but a schooling and 
 drawing out of sensation, by making it the reward of 
 just that which is most totally opposite to self-govern- 
 ment ? It must be a very dull child that will not cry 
 and fret a great deal, when it is so pleasantly rewarded. 
 Trained, in this manner, to play ill-nature for sensation's 
 sake, it will go on rapidly, in the course of double attain- 
 ment, and will be very soon perfected, in the double 
 character of an ill-natured, morbid, sensualist, and a 
 feigning cheat beside. By what method, or means, 
 can the great themes of God and religion get hold of a 
 soul, that has learned to be governed only by rewards 
 of sensation, paid to affectations of grief and deliberate 
 actings of ill-nature? 
 
 Simplicity also, as opposed to luxuries, condiments, 
 and confections, is a condition of all right feeding for 
 infancy and childhood, which ought to approve itself 
 to the most ordinary measure of parental discretion. 
 Of course I do not mean to say that the child is 
 never to have his holiday feast — that would be 
 to cut him off from another kind of benefit — I only 
 insist that he is not to have a perpetual holiday, 
 and be stimulated by continual flavors on his or- 
 gans, till the beautiful simplicity of his appetite is 
 gone and nothing pleases longer, but that which is in- 
 
TO BE A MEANS OF GRACE. 281 
 
 tense enough to be rather poison than food. Coffee, for 
 example — what can be worse for a child's body, or his 
 future character, than to be dosed every morning with 
 his cup of coffee ? No matter if he cries for it, all the 
 worse if he does ; for it shows that he has been already 
 taught to love it, and is so far taken away, prematurely, 
 from the natural simplicity of his tastes. And how is 
 the child going to be drawn by the beauty of God, and 
 the sacred pleasures of God's friendship, when thinking 
 always of the dainties he has had, or is again to have, 
 and counting it always the main blessing of existence, 
 to have his body seasoned by the flavors of sensation ? 
 Instead of praying, as possibly he may be taught, in 
 words — "Feed me with food convenient for me" — he 
 prays, in fact, from morning to night, with all diseased 
 longings and hankerings, to be fed, in the exact contrary, 
 with what will most increase his already overgrown 
 sensuality. In a manner faithfully characteristic of his 
 low, prudential morality, Paley advises that all chil- 
 dren and young person should live simply, because they 
 are now susceptible enough to relish simple things ; in 
 order that, as their tastes grow duller with advancing 
 age, they may allow themselves a freer indulgence in 
 the stimulations of appetite, and may so maintain the 
 feeding pleasures to the last. Counsel not to be ques- 
 tioned, even if these pleasures were the chief end of life 
 itself. We are only disappointed and vexed by the 
 lowness of it, when we recall, what is the real and true 
 penalty of youthful indulgence, that it takes away the 
 possible relish of truth, duty, and religion, and makes 
 
 24* 
 
282 PHYSICAL NUETUEE 
 
 the soul forever inaccessible to these noblest powers of 
 character and blessedness. 
 
 In a wise, physical nurture, it is a matter of great 
 import also to regulate the times of feeding. For this 
 induces the sense of order, which is closely allied to a 
 habit of self-government. If the nursing child is simply 
 stuffed to its last limit, at any and all hours, then it is 
 put in the way, not of intelligent feeding, which is in- 
 terspaced by rest, but of always being filled to its limit. 
 The feeding must, of course, be as much more frequent 
 in infancy as the demands of a more rapid consumption 
 require, but there should be times, and a degree of order 
 established, as soon as possible ; otherwise the stuf&ng 
 method will go on into childhood, and boyhood, and by 
 that time the bodily habit is in total disorder, carrying 
 the tempers and general character with it. The break- 
 fast before breakfast, and the dinner before dinner, and 
 the casual snatching and feeding at all hours between, 
 bring the child to the table with a scowl upon his face, 
 and a nervous, morbid look of disgust, which declare^ 
 as plainly as possible, that there is nothing good enough 
 prepared for him ; and, quite as plainly, that he is a 
 poor, misgoverned and spoiled child. He is overtaken 
 by all the woes of sensuality, and yet has gotten almost 
 none of its pleasures ; for he is always kept, by his 
 irregular, ungoverned feeding, so close up to the line of 
 possible appetite, that peevishness and ill-nature are the 
 spice of all his sensations, and his body and soul are about 
 equally distempered by the morbid irritations and dys- 
 peptic woes that have come upon them. What a prep- 
 
TO BE A MEANS OF GKACE. 288 
 
 aration is this for the calm, sweet, thouglitful. motives 
 of religion, and the gentle whispers of God's truth in 
 the heart ! 
 
 It should also be understood in the religious training 
 of children, how great mischiefs are likely to follow, 
 when much is made of the pleasures of the table. If 
 the feeding is the great circumstance of the house and 
 the day, if the discourse turns always on the peculiar 
 relish of this, or the wonderful delicacy of that, and the 
 main stress of life in general on the bliss of good living, 
 it will not much avail, that the parents have a certain 
 wish to see their children grow up in religion. A 
 stranger falling into such a family, will be amazed to 
 find how pervasive and spirit-like this most unetherial, 
 undiffusive kind of bliss may be. The smack of appe- 
 tite will seem to be in the atmosphere of the house. It 
 will be as if the gastric nerve of the family were be- 
 come the whole brain. A certain coarseness of feeling 
 and character will appear in every thing. The grain 
 will be coarse, both of body and soul ; and the general 
 expression of manners, faces, and voices, will be such 
 as indicates a reduction of grade, in all the finer im- 
 pulses of society, intelligence, and duty. The family 
 affections themselves will seem to have fallen back, to 
 make room for the valued bliss of the appetites. Ko 
 matter how much of prayer and regular church-going 
 there may be in such a family, the child brought up in 
 it has a most sad fortune to bear, in the savoring habit 
 to which it trains him. Kor is it only in some high 
 conditioned family, where wealth is steeping itself in 
 
284 PHYSICAL NUKTURE 
 
 luxury, that this kind of woe is put upon children. It 
 quite as often begins at the coarse, low table of the sen- 
 sually minded poor. These are even most likely of all 
 to live, and teach their children to live, for what they 
 may eat. The humble Christian mother, it may be, 
 having no luxuries of dress and show to give her chil- 
 dren, makes it a great point to have them enjoy the 
 feeding of their bodies ; and so, instead of fining them 
 to a nobler pleasure in the virtues of frugality, order, 
 gentle society, and good action, she graduates them into 
 just that coarsest sensuality which is the bane of all 
 character, for this life and the next. 
 
 It is a much greater point, in this connection, than is 
 commonly supposed, that children should be trained, to 
 good manners in their eating. Good manners are a 
 kind of self-government which operates continually to 
 keep the body under, and hold the sensualizing ten- 
 dency of food in check. Animals have no manners, 
 and the higher gift of manners is allowed to man, to 
 keep him from the coarseness and lowness to which his 
 animal nature would otherwise run. In this view, good 
 manners are even a sort of first-stage religion, for the 
 reduction of the body. If the child is practiced care- 
 fully, at his food, in deferring to superiors and seniors ; 
 in the restraint of haste, or greediness ; in the proprie- 
 ties of positions, and the handsome uses of tools ; in 
 the limitation of his feeding by his wants, and a good- 
 natured submission to restriction when restriction is 
 needed for his good ; he will not grow sensual in that 
 manner, but his mind will be all the while getting sov- 
 
TO BE A MEANS OF GRACE. 285 
 
 ereignty over the body. Good breeding and civility are, 
 in this view, indispensable. The Christian training of chil- 
 dren, without any care of their manners in these respects, 
 is only the training, in fact, of barbarians and savages, 
 in the houses of such as call themselves Christian people. 
 There is great importance also, for a similar reason, 
 in the observance of a Christian blessing, or giving of 
 thanks at the table. The mere form, taken only as a con- 
 stantly recurring acknowledgment of God and the obliga- 
 tions of gratitude, laid on the family by his goodness, is a 
 matter of inestimable value. The bare recollection of a 
 higher nature and the higher meaning of life, coupled uni- 
 formly thus with the order of the table, qualifies the lower 
 sensations, and raises them to a kind of spiritual dignity. 
 It is even a pitiful figure, in this view, which the great 
 Franklin makes, when, with so little show of philoso- 
 phy, saying nothing of Christian reverence, he recites, 
 in a manner of evident pleasure, the wit of his boy- 
 hood : asking his father, at the packing of his barrel of 
 meat, why he did not say grace over the whole barrel 
 at once, and save the necessity of so many repetitions ? 
 These repetitions are the very things most wanted. 
 They compose the liturgy of the table, and have their 
 value, not in the quantities of meat they season, but in 
 the seasoning of the partakers themselves, by so many 
 reiterations of their, at least, formal homage and grati- 
 tude. At the same time there should be much care 
 taken to make these blessings of the table more than a 
 form ; to connect a real and felt meaning with them, 
 and make them the expression of a living and true 
 
286 PHYSICAL NURTURE 
 
 gratitude in all present. Children can be so trained, in 
 this matter, as even to miss the flavor of their meat, 
 when no blessing is upon it. What then can be ex- 
 pected, in a Christian family, when the children are put 
 to their food with no such recognition of God, and 
 have their faces turned downward always upon it, even 
 as if they were animals ? Doubtless the blessing may, 
 too often, be a mere form, but it is a form which, apart 
 from any conscious glow of sentiment, no Christian 
 family can afford to lose. 
 
 Much also may be done for children, by associating 
 subjects, and sentiments, and plans of practical charity, 
 with the blessings and pleasures of the table. To do 
 this requires no very ingenious methods, or deeply 
 studied plans. It will be done almost, of course, if the 
 parents themselves are, at all, given to such things; 
 for, in such a case, they can hardly fail to speak of the 
 children of the poor, and the bitter pains and pinings 
 of their unsatisfied hunger. If the appetites of chil- 
 dren are eager and easily turned to a habit of sensu- 
 ality, their sympathies also are quick, and their compas- 
 sions wonderfully tender. Let these last be called into 
 play, and kept in play, as they may be always by a 
 few simple words of charity, and proposed acts of 
 bounty to the children of want, and the former, the 
 appetites, will become incentives even habitually, to 
 what is noblest in feeling and remotest from a properly 
 sensual character. The body itself becomes the inter- 
 preter, in such a case, of want, and offers itself duti- 
 fully to mercy, to be used as its organ. 
 
TO BE A MEANS OF GRACE. 287 
 
 Such, are a few of the suggestions that require to be 
 noted and observed, in the right feeding of children. 
 Others will occur to you daily, as your work goes on, 
 if only you are really awake to the transcendent im- 
 portance of the subject. Let it never be assumed, for 
 one moment, that you are now doing nothing and can 
 be doing nothing for your children, because you are 
 only feeding their bodies. A very considerable part of 
 your parental charge lies just here ; in giving your chil- 
 dren such a nurture in the body, as makes them superior 
 to the body ; subordinates the passions, and evens the tem- 
 pers of the body ; prepares them to a state of robust and 
 massive healthiness; gives them clearer heads, and nobler 
 sentiments of truth ; preparing them, in that manner, to 
 be good scholars, to have their affectional nature opened 
 wide by a general love, to have their perceptive feeling 
 quickened to all highest forms of beauty and good, 
 and so to have them ready, more and more ready, for a 
 state of eternally unsealed affinity with God. There is 
 not any thing, in the highest ranges of their spiritual 
 and religious nature, that will not be somehow affected, 
 and powerfully too, by the feeding of their bodies. 
 Even their conscience itself, which is God's own organ 
 or throne, so to speak, in their nature — the most self- 
 asserting and, as we should say, most indestructible 
 of all their powers — can be made to ring out clear and 
 true, like a bell in the night, or it can be stifled and 
 choked, so as scarcely to be audible — all by the mere 
 feeding of the body. So there is a feeding that makes 
 a manly life, and a feeding that makes a mean, weak, 
 
288 PHYSICAL NURTURE 
 
 ignoble life. So there is a feeding wliicli makes room 
 for God, and a feeding that leaves him no vacant space 
 or chamber to fill. The question here is not, exactly, 
 what converting power is exerted or not exerted, what 
 Christian truth impressed or not impressed, but it is 
 what kind of metal, in fact, the future man is to be 
 made of; for all that is entered, thus early, into the 
 feeding habit of the body, is about as really composite 
 and substantial as that which is prepared in the inborn 
 properties of nature itself. This feeding nurture, if we 
 take the real sense of it, is to grow in good or bad 
 affinities and possibilities ; to grow a body under the 
 soul, or over it ; to form a good or bad staple, in the 
 substance of the man, which is going to remain un- 
 changed, by all his future changes and transformations, 
 about as certainly as his face, or gait, and in much the 
 same degree. 
 
 To complete this view of the bodily nurture and 
 keeping, something ought also to be said of personal 
 neatness, and also of dress, in both of which the bodilv 
 habit is concerned, though in a more external and less 
 decisive way. 
 
 As regards the matter of personal neatness, I will 
 only suggest the very close relationship of association 
 between it, as a habit, and the spiritual habit of the 
 soul in religion. In this holy endeavor of grace, or 
 religion, the soul aspires to be clean. Conscious of 
 great defilement in sin, it hears a call to come and be 
 made white, even as the snow. It begins with the 
 
TO BE A MEANS OF GRACE. 289 
 
 prayer — " Create in me a clean heart, God," and the 
 loDging after purity, and a clean consciousness before 
 Him, draws it on. To be washed, purified, made 
 clean — under these, and such like terms of aspiration, 
 it is exercised, in all the keeping of the life, that it 
 may incur no spot or stain, and be elBfectually purged 
 from all most subtle defilements. In this view, bodily 
 neatness, or the cleanly keeping of the person, is a kind 
 of outward religion going before, preparing tastes, 
 images, sensibilities, habits that make the soul more 
 akin to religion, readier to feel the obligation, and 
 labor in the purifying endeavor. And, in this view, 
 the mother, the poor Christian mother, who has noth- 
 ing of this world's good, as we commonly speak, to put 
 upon her children, has yet one of the best goods of all, 
 which she may, without fail, bestow, viz: a cleanly 
 habit. She gives them a great mark of honor, and sets 
 them in a way of great hope and preferment, as regards 
 all highest character, when she trains them to a felt 
 necessity of neatness and order. On the other hand, 
 if she allows them to grow up in a filthy and loose 
 habit, crowding all bounty upon them, and breathing 
 out- her soul beside, in prayer and fasting on their ac- 
 count, it will be wonderful if they have much sensi- 
 bility to the defilements of the soul, or come to God in 
 any determinate longings after purity. Nay, it will be 
 wonderful if the dirt upon their persons and clothing 
 is not found upon their conscience also, and if they do 
 not go on to live the disorder in their souls, which has 
 been the untidy element of their bodies. 
 I 25 
 
290 PHYSICAL NUBTURE 
 
 There is also this very peculiar excellence in neat- 
 ness, that it is not ambitious, not for show, but more for 
 what it is in itself — an honest kind of benefit, or good, 
 that brings along no bad or false motive with it. 
 Hence there is no temptation in the practice. Honor 
 and ornament and grace of poverty, as it often is, it is 
 only the more truly such, that it simply fulfills and per- 
 petuates a fixed necessity, looking after no reward, save 
 what it is to itself. Formed to such a habit, and 
 scarcely conscious of it, the children grow into a kind 
 of pure simplicity in good, which is itself one of the 
 finest symbols and surest outward preparations of the 
 religious life and character. 
 
 The subject of dress, taken as related to religious 
 character in youth, is one of transcendent importance, 
 but as I am treating mostly of what is to be done for 
 children, in the few first years of their training, I shall 
 dismiss the subject with only a few suggestions, such as 
 my particular purpose appears to require. 
 
 There is this very singular and striking contrast be- 
 tween animals and men, that they are born dressed, 
 and these to be dressed ; while yet the fact of a dress 
 is equally necessary to both. The object of the dis- 
 tinction appears to be, to allow, in the latter case, a 
 certain liberty of form and appearance, even as there is 
 given a grand central liberty of life and character 
 within. It allows us to choose what shall be added to 
 finish out our form, or appearing ; and it is a singular 
 fact, in this connection, that we always take our dress 
 to be, in some sense, ourselves ; just as if it grew out 
 
TO BE A MEANS OF GEACE. 291 
 
 of our bodily substance ; so that we feel ourselves or- 
 dinarily limited and hampered, in behavior and man- 
 ners, in thought and feeling, and fancy, by the dress we 
 have on. The consciousness of being badly, or half 
 absurdly dressed, makes us awkward. We can not sit 
 down to write in a sordid and tattered dress — thought 
 can not sufficiently respect itself, the feeling nature and 
 the taste and the fancy can not be in trim in such a 
 guise. As a king would not like to appear in the 
 dress of a convict, so they ask a dress that more respects 
 their quality. There is a fearfully powerful reaction, 
 thus, in dress, upon what is inmost and deepest in char- 
 acter. And so much is there in this fact, that every 
 Christian parent should be fully alive to it, even from 
 the first ; understanding that the child is going to en- 
 large his consciousness, so as, in a sense, to take in his 
 dress and be configured to it — inverting the common 
 order of speech on the subject, when we talk of cut- 
 ting the dress to the child ; for it is equally true, in a 
 different sense, that the child will be cut to his dress. 
 
 Hence the dreadful mischief done to a child, by what 
 may be called the dolling of it ; that is, by dressing, 
 or over-dressing it, just to please, or amuse, or, what is 
 really more true, to tickle a certain weak and foolish 
 pride in the parents. What meantime has become of 
 that most tender and godly concern, which belongs to 
 the Christian charge put upon them, in the gift of this 
 same child ? It takes whole months, how often, to get 
 the child's looks and dress into such trim that it can be 
 offered by them for baptism, making the desired im- 
 
292 PHYSICAL NURTURE 
 
 pression ; in whicli it turns out that tlie chief object, 
 to them, of baptism, is the exhibition of the doll thej 
 have been dressing ; not to get the seal and sacrament 
 of God's mercj upon it, as a creature in the heritage 
 of their own corrupted life. 
 
 And then, afterwards, the dressing goes on still, in 
 faithful keeping with its sad beginning. In a few days 
 this same child appears, m^arching the streets, in the 
 figure of a little gentleman with a cane ; or if it be a 
 daughter, hung with necklaces and chains, and set off 
 with as much of finery as can well be supported — visi- 
 bly conscious, in either case, of the fine show being 
 made ; even as the foolish parents, it might fitly despise, 
 were just now admiring their doll at home, and prais- 
 ing to itself the pretty figure it made ! 
 
 Is this now the dress of a Christian child ? is this 
 such a dress as a properly Christian nurture prescribes ? 
 What is this child training for, but simply to be a fop, 
 or fashionist, or fool ? This taste for show, and finery, 
 and flattery — what is it but the beginning of all irrelig- 
 ion ? and what will the after life be, but the continu- 
 ance of this beginning ? 
 
 Just contrary to this, whoever will bring up a child 
 for God, must put him, at the very first, into God's 
 modes and measures. The real question of dress, is 
 what shall be put upon this child, to make it feel 
 most like a Christian — what will give him the finest 
 feeling with the least of show and vanity ? "What will 
 leave him in a state most natural, and simple, and far- 
 thest from affectation ? What will be most like to the 
 
TO BE A MEANS OF GRACE. 293 
 
 putting on of Clirist himself, his righteousness, beauty, 
 truth, meekness, and dignity? Dress your child for 
 Christ, if you will have him a Christian ; bring every 
 thing, in the training, even of his body, to this one 
 final aim, and it will be strange, if the Christian body 
 you give him does not contain a Christian soul. 
 
 25* 
 
IV. 
 
 THE TREATMENT THAT DISCOURAGES PIETY. 
 
 " Fathers provoke not your children to anger, lest they be discouraged." 
 — Colossians, iii. 21. 
 
 DiscouKAGED, the apostle means, in good ; that is, in 
 worthy purposes and pious endeavors. Nothing will 
 more certainly put a child in a discouraged feeling, than 
 to be angered by a parent's ill-nature and abuse. The 
 anger is, most certainly, far enough from being itself a 
 state of discouragement ; but anger is a passion that can 
 not hold long and the after state into which it subsides, 
 in the case of inferiors and dependants, is commonly a 
 giving up to the bad, a passionless and low desperation, 
 that is equivalent to a general surrender 6f all high 
 aims and aspirations. 
 
 In this view, it would not be altogether amiss, and 
 certainly no improper use of the apostle's words, if I 
 were to offer under them a lecture to parents, on the 
 provoking ways of treatment and government. But I 
 have chosen them for a different purpose, and one that 
 is more inclusive, viz : to introduce and give sanction 
 to a discourse on — 
 
 The discouragement of piety in children ; the ivays in 
 which it is discouraged^ and the great care necessary to avoid 
 a mistake so injurious. , 
 
, THE TREATMENT. 295 
 
 I speak here, of course, to pareiits wlio really desire 
 tlie spiritual welfare of their children. Nothing is far- 
 ther off from their design, than to push their children 
 away from Christ into a state of alienated and discour- 
 aged feeling. And yet they do it, very often, by faults 
 of management not suspected, and never afterwards dis- 
 covered ; unless, possibly, after the injury is done, when 
 it can no longer be repaired. 
 
 It becomes, in this view, a very serious and prac- 
 tically important question, how, or by what methods, 
 Christian parents, unawares to themselves and contrary 
 to their really good intentions, discourage piety in their 
 children? Let us see if we can partially answer the 
 question. 
 
 We begin, then, where the apostle begins with his 
 remonstrance. His language is particularly addressed 
 to fathers ; for he seems to have in view the case of 
 children, who are in the more advanced stages of child- 
 hood, or in what we call the period of youth. And 
 yet the language is equally applicable to the case of 
 mothers and very little children. It might not be 
 wholly amiss for a half-grown lad, or youth, who has 
 violated his father's feelings, by some really base act of 
 crime, or disobedience, to see, by the smoke of his indig- 
 nant passion, how deeply his right sensibility is revolted. 
 That will never discourage him in any thing good. 
 It might even rouse his moral nature, when nothing 
 less violent would suffice. The father will really dis- 
 courage good in his son, only when he stings him with 
 a sense of injustice, and keeps him in a wounded feel- 
 
296 THE TREATMENT 
 
 ing, bj his own ungoverned, groundless passion. But' 
 in the case of the mother, deahng with her very young 
 child, there is no place even for so much as a feeling of 
 impatience. Ko crisis occurs that she has any right to 
 carry by a storm. And yet there are many mothers 
 who breed a climate of storms for their children to grow 
 up in, even from the first. They make an element of 
 pettishness and passion, and call it Christian nurture to 
 maintain a kind of quarrel with their children, from 
 infancy upward. We do not commonly conceive that 
 the children are discouraged, thus, in the matter of 
 piety ; but the real fact is, that their better, higher nature, 
 quite worn down by such treatment, sinks at last into 
 a kind of atrophy, which is the essence of all discour- 
 agement. By the time they are passed through this 
 first chapter of torment, their faces even have begun 
 to take on a forlorn expression, as if their well-abused 
 feeling had been quite choked off from every thing 
 hopeful or good. Nothing is more beautiful than the 
 God- ward affinities, and glad impulses to good, in a 
 childish soul ; but when it has once been kiln-dried in 
 this hot furnace of motherly or fatherly passion, there 
 is no more any putting forth after the divine. A kind 
 of indifference, or sullen prejudice, sets off the heart 
 from God, and the gentle affinities close up under the 
 stupor of so great early abuse and discouragement. 
 
 Children are also discouraged and hardened to good 
 by too much of prohibition. There is a monotony of 
 continuous, ever sounding, prohibition, which is really 
 awful. It does not stop with ten commandments, like 
 
THAT DISCOUKAGES PIETY. 297 
 
 the word of Sinai, but it keeps the thunder up, from 
 day to day, saying always thou shalt not do this, nor 
 this, nor this, till, in fact, there is really nothing left to 
 be done. The whole enjoyment, use, benefit, of life is 
 quite used up by the prohibitions. The child lives 
 under a tilt-hammer of commandment, beaten to the 
 ground as fast as he attempts to rise. All command- 
 ments, of course, in such a strain of injunction, come to 
 sound very much alike, and one appears to be about as 
 important as another. And the result is that, as they 
 are all in the same emphasis, and are all equally annoy- 
 ing, the child learns to hate them all alike, and puts 
 them all away. He could not think of heartily accept- 
 ing them aJl^ and it would even be a kind of irrever- 
 ence to make a selection. Nothing so fatally worries a 
 child, as this fault of over-commandment. The study 
 should be rather to forbid as few things as possible, and 
 then to soundly enforce what is forbidden. Such kind 
 of prohibitions the child will even like, and will be all 
 the happier, that he has something good to observe. 
 But nothing can be more impotent, in the way of au- 
 thority, than the din of a continual prohibition. Even 
 the commandments of God will, in such a case, be 
 robbed of all just authority, by the custom of a gen- 
 eral weariness and distaste ; in which all highest man- 
 dates are -leveled to equality with the pettiest and 
 most useless restraints. 
 
 Again, it is a great discouragement to piety in chil- 
 dren, when they are governed in a hard, unfeeling, way 
 or in a manner of force and overbearing absolutism. 
 
298 THE TREATMENT 
 
 Any thing wliicli puts tlie child aloof from the parent, 
 or takes away the confidence of love and sympathy, 
 will as certainly be a wall to shut him away from God. 
 If his Christian father is felt only as a tyrant, he will 
 seem to have a tyrant in Grod's name to bear ; and that 
 will be enough to create a sullen prejudice against all 
 sacred things. Nor is the case at all better when the 
 child is cowed under fear of such a parent, and reduced 
 to a feeling of dread or abject submission. There is a 
 beautiful courage in children as respects approach to 
 God, when God is not presented as a bugbear ; and this 
 natural state of courage, is just that which makes the 
 time of childhood so ingenuously open to religion. But 
 if their courage, even toward their father, is already 
 broken down into fear and servile submission, they will 
 only think of God with as much greater fear, and shrink 
 from all the claims of piety with a kind of abject recoil, 
 as from a thing forbidden. No gentleness even of 
 Christ will sufi&ce, in such a case, to win, or reassure the 
 broken courage of the soul. I recall a family in which 
 the father, known as a man of condition and of no 
 little repute for his Christian good works, brought up a 
 large family of boys to be ruled at a distance. He 
 addressed them in a kind of imperious, unfeeling way ; 
 not with any violence of manner, but with a stern faced 
 grin that seemed to say, "it is well that you fear me." 
 And fear him they most certainly did — ^fear was the 
 element in which they grew. And the result was that 
 having no self-respect, and living under a law of mere 
 suppression, they fell into base immoralities from their 
 
THAT DISCOUKAGES PIETY. 299 
 
 cliildliood, and were never afterwards known, even one 
 of them, to have so mucli as a tlionght of piety. 
 
 Another and even more common way of discouraging 
 children in matters of piety is by an over-exacting man- 
 ner, or by an extreme difficulty of being pleased. Chil- 
 dren love approbation, and are specially disappointed, 
 when they fail of it in their meritorious endeavors. Their 
 chagrin is nevermore complete, in fact, than when, having 
 set themselves to any purpose of well-doing, they are still 
 repulsed by a manner of fault-finding at the end, and 
 blamed on account of some trivial defect which they did 
 not know, and would really have tried to avoid. Some 
 parents appear to think it a matter of true faithfulness, 
 that they be not too easily pleased, lest their children 
 should take up loose impressions of the strictness of duty. 
 They do not consider how they would fare themselves, 
 if God were to make a point of treating them in the 
 same manner. His manner with them is exactly oppo- 
 site. He perceives that he will only repel them, by 
 making it a matter of difficulty to please him, and that 
 he could never draw them on, if he did not yield them 
 his smile under great faults and shortcomings, and did 
 not give them the testimony that they please him, when 
 they are a great way off from his own scale of perfec- 
 tion. In all which we may readily see how great dis- 
 couragement is put upon children, in all their good 
 attempts, when their parents will not allow themselves 
 to be pleased with any thing they do. Possibly they 
 are withheld by scruples of orthodoxy. If so, the mis- 
 chief is only the greater. What can win a child to the 
 
300 THE TKEATMENT 
 
 attempt to please God, wlien his parents dare not suJffer 
 so mucli as a thought of the possibihty in him, and, 
 for the same reason, dare not so much as approve him 
 themselves. Such kind of orthodoxy can not be too 
 soon forsaken, or too earnestly repented of. 
 
 Closely akin to this, is the fault of holding displeas- 
 ure too long, and yielding it with too great difficulty. 
 It is right that children, doing wrong, should encounter 
 some kind of treatment that indicates displeasure. But 
 the displeasure should not take the manner of a grudge, 
 and hold on after the wrong is visibly felt and re- 
 pented of. On the contrary, there should even be a 
 hastening toward the child, in glad recognitions and 
 cordial greetings, when the tokens only of relenting 
 begin to appear ; even as the prodigal's father is repre- 
 sented, in the parable, as discovering him, in his return, 
 when he is yet a great way off, and advancing to meet 
 and embrace him. By this tender figure God is shown 
 us, and the holy generosity of his fatherhood is repre- 
 sented. We see that he is only the more ready to be 
 pleased, because of his magnanimity; holding no re- 
 sentments, putting off the feeling of offense at the ear- 
 liest moment, and the cheapest possible rate. Nay, He 
 will even take our good by anticipation ; accepting us 
 for what we ask, before he can accept us for what we 
 are. Well is it for those parents who think it incum- 
 bent on them, to hold their displeasure till the culprit 
 is sufficiently scathed by it, if they do not hold it just 
 a little too long ; turning, thus, even his repentance into 
 a sullen aversion, and setting it in his feeling, that there 
 
THAT DISCOURAGES PIETY. 801 
 
 is the same heavy tariff of displeasure still to be paid, 
 when he would forsake his sins and turn himself to 
 God. When will it be learned that penance is no fit 
 beginning of piety ? 
 
 And here let me speak of the very great danger, 
 after a time of discipline, that the parent may hold his 
 displeasure too long; as he certainly will, if ttiere is 
 any ugly feeling, or wicked, natural resentment in him. 
 Thus Jean Paul beautifully says : — " A punishment is 
 scarcely of such importance to a child as the succeeding 
 quarter of an hour, and the transition to forgiveness. 
 After the storm, the seed finds the soil warm and soft- 
 ened ; the terror and hatred of the punishment are now 
 past, which before resisted and struggled against the 
 word, and gentle instruction finds its way, and brings 
 healing with it, as honey assuages the sting of bees, and 
 oil the pain of a wound. In this hour we can say 
 much, if we use the utmost gentleness of voice, and by 
 the manifestation of our own pain, soothe that of the 
 child. But every continuance of wintry anger is pois- 
 onous. Mothers easily fall into this prolongation of 
 punishment. This continuance of anger ; this would-be 
 punishment of pretending a diminution of love, either 
 fails to be comprehended by the child, because he is 
 wholly immersed in the present and so misses its effect, 
 or else he becomes satisfied with a deprivation of the 
 signs of love, and- learns to do without it; or else he 
 is embittered by the continuance of punishment for a 
 sin which he has already buried. Through this pro- 
 longation of harshness, we lose that beautiful and touch- 
 
302 THE TKEATMENT 
 
 ing transition into forgiveness, wliicli^ by coming slowly 
 and after a long period, only loses its power. "^ 
 
 Hasty and false accusations again are a great discour- 
 agement to piety in cliildren. Their good feeling, or 
 intention, appears to be rated low by their parents, when 
 they are put under the ban of dishonor, b}'' false and 
 groundless imputations; and they are very likely, as 
 the next thing, to show that they are no better than 
 they were taken to be. On this account, a wise parent 
 will be religiously careful of all volunteer and random 
 charges of blame, lest he may discourage fatally all 
 pious or ingenuous aspirations by them ; for to batter 
 self-respect, or insult the sense of character, thus gratuit- 
 ously, is the surest way possible to break every natural 
 charm of virtue and religion. The effect is scarcely 
 better where acknowledged faults are exaggerated, and 
 set off in colors of derision. It will do for a parent to 
 be just, severely just ; for, by that means, he will best 
 impress the sacred severity of principle. God is just in 
 all his charges and reproofs ; but there is no manner of 
 excess or spirit of exaggeration in them. And exactly 
 this it is which makes his kindness so beautiful, so in- 
 spiring to our courage, so attractive to our love. But 
 harsh justice, exaggerated justice, is injustice. When a 
 child, therefore, is persecuted by railing words, cauter- 
 ized bv satire, blamed without reason or measure for 
 faults not easily corrected, the severity is really unprin- 
 cipled as well as unfriendly, and is only the more 
 dreadfully mischievous, that it takes on airs of piety, 
 
 * L9vana iii. § 65. 
 
THAT DISCOURAaES PIETY. 303 
 
 and bears the Christian name. How can he be drawn 
 by that which has no grace of allowance, and yields no 
 sympathy to the struggles of his infirmity ? How many 
 poor children are beaten out of all their natural affini- 
 ties for good, by just this kind of cruelty ! They had 
 parents who, in fault of the better evidences of love and 
 patience, thought to make "up the deficit in being at 
 least severe enough to be Christian ; which, though it 
 was an easy grace for them — the only grace at their 
 command — was, alas! fearfully hard on the subjects. 
 
 We bring into view a different class of discouraging 
 causes, when we speak of that anxiousness, or always 
 miserable concern, for children, by which some parents 
 keep them in a continual torment of suppression. We 
 have really no right to allow a properly anxious feeling 
 any where. Anxiety is a word of unbelief, or unrea- 
 soning dread. Full faith in God puts it at rest ; any 
 solid conviction of necessity and right is chloroform to 
 the pain of it. And we have the less right to be 
 anxious, that it is a feeling which destroys the comfort 
 of others whenever and wheresoever it appears. Only 
 to be in a room with an anxious person, though a stran- 
 ger, is enough to make one positively unhappy ; for the 
 manner, the nervous unsteadiness, and worry, and shift, 
 are so irresistibly expressive, that no effort of silence, or 
 suppression, is able to conceal the torment. To go a 
 journey thus with an anxious person, is about the worst 
 kind of pilgrimage. What then is the woe put upon 
 a hapless little one or child, who is shut up day by day 
 and year by year, to the always fearing look and depre- 
 
304 THE TREATMENT 
 
 eating whine, the questioning, protesting, super-caution- 
 ary keeping of a nervously anxious mother. If the 
 child catches the infection himself, he will never come 
 to any thing ; never dare any great purpose that be- 
 longs to a man, or a Christian. And if he does not 
 catch it, which is more probable, then he will pitch him- 
 self into a campaign of will and passion with all that 
 kind of control, a good deal less rational, probably, 
 than the control itself. Simply to enter the house will 
 raise a breeze in his feeling, and he will be worried and 
 fretted, till he has somehow made his escape. Nothing 
 is more opposite to the hopeful and free spirit of child- 
 hood, and nothing will so dreadfully overcast the sky 
 of childhood, as the sad kind of weather it is always 
 making. It worries the child in every putting forth 
 and play, lest he should somehow be hurt ; takes him 
 away, or would, from every contact with the great 
 world's occasions, that would give fit schooling to his 
 manhood. And then, since the child will most cer- 
 tainly learn, at last, how little reason there was in the 
 eternal distress of so many fears and imaginations 
 of harm, he is sure to be issued finally, in a feeling 
 of confirmed disrespect, which is the end of all good 
 influence or advice. And then it will be so much the 
 worse, if the anxiety whose bagpipe melody has been 
 the torment of his early days, has shown itself in the 
 same unregulated way in matters of religion. ISToth- 
 ing will set a child farther off from religion, or make 
 him more utterly incapable of sympathy with it, than 
 to have had it put upon him in a whining and misgiv- 
 
THAT DISCOURAGES PIETY. 305 
 
 ing way, in all his moods and occasions. ISTo ! there 
 must be a certain courage in maternity and the religion 
 of it. The child must be wisely trusted to danger, and 
 shown how to conquer it. A pleasure must be taken 
 in giving him a certain range of adventure; and he 
 must see that his courage and capacity are confided in. 
 And then it must be seen, in the same way, that his 
 truth, fidelity, piety, are as much expected as his man- 
 hood. In a certain good sense, the mother may be 
 anxious for him, burdened in her prayers in his be- 
 half, but she must take on hope and confidence nev- 
 ertheless, and show that courage in him, as regards all 
 good endeavor, is met and supported by courage in 
 herself. 
 
 Again, it will be found that piety is very commonly 
 discouraged in children, by giving them tests of charac- 
 ter that are inappropriate to their age. There is an 
 immense cruelty put upon children here, by parents 
 who have really no design but simply to be faithful. 
 Their child, for example, loses his temper in some mat- 
 ter in which he is crossed ; and the conclusion is forth- 
 with sprung upon him that he has a bad heart, and is 
 certainly no Christian child. Whereupon he ceases to 
 pray ; or, if he is put to it as a form, does it'with an 
 averted and reluctant feeling, as if the wrong were con- 
 clusive against his prayers. It is only necessary to ask 
 how the father, how the mother would themselves fare, 
 tested by the same rule? If irritation, passion, any 
 loss of temper, is conclusive against the little being 
 who has scarcely began to be prR^ticed in self-govern- 
 
 26* 
 
306 THE TREATMENT 
 
 ment, how is it with tliem who ought by this time to be 
 immovably fixed in their serenity ? So if the child has 
 played, or shown some eagerness for play on Sunday, 
 has not the father, or the mother, who indeed has out- 
 grown all such care for play, been delving still, even in 
 the church worship itself, and at the table of commun- 
 ion, in schemes, and projects, and works, that thrust 
 out, for the tine, even these most sacred things from 
 any due place in their attention. If sometimes a mere 
 child is carried a^vay by exuberant life and playfulness, 
 is that worse than to be cankered by the love of gain, 
 or by the severe and sober sins of a grasping, eager, 
 worldly manl^ood ? The sins of children are ingenuous 
 and open, and on just that account are to be less 
 severely judged. The sins of manhood are sins of grav- 
 ity, prudence, self-seeking, always contriving to wear 
 some plausible aspect of sobriety and dignity ; but they 
 are not any the more consistent with piety on that ac- 
 count. We do not judge that any one is of course with- 
 out piety, or is no Christian, because he has faults, or 
 failings, or even because he is overtaken by sins ; why 
 then should a child be conde'mned, as having no just 
 evidence of piety, just because he is only a little less 
 under the power of evil than his Christian father and 
 mother? God, I am certain, judges children's faults in 
 no such manner, and therefore it is never to be assumed 
 by us that they are^ without piety, because they falter 
 in some things. If they only falter, seeming still to 
 love what is good, and struggle ingenuously after it, 
 there is just as good reason to hope that their hearts 
 
THAT DISCOURAGES PIETY. 307 
 
 have been touched by the Spirit of God, as there is that 
 the hearts of older persons have been, when they are 
 groping always in the seventh chapter of the Eomans, 
 having a mind to serve God, but always failing in the 
 service. The child must be judged or tested in the 
 same general way as the adult. If he is wholly per- 
 verse, has no spirit of duty, turns away from all relig- 
 ious things, it will not discourage any thing good in 
 him to tell him that he is without piety ; but if he 
 loves religious things, wants to be in them, tries after a 
 good and obedient life, he is to be shown how tenderly 
 God regards him, how ready he is to forgive him ; and 
 when he stumbles or falls, ^ how kindly he will raise him 
 up, how graciously help him to stand. Nor does it 
 make any difference that no time is remembered, when 
 he seemed to be brought unto God, by a great change 
 of experience, such as adult persons are often the sub- 
 jects of. He ought not to be the subject of any such 
 change ; and if he is properly trained, will not be. As 
 regards the testing of his condition or character, noth- 
 ing at all depends on that. It will even be a good sign 
 for him that he has always seemed to love Christ ; and 
 it will be no proper evidence to the contrary, that he 
 sometimes falters. Children are very ingenuous, and 
 they may even show some disinclination, for a time, to 
 all religious duties, without creating any such evidence. 
 Adults often suffer such disinclination, when they do 
 not allow it to appear. The sum of all I would say 
 here is, let children be judged as children, and let them 
 not be cruelly discouraged in all thoughts of love to 
 
808 THE TREATMENT 
 
 Grod, because they falter, as older people do ; only in a 
 different manner. 
 
 I must also speak of another and more general mode 
 of discouragement, in what may be called the holding 
 back, or holding aloof system, by which children are 
 denied an early recognition of their membership in the 
 church, and an admission to the Lord's table. I have 
 spoken of this membership already, in another place, 
 and shall also speak, hereafter, of the supper in its more 
 positive uses. What I now refer to, more especially, 
 is the negatively bad or discouraging effect thrown 
 upon their piety, by these methods of detention, or ex- 
 clusion. The child giving evidence, however beauti- 
 ful, of his piety, is still kept back from the fellowship 
 and table of Christ, for the simple defect of years. As 
 if years were one of the Scripture evidences of grace. 
 Sometimes the difficulty is that he can speak of no ex- 
 perience, or change, such as we call conversion ; and 
 sometimes, if he can, that he is yet too young to be 
 confided in. And so it turns out, after all that is said 
 of the membership initiated in baptism, that nothing is 
 practically made of it, or allowed to be made of it. The 
 membership it creates is only a disjunctive conjunction ; 
 words for a show, answered by no conditions or con- 
 sequences of fact. The poor child still is virtually 
 counted or assumed to be an alien, required to be con- 
 verted in jusfthe same fashion as all heathens are, and 
 to show the fact by the same kind of evidences. The 
 little, saintly daughter, for example, of a venerable 
 Presbyterian minister, aching for a place at the Lord's 
 
THAT DISCOURAGES PIETY. 809 " 
 
 table, goes to her father, after being several times post- 
 poned by him and by the session, asking — "father, 
 when shall I be old enough to be a Christian ?" He 
 and his session, alas ! did not believe that of such is 
 the kingdom of heaven. Had the dear child gone to 
 Jesus, she would most certainly have gotten a different 
 answer. True, the religious experience of children is 
 of course small — only not as small, or unreliable, by 
 any means, as the experience commonly is of an adult 
 convert only a few weeks old. Besides, what is the use 
 of a fold, if the lambs are to be kept outside till it is 
 seen whether they can stand the weather ? 
 
 The chilling, desolating effect of this very unnatural 
 and cruel practice, will be understood without diffi- 
 culty. ISTo plan could be devised for the discourage- 
 ment of piety in children, that would be more certain 
 of its object. They are only mocked and tantalized by 
 their baptism itself. They are thrust away and kept 
 aloof from the communion of Christ, for reasons that 
 make it impossible for them to be reliably Christian. 
 And so their courage is broken down, and all their 
 religious longings are crippled, just when they most 
 want grace and sympathy to draw them on. 
 
 The remedy is plain. In the first place, there ought 
 to be some exercise or service in every church, to which 
 the baptized children may be called, in common with 
 the adult members, there to be recognized in a begun 
 relationship. They should be formally addressed and 
 prayed with. But the chief exercise, in which they 
 can as heartily partake as any, should be the singing 
 
310 THE TREATMENT 
 
 of simple "hymns to Christ, sucli as are nsed by tlie Mo- 
 ravian brethren for this purpose. In this manner, too, 
 they will quite as much edify, as be edified, by the 
 adult brethren. Their childish sympathies will, in this 
 manner, be laid hold of at the earliest moment. They 
 will perceive that so much, at least, of worship and 
 religion is open to them as to others, and will begin to 
 feel themselves at home among the brethren. 
 
 In the next place, there should be some arrangement, 
 in which It is understood that children, piously dis- 
 posed, though not confirmed or accepted formally as 
 members on their own account, may be allowed, either 
 on consultation with the pastor or without, to come to 
 the Lord's table for the time, on the score of their 
 initial membership in baptism, and their hopefully gra- 
 cious character. In this manner, some confidence will 
 be shown that they are going to claim their place, in. 
 full church relations, as soon as they are better matured 
 in character and evidences ; and this kind of confidence 
 will have great power with them, to encourage and sup- 
 port their s.truggles, and help them forward into an 
 established Christian life. 
 
 And then, once more, no child should ever be kept 
 back from a complete and formal, or formally professed, 
 membership in the body of Christ, simply because of 
 his age. Some children will give more reliable evi- 
 dence of Christian character at seven years of age than 
 others at fourteen. Were every thing as it should be, 
 and as the most genuine ideas of baptism and Christian 
 nurture suppose, nearly all the subjects would be found 
 
THAT DISCOURAGES PIETY. 811 
 
 ill the cliurcli, as brethren accepted, by the time they 
 are twelve years old, and the greater part of them be- 
 fore they are ten years old. 
 
 "While the church cooperates, in this manner, cherish- 
 ing the baptized children as her own, it is understood, 
 of course, that parents are to be engaged in putting 
 forward their children and preparing them to bear the 
 Christian profession. They are not to assume that the 
 matter of true prudence here is all on one side, the side 
 of detention; as if there were nothing to be sure of 
 but that their children do not get on too fast. If that 
 were all, it were the easiest thing in the world to settle 
 every question, by the argument of delay ; which neg- 
 ative grace, alas ! is about the only kind of function some 
 parents are equal to. Ko, this grip of detention is not 
 any so easy and safe kind of duty. It may put the 
 child by his time for life. It may fatally discourage all 
 his beginnings of godliness, and may so far choke his 
 growth in good that he will neVer be recovered. 
 
 The matters which I have gathered up in this dis- 
 course, it is not ,to be denied, my brethren, i make a 
 melancholy picture. When we discover in how many 
 ways even Christian parents themselves discourage the 
 piety of their children, it ceases to be any wonder that 
 they so often turn out badly, and come to a sad figure 
 in their life. There are very few children brought up 
 in Christian families, who do not, at some time, show a 
 particular openness and tenderness to the calls of relig- 
 ion. These flowering times of piety, ought to be all 
 
312 THE TREATMENT 
 
 setting times of fruit, and I verily believe that they 
 would be, if the flowers were not broken off by some 
 rough handling, or discouraging treatment. And it 
 should scarcely be any wonder that so many children 
 of Christian parents come forward into life, in a dulled, 
 uncling mood ; as if their conscience were under some 
 paralysis, or as if they had somehow fallen out of all 
 sense and sentiment of religion. The reason is, how 
 often, that all their religious affinities have been bat- 
 tered by parental discouragement. They think of 
 religion, if they think of it at all, only as a kind of 
 forbidden fruit ; and since it has never been for them, 
 why should it ever be ? 
 
 Here, too, is the solution of, alas ! how many cases, 
 where Christian parents speak, with great sadness, of a 
 time when this or that child, now utterly submerged 
 under the world, or the world's vices, was greatly exer- 
 cised in matters of religion, fond of prayer, wanting 
 even to be admitted to Christ's table. How many chil- 
 dren have been discouraged, kept back, with just the 
 same effect ! Treated as if their piety was impossible, 
 how could it become a fact ? O, if they had been 
 wisely and skillfully encouraged, assisted, led along, 
 how different probably the state and character in which 
 they would now be found I 
 
 A heavy shade is here thrown, too, upon all those 
 sorrowful regrets in which Christian parents bewail 
 what they call the mystery of their lot, in having chil- 
 dren grown up to a prayerless and godless maturity. 
 Alas I it is too easy, in most cases, to account for this 
 
THAT DISCOUEAGES PIETY. 313 
 
 mystery. When we see in how many ways children 
 may be thrown off from the courses of holy obedience, 
 or discouraged in them, we have a strong ground of 
 presumption that the mystery deplored by their parents 
 is not as deep as they suppose. For myself, when I 
 look over this field of misuse, misconception, misdirec- 
 tion, seeing in how many and subtle ways children are 
 turned off from Christ, when they might be and ought 
 to be drawn to his fold, it is no longer a wonder that 
 they go astray ; it would only be a greater wonder if 
 they met the call of Christ more faithfully, and stood in 
 a character more answerable to the privilege he gives 
 
 them. 
 
 27 
 
V. 
 
 FAMILY GOVERNMENT. 
 
 " One that ruletli well his own house, having his children in subjection 
 with all gravity." — 1 Timothy^ iii. 4. 
 
 To BE a Christian bishop, whether in a clergy of one 
 order or of three, is to be set in a high office, demand- 
 ing high qualifications. What may be taken as quali- 
 fications, the apostle is here specifying ; and among the 
 rest, he names the character evinced by maintaining a 
 good and sound government in the house. "For if a 
 man know not how to rule his own house, how shall he 
 take care of the church of God?" A very singular 
 test, in one view, for a Christian bishop ; one that passes 
 by the matter of learning and eloquence, and church 
 reputation, laying hold, instead, of a gift in which some 
 very ordinary men, and not a few ordinary women, 
 excel. And with good reason ; for, in fact, how very 
 much alike, in the elements of merit and success, are 
 all that purchase to themselves a good degree, in what- 
 ever rank, or sphere — alike in fidelity, order, patience, 
 steadiness, attention, application to the charge that is 
 given them. N'ay, when the apostle drops in thought- 
 fully what he takes to be the same thing in effect, as 
 ruling one's house well, viz : " the having his children 
 in subjection with all gravity," the words themselves, 
 
FAMILY GOVERNMENT. 315 
 
 appear to have a sound of character and office in them, 
 as if spoken of a bishop with his flock. And what 
 indeed is the house but a little primary bishopric under 
 the father, taking oversight thereof? 
 
 Family Government, then, is the subject here sug- 
 gested for discussion. And we naturally endeavor — 
 
 I. To ascertain what is the true conception of family 
 government. 
 
 Of course it is to be government ; about that there 
 ought to be no hesitation. It is not to be a mere nurs- 
 ing, or dressing, or provisioning agency ; not to be an 
 exhorting, advising, consulting relationship ; not to be 
 a lavishing of devotion, or parental self-sacrifice ; but 
 the radical constitutive idea, that in which it becomes 
 family government, is that it governs, uses authority, 
 maintains law and rules, by a binding and loosing 
 power, over the moral nature of the child. Parents, it 
 would sometimes appear, fall into a practical ambiguity 
 here — as if the governing power were a kind of sever- 
 ity, or harsh assumption ; not perceiving that, by com- 
 mon consent, we speak of an ungoverned family as the 
 synonym of a disorderly, wretched, and dishonored, if 
 not ruined, family. There is no greater cruelty, in fact, 
 than this same false tenderness, which is the bane of so 
 many families. There is a kind of cruelty indeed, 
 which is exactly opposite, and misses the idea of gov- 
 ernment on the other side, viz: that brutish manner 
 of despotic will and violence, which makes no appeal 
 to the moral nature at all, driving straight by, upon the 
 
316 FAMILY GOVEKNMENT. 
 
 fears, in a battery of force. And yet, whether even 
 this be really more cruel in its effects, than the false 
 tenderness just named, is a fair subject of doubt. The 
 true idea, that which makes the domestic order and 
 state so beneficent, is that it is to be a state of govern- 
 ment ; a state where love has authority, and presides in 
 the beneficent order of law. 
 
 But when we have reached this point,. that family gov- 
 ernment is to govern, we shall find that multitudes of pa- 
 rents who assume the Christian name, have yet no practi- 
 cal sense of the intensely religious character of the house, 
 or the domestic and family state. They go into their of- 
 fice loosely, and without any conception, for the most 
 part, of what their authority means. This, I will now un- 
 dertake to show, drawing out especially the points in which 
 they most commonly seem to fall below the real sense of 
 their office, in the opinions they hold concerning it. 
 
 First of all, their family government is never con- 
 ceived, in its true nature, except when it is regarded as 
 a vice-gerent authority, set up by God, and ruling in his 
 place. Instead of creating us outright, God has seen 
 fit to give us existence under laws of reproduction ; hav- 
 ing it for his object, in the family order and relation- 
 ship, to set us forth, under a kind of experience in the 
 small, and in terms of sense, that faithfully typifies our 
 wider relationship to Him, the eternal Father and in- 
 visible Ruler of the worlds. We are infants too, men 
 and women in the small, that we may be as flexible in 
 our will as possible. Our parents, if they are godly 
 themselves, as by the supposition they will be, are to 
 
FAMILY GOVERltMENT. 317 
 
 personate God, in the double sense of bearing his natu- 
 ral and moral image before us, ever close at hand ; and 
 also in the right of authority with which they are 
 clothed. And, that they may have us at the greatest 
 advantage, it is given them to clothe us, and feed us, 
 and bathe us, day and night, in the unsparing and lav- 
 ish attentions of their love; enjoying our enjoyments, 
 and even their own sacrifices for us. First, the mother 
 has us, at her bosom, as a kind of nursing Providence. 
 Perused by touch and by the eyes, her soul of mater- 
 nity, watching for that look and bending ever to it, 
 raises the initial sense of a divine something in the 
 world ; and when she begins to speak her soft impera- 
 tive, putting a little decision into the tones of her love, 
 she makes the first and gentlest possible beginning of 
 authority. And then the stifFer tension of the mascu- 
 line word, connected with the wider, rougher provi- 
 dence of a father's masculine force, follows in a stouter 
 mode of authority, and the moral nature of the child, 
 configured thereto, answers faithfully in a rapidly de- 
 veloped sense of obligation. The parents are to fill, in 
 this manner, an office strictly religious; personating 
 God in the child's feeling and conscience, and bending 
 it, thus, to what, without any misnomer, we call a filial 
 piety. So that when the unseen Father and Lord is 
 Himself discovered, there is to be a piety made ready 
 for him ; a kind of house-religion, that m^ay widen out 
 into the measures of God's ideal majesty and empire. 
 Hence the injunction, "Children obey your parents in 
 the Lord." They could not make a beginning with 
 
318 FAMILY GOVERNMENT. 
 
 ideas of God, or with God as an -anseen Spirit ; there- 
 fore they had parents given them <in the Lord — the 
 Lord to be in them, there to personate and finite him- 
 self, and gather to such human motherhood and father- 
 hood, a piety transferable to Himself, as the knowledge 
 of his nobler, unseen Fatherhood arrives. 
 
 Again, it is another point, very commonly over- 
 looked, or forgotten, that parental government is genu- 
 ine, only as it bears rule for the same ends that God 
 Himself pursues, in the religious order of the world. 
 True family government will be just as religious as His, 
 neither more nor less. It will have exactly the same ends 
 and no other. Just here, accordingly, is the main root of 
 mischief and failure in the government of Christian fam- 
 ilies. The parents are not Christian enough to think of 
 bearing rule for strictly Christian ends. They drop into 
 a careless, irresponsible way, and rule for any thing that 
 happens to chime with their own feeling or conven- 
 ience. They want their children to shine, or be honor- 
 able, or rich, or brave, or fashionable ; so to serve them- 
 selves in them, or their pride, or their mere natural 
 fondness. They bring in, thus, bad motives to corrupt 
 all government, and even to corrupt themselves. If 
 they have some care of piety in their government, it is 
 a kind of amphibious care, sometimes in one element 
 and sometimes in another. They are never truly and 
 heartily in God's ends. And the result is that what 
 they do in the name of religion, or to inculcate religion, 
 shows their want of appetite, and has really no effect 
 but to make both God's authority and theirs irksome. 
 
FAMILY GOVERNMENT. 819 
 
 Nothing answers the true purpose here, but to bring in 
 all the noblest ideas of truth, and forgiveness and self- 
 sacrifice, and assert a pitch of virtue in the house high 
 enough to be inspiring. The government will then 
 have a genuine authority and power, because the rule 
 of God is in it. As it rules for God, and with God, 
 God will be in it ; otherwise it is mortal self-assertion 
 only. 
 
 Closely related is the conviction to be firmly held, 
 that family discipline, rightly administered, is to 
 secure, and may secure, a style of obedience in the 
 child that amounts to a real piety. If we speak 
 of conversion, family government should be a con- 
 verting ordinance, as truly as preaching. For ob- 
 serve and make due account of this single fact, that 
 when a child is brought to do any one thing from a 
 truly right motive, and in a genuinely right spirit, there 
 is implied in that kind of obedience, the acceptance of 
 all best and holiest principle. I do not mean, of course, 
 that children are to be made Christians by the rod, or 
 by any summary process of requirement. There is no 
 such short method of compulsory piety here, as some 
 are reported to have held, or put in exercise. But it is 
 not absurd to expect and aim to realize in the family, a 
 genuine spirit of obedience; obedience, that is, from 
 the principle that God enthrones, and which underlies 
 all piety — just what the apostle means, if I understand 
 him rightly, by having children "in subjection with all 
 gravity." In the phrase " all gravity,'* he is looking at 
 a kind of obedience that touches the deepest notes 
 
320 FAMILY GOVERNMENT. 
 
 of principle and character. Contrary to tMs, tliere is 
 an obedience without principle, which is obedience with 
 all levity ; that which is paid to mere will and force ; 
 that which is another name for fear; that which is 
 bought by promises and paid by indulgences ; that 
 which makes a time-server, or a coward, or a lying pre- 
 tender, as the case may be, and not a Christian. This 
 latter — that which makes a Christian — is the aim of all 
 true government, and should never be out of sight for 
 an hour. Let the child be brought to do right because 
 it is right, and not because it is unsafe, or appears 
 badly, to do wrong. In every case of discipline for 
 ill-nature, wrong, willfulness, disobedience, be it under- 
 stood, that the real pomt is carried never till the child 
 is gentled into love and duty ; sorry, in all heartiness, 
 for the past, with a glad mind set to the choice of doing 
 right and pleasing God. How often is it true that in 
 the successful carrying of such a point, (which can not 
 be carried, save by great resources of love and gospel 
 life in the parents,) the fact of a converted will is gained. 
 And one must be a dull observer of children and their 
 after life, who has not many times suspected that just 
 the ones who are said to be converted afterwards, and 
 suppose themselves to be, had their wills, not seldom 
 bowed to this in their childhood, under the government 
 of the house. 
 
 Having so far indicated what is the true idea of fam- 
 ily government as a Divine institution, let us next 
 inquire — 
 
FAMILY GOVERNMENT. 821 
 
 II. By what methods it will best fulfill its gracious and 
 beneficent purposes ? 
 
 It is hardly necessary to say that the vice-gerent 
 office to be maintained, and the gracious ends to be se- 
 cured, make it indispensable that parents should them- 
 selves be living in the Spirit, and be so tempered by 
 their faithful walk, as to have the Christly character on 
 them. Nothing but this will so lift their aims, gentle 
 their passions, steady their measures and proceedings, 
 as to give them that personal authority which is requi- 
 site. For this authority of which I speak supposes 
 much — so much of grace and piety, that God is ex- 
 pressed in the life ; so much as to even it in all princi- 
 ple, fasten it in all moderation of truth and justice, 
 gladden it in heaven's liberty and peace, and, above all, 
 clear it of sanctimony; for if any thing will drive a 
 poor child mad with disgust of religion, it is to be tor- 
 mented day and night with the drawlings and mock 
 solemnities of a merely sanctimonious piety. Children 
 love the realities, and are worried by all shams of char- 
 acter. If then parents can not be deep enough in 
 religion to live it naturally, and have it as an element 
 of gladness, clear of all sanctimony, it is doubtful 
 whether they might not better be even farther off from 
 the semblance of it than they pretend to be. Of this 
 one thing they may be sure, that they get no addition 
 of personal authority by any thing put on ; or by any 
 prescribed longitudes of expression. The most pro- 
 foundly real thing in the world is this matter of per- 
 sonal authority. Jesus had it as no other ever had, 
 
322 FAMILY GOVERNMENT. 
 
 because lie had most of reality and divine truth in his 
 character ; we shall have the same only as we have the 
 same steady affinities in us. and the same Spirit without 
 measure upon us. 
 
 There is also another precondition of authority in 
 parents closely related to this ; I mean that they be so 
 far entered into the Christian order of marriage, as to 
 fulfill gracefully what belongs to the relation in which 
 they are set, and show them to the children as do- 
 ing fit honor to each other. By a defect just here, all 
 authority in the house is blasted. Thus Dr. Tiersch, in 
 his excellent little treatise on the Christian Family Life, 
 says : — " A wife can not weaken the authority of the 
 father without undermining her own, for her authority 
 rests upon his, and if that of the mother is subordinated 
 to that of the father, yet it is but one authority, which 
 can not be weakened in either of the two who bear it, 
 without injury to both. The mother, therefore, must 
 consider it a matter of family decorum which is not to 
 be broken, never even in little matters to contradict the 
 father in the presence of the children, except with the 
 reservation of a modest admission of his right of de- 
 cision, and that in cases which admit of no delay. But 
 just as much is it the duty of the husband to leave the 
 authority of his wife unassailed in the presence of other 
 members of the household ; and when he is obliged to 
 overrule her objections, to do it in a tender and kindly 
 form. If he turns to her with roughness and harshness 
 from jealousy of his place of rule, it is not only the 
 heart of his wife which is estranged from him, with the 
 
FAMILY GOVERNMENT. 323 
 
 children too intervenes a weakening of the moral power, 
 under which they should feel themselves placed. If in 
 their presence their mother is blamed as foolish or ob- 
 stinate, and so lowered to the place of a child or a maid- 
 servant, that sanctity immediately vanishes, which, in 
 the eyes of the children, surrounds the heads of both 
 father and mother in common."* 
 
 Again it is of the highest importance in family gov- 
 ernment, that parents understand how early it be- 
 gins — how easily, in fact, the great question of rule and 
 obedience may be settled, or well-nigh settled, before 
 the time of verbal order and commandment arrives. 
 Thus there is what may be fitly called a Christian 
 handling for the infant state, that makes a most solid 
 beginning of government. It is the even handling of 
 repose and gentle affection, which lays a child down to 
 its sleep so firmly, that it goes to sleep as in duty bound ; 
 which teaches it to feed when food is wanted, not when 
 it can be somehow made uneasy, or the mother is uneasy 
 for it ; which refuses to wear out the night in laborious 
 caresses and coaxings, that only reward the cries they 
 endeavor to compose ; which places the child so firmly, 
 makes so little of the protests of caprice in it, wears a 
 look so gentle and loving, and goes on with such even- 
 ness of system, that the child feels itself to be, all the 
 while, in another will, and that a good will ; consent- 
 ing thus by habit and quietly to be lapped in authority, 
 just as it consents to breathe in the lap of nature and 
 her atmospheric laws. And so it becomes a thoroughly 
 
 * Page 99. 
 
824 FAMILY GOVERNMENT. 
 
 governed creature, under the mere handling of its in- 
 fantile age. Neither should it seem that this is, in any 
 sense, an exaggeration. For though the government 
 we speak of here is silent, and utters for the time.no 
 law, there still is law enough revealed to feeling 
 in the mere motions and modes of the house. Who is 
 ignorant that by jerks of passion, flashes of irritation, 
 unsteady changes of caprice and nervousness, fits of 
 self-indulgence, disgusts with self and life that are 
 half the time allowed to include the child, songs and 
 caresses both of day and night, that are volunteered as 
 much to compose the mother's or the nurse's impa- 
 tience as the child's — who is ignorant that an infant, 
 handled in this manner, may be kept in a continual fret 
 of torment and ill-nature. Meantime there is, just op- 
 posite, what a beautiful power of order, and quiet, and 
 happy rule, when the motions and modes of the hand- 
 ling are such as token peace, repose, firmness, system, 
 confidence, and a steady all-encompassing love. Here 
 is law, felt, we may even say, in every touch, entered 
 into every sensational experience, confided in, submit- 
 ted to, with all gravity. So that when the time of 
 words arrives, the child is already under government, 
 and the question of obedience and order is already half 
 settled. • 
 
 We come now to the age of language, or the age 
 when words begin to be used to express requirement 
 and authority. Indeed this will be done, assisted by 
 tones and signs of manner, even before the child itself 
 is able to speak. 
 
FAMILY GOVERNMENT. 325 
 
 And here it is to be noted that much depends upon 
 the tone of command, or the kinds of emphasis em- 
 ployed. It is a great mistake to suppose that what will 
 make a child stare, or tremble, impresses more author- 
 ity. The violent emphasis, the hard, stormy voice, the 
 menacing air, only weakens authority ; it commands a 
 good thing as if it were only a bad, and fit to be no 
 way impressed, save by some stress of assumption. Let 
 the command be always given quietly, as if it had some 
 right in itself, and could utter itself to the conscience 
 by some emphasis of its own. Is it not well understood 
 that a bawling and violent teamster has no real govern- 
 ment of his team? Is it not practically seen that a 
 skillful commander of one of those huge floating cities, 
 moved by steam on our American waters, manages and 
 works every motion by the waving of a hand, or by 
 signs that pass in silence ; issuing no order at all, save 
 in the gentlest undertone of voice ? So when there is, 
 or is to be, a real order and law in the house, it will 
 come of no hard and boisterous, or fretful and terma- 
 gant way of commandment. Gentleness will speak the 
 word of firmness, and firmness will be clothed in the 
 airs of true gentleness. 
 
 Nor let any one think that such kind of authority 
 is going to be disrespected, or disregarded, because it 
 moves no fright or fear in the subjects. That will 
 depend on the fidelity of the parent to what he has 
 commanded. How many do we see, who fairly rave in 
 authority, and keep the tempest up from morning to 
 night, who never stop to see whether any thing they 
 
 28 
 
826 FAMILY GOVEKNMENT. 
 
 forbid or command is, in fact, observed. Indeed tbey 
 really forget wliat they have commanded. Their man- 
 dates follow so thickly as to crowd one another, and 
 even to successively thrust one another out of remem- 
 brance. And the result is that, by this cannonading 
 of pop-guns, the successive pellets of commandment 
 are in turn all blown away. If any thing is fit to be 
 forbidden, or commanded, it is fit to be watched and 
 held in faithful account. On this it is that the real em- 
 phasis of authority depends, not on the wind-stress of 
 the utterance. Let there be only such and so many 
 things commanded, as can be faithfully attended to — 
 these in a gentle and firm voice, as if their title to 
 obedience lay in their own merit — and then let the child 
 be held to a perfectly inevitable and faithful account ; 
 and, by that time, it will be seen that order and law 
 have a stress of their own, and a power to rule in their 
 own divine right. The beauty of a well-governed 
 family will be seen, in this manner, to be a kind of 
 silent, natural-looking power; as if it were a matter 
 only of growth, and could never have been otherwise. 
 
 At first, or in the earlier periods of childhood, au- 
 thority should rest upon its own right, and expect to be 
 obeyed just because it speaks. It should stake itself 
 on no assigned reasons, and have nothing to do with 
 reasons, unless it be after the fact ; when, by showing 
 what has been depending, in a manner unseen to the 
 child, it can add a presumption of reason to all future 
 commands. It is even a good thing to the moral and 
 religious nature of a child, to have its obedience re- 
 
FAMILY GOVERNMENT. 827 
 
 quired, and to be accustomed to obedience, on the 
 ground of simple authority ; to learn homage and 
 trust, as all subject natures must, and so to accept the 
 rule of God's majesty, when the reasons of God are in- 
 scrutable. There is little prospect that any child will 
 be a Christian, or any thing but a skeptic, or a godless 
 worldling, who has not had his religious nature un 
 folded by an early subjection to authority, speaking in 
 its own right. 
 
 Nay, I will go farther ; there is a certain use in hav- 
 ing a child, in the first stages of government, feel the 
 pressure of law as a restriction. For, as the law of 
 God is a schoolmaster to bring us to Christ, so there is 
 a like relation between law and liberty in the training 
 of the house. It is by a certain friction, if I may so 
 speak, on the moral nature, a certain pressure of con- 
 trol, not always welcome, that the sense of law gets hold 
 of us. Observances that we do not like, prepare us to 
 a kind of obedience, further on, that is free — that wel- 
 comes the same command because it is good, the same 
 authority because it is wholesome and right. And so 
 it comes to pass that a son, grown almost to manhood, 
 will gladly serve the house, and yield to his parents a 
 kind of homage that even anticipates their wishes, just 
 because he has learned to be in subjection, with all 
 gravity, under restrictions that were once a sore limit 
 on his patience. 
 
 At the same time it should never be forgotten, in 
 this due assertion of authority and restrictive law, that 
 there is a great difference between the imperative and 
 
328 FAMILY GOVERNMENT. 
 
 the dictatorial ; between the exact and the exacting. I 
 have spoken already of the common fault of command- 
 ing overmuch, and forgetting or omitting to enforce 
 what is commanded ; there is another kind of fault 
 which commands overmuch, and rigidly exacts what is 
 commanded ; laying on commands, as it seems to the 
 child, just because it can, or is willing to gall his peace 
 by exacting something that shall cut away even the 
 semblance of liberty. No parent has a right to put 
 oppression on a child, in the name of authority. And 
 if he uses authority in that way, to annoy the child's 
 peace, and even to forbid his possession of himself, he 
 should not complain, if the impatience he creates grows 
 into a bitter animosity, and finally a stiff rebellion. 
 Kothing should ever be commanded except what is 
 needed and required by the most positive reasons, 
 whether those reasons are made known or not. 
 
 Another qualification here to be observed, belongs 
 to what may be called the emancipation of the child. 
 A wise parent understands that his government is to 
 be crowned by an act of emancipation ; and it is a 
 great problem, to accomplish that emancipation grace- 
 fully. Pure authority, up to the last limit of minority, 
 then a total, instantaneous self-possession, makes an 
 awkward transition. A young eagle kept in the nest 
 and brooded over till his beak and talons are full- 
 grown, then pitched out of it and required to take care 
 of himself, will most certainly be dashed upon the 
 ground. The emancipating process, in order to be well 
 finished, should begin early, and should pass imper- 
 
FAMILY GOVERNMENT. 329 
 
 ceptiblj, even as age increases imperceptibly. Thus 
 the child, after being ruled for a time, by pure au- 
 thority, should begin, as the understanding is developed, 
 to have some of the reasons given why it is required to 
 abstain, or do, or practice, in this or that way instead 
 of some other. The tastes of the child, too, should 
 begin to be a little consulted, in respect to his school, 
 his studies, his future engagements in life. When he is 
 old enough to go on errands, and to labor in various 
 employments for the benefit of the family, he should be 
 let into the condition of the family far enough to be 
 identified with it, and have the family cause, and pro- 
 perty, and hope, for his own. Built into the family 
 fortunes and sympathies, in this manner, he will begin, 
 at a very early day, to command himself for it, and so 
 will get ready to command himself for himself, in a 
 way that will be just as if the parental authority were 
 still running on, after it has quite run by. 
 
 Is it necessary to add that a parent who governs at 
 the point of authority will not, of course, allow himself 
 to be known only as a bundle of commandments ? In 
 order to have authority, he must have life, sympathy, 
 feeling unbent in play. He must connect a gospel with 
 his law, and so instead of being a law over the house, 
 he must undertake to be a law written in the heart ; 
 winning love as commanding out of love, consumma- 
 ting obedience, by the glad and joyous element in 
 which he bathes the playful homage and trust of his 
 children. 
 
 As to the motives addressed by family government, 
 
380" FAMILY GOVEBNMENT. 
 
 in a way of maintaining or securing obedience, they 
 need to be of two kinds ; such as belong to a character 
 in principle, and such as belong to a character that is 
 equivocal in it, or fallen below it. The first kind 
 should never be left out of sight. They are such as 
 these : doing right because it is right ; loving God be- 
 cause he loves the right ; God's approbation ; the ap- 
 probation of a good conscience ; the sense of honor 
 with himself, as opposed to the meanness of lying and 
 deceit. These are, by distinction, the religious motives*; 
 and where these are completely ignored, all others are 
 radically faulty, of course. But there is, beside, a very 
 great and hurtful mistake that is commonly made in 
 choosing, from among the lower and second-class mo- 
 tives, those which are really most questionable, and 
 most likely to be followed by sinister effects. Here 
 again we are to follow God, who undertakes to dislodge 
 us, in the plane below principle, or keep us from set- 
 tling into it, by raking it, every way, in a cannonade 
 of penalty and fear. ISTo, say the plausible sophisters 
 of our day, in what they take to be its better wisdom, 
 fear is a mean and servile motive ; we will not make 
 cowards of our children. They do not observe the 
 very considerable distinction between terror and fear ; 
 that terror lays hold of passion, fear of intelligence ; 
 that one dispossesses the soul, the other nerves it to a 
 wise and rational prudence ; that one scatters all dis- 
 tinctions of principle, and the other turns the soul 
 thoughtfully towards principle. Missing this distinc- 
 tion, they make their appeal sometimes to the sense of 
 
FAMILY GOVERNMENT. 331 
 
 honor before men, frequently to the sense of appear- 
 ance, or to what will be the appearance of the famil}^, 
 not less frequently to the desire of success in life; 
 praising the shows of bravery and spirit, deifying, so to 
 speak, human conventionalities and laws of fashion. 
 They do not see the total want of dignity in these ap- 
 peals ; how they all put shams and shows, and falsities, 
 in the place of solid realities ; how they sort with all 
 lying semblances of virtue, run the soul into all most 
 cowardly fictions of time-serving, pretense, hypocrisy, 
 sj'Cophancy, and make even hollowness itself the prin- 
 cipal substance of life. Therefore it is that God ap- 
 peals to fear, backs authority and law by penalties that 
 waken fear ; because this one prudential motive has a 
 place by itself, in not being positive or acquisitive, in 
 any sense, but only negative ; and so far has the sem- 
 blance of unselfishness. It makes no one selfish to 
 fear, though fear, as a motive, is not up to the level of 
 principle loved for its own sake. The wise parent, 
 therefore, will not be wiser than God ; and wheresoever 
 fear is needed, he will speak to fear, and make as little 
 as possible of appearance, popularity, and opinion, un- 
 derstanding that, if he is to have his children in sub- 
 jection with all gravity, they must be brought into 
 God's principle, by a motive that is unambitious, un- 
 worldly and real, and turns the soul away by no com- 
 putations of pride and airy pretense. 
 
 There is, then, to be such a thing as penalty, or pun- 
 ishment, in the government of the house. And here 
 again is a place where large consideration is requisite. 
 
332 FAMILY GOVEENMENT. 
 
 First of all, it should be threatened as seldom as possi- 
 ble, and next as seldom executed as possible. It is a 
 most wretched and coarse barbarity that turns the house 
 into a penitentiary, or house of correction. Where the 
 management is right in other respects, punishment will 
 be very seldom needed. And those parents who make 
 it a point of fidelity, that they keep the flail of chas- 
 tisement always a going, have a better title to the bas- 
 tinado themselves than to any Christian congratula- 
 tions. The punishments dispensed should never be 
 such as have a character of ignominy ; and therefore, 
 except in cases of really ignominious wickedness, it 
 would be better to avoid, as far as may be, the infliction 
 of pain upon the person. For the same reason the 
 discipline should, if possible, be entirely private; a 
 matter between the parent and child. Thus it is well 
 said by Dr. Tiersch, " If ever a severe punishment is 
 necessary, it must be carried out so as to spare the 
 child's self-respect ; not in the presence of his brothers 
 and sisters, nor of the servants. For a wholesome ter- 
 ror to the others, it is enough if they perceive, at a dis- 
 tance, something of that which happens. And if only 
 the smallest triumph over his misfortune, the least de- 
 gree of mockery arise, bitterness and a loss of self- 
 respect are the consequences to the child."* 
 
 Punishments should be severe enough to serve their 
 purpose ; and gentle enough to show, if possible, a ten- 
 derness that is averse from the infliction. There is no 
 abuse more shocking, than when they are administered 
 
 * Page 153. 
 
FAMILY GOVERNMENT. 333 
 
 by sheer impatience, or in a fit of passion. Nor is the 
 case at all softened, wlien they are administered without 
 feeling, in a manner of uncaring hardness. Whenever 
 the sad necessity arrives, there should be time enough 
 taken, after the wrong or detection, to produce a calm 
 and thoughtful revision; and a just concern for the 
 wrong, as evinced by the parent, should be wakened, 
 if possible, in the child. I would not be understood, 
 however, in advising this more tardy and delicate way 
 of proceeding, to justify no exceptions. There are 
 cases, now and then, in the outrageous and shocking 
 misconduct of some boy, where an explosion is wanted ; 
 where the father represents God best, by some terrible 
 outburst of indignant violated feeling, and becomes an 
 instant avenger, without any counsel or preparation 
 whatever. Nothing else expresses fitly what is due to 
 such kind of conduct. And there is many a grown up 
 man, who will remember such an hour of discipline, as 
 the time when the ploughshare of God's truth went 
 into his soul like redemption itself. That was the 
 shock that woke him up to the staunch realities of prin- 
 ciple ; and he will recollect that father, as God's minis- 
 ter, typified to all dearest, holiest, reverence, by the 
 pungent indignations of that time. 
 
 There is great importance in the closing of a penal 
 discipline. Thus it should be a law never to cease from 
 the discipline begun, whatever it be, till the child is seen 
 to be in a feeling that justifies the discipline. He is never 
 to be let go, or sent away, sulking, in a look of willful- 
 ness unsubdued. Indeed, he should even be required 
 
334 FAMILY GOVERNMENT. 
 
 always to put on a pleasant, tender look, such as clears 
 all clouds and shows a beginning of fair weather. No 
 reproof, or discipline, is rightly administered till this 
 point is reached. Nothing short of this changed look 
 gives any hope of a changed will. On the other hand, 
 when the face of disobedience brightens out into this 
 loving and dutiful expression, it not only shows that the 
 malice of wrong is gone by, but, possibly, that there is 
 entered into the heart some real beginning of right, 
 some spirit of really Christian obedience. Many a 
 child is bowed to holy principle itself, at the happy and 
 successful close of what, to human eyes, is only a 
 chapter of discipline. 
 
 In order to realize this Christian issue of discipline, 
 it is sometimes recommended that the child should be 
 first prayed with, and made conscious, in that manner, 
 of his own wrong, as before God, and of the truly relig- 
 ious intentions by which the parent is actuated. No 
 rule of this kind can be safely given ; for there is great 
 danger that the child will begin to associate prayer and 
 religion with his pains of discipline ; than which noth- 
 ing could be more hurtful. It would be far better, in 
 most cases, if the prayer were to follow, coming in to 
 express and gladden his already glad repentances. 
 
 There are many things remaining still to be said, in 
 order to a complete view of the subject ; but there are 
 two simple cautions that must not be omitted, and with 
 these I close — 
 
 1. Observe that great care is needed in the processes 
 
FAMILY GOVERNMENT. 835 
 
 of detection, or the police of discovery. The child 
 must not be allowed to go on breaking through the 
 orders imposed, or into the ways of vice, not detected. 
 This will make his life a practice in art and hypocrisy ; 
 and what is worse, will make him also confident of suc- 
 cess in the same. Nothing will corrupt his moral na- 
 ture more rapidly. There must be a very close and 
 careful watch on the part of fathers and mothers, to let 
 no deviation of childhood pass their discovery. And 
 then, again, the greatest care and address will be needed, 
 to keep their circumspection from taking on the look 
 of a deliberate espionage, than which nothing will more 
 certainly alienate the confidence and love needful to 
 their just authority. Nothing wounds a child more 
 fatally, than to see he is not trusted. Under such 
 an impression, he will soon become as unworthy of 
 trust as he has been taken to be. On the other hand, 
 he will naturally want to be worthy of the trust he re- 
 ceives. For the same reason, he should never be set 
 upon by volunteer charges, or accusations which have 
 no other merit than to be the ground of a cross-ques- 
 tioning process. It is a harsh experiment that insults a 
 child, in order to find out whether he is innocent or 
 guilty. Besides, if he is guilty, there is no small risk 
 of drawing him on to asseverations of innocence, that 
 will fatally break down his truthfulness. Neither will 
 it answer, in the case of little children, to make them 
 reporters of their own wrongs, by allowing the under- 
 standing that they shall so obtain pardon. For then 
 they are only trained to a manner of sycophancy that 
 
SB6 FAMILY GOVERNMENT. 
 
 mocks all government. Wliat then shall be done? 
 First of all, make much of the fact, that when a child 
 is doing any secret wrong, he grows shy, ceases to be 
 confiding and demonstrative, even as Adam, when he 
 hid himself among the trees. Then let the watch grow 
 close — watch his companions, the way he goes, the way 
 he returns, his times, what he says, and what he par- 
 ticularly avoids speaking of at all ; speak of his shyness, 
 and observe the reasons he assigns, question his reasons. 
 *It will be difiicult for any young child to escape this 
 kind of search. Indeed, this kind of search will almost 
 never be needed if children are inspected carefully 
 enough, at a very early period, when, as yet, they are 
 simple, and the art of wrong has not begun to be 
 learned. Accustomed then to the feeling that art hides 
 nothing, they will never try to hide any thing by it 
 afterwards. 
 
 2. Have it as a caution that, in holding a magisterial 
 relation, asserting and maintaining law, discovering and 
 redressing wrong, you are never, as parents, to lose out 
 the parental; never to check the demonstrations of 
 your love; never to cease from the intercourse of 
 play. If you assert the law, as you must, then you 
 must have your gospel to go with it ; your pardons 
 judiciously dispensed, your Christian sympathies flow- 
 ing out in modes of Christian concern, your whole ad- 
 ministration gentled by tenderness. Above all, see that 
 your patience is not easily broken, or exhausted. If 
 your authority is not established in a day, you have 
 small reason, in that fact, to be fretted, or discouraged, 
 
FAMILY GOVEKNMENT. 337 
 
 and the less reason if you are and are seen to be, to 
 believe that it ever can be established. There will 
 sometimes be a child, or children, given, that have a 
 more restive and less easily reducible nature than oth- 
 ers, and partly because they have more to reduce. 
 Time with such is commonly a great element, and as 
 time is needed for them, patience will be needed in you. 
 Let them have a little more experience of themselves, 
 and of what a good and wise regulation means ; let their 
 rational nature be farther unfolded and come to your aid, 
 and they will be gradually taking sides with your au- 
 thority. The other and more tractable children, win- 
 ning on their respect, will also assist in the taming of 
 their repugnances. Meantime God, who perhaps gave 
 you this trial to complete your patience, and purify all 
 graces in you, will be raising you to a higher pitch of 
 character and authority, which no most wayward child 
 can well resist. And so it will be your satisfaction to 
 see, in due time, that your reward is coming ; that your 
 children are growing into all truth and order together ; 
 melting into all confidence and good understanding with 
 authority itself. Your triumph will now be sealed. 
 You will have your house in subjection with all grav- 
 ity ; a little bishopric, as the apostle would say, gath- 
 ered in heaven's truth anri unitv. obedient Christian, 
 
 filial, and free. 
 
 29 
 
VI. 
 
 PLAYS AND PASTIMES, HOLIDAYS AND SUN- 
 DAYS. 
 
 "And the streets of the city shall he full of hoys and girls playing in 
 the streets thereof." — ZechariaTiy viii. 5. 
 
 Happy days are tliese that figure in the prophet's 
 vision. The people of the city are accnstomed to scenes 
 that are widely different, and give a peculiar zest to his 
 picture. In the times of pestilence, in the horrors of 
 the siege, in the sweeping out of captivity, what silence 
 of desolation have they seen — the silence of ghastly 
 death, the silence of gaunt famine, the silence of empti- 
 ness and depopulated life. It shall no more be so ; the 
 city shall be God's mountain, sheltered under his care, 
 exempt from all the past desolations of pestilence and 
 war — peaceful, populous, secure, and strong. All which 
 is shown by two simple touches that make out the cgm- 
 plete picture — " There shall yet old men and old women 
 dwell in the streets of Jerusalem, and every man with 
 his staff in his hand for very age. And the streets of 
 the city shall be full of boys and girls, playing in the 
 streets thereof." 
 
 We can see, too, for ourselves that the prophet's feel- 
 ing goes into his picture; and that he has a natural 
 delight in it himself. He sees the venerable crones 
 
PLAYS AND PASTIMES. 839 
 
 gathering at the corners, and blesses himself in the 
 sight ; hears the ring of happy voices in the streets and 
 market-places, and plays his feeling in, with the play- 
 ing boys and girls of the Lord's glad mountain. Inspi- 
 ration has not taken the nature out of him, but has 
 only made him love the innocent glee of childhood the 
 more. 
 
 I draw it, accordingly, from this beautiful touch of 
 the pro|)het's picture, that religion loves too much the plays 
 and pleasures of childhood, to limit or suppress them hy any 
 kind of needless austerity. 
 
 Having set the young of all the animal races a play- 
 ing, and made their beginning an age of frisking life 
 and joyous gambol, it would be singular if God had 
 made the young of humanity an exception ; or if, hav- 
 ing put the same sportive instinct in their make, he 
 should restrict them always to a carefully practical and 
 sober mood. What indeed does he permit us to see, in 
 the universal mirth-time which is given to be the be- 
 ginning of every creature's life, that he has. Himself, a 
 certain pleasure in their exuberant life, and regards their 
 gambols with a fatherly satisfaction ? What, too, shall 
 we judge, but that as all instincts are inserted for that to 
 which they tend, so this instinct of play in children is 
 itself an appointment of play ? 
 
 Besides, there is a very sublime reason for the play- 
 state of childhood which respects the moral and religious 
 well-being of manhood, and makes it important that we 
 should have our first chapter of life in this key. Play 
 is the symbol and interpreter of liberty, that is, Chris- 
 
840 PLAYS AND PASTIMES, 
 
 tian liberty ; and no one conld ever sufficiently conceive 
 the state of free impulse and tlie joy tliere is in it, save 
 by means of this unconstrained, always pleasurable ac- 
 tivity, that we call the play of children. Play wants no 
 motive but play ; and so true goodness, when it is ripe 
 in the soul and is become a complete inspiration there, 
 will ask no motive but to be good. Therefore God has 
 purposely set the beginning of the natural life in a mood 
 that foreshadows the last and highest chapter of immor- 
 tal character. Just as he has made hunger in the body 
 to represent hunger in the soul, thirst in the body to 
 represent thirst In the soul, what is sweet, bitter, sour 
 in the taste to represent what is sweet, bitter, sour in 
 the soul's feeling, lameness to represent the hobbling of 
 false principle, the fierce combustion of heat to repre- 
 sent the rage of angry passion, all things natural to 
 represent all things spiritual, so he prepares, at the 
 very beginning of our life, in the free self-impulsion 
 of play, that which is to foreshadow the glorious liberty 
 of the soul's ripe order and attainment in good. One 
 is the paradise of nature behind us, the other the para- 
 dise of grace before us; and the recollection of one 
 images to us, and stimulates us in, the pursuit of the 
 other. 
 
 Holding this conception of the uses, and the very 
 great importance of play, as a natural interpreter of 
 what is highest and last in the grand problem of our 
 life itself, we are led, on sober and even religious con- 
 viction, to hold in high estimation the age of play. As 
 play is the forerunner of religion, so religion is to be 
 
HOLIDAYS AND SUNDAYS. 841 
 
 the friend of play ; to love its free motion, its bappy 
 scenes, its voices of glee, and never, by any needless 
 austerities of control, seek to hamper and shorten its 
 pleasures. Any sort of piety or supposed piety that is 
 jealous of the plays and bounding activities of childish 
 life, is a character of hardness and severity that has, so 
 far at least, but a very questionable agreement with 
 God's more genial and fatherly feeling. One of the first 
 duties of a genuinely Christian parent is, to show a gen- 
 erous sympathy with the plays of his children; pro- 
 viding playthings and means of play, giving them play- 
 times, inviting suitable companions for them, and re- 
 quiring them to have it as one of their pleasures, to 
 keep such companions entertained in their plays, in- 
 stead of playing always for their own mere self-pleasing. 
 Sometimes, too, the parent, having a hearty interest in 
 the plays of his children, will drop out for the time the 
 sense of his years, and go into the frolic of their mood 
 with them. They will enjoy no other play- time so 
 much as that, and it will have the effect to make the 
 authority so far unbent, just as much stronger and more 
 welcome, as it has brought itself closer to them, and 
 given them a more complete show of sympathy. 
 
 On the same principle, it has an excellent effect to 
 make much of the birthdays of children, because it 
 shows them, little and dependent as they are, to be held 
 in so much greater estimation in the house. When 
 they have each their own day, when that day is so re- 
 membered and observed as to indicate a real and felt 
 interest in it by all, then the home in which they are so 
 
 29^ 
 
342 PLAYS AND PASTIMES, 
 
 cherislied is proportionally endeared to feeling, and wliat 
 has magnified them they are ready to magnify. 
 
 On the same principle, too, public days and festivals, 
 those of the school, those of the state, and those of relig- 
 ion, are to be looked upon with favor, as times in which 
 they are to be gladdened by the shows, and plays, and 
 simple pleasures appropriate to the occasions ; care be- 
 ing only taken to put them in no connection with vice, 
 or any possible excess. Let them see what is to be 
 seen, enjoy what is to be enjoyed, and shun with just 
 so much greater sensibility whatever is loose, or wild, 
 or wicked. 
 
 Eeligious festivals have a peculiar value to children ; 
 such I mean as the festivals of Thanksgiving and Christ- 
 mas — one a festival of thanks for the benefits of Prov- 
 idence, the other for the benefits of that supernatural 
 providence which has given the world a Saviour and a 
 salvation. Both are religious, and, in that fact, have 
 their value ; for nothing will go farther to remove the 
 annoyance of a continual, unsparing, dry restraint upon 
 the soul of childhood, and produce a feeling, as re- 
 spects religion, of its really genial character, than to 
 have it bring its festive and joyously commemorative 
 days. One of the great difficulties in a properly relig- 
 ious nurture is, that religion has to open its approaches 
 to the soul, and make its beginnings in the shape of 
 law ; to say God requires of you this, forbids you in 
 that, makes it your life to be set in all ways of obedi- 
 ence. It takes on thus a guise of constraint, and so far 
 wears a repulsive look ; but if it can show how genial it 
 
HOLIDAYS AND SUNDAYS. 843 
 
 is, how truly it loves even childisli enjoyment, by gild- 
 ing for it clays of joy and festive celebrations, then the 
 severities of law and responsible obedience take on 
 themselves a look of benignity, and it begins to be felt 
 that God commands us, not to cripple us, but to keep 
 us safe and lead us into good. Such days, it is true, 
 may be greatly abused by what is really unchristian ; 
 what is sensual and low, and very close to vice it- 
 self; and it is much to be regretted that the Christmas 
 festival, otherwise so beautiful and appropriate, taken 
 as a Christian commemoration of the greatest fact of the 
 world's history, has been so commonly associated with 
 traditional looseness and excess. The friends of such a 
 day can not do it any so great honor, as to clear it en- 
 tirely of the excess and profane jollity by which it was 
 made to commemorate any thing and every thing but 
 Christ, that, setting it in character as a genuine religious 
 festivity, they may give it to all friends of Christ as a 
 day of universal observance. 
 
 Happily there is now such an abundance of games 
 and plays prepared for the entertainment of children, 
 that there is no need of allowing them in any that stand 
 associated with vice. Those plays are generally to be 
 most favored that are to be had only in the open air, and 
 in forms of exercise that give sprightliness and robustness 
 to the body. At the same time, there needs to be a 
 preparation of devices for the entertainment of children 
 indoors in the evening ; for the prophet did not give it 
 as a picture of the happy days of Jerusalem, that the 
 streets of the city should be full of boys and girls play- 
 
344 PLAYS AND PASTIMES, 
 
 ing there in the evening, or into the night, away from 
 their parents and the supervision of their home. There 
 is any thing signified in that but happiness and public 
 well-being. Christian fathers and mothers will never 
 suffer their children to be out in the public streets in 
 the evening, unless they are themselves too loose and 
 self-indulgent to assume that care of the conduct and 
 the hours of their children, which is imposed upon them 
 by their parental responsibilities. In country places, 
 far removed from all the haunts of vice, and in neigh- 
 borhoods where there are no vicious children, it might 
 work no injury if boys were allowed to be out, now and 
 then, in their coasting or skating parties in the evening. 
 But the better rule in large towns, the absolute rule, 
 having no exceptions as regards very young children, 
 will be that they are never to be out or away from home 
 in. the evening. Meantime, it will be the duty of the 
 parents, and a kind of study especially of the mother, 
 to find methods of making the house no mere prison, 
 but a place of attraction, and of always cheerful and 
 pleasant society. She will provide books that will feed 
 their intelligence and exercise their tastes, pictures, 
 games, diversions, plays; set them to inventing such 
 themselves, teaching them how to carry on their little 
 society, in the playful turns of good nature and fun, by 
 which they stimulate and quicken each other ; drilling 
 them in music, and setting them forward in it by such 
 beginnings that they will shortly be found exercising 
 and training each other ; shedding over all the play, in- 
 fusing into all the glee, a certain sober and thoughtful 
 
HOLIDAYS AND SUNDAYS. 345 
 
 look of character and principle, so that no overgrown 
 appetite for sport may render violent pleasures neces- 
 sary, but that small, and gentle, and easy, and almost 
 sober pleasures, may suffice ; becoming, at last, even 
 most satisfactory. Here is the field of the mother's 
 greatest art, viz : in the finding how to make a happy 
 and good evening for her children. Here it is that the 
 lax, faithless, worthless mother most entirely fails; 
 here the good and wise mother wins her best successes. 
 
 Meantime some care must be exercised, that the rehg- 
 ious life itself be never set in an attitude of repug- 
 nance to the plays of childhood. There must be no 
 attempt to raise a conscience against play. Any such 
 religion will certainly go to the wall ; any such con- 
 science will be certainly trampled, and things innocent 
 will be done as if they were crimes ; done with a guilty 
 feeling; done with as bad effects every way, on the 
 character, as if they were really the worst things. 
 ISTothing is more cruel than to throw a child into the 
 attitude of conflict with God and his conscience, by 
 raising a false conscience against that which both God 
 and nature approve. It is nothing less than making a 
 gratuitous loss of religion, required by no terms of rea- 
 son, justified by no principle, even of Christian sacrifice 
 itself 
 
 Suppose, for example, that a child has begun to show 
 many pleasant evidences of love to God and all good 
 things, but that he is eager still in play, or sometimes 
 gets quite wild in the excitement of it. If, at such a 
 time, it is sprung upon him, as a conclusion, that he 
 
346 PLAYS AND PASTIMES, 
 
 does not truly love God, because lie is so mucb. taken 
 by the excitements of play, he will thus be discouraged 
 without reason, in all his confidences of piety, and it 
 will be strange, if by-and-bye he does not begin to 
 show a settled aversion to religious things. How can 
 he do less, when he is compelled to see it, as in conflict 
 with all the most innocent and most truly natural in- 
 stincts of his age ? Or, to make the case more plain, 
 drawing the question to a closer point, suppose the 
 child, having so many evidences of piety in his dispo- 
 sitions, to be found at some kind of play in the family 
 prayers, or that he rushes out from such prayers, in a 
 manner that indicates eagerness and an emancipated 
 feeling, or that he sometimes shows uneasiness in the 
 hours of public worship on Sunday, or gives manifest 
 tokens, in the morning, of a desire to escape from it, 
 is it then to be set down, in your parental remonstran- 
 ces with him, that he has, of course, no love to God, or 
 the things of religion ? By no means. How often does 
 the adult Christian feel even a disinclination to such 
 things ; how often hurry away from his formal prayer, 
 that he may get into his shop, or his field, or into some 
 negotiation that has haunted his sleep in the night ; how 
 often sit through sermons with his mind on the game of 
 politics, on the investment made or to be made ; on his 
 journey, or his mortgage, or the rivals he has in his 
 trade ? Is it worse for a child to be after his plays, with 
 only the same kind of eagerness ? Doubtless all such 
 engrossments of the soul, whether of one kind or the 
 other, are to be taken as bad signs, and, as far as they 
 
HOLIDAYS AND SUNDAYS. 347 
 
 go, to be allowed their due weight. But which is worse 
 and more fatal, the child's undue possession by the 
 spirit of play, or the man's by the spirit of gain — the 
 honest, artless, letting forth of nature by one, or the 
 deliberate, studied, scheming of the other — it is not dif- 
 ficult, I think, to guess. No matter if the latter is 
 more sober and thoughtful in the mood, observing a 
 better show of gravity. For just that reason he is only 
 to be judged the more harshly. If then we can bear 
 with adult Christians, who are much in the world, and, 
 forgetting themselves often, fall into moods of real dis- 
 inclination to their duty, are we to set it down as some 
 total evidence against the piety of a child, that, by 
 mere exuberance of life, he is occasionally hurried 
 away from sacred things, into matters of play ? Noth- 
 ing is more unjust. Why should we require it of a 
 child to be perfect, when we do not require it of a man ? 
 And if we tolerate inconstancy of feeling or impulse 
 in one, why not a much less worldly and deliberate in- 
 constancy in the other ? 
 
 Thus far we speak for the side of play, showing how 
 far off it is from the purpose of religion to take away, 
 or suppress, the innocent plays of childhood ; how 
 ready it is, on the other hand, to foster them and give 
 them sympathy. But it is not the whole of life, even 
 to a child, to be indulged in play. There is such a 
 thing as order, no less than such a thing as liberty ; and 
 the process of adjustment between these two contending 
 powers, begins at a very early date. Under the law of 
 
348 PLAYS AND PASTIMES, 
 
 the house, of the school, and of God, the mere play 
 impulse begins very soon to be tempered and modera- 
 ted by duty, and the problem is to make divine order 
 itself, at last, a state of liberty analogous to the state of 
 play, as already suggested. But the law that is to fash- 
 ion such order will be first felt as a restriction ; then, 
 when it becomes the spirit of the life, the order itself 
 will be liberty. There is no such thing, therefore, as a 
 possibility to childhood of unrestricted play. Eestric- 
 tion must be encountered as often as the order of the 
 house demands it, then as often as the school de- 
 mands it, then as often as the duties of religion demand 
 it. Though such restrictions are never to be looked 
 upon as hostile to the child's play, but only as terms 
 that are really necessary for his training into the 
 organic relations under which he is born, best for his 
 character, and even best for the enjoyments of his play 
 itself Otherwise he would either become sated by it 
 in a short time, or his appetite for it would become so 
 egregiously overgrown, that no possible devices or 
 means could be invented to keep pace with it. Be- 
 sides, a child, thus put to nothing but mere play, would 
 very soon grow into such lightness and dissipation of 
 feeling, as to be mentally addled, and would so be 
 wholly incapacitated for any of the more sober and 
 manly of&ces of life. 
 
 Here, then, begins a process of training into moral 
 order, which, without wishing to be any restriction 
 upon play, is yet of necessity such a restriction. The 
 child is required to conform his conduct, including his 
 
HOLIDAYS AND SUNDAYS. 349 
 
 plays, to the peace of the house, to the conditions of 
 sick persons in it, to the hours and times and general 
 comfort of other inmates older than himself. Errands 
 are put upon him that require him to forego his pleas- 
 ures. When he is old enough, he is set to works of 
 industry, it may be, that he may contribute something 
 to the general benefit. By all which restrictions of play, 
 he is only prepared to enjoy his pastimes and plays the 
 more. The restrictions he will doubtless feel, at the 
 time, and may be somewhat restive under them ; but 
 when he is thoroughly brought into the order of the 
 house, and is set in the habit of serving it, as an inter- 
 est of his own, then he will obey, contrive, and work, 
 and even drudge himself to serve it, constrained by no 
 motive but the service itself. 
 
 In the same manner it will be laid upon him to be at 
 his place in the school, to be punctual to his times, to 
 miss no lesson, to hold his mind to his studies by close, 
 unfaltering application, even though it cost him a loss 
 of just that liberty in play that he would most like, 
 and take it as the very bliss of his good fortune to have. 
 Kestricted thus by the order of the school, he will only 
 enjoy his play-times the more, and finally will come to 
 the enjoyment of study itself for its own sake. 
 
 And so it will be in religion. There must, of course, 
 be in it, what may be called restrictions upon children. 
 All law is felt as restriction at the first, but it will not be 
 that God makes war on their innocent plays ; thej^ only 
 need as much, to be established in right conduct, well- 
 doing, and piety, as to have their indulgence in such 
 
 30 
 
850 PLAYS AND PASTIMES, 
 
 pleasures. If God will take them away from all mis- 
 rule and wretchedness, and will bring them into all best 
 conditions of blessedness and peace, and even of liberty 
 itself, he must put them under his commandments, train 
 them into his divine will, and settle them in his own 
 perfect order ; and if he is obliged, in such a design, to 
 infringe here and there upon their plays, it is not be- 
 cause he likes the infringement, but only that he seeks 
 the higher bliss of character for them. Thus when a 
 little child is required to say his prayers and retire at 
 the proper time for sleep, there is nothing to complain 
 of in that kind of constraint, even though he wants to 
 continue his play ; for the thing required is plainly for 
 his good — this for the double reason that it trains him 
 toward obedience to God, and a life in heaven's order, 
 and because it even gives him a better appetite, and a 
 fuller fund of vigor for, his play itself. And so it is 
 ' universally ; no constraint is to be blamed as infringe- 
 ment on his happiness, or a harsh severity against his 
 pleasures, when, in fact, all highest happiness and 
 widest range of liberty depend on the requirement 
 imposed. 
 
 The suggestions and distinctions thus far advanced, 
 have, it will now be seen, another kind of use and im- 
 portance, when taken as preparatives for the settlement 
 of a great practical question, viz : how to use the Chris- 
 tian Sabbath, or Sunday, so as to best honor the day 
 in its true import, and best secure the ends of Christian 
 nurture. " The question is one that relates to a whole 
 
HOLIDAYS AND SUNDAYS. 351 
 
 seventli part of the child's time, and to just that part 
 which is most peculiarly religious in the form, and most 
 likely to assist the implanting and due fostering of 
 religious impressions. So much indeed is there in this 
 matter of a right use of Sundays, that the success of 
 family nurture will be more exactly represented and 
 measured by that use, than by any thing else. Sunday 
 is preeminently the child's day for the soul, and the de- 
 fective or bad use of it is never going to be compen- 
 sated, by any wisest, best use of the other six days of the 
 week. Indeed there is so much depending on this day, 
 as regards human society, and the growth, and purity, 
 and power of religion, that where it is lost in the train- 
 ing of families, no other kind of advantage — no litur- 
 gical drill, or eloquent preaching, or faithful and clear 
 doctrine — can possibly make up the loss. 
 
 The main question, here, is how much, or little, of re- 
 striction is to be laid upon children in the due observ- 
 ance of the day? And the tendency is, it will be 
 observed, to one or the other of two opposite ex- 
 tremes — that of undue severity, or that of unchristian 
 looseness — and this, for two distinct sets of reasons. 
 Sometimes for the reason of self-indulgence, or indo- 
 lence in the parents ; and sometimes for the reason of 
 insufficient views of the day, as it stands in the Scrip- 
 ture, or in the judgments to be held of its uses. Thus 
 it will be noted — 
 
 1. That, where parents are too indolent for any kind 
 of painstaking in their families, they will contrive to 
 ease the burdens of their duty by one or the other of 
 
352 PLAYS AND PASTIMES, 
 
 two distinct metliods. They will either take up the 
 notion that it is best and most soundly orthodox, to 
 make a very stiff practice for their children ; in w^hich 
 case they will perhaps require them to sit down within 
 doors a good part of the day, learning catechism or 
 scripture, stilling the house in that manner so as to 
 allow them to sleep ; or else they will take up the no- 
 tion that, in modern times, we are to be more liberal, 
 of course, being more intelligent; in which case they 
 will get their children off to the Sunday-school, (with 
 a lesson, or without,) or if they better like it, send them 
 into the streets, or the fields. Here is the first great 
 obstacle to be encountered, in securing a right and use- 
 ful Sunday in families, viz : that invincible self-indul- 
 gence in parents, which is the bane of all true care and 
 responsibility ; the poison, too, of all honest judgment 
 in finding what the way of duty is. They have fre- 
 quently no such earnest and prayerful desire of the 
 religious benefit of their children, as fastens their own 
 attention, or presses them into a study of plans and 
 expedients for creating a religious interest in their 
 minds. And then a double mischief follows, viz : that 
 they grow rusty themselves in their religious character, 
 and having no good conscience, subside into a state of 
 silence and acknowledged incapacity; and next, that, 
 having become mere drones of respectful nothingness 
 in the positive duties of religion, they stand as actual 
 impediments in the way of all genuine religious impres- 
 sions in their families. The man who can make sacri- 
 fices and take pains for his children at home will grow, 
 
HOLIDAYS AND SUNDAYS. 353 
 
 and be a useful Christian every where ; and the man 
 who can not, will be a dead weight every where. Here is 
 the secret of a great part of that drying up of charac- 
 ter which we so often deplore ; and the secret also of 
 that strangely irreligious temper, that hatred and con- 
 tempt of all religion, that so often excites our wonder 
 in the children of nominally Christian families. Let 
 no parent hope to have God's blessing on the Sundays 
 of his house, or indeed on any thing else that concerns 
 the religious welfare of his children, unless he is willing 
 to take pains, make sacrifices, burn as a light of holy 
 example, for them and before them. Pass then, 
 
 2. To the inquiry what is the true conception of our 
 Lord's day, or Sunday ? What, according to the Scrip- 
 ture, and to all sound judgment of the day, as related 
 to the Christian training of families, and to the general 
 welfare of society, is the mode and amount of restriction 
 imposed by it ? I think it will be found, in giving a 
 right answer to this question, that the true use of the 
 day lies between two errors, or extremes, that stand over 
 against each other ; one that makes a virtually Jewish 
 day of it, and an opposite that, with undue haste, quite 
 sweeps it away. Neither is the mode of scripture, and 
 the two are about equally weak, as regards their philos- 
 ophic grounds and reasons. 
 
 According to the Scripture, God ordained a religious 
 day, called a Sabbath, at the very morning of the crea- 
 tion. This was the day that Moses found already exist- 
 ing and only re-enacted in the ten tables of the moral 
 law, as he did the statutes against Iving and murder. 
 
 30* 
 
854 PLAYS AND PASTIMES 
 
 The Sabbath stands, therefore, on precisely the same 
 ground, scripturally, as the others; on the same too 
 morally, save that the precise natural and social reasons 
 for it, equally clear to God, are not so to us ; and that, 
 so far, it has the character to us of a simply divine 
 institute, while the other nine statutes of the decalogue 
 have the nature of acknowledged principles, grounded 
 in their perceptible moral reasons. Could we also grasp, 
 as God does, the precise natural reasons for observing 
 just one day in seven as holy time, tracing perfectly the 
 vast religious, and social, and moral, and physical ef- 
 fects involved, it would have no more the look of an 
 institute, and would become a principle of natural obli- 
 gation, like the others that stand with it. 
 
 In this view, it can not be repealed any more than 
 the statute against theft, or false witness. It is not a 
 Jewish day, in any proper sense of the term, but a day 
 of humanity, a world's-creation day; type also and 
 ground of the new-creation day of the Lord. Moses 
 went on, it is true, after the delivery of the decalogue, 
 and ordained laws civil, and police regulations, by which 
 the Sabbath was to be observed and enforced, and it 
 was these that gave a Jewish character to their Sab- 
 bath. And, so far, no farther, it was that the Sabbath 
 was repealed, in becoming a Lord's day. When Paul 
 complains to the Colossians, that they "observe new 
 moons and Sabbaths," and boldly rebukes the Galatians, 
 that they "turn again to the beggarly elements desiring 
 to be in bondage," and "observe days, and months, and 
 times, and years," he does not mean to call the seventh 
 
HOLIDAYS AND SUNDAYS. 855 
 
 day of the decalogue beggarly elements, any more than 
 he does the command to have but one God, or not to steal 
 or kill. The beggarly elements are the political addi- 
 tions, those rigors of observance that were added by the 
 political statutes and the religious drill of the ritual ; 
 designed, as it was, for- a slavish people, low in their 
 perceptions, and unable to know religion at all, save in 
 the practice of austerities under it. Eestriction was to 
 them, at their low point, about the only religious con- 
 ception they were equal to, and their whole ritual econ- 
 omy had a great part of its merit, in the stringent close- 
 ness of it, and the perpetual girding of their practice 
 under its hard austerities. So far the whole economy 
 was to be displaced, and the civil-law Sabbath was to 
 go down with it. But the more ancient Sabbath be- 
 longed to the covenant of promise itself, and had the 
 same kind of freedom and genial life in it that per- 
 tained, in Paul's view, to the whole Abrahamic order in 
 religion. We can see too, for ourselves, that, so far as 
 it is affirmed in the moral code of the decalogue, in dis- 
 tinction from the civil law, it has a character of extreme 
 beauty and benignity. What can be a more genial to- 
 ken for God, than that he appoints such an institute of 
 universal rest from labor ? And what could evidence 
 a more beautiful mercy than that God should take the 
 part, in this manner, of all labor, even that of servants 
 and slaves, and indeed of the laboring beasts, the oxen 
 and the asses, asserting his protection over them (beau- 
 tiful lesson of mercy to animals !) even against the sel- 
 fishness of their owners, and allowing them to have a 
 
356 PLAYS AND PASTIMES, 
 
 respite to tlieir otherwise endless toils. There is, in fact, 
 no restrictive word in the commandment, save what 
 may be felt of restriction in the injunction to "keep the 
 day holy," and even that is interpreted, to a great de- 
 gree, by the simple requirement of a cessation from 
 labor; though it is, doubtless, to be understood that 
 the day is duly hallowed, only by a careful devotion of 
 it to the uses of religion. Is there any thing harsh or 
 unduly restrictive in such a day? Does Christianity 
 itself find any thing to accuse, or any want of benignity 
 in it? 
 
 There is, then, no pretext of authority in the Scrip- 
 ture for making the Lord's day, or Sunday, a Jewish 
 day to children. And those parents who make it a 
 point of fidelity to lay it on their children, according to 
 the strict police regulations of the Jewish code, would 
 be much more orthodox, if they went farther back, and 
 took up conceptions of the day some thousands of years 
 older. When they assume that every thing which can 
 be called play in a very young child is wrong, or an 
 offense against religion, they try, in fact, to make Gala- 
 tians of their children ; incurring a much harsher, Chris- 
 tian rebuke, than if they only turned to the beggarly 
 elements themselves, and laid their own souls under 
 the bondage. What can a poor child do, that is cut off 
 thus, for a whole twenty-four hours, from any right to 
 vent his exuberant feeling — impounded, strictly, in the 
 house and shut up to catechism; or taken to church, 
 there to fold his hands and sit out the long solemnities 
 of the worship, and what to him is the mysterious lingo 
 
HOLIDAYS AND SUNDAYS. 367' 
 
 of preaching; then taken home again to struggle with 
 the pent up fires, waiting in dreary and forlorn vacan- 
 cy, till what are called the mercies of the day are over? 
 What conception does he get of religion, by such kind 
 of treatment, but that it comes to the world as foe to 
 every bright thing in it ; a burden, a weariness, a tariff, 
 on the other six days of life ? 
 
 But there comes in, here, a grand scripture reason for 
 some sort of restriction, viz: that restriction is the 
 necessary first stage of spiritual training every where. 
 Instead of rushing into the conclusion, therefore, as 
 many parents do, that all religious observances which 
 create a feeling of restraint, or become at all irksome to 
 chidren, are of course hurtful, and raise a prejudice in 
 their minds against religion, the Scripture boldly asserts 
 the fact that all law begins to be felt as a bondage. 
 Law and gospel have a natural relationship, and they 
 are bound together every where, by a firm interior ne- 
 cessity. It is so in the family, in the school, and in 
 religion. The law state is always felt to be a bondage, 
 and the restriction is irksome. By-and-bye, the good- 
 ness of the law, and of them by whom it is adminis- 
 tered, is fully discovered, and the obedience that began 
 as restriction merges in liberty. The parents are obeyed 
 with such care, as anticipates even their wishes; the 
 lesson, that was a task, is succeeded by that free appli- 
 cation which sacrifices even health and life to the eager- 
 ness of study ; and so the law of God, that was origin- 
 ally felt only in the friction, rubbed in by that friction, 
 is finally melted into the heart by the cross of Jesus, 
 
358 PLAYS AND PASTIMES, 
 
 and becomes the soul's liberty itself. It is no fault then 
 of a Sunday tbat it is felt, in some proper degree, as a 
 restriction ; or even that the day is sometimes a little 
 irksome to tbe extreme restiveness of cbildren. All re- 
 straint, wbetber in the family or tbe scbool, is likely to 
 be somewhat irksome at the first. The untamed will, 
 the wild impulse of nature, always begins to feel even 
 principle itself in that way of collision with it. Xor is 
 it any fault of the Sunday observance, that it has, to 
 us, the character of an institute. If it were a mere law 
 of natural morality, we might observe it without any 
 thought of God's will ; but if we receive it as an insti- 
 tute, we acknowledge God's will in it; and nothing 
 has a more wholesome effect on just this account, than 
 the being trained to an habitual surrender to what God 
 has confessedly enjoined or instituted by his will. It is 
 the acknowledging of his pure authority, and is all the 
 more beneficial, when the authority is felt in a some- 
 what restrictive way. The transition too is easy from . 
 this to a belief in the supernatural facts of Christianity. 
 The conscience and life is already configured to such 
 faith ; for whatever is accepted as an institution of God, 
 is accepted as the supernatural injunction of his will. 
 
 The flash judgments, therefore, of many, in respect 
 to the observance of Sunday, are not to be hastily ac- 
 cepted. We are not to read the prophet, as if promis- 
 ing that the streets of the city shall be full of boys and 
 girls, on the Lord's holy day, playing in the streets 
 thereof ; or as if that kind of license were necessary to 
 clear the irksomeness of an oppressive observance ; or 
 
HOLIDAYS AND SUNDAYS. 359 
 
 as if the power of religion were to be increased by 
 removing every thing in it, wliicli disturbs the natural 
 impatience of restraint. Some child that was, for ex- 
 ample, now grown up to be a man — a profligate it may 
 be, a sworn infidel, a hater of'-all religion — laughs at the 
 pious Sundays that his godly mother made him keep, 
 and testifies to the bitter annoyance he suffered under 
 the irksome and superstitious restrictions thus imposed 
 on his childish liberty. Whereupon some liberalist or 
 hasty and superficial disciple, immediately infers that 
 all Sunday restrictions are injurious, and only raise a 
 hostile feehng in the child toward all religion. Where- 
 as it may be, in the example cited, for such are not very 
 infrequent, that the child was never accustomed to re- 
 striction at any other time as he ought to have been, or 
 that his mother was too self-indulgent to exert herself 
 in any such way for his religious entertainment, as to 
 respite and soften the strictness of the Sunday observ- 
 ance. Perhaps the requirement was really too restric- 
 tive, or perhaps it was so little and so unevenly restric- 
 tive, as to make it only the more annoying. Be it as it 
 may, in this or any particular example, a true Sunday 
 observance needs to be restrictive in a certain degree, 
 and needs to be felt in that way, in order to its real 
 benefit. What is wanted is to have God's will felt in 
 it, and then to have it reverently and willingly ac- 
 cepted. A Sunday turned into a holiday, to avoid the 
 supposed evil of restrictiveness, would be destitute or 
 religious value for just that reason. 
 
 The true principle of Sunday observance, then, ap- 
 
860 PLAYS AND PASTIMES, 
 
 pears to be this : that the child is to feel the day as a 
 restriction, and is to have so much done to excite in- 
 terest, and mitigate the severities of restriction, that he 
 will also feel the true benignity of God in the day, and 
 learn to have it as one of his enjoyments. When the 
 child is very young, or just passing out of infancy, it 
 will be enough that, with some simple teaching about 
 Grod and his day, a part of his more noisy playthings are 
 taken away ; or, what is better than this, that he have 
 a distinct Sunday set of playthings ; such as may repre- 
 sent points of religious history, or associate religious 
 ideas, abundance of which can be selected from any 
 variety store without difficulty ; then, as the child ad- 
 vances in age, so as to take the full meaning of lan- 
 guage, or so as to be able to read, the playthings of the 
 hands and eyes will be substituted by the playthings 
 of the mind ; which also will be such as connect some 
 kind of religious interest — books and pictures relating 
 to scripture subjects, a practice in the learning and be- 
 ginning to sing Christian hymns, conversations about 
 God and Christ, such as bring out the beauty of God's 
 feeling and character, and present Him, not so much 
 as a frightful, but more as a friendly and attractive 
 being ; for the child who is only scared by God's ter- 
 rors and severities, will very soon lose out all propor- 
 tional conceptions of him, and will want to hear of him 
 no more. Even the Sunday itself that only brings him 
 to mind will, for just that reason, become a burden. 
 The endeavor should be to excite a welcome interest in 
 the day and the subjects it recalls. 
 
HOLIDAYS AND SUNDAYS. 861 
 
 And the devices that may be used are endless. The 
 natural history of Palestine, the rivers, lakes, moun- 
 tains, every city, every plain, will be easily associated 
 in the child's memory, with the events and characters, 
 and religious transactions of the sacred history ; so with 
 lessons of duty and sentiments of piety. For such uses, 
 an embossed map of the Holy Land would be invalu- 
 able in a family of young children. Here are marked 
 the sites of towns and cities, and the face of the ground 
 is given on which they stood, or stand. Here was the 
 locality of a battle, on this mountain or slope, or in 
 this plain, or by this river. Here dwelt some patriarch, 
 or prophet, or ministering woman. Looking over these 
 ranges of mountain, through these valleys, and across 
 these lakes and plains, questions of locality, geography, 
 prospect, transaction, miracle, travel, can be raised with 
 endless variety, such as will sharpen the intellectual 
 curiosity, and the sense of religion together. The 
 whole country may be daguerreotyped in this manner 
 on the child's mind, and a tenfold interest excited in 
 every event, whether of the Old or New Testament 
 history. 
 
 The day itself also will be raising fruitful topics of 
 inquiry. The topics of public preaching, especially 
 those which relate to Christ — Christ the child, Christ 
 the friend, brother, bread, way, reconciling grace — will 
 raise interesting questions in the child's mind, and he 
 will be delighted if the parent can make out a good 
 and lively child's version of them. 
 
 Hearing much too of the church, and the communion 
 
862 PLAYS AND PASTIMES, 
 
 of saints in its order and ordinances, lie will want to 
 know more exactly what tlie cliiircli is, wliat it is for, 
 and wIlo are in it. And when lie is rightly informed 
 concerning it, as being God's holy family, or school, in 
 which all the members are disciples or learners to- 
 gether, and how Christ himself dwells in it, unseen, as 
 the teacher and head, preserving its order from age to 
 age, and dispensing gifts of life and salvation to them 
 that are folded with him in it, hoAv tenderly will it 
 move his feeling, and with what gladness, to hear that 
 he also is a member, whom Christ has accepted before- 
 hand, to grow Tip as a disciple in it. His feeling will thus 
 begin at once to take sides with it, as with his family 
 itself, and he will be drawn along into the spirit and 
 cause of it, just as he is into the cause of his family. 
 
 Perhaps too he will have witnessed the sacraments, 
 the holy supper, and baptism as administered to in- 
 fants, and he will be asking, probably, for some ex- 
 planation of these. And nothing can have a more be- 
 nign effect on a child's religious feeling than to be 
 trained to a genuine faith in sacraments. But, in order 
 to this, they must be sacraments ; that is, observances 
 appointed by Grod, as the occasions of a special faith in 
 the special visitations and powers he engages to bestow 
 on the receivers. 
 
 "We have become even a little jealous of sacraments. 
 Our recoil from the extravagances of priestly magic 
 has been carried too far. We keep them on foot, but 
 we can scarcely be said to have faith in them, or to use 
 them. The very attitude of mind they require is what 
 
HOLIDAYS AND SUNDAYS. 3G3 
 
 we want — want in the family, want in the cliurch. 
 They set ns before God in just the way to receive Him 
 best. He knew exactly what we wanted, and there- 
 fore gave them to communicate his own divine power 
 in them. Suppose that Carthage, in giving to her sons 
 an oath {sacramentum) of eternal hostility to Eome, had 
 been able to pledge a war-grace also, going into battle 
 with them to make them strong before their enemy 
 and always victorious, how eagerly would they have 
 taken hold of it, in the terrible encounters of the field ! 
 
 The supper then is to be a sacrament and no merely 
 monumental affair, as if it were a coming to the tomb 
 of Jesus to read his inscription ; but it is to be an occa- 
 sion where he is to be discerned, manifested as dis- 
 cerned, in his most real, only real, presence ; dispens- 
 ing himself and his reconciling peace to the soul. Ex- 
 plained thus to the child, in a manner adapted to his 
 understanding, it is also to be added — "this is for you, 
 and Christ is waiting to receive you and bless you in it, 
 whenever you can ask it truly believing that he will, 
 according to the faith to which you were pledged in 
 your baptism." I see no objection whatever to his being 
 taken to the supper casually, whenever his childish piety 
 really and seriously desires it ; unless some opposing 
 scruples in the church, or the minister, should make it 
 unadvisible. Christ, I am sure, would say — "Suffer 
 the child and forbid him not." 
 
 The sacrament of baptism, which he will often see 
 dispensed to infants — and they ought always to be pre- 
 sented in a public way, or in the open church, for that 
 
364 PLAYS AND PASTIMES, 
 
 purpose — can be handled, in tliese Sunday conversa- 
 tions, with still greater effect. This preeminently is the 
 child's sacrament ; signifying no regenerative work 
 done upon the child, (opus operaium^) but the promise 
 of an always cherishing, cleansing, sealing mercy, in 
 which he is to be grown, as one that is born in due 
 time; and which he is always to believe in, and be 
 taking hold of, in all his childish struggles with evil. 
 And he is to have it, not as a sacrament dispensed once 
 for all and ended, but as a perpetual baptism, always 
 distilling upon him, pledged to go with him, overliving 
 his many faults and falls, and operating restoratively 
 when it can not 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 pro- 
 foundest 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. Fam- 
 ily 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 — 
 
HOLIDAYS AND SUNDAYS. 365 
 
 tlie churcli, 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 Sab- 
 bath a delight, and the holy of the Lord honorable," 
 and will have beside, all the blessings of the prophet 
 that follow. 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 after- 
 ward, 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. 
 
 31* 
 
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. — 2 Timothy^ iii. 14. 
 
 This exliortatioii 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 child- 
 hood — "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 un- 
 believer ; 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 call- 
 ing 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 ex- 
 ample, as it appears in all the parties concerned, the 
 young minister and disciple, the godly mother and her 
 
THE CHRISTIAN TEACHING. 367 
 
 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 begin- 
 ning, 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 prin- 
 cipally summed up. It is not every thing to teach, or 
 verbally instruct their children, least of all to indoc- 
 trinate 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 Testa- 
 ment preacher is exhorted still to be an Old Testament 
 son, and is sent forth, in the power of the ancient Scrip- 
 ture, 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 m their character. 
 
868 THE CHRISTIAN TEACHHSTG 
 
 2. It is to be noted that tlie 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 him- 
 self. 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, char- 
 acter, 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 exer- 
 cised 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 train- 
 
OF CHILDREN. 369 
 
 ing in catec"hism, 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 reall}^ 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. Ilis 
 anchorage in some Christian belief, which is certainly 
 desirable, would be accomplished much more effectually, 
 if he were trained, for example, to recite the Apostle's 
 or the Nicene creed. Here he does not merely mem- 
 orize, but he assents ; and, what is more, does it by an 
 act of practical homage, or worship — a confession. 
 And then what he assents to is no matter of opinion, or 
 speculative theology, but a recitation of the supernatural 
 facts of the gospel, taken simply as facts. For these 
 facts are intelligible even to a very young child, and 
 will be recited always with the greater interest, that the 
 recitation is itself a religious act, or confession. 
 
 I am principally concerned here with the case of very 
 young children, not with such as are farther advanced 
 in age, or intelligence ; and there is no room for doubt, 
 in their case, whatever may be decided in respect to 
 others, that the teaching of Timothy's mother, the 
 scripture teaching, is to be preferred. The memoriz- 
 ing of the ten commandments and the Lord's prayer, 
 followed by the Apostle's creed and the simplest 
 Christian hymns, connected with scripture readings, 
 conversations, and discussions, will compose a body of 
 teaching specially adapted to a child, and most likely to 
 make him wise unto salvation. 
 
870 THE CHRISTIAN TEACHING 
 
 3. It is to be noted tliat tlie most genuine teacMng, 
 or only genuine teacliing, will be tliat which interprets 
 the truth to the child's feeling by living example, and 
 makes him love the truth afterwards for the teacher's 
 sake. It is a great thing for a child, in all the after life, 
 to "know of whom" he learned these things, and to see 
 a godly father, or a faithful mother, in them. ISTo truth 
 is really taught by words, or interpreted by intellectual 
 and logical methods; truth must be lived into mean- 
 ing, before it can be truly known. Examples are 
 the only sufficient commentaries; living epistles the 
 only fit expounders of written epistles. When the 
 truly Christian father and mother teach as being 
 taught of God, when their prayers go into their 
 lives and their lives into their doctrine, when their 
 goodness melts into the memory and heaven, too, 
 breathes into the associated thoughts and sentiments 
 to make a kind of blessed memory for all they teach, 
 then we see the beautiful ofS.ce they are in, fulfilled. 
 In this manner, Timothy was supposed to have a com- 
 plete set of recollections from his mother woven into 
 his very feeling of the truth itself It was more true be- 
 cause it had been taught him by her. There was even 
 a sense of her loving personality in it, by which it 
 always had been, and was always to be, endeared. On 
 the other hand, it will always be found that every kind 
 of teaching in religion, which adds no personal interest, 
 or attraction to the truth, sheds no light upon it from a 
 good and beautiful life, is nearly or quite worthless. 
 And here is the privilege of a genuinely Christian father 
 
OF CHILDREN. 371 
 
 and mother in their teaching, that they pass into the 
 the heart's feeling of their child, side by side with God's 
 truth, to be forever identified with it, and to be, them- 
 selves, lived on and over with it, in the dear eternity it 
 gives him. 
 
 But these are general considerations, which it is suffi- 
 cient to have suggested without further dwelling upon 
 them. There are yet a great many subordinate and 
 particular points, of a more promiscuous character, to 
 which also I must call your attention. And I deem it 
 here a matter of consequence to make out, first of all, a 
 somewhat extended roll of things, which are not to be 
 taught ; for so many things are taught which are not 
 true for any body, and so many which are only theo- 
 logically true for minds in full maturity — to all others 
 meaningless and repulsive — that many a child is fatally 
 stumbled in religion, just because of his teaching. 
 
 First of all, then, children are not to be taught that 
 they were regenerated in their baptism. That will only 
 convert the rite into a superstition, and put the child in 
 a totally false position, where he will rest his Christian 
 title on a mere outward transaction already past, and 
 what is even worse, on a function of priestly magic. 
 Furthermore, if the child should turn out, when he is 
 fully grown, to be a totally reckless and profane person, 
 having no pretense, or even semblance of religious 
 character, it will now be discovered to him that his re- 
 generation meant nothing, had no practical effect or 
 value, and since there is no second baptismal regenera- 
 
372 THE CHRISTIAN TEACHING 
 
 tion, it will only be left him to have neither any care 
 for the old, or hope of a new that is better. Indeed he 
 must now be saved, for aught that appears, without re- 
 generation ; which makes a very awkward kind of gos- 
 pel. If the child could be taught that his baptism 
 signifies regeneration ; supposing a pledge on God's part 
 of the necessary grace, and so the fact presumptive, that 
 the faith and careful training of his parents shall be so 
 far issued in a gracious character, that his very first 
 putting forth of good endeavor, (having been divinely 
 prepared,) shall be crowned with Christian evidence, it 
 would be well. But no young child can grasp such a 
 conception evenly enough to hold it. The most that 
 can be said to him, therefore, of his baptism, is that 
 God gave it to his parents and to himself, as a pledge 
 of the Holy Spirit, and all needed help, that he may 
 grow up into good, as a regenerated man. 
 
 As little are young children to be taught that they 
 are of course unregenerated. This, with many, is even 
 a fixed point of orthodoxy, and of course they have no 
 doubt of it. They put their children on the precise 
 footing of heathens, and take it for granted that they 
 are to be converted in the same manner. But thev 
 ought not to be in the same condition as heathens. 
 Brought up in their society, under their example, bap- 
 tized into their faith and upon the ground of it, and 
 bosomed in their prayers, there aught to be seeds of 
 gracious character already planted in them ; so that no 
 conversion is necessary, but only the development of a 
 new life already begun. Why should the parents cast 
 
OF CHILDREN. 373 
 
 away tlieir privilege, and count their child an alien still 
 from God's mercies ? 
 
 Again, you are not to teach your children that they 
 need, of course, to be regenerated, because they fail in 
 obedience, show bad tempers, and display manifold 
 other faults. Have you no faults yourselves ? Do you 
 then spring it as a conclusion against yourselves, that 
 you are unregenerate persons, or do you take hold of 
 God's help, with new earnestness and confidence, that 
 you may get strength to overcome your faults and be 
 clear of them? Shortcomings, faults, casual disincli- 
 nations of feeling, are bad signs, such as ought to wa- 
 ken distrust, but they are not, of course, conclusive 
 evidences. 
 
 As little are you to teach them that they are certainly 
 unregenerate, or without piety, because they are light 
 in many of their demonstrations, full of play, abound- 
 ing in frolicsome gayeties. Which is worse and farthest 
 from God, these innocent exuberances of life, or the 
 covetous, overcaring^ overworking, enviously plotting, 
 sobriety of their parents ? 
 
 Again you are never to teach your very young chil- 
 dren that they are too young to be good, or to be really 
 Christian. Never allow them to see that you expect 
 them to be pious only at some future day, when they 
 are older. What you despair of, or assume to be no 
 possibility for them, they certainly will not attempt, and 
 the discouragement of good, thus thrown upon them, 
 may be even fatal to their future character. Draw them 
 rather into your own exercises, taking always for grant- 
 
 32 
 
874 THE OHEISTIAN" TEACHING 
 
 ed, tliat tliey will be with you. Promise them a com- 
 mon part with you in God's friendship, and as your love 
 to Grod makes you good to them, careful of them, tender 
 toward them, show them how it will make them good 
 to one another and to you, and all good and happy 
 together. 
 
 Again, do not teach them that they can never pray, 
 or do any thing acceptable to God, till after they 
 are converted or regenerated. This, with many, is 
 a great point of orthodoxy, and I would not speak 
 of it with severity, because it is a very natural mistake ; 
 and yet it is one of the most hurtful delusions, short 
 of real infidelity, that can be put into language. It 
 is not only not true for children, but it is not true 
 for any body, and is, in fact, a kind of barricade 
 before the heavenly gate for every bod}^, still out- 
 side. It is very true that no one can pray, or do 
 any thing acceptably, to God, as being and remaining 
 unconverted, unregenerated ; but that is a very different 
 thing from showing that no one can pray, or do any 
 thing acceptably till after they are converted, or regen- 
 erated. The difference is just as wide as between all 
 good possibility and none whatever. God is ready to 
 hear every child's prayer, every man's prayer, calls 
 him to come and be heard for all he wants, only let him 
 j)ray as coming to be converted, or born of the Spirit, 
 in his prayer. If the prayers of the wicked are an 
 abomination, as they certainly are, let them come to 
 cease being wicked, and be made right with God. Can 
 not a wicked man become right, and at what time and 
 
OF CHILDREN. 875 
 
 where, better than when God is hearing and helping his 
 prayer? His very prayer will be a praying out of 
 wickedness into right. But when he can not think, 
 work, pray; can not do any thing acceptably, till after 
 he is born of the Spirit, that word after fences him back, 
 shuts him up in his sin, there to bide his time. What 
 multitudes of children have been shut away from the 
 kingdom of God, by this one misconception of piously 
 intended orthodoxy. 
 
 The mistake of teaching is scarcely less fatal, when 
 the child is put to the doing of good works, and the 
 making up of a character in the self-regulating way. 
 That kind of duty is so legal and painful, and the poor 
 child will be so often floored by his failures in it, that 
 he will not continue long. A kind of despair will 
 come upon him in a short time, and religion itself will 
 take on a hard impossible look, that is even repulsive. 
 Kothing will draw the child onward in ways of piety, 
 but the sense of forgivenesses, helps, felt sympathies of 
 grace and love. Salvation by faith, is the only kind of 
 religion that a child call support. If there is no ladder 
 to heaven but a ladder of will- works and observances, 
 he will not be climbing it long. Where Luther fell off 
 and lay groaning, infant steps will not persist. 
 
 It is a great mistake, too, and a great Christian wrong, 
 under salvation by faith, to be always showing children 
 what a hard, dry service the Christian life must be. 
 A great many parents do this unthinkingly, because it 
 is just so to them. Where there is a real living faith, 
 and children believe most easily, cheerfulness, bright- 
 
376 THE CHRISTIAN TEACHING 
 
 ness, liberty, joy, are tlie element of life itself. But if 
 tlie parent is down in the lft)west grades of possible 
 devotion, worried and not blessed by liis piety, galled 
 and not comforted ; if tbe children hear him mourning 
 always in his prayer, and confessing shortcomings and 
 defeats and poverty enough to ungospel all the gospel 
 promises, it should not be wonderful that they are not 
 particularly drawn to that kind of piety. 
 
 These, now, are some of the things which are not to 
 be taught, but carefully avoided in the training of chil- 
 dren. There are a great many other things which are 
 not to be taught, for the reason that they can not be 
 sufficiently apprehended, and will only confound the 
 understanding instead of giving it light. These are to 
 be taught, not formally or theologically, but implicitly, 
 in a kind of child's version, which the confessions com- 
 monly do not give. Thus depravity in Adam, the 
 fall of the race, the atonement by Christ in any view 
 that makes it a ground of forgiveness, regeneration 
 itself as a metaphysically defined change in character — 
 none of these can be taught as a doctrine for young 
 children. And yet they can all be taught implicitly. 
 Thus we may represent to children that we are all sin- 
 ners, and that God is displeased with us whenever we 
 do or think what is wrong ; that we want a better and 
 a clean heart, so that we shall love to do what is right, 
 and that Christ came down into the world to give it to 
 us ; that when we feel sorry for wrong he loves to for- 
 give us, and that when we feel weak and are much 
 
OF CHILDREN. 377 
 
 tempted he will help us, hearing our prayer, and com- 
 ing to us by his Spirit, to give us strength. Meantime 
 we must not omit teaching that Jesus had a most dear 
 love to children, took them in his arms, blessed them, 
 loved them even the more tenderly because of the bad 
 world into which they are come ; and that breathing 
 his own love into them, he was able to say that of such 
 is the kingdom of heaven. Proceeding in this manner, 
 let the call be to the child to become good, and to be 
 always trusting Christ to make him so, and he will 
 get the force, implicitly, of a whole gospel, in this 
 very simple and summary version. 
 
 While the whole teaching centers at this point, the 
 mind of the child will not be wearied, of course, by a 
 continual reiteration of the same very simple matter, 
 but it will be led about, into free ranges and excur- 
 sions, among the facts and very dramatic incidents of 
 the Scripture history. Little debates will be raised 
 about duties in common matters; characters will be 
 held up for approbation, or to be condemned. The 
 matters of creation, from the sky downward, will come 
 into notice, and be used to show God's wisdom and 
 greatness. And so there will be a rotary movement 
 of inquiry and teaching, all round the great central 
 point of being good, and the readiness of Christ to help 
 us in it. 
 
 Due care will be taken also not to thrust religious 
 subjects on the child, when he is excited by other 
 things, in a manner to make it unwelcome. His times 
 of thought and appetite must be watched. Play with 
 
 82^ 
 
378 THE CHRISTIAN TEACHING 
 
 him wlien he wants to play, teach him when he wants 
 to be taught. Untimely intrusions of religion will 
 only make it odious — the child can not be crammed 
 with doctrine. 
 
 Children often break upon their parents with very 
 tough questions, and questions that wear a consider- 
 able looking towards infidelity. It requires, in fact, but 
 a simple child to ask questions that no philosopher can 
 answer. Parents are not to be hurried or flurried in 
 such cases, and make np extempore answers that are 
 only meant to confuse the child, and consciously have 
 no real verity. It is equally bad, if the child is scolded 
 for his freedom ; for what respect can he have for the 
 truth, when he may not so much as question where it 
 is ? Still worse, if the child's question is taken for an 
 evidence of his superlative smartness, and repeated 
 with evident pride in his hearing. In all such cases, a 
 quiet answer should be given to the child's question 
 where it can easily be done, and where it can not, some 
 delay should be taken ; wherein it will be confessed 
 that not even his parents know every thing. Or, some- 
 times, if the question is one that plainly can not be 
 answered by any body, occasion should be taken to 
 show the child how little we know, and how many 
 things God knows which are too deep for ns — ^how rev- 
 erently, therefore, we are to submit our mind to his, and 
 let him teach us when he will, what is true. It is a very 
 great thing for a child, to have had the busy infidel lurk- 
 ing in his questions, early instructed in regard to the 
 necessary limits of knowledge, and accustomed to a 
 
OF CHILDREN. 379 
 
 simple faith in God's requirement, where his knowl- 
 edge fails. 
 
 Observe also, at jnst this point, the immense advant- 
 age that a Christian parent has in Jesus Christ, as re- 
 gards the religious teaching of his children. I speak 
 here of the fact that all truth finds in him the concrete 
 form. Truth is not less really incarnate in him, than 
 God. Indeed he testifies, himself, that he is the truth. 
 And he is so, not merely in the sense that he parabolizes 
 the truth, and gets it thus into human conditions or 
 analogies, but that his own person also and life are the 
 eternal form of truth ; that he lives it, acts it forth, 
 groans it in his Gethsemane, sheds it from his veins in 
 the bleeding of his cross. You may take your chil- 
 dren along therefore, through his childhood, into 
 his ministries of healing, on to his death-scene itself, 
 and it will be as if you led them through a gallery, 
 where all divinest, most life-giving truth is pictured. 
 No abstractions will be wanted, no dif&cult reaches of 
 comprehension required ; you have nothing to do but 
 to show them Jesus as he is, and the Great Teach- 
 ing will be in them — all that is needed as the vital 
 bread of their intelligence, and heart, and character. 
 The blessed child's doctrine of the world is Christ. 
 Have it then as your privilege to be always unfolding 
 your child's understanding, and spiritual nature, by 
 that which will be life and healing to both ; even Jesus 
 Christ, the Word of the Father's glory. Converse 
 much of him and about him, make him familiar, and 
 it will be strange if you do not find that both your 
 
BSO THE CHEISTIAN TEACHING 
 
 conversation and theirs is in heaven, where he sitteth 
 at the right hand of God. 
 
 And of this you will be the more certain if you 
 teach Christ not by words only, but by so living as to 
 make your own life the interpreter of his. There is 
 no feebler and more unpractical conception, than that 
 children are faithfully taught, when they are abund- 
 antly lectured. If you will put in Christ, you must 
 put him on. There is no such gospel for them, as that 
 which flavors your own conduct, and fills your personal 
 atmosphere with the Christly aroma. 
 
 At the same time it should be the constant endeavor 
 with children, to make the subject of religion an open 
 subject, and keep it so, never to be otherwise. Kothing 
 is wider of dignity, or more mischievous in its effects, 
 than the remarkable shyness of religious conversation 
 in most Christian families. It argues either some great 
 neglect of the parents, in which they have let the sub- 
 ject fall out of range as a subject not to be named, or 
 else it shows that, in trying to make it an open subject, 
 so much of cant or untimely exhortation has been 
 mixed with it, as to make it unwelcome. Rightly con- 
 ceived, there is no subject of so great interest and such 
 inexhaustible freshness, as that which pertains to the 
 soul and the future life. Good conversation, too, upon 
 it, in the house, is better than sermons. Why then 
 should a Christian family, where every other subject 
 is welcome, taboo this, requiring it to pass in silence, 
 as if it were in fact the forbidden fruit of their intel- 
 ligence ? 
 
OF CHILDREN. 381 
 
 But I must speak, in closing, of what appears to be 
 a somewhat general misconception, as respects the aim 
 of Christian teaching in the case of very young chil- 
 dren. According to the view I am here maintaining, 
 it is not their conversion, in the sense commonly given 
 to that term. That is a notion which belongs to the 
 scheme that makes nothing of baptism and the organic 
 unity of the house ; that looks upon the children as 
 being heathens, or aliens, requiring, of course, to be con- 
 verted. But according to the scheme here presented, 
 they are not heathens, or aliens ; but they are in and 
 of the household of faith, and their growing up is to be 
 in the same. Parents therefore, in the religious teach- 
 ing of their children, are not to have it as a point of 
 fidelity to press them into some crisis of high experi- 
 ence, called conversion. Their teaching is to be that 
 which feeds a growth, not that which stirs a revolution. 
 It is to be nurture, presuming on a grace already and 
 always given, and, for just that reason, jealously care- 
 ful to raise no thought of some high climax to be 
 passed. For precisely here is the special advantage of 
 a true sacramental nurture in the promise, that it does 
 not put the child on passing a crisis, where he is thrown 
 out of balance not unlikely, and becomes artificially 
 conscious of himself, but it leaves him to be always in- 
 creasing his faith, and reaching forward, in the sim- 
 plest and most dutiful manner, to become what God is 
 helping him to be. On this point Dr. Tiersch says, 
 with very great insight, both of the gospel and of 
 children — 
 
882 THE CHEISTIAN TEACHING 
 
 "It is. certainly not difficult to bring a child into a 
 condition of emotion and anxiety, by representations of 
 natural corruption, of the judgment, and of the influ- 
 ence of the enemy ; and to fill liim with doubts of his 
 own salvation, thereby moving him to any thing that 
 may be desired. It is possible that by these means, 
 deep experiences of the communion of the soul have 
 been brought to light. But these are consequences that 
 should rather be objects of our fear than of our rejoic- 
 ing. For here comes in the worst of all dangers, the 
 early wasting of such impressions and experiences, and 
 a creeping in of untruth, whilst the power vanishes and 
 the forms of speech remain. For both the most deli- 
 cate and the most solemn experiences become, after this 
 method, objects of continual reflection and conversation, 
 under which, at last, solemn earnestness, as well as all 
 delicacy, is destroyed, and there remains either a con- 
 tinual self-deception, with the semblance of the reality 
 of godliness, or a gnawing consciousness of an increas- 
 ing untruthfulness, and of an inner unfruitfulness be- 
 neath a mass of phrases."* 
 
 It is a delicate matter for children to navigate in this 
 rough sea of conversional tossings, where the stormy 
 wind lifteth up the waves, and they go up to the 
 heaven, and go down again to the depth, and their soul 
 is melted because of trouble. There is, for the little 
 ones, a more quiet way of induction. Show them how 
 to be good, and then, when they fail, how God will 
 help them if they ask him and trust in him for help. 
 
 * Christian Family, p. 133. 
 
OF CHILDREN. 383 
 
 In this manner they will be passing little conversion- 
 like crises all the time. Eejoice with them and for them 
 as they do, only do not put them on the consciousness, 
 in themselves, of what you seem to see. Let them be 
 accustomed to it as a fact of experience that they are 
 happy when they are right, and are right when God 
 helps them to be, and that he always helps them to be 
 when they put their trust in him. The Spirit of God is 
 nowhere so dovelike as he is in his gentle visitations 
 and hoverings of mercy over little children. 
 
 What is wanted is, to train them by a corresponding 
 gentleness, and keep them in the molds of the Spirit. 
 Ko spiritual tornado is wanted that will finish up the 
 parental duties in a day ; but there is to be a most ten- 
 der and wise attention, watching alwaj^s for them, and, 
 at every turn or stage of advance, contributing what is 
 wanted ; enjoying their bright and happy times of good- 
 ness and peace with them, helping their weak times, 
 drawing them out of their discouragements, and smooth- 
 ing away their moods of recoil and bitterness ; contriv- 
 ing always to supply the kind of power that is wanted, 
 at the time when it is wanted. Yery young children 
 religiously educated, it will be remembered by almost 
 every grown up person, have many times of great relig- 
 ious tenderness, when they are drawn apart in thought- 
 fulness and prayer. The effort should be to make these 
 little, silent pentecosts and gentle openings God-ward 
 sealing-times of the Spirit, and have the family always 
 in such keeping, as to be a congenial element for such 
 times ; and to suffer no possible hindrance, or opposing 
 
884 THE CHRISTIAN TEACHING. 
 
 influence, even should they come and go unobserved. 
 Under such, kind of keeping and teaching, God, who is 
 faithful to all his opportunities, as men are not, will be 
 putting his laws into the mind and writing them in the 
 heart, and the prophet's idea will be fulfilled to the let- 
 ter ; it will not be necessary to go calling the children 
 to Christ, and saying, know the Lord; for they will 
 know him, every one, the least as the greatest, and the 
 greatest as the least, each by a knowledge proper to 
 his age. 
 
VIII. 
 
 FAMILY PRAYERS. 
 
 " And it shall come to pass in that clay, I will hear, salth the Lord, I 
 will hear the heavens, and they shall hear the earth, and the earth shall 
 hear the corn, and the wine, and the oil, and they shall hear Jezreel." — 
 Bosea ii. 21-2. 
 
 By this very elaborate and poetically ingenious fig- 
 ure, tlie prophet appears to be giving a contrived 
 representation of the flict, that when God brings in the 
 promised day of his universal reign in the earth, there 
 will be a grand convergency of causes to prepare it, 
 and, like so many concurrent prayers, to make common 
 suit for it before Him. Thus he figures the world as 
 being the beautiful valley called Jezreel, which is the 
 garden, so to speak, of the land. And it is to be as when 
 the people of Jezreel get their harvest, by having every 
 thing in a train of concurrent agency to prepare it — 
 they make petition by their careful tillage to the corn, 
 the grapes, and olives, that they will grow apace ; these, 
 in turn, make suit to the earth to give them nutriment ; 
 this again hears them, and lifts its petition to the 
 heavens, asking rain and dew ; whereupon, last of all, 
 the heavens hand up the prayers to God, to furnish 
 them water, and let them shed it down ; which petition 
 lie graciously hears, and the harvest follows. So he 
 conceives it will be, as the harvest of the world 
 
 83 
 
886 FAMILY PEAYERS. 
 
 approaclies. It will be as if all things were put striv- 
 ing together, and a prayer were going up for it tlirough 
 all the concurrent circles of Providence. God's counsel 
 and kingdom are constructing always a perfect har- 
 mony, by their convergence on his perfect end. Then, 
 as the perfect end is neared, and the harmony with it 
 grows more complete, it will be as if more things were 
 concurring in it and asking for it, and prayer, falling in 
 as a cause among causes, will have them all praying 
 with it, or handing up its request. In which we may 
 see what holds good of all prayer, and how or by what 
 law it prevails. In one view, the whole future is 
 prayed in by the whole present, being such a future as 
 the whole present demands. The more things, there- 
 fore, prayer can get into harmony with itself in its 
 request, the more likely it is to prevail ; and the more 
 alone it is, and the more things it has opposite to it, in 
 the field of causes, the less likely it is to prevail — even 
 as Adam had less hope of success in praying for Cain, 
 that the blood of Abel was crying to God against him 
 from the ground. 
 
 All prayer being under this general condition, family 
 prayer will be of course ; and of this I now propose to 
 speak. I choose to handle the subject in this form, in 
 the conviction that the prayers of families are so often 
 defeated by the want of any such concert in the aims, 
 plans, tempers, works, and aspirations of the house, as 
 are necessary to a common suit before God ; in other 
 words, because the prayers, commonly so called, are de- 
 feated by the suit of so many causes contrary to them. 
 
FAMILY PRAYERS. 387 
 
 We sometimes use the terms family worship and /am- 
 ily prayers^ without any reference at all to their spiritual 
 acceptance with God, or to any gifts and benefits to be 
 bestowed, in the way of answer to such prayers. We 
 speak of the worship, or the prayers, as a kind of morn- 
 ing observance ; a religious formality that is to have its 
 value, under the laws of drill and habitual repetition ; 
 good therefore, in that sense, to be kept a going, and 
 not expected to be good on the high ground of faith and 
 living intercourse with Grod. That it is to be the open- 
 ing of heaven and the keeping of it open to the family, 
 under the conditions of prevailing prayer, is either not 
 commonly supposed, or not made a point of practical 
 endeavor. The benefits thought of are to be such as 
 will come of mere observance itself, and the religious 
 reverence impressed by it. 
 
 Now that some such kind of benefit may be expected 
 to follow, I am not about to question. Any such ex- 
 ternal observance, kept up in the family, must probably 
 beget a deeper sense of religion, and prepare all the 
 members to a readier admission of the great principles 
 of faith, and spiritual devotion to God. And in that 
 view, the observance of family worship is a matter of 
 such consequence in a family, that the parent, who con- 
 fessedly is not a Christian person, ought still to feel it 
 incumbent on him to maintain that observance. And 
 if such were the persons with whom I am dealing in 
 this discussion, I should urge it upon them, as a matter 
 indispensable, and never to be omitted. But my sub- 
 ject is different. I am addressing Christian parents, on 
 
888 FAMILY PRAYERS. 
 
 the subject of tlie Christian training of their children ; 
 showing it to be the same thing as a training into 
 Christ, and how that training will secure the real initia- 
 tion of their children into a state of genuine discipleship. 
 Having this aim therefore, I shall drop out of notice 
 family worship as observance, and speak of it only as 
 the open state of prayer and communion with God in 
 the house. For, as the greater includes the less, we 
 need not be careful about the less ; but only about the 
 greater. And I shall speak, in the conviction that a 
 great and principal reason why the family religion of 
 those who are really Christian believers, carries no sav- 
 ing benefit with it, is that they are content with the 
 less when they ought to claim the greater ; maintaining 
 the family prayers, in the way of observance only, and 
 not as an appeal of faith to Grod. They imagine some 
 impossibility perhaps of maintaining the family religion 
 on so high a key. It will not only be a wearisome and 
 over-exhaustive painstaking for themselves, but they 
 sometimes imagine that the children, too, will be finally 
 drugged by such over-dosing, in the spiritual intensities 
 of rehgion, and be only the more repelled from it. 
 
 But they greatly mistake, in this kind of judgment, 
 by mistaking first, in their conception of what is neces- 
 sary to the prevalent efiect of the family prayers, and 
 the always open state of the house towards God. No 
 rhapsodies are wanted, or flights of feeling, or heavings 
 of passional intercession, as many are wont to assume, 
 but simply that there should be a sober, calculated har- 
 mony between all the plans and appointments of life, 
 
FAMILY PRAYERS. 389 
 
 and the prayers or petitions made. The great difficulty 
 in faith, after all, is to be fliithful. God is not carried 
 by shrieks of emotion, but by the honestly meant and 
 soberly contrived ordering of things, to make them 
 work in with, and, if possible, work out the prayers. 
 In this view, let me call your attention — 
 
 I. To the manner in which prayers, of all kinds, get 
 their answer from God. Two things arc wanted, as 
 conditions previous to the favoring answer. First, that 
 the matter requested should agree with God's beneficent 
 aims, or the ends of good to which his plans are built. 
 Secondly, that the prayer should agree with as many 
 other prayers, and as many other circles of causes as 
 possible ; for God is working always toward the largest 
 harmony, and will not favor, therefore, the prayers of 
 words, when every thing else in the life is demanding 
 something else, but will rather have respect to what has 
 the widest reach of things and persons making suit with 
 it. It is at this latter point that prayers most commonly 
 fail, viz : that they are solitary and contrary, having 
 nothing put in agreement with them ; as if some one 
 person should be praying for fair weather when every 
 body else wants rain, and the gaping earth, and thirsty 
 animals, and withering trees, are all asking for it to- 
 gether. Or a man, we may conceive, prays for holi- 
 ness, getting off his knees to go and defraud his neigh- 
 bor ; or that he may be prospered in some plan that re- 
 quires industry, and, by indolence and inattention, 
 leaves all the causes of nature making suit against him. 
 
 33*' 
 
390 FAMILY PRAYERS. 
 
 God is for some largest harmony in the hearing of pray- 
 ers, as in every thing else. All the prayers that he will 
 hear too must, in some sense, be from Himself, which 
 is the same as to say that they must chime with His 
 ends, and the working of his plans generally. 
 
 See how it is, for example, in the great realm of nature. 
 The first thing here to be discovered is that every thing 
 requires every thing ; or, if we take the figure of prayer, 
 that all events make suit for all. Omit any one, and there 
 would be a shock of discord felt in the whole frame- 
 work. As regards the interior principle of causes, we 
 know nothing ; we only see them all playing into all, 
 and all demanding all, and then, all together, making 
 suit for a certain general future, somehow accordant 
 with them and their harmonies. Thus it will be seen 
 to hold, even scientifically, in the grand astronomic sys- 
 tem of worlds, that all the innumerable parts have a 
 perfect concurrence, demanding exactly every thing 
 that comes to pass, in the motions, changes of position, 
 perturbations of parts, and processions of the whole. 
 The principle, every thing for every thing and all to- 
 gether one, is so exact, that every atom and tiniest 
 insect feels the touch, in fact, of every heaviest, high- 
 est, and remotest orb, and every such orb a respective- 
 ness of action reaching downward, after every such 
 minim of matter and life. 
 
 Such is nature, and it would be exactly so, were it 
 not for sin, in the supernatural order, viz: in the 
 wj^nts, and works, and prayers, and heavenly gifts of 
 God's spiritual empire. Sin harmonizes with nothing. 
 
FAMILY PRAYERS. 391 
 
 It is a principle of general discord with all God's pur- 
 poses, plans, and creations ; refusing to be included in 
 any terms of intellectual unity and order. But God is 
 none the less intent on harmony here, that the constitu- 
 ent harmony of his realm is broken. All that lie is 
 doing as a world's Eedeemer, is to gather together in 
 one, all the loosened elements of discord, and settle the 
 world again, in everlasting concord and unity. And 
 toward this final issue he puts all things working to- 
 gether as for the same good issue. 
 
 Thus it will be found that the Bible history shows 
 a grand convergency of all the matters included in it, 
 and that a mysterious concert weaves all its facts to- 
 gether, and keeps them working toward the same 
 result. The ritual of Moses, and the forty years' march, 
 and all the captivities and dispersions of the people, and 
 the dispersions of the Greek and Eoman languages, and 
 all the philosophic exhaustions, and all the crumblings 
 of the false religions, and all the great wars of the Ro- 
 mans, and all the fortunes of empire determined by 
 those wars, and then the universal pacification of the 
 world — by all these vast concurrences the world is made 
 ready, and set waiting for Christ to be bom. The stu- 
 dents of history, looking over this field, are astonished 
 by the vastness of the preparation, and it is to them, as 
 if they heard all these world-wide powers voiced in 
 prayer together for the coming of Jesus. Just here, 
 then was the time for him to come. And thus, in fact, 
 he came, in the exact fullness of time, when the largest 
 harmony was asking for him. 
 
892 FAMILY PKAYERS. 
 
 In the same way, it will be seen, descending to a 
 lower field, tbat every conversion to God takes place 
 wtien some largest harmony demands it. Not always, 
 or commonly, when some friend, or wife, or good mother, 
 prays it, wholly alone, but when others join them, or 
 when, at least, there is a large concurrence of provi- 
 dences and causes, making the same suit, and joining 
 in the general conspiracy of reasons. And so much is 
 there in this, that the subject himself will almost always 
 feel a conviction of some wonderful conjunction of 
 means, and conditions, and prayers, just then brought 
 together, to accomplish the otherwise difficult or impos- 
 sible result. 
 
 Other illustrations, without limit, could be cited from 
 the processes of Grod's spiritual administration ; for it is 
 always working toward the largest harmony. But we 
 come directly to the matter of prayer itself. And here 
 we meet the promise, first of all, that — "if we ask any 
 thing according to his will he heareth us;" for the de- 
 sign is here to draw the petitioner into the most inti- 
 mate acquaintance, and bring him into the most exact 
 conformity with, God's purposes and ends. And prob- 
 ably the whole economy of prayer, or giving gifts to 
 prayer, which might as well be given otherwise with- 
 out prayer, is to affect this radical agreement of the 
 petitioners with God. Next we have that peculiar 
 phrasing of the doctrine of prayer, by Christ, when he 
 says — "If two of you shall agree, on earth, as touching 
 any thing, that they shall ask, it shall be done for 
 them;" where the intent of the doctrine is to bring the 
 
FAMILY PRAYERS. 393 
 
 petitioners into the largest possible circle of harmony 
 among themselves. Hence the promise too — "Ye shall 
 seek me and find me, if ye search for me with all your 
 heart;" where the purpose is to bring each individual 
 into the largest harmony with himself, and not leave 
 half his dispositions, or aspirations, or lustings, praying 
 virtually against his prayers. Hence, again the com- 
 mand — "Watch and pray lest ye enter into temptations ;" 
 where the endeavor is to set the voluntary powers 
 chiming with the prayers, and working toward a grand 
 petitional harmony with them. By the whole economy 
 of prayer, then, God is working toward the largest, 
 most inclusive harmony, and prayer is to be successful, 
 just according to the amount of concurrency there is in 
 it. First, there is to be the completest possible concur- 
 rency with God ; then a concurrency of one or two 
 hundred, or, if so it may be, two hundred millions of 
 petitioners in a common suit ; and then all these are to 
 be total in the suit, bringing all their lustings, affections, 
 works, plans, properties, and self-sacrifices, into the pe- 
 tition; whereupon the prayer will grow strong, just in 
 proportion to the amount of agreement, or concurrence 
 there is in it. 
 
 Under this great law, therefore, prayer, as a matter of 
 fact, has been getting and will always be getting more 
 strength by the larger harmonies it embodies. Noah 
 prayed alone for his very ungodly times, and could not 
 be heard— the blood of Abel was crying to God for jus- 
 tice over against him, and so were all the crimes of vio- 
 lence and murder in his own most bloody and cruel 
 
394 FAMILY PEAYERS. 
 
 age. Abraham prayed for Sodom, but tliere were no 
 fifty, forty, thirty, twenty, ten, or, as far as we know, 
 more than one righteous man to pray with him ; and 
 therefore he fails, obtaining only the safety of that 
 Grodly brother's family. Afterwards Daniel, in a mat- 
 ter of great peril, was able, going to his house to pray, 
 to set his three friends praying with him, and he found 
 the light on which even his life depended. Still farther 
 on, Esther set all her countrymen in the city praying 
 and fasting with her, and obtained, in that manner, the 
 deliverance of her whole people, and their promotion to 
 honor in the kingdom. And so, again, the more won- 
 derful scene of power which inaugurates the church, on 
 the day of Pentecost, is distinguished by this principal, 
 all-determining fact, that the disciples are all with one 
 accord in one place, praying for the heavenly gift. 
 
 Not to extend these illustrations farther, we may 
 safely put it down as a conclusion, that prayer wants 
 the largest possible harmony praying with it ; or what 
 is the same, as many reasons, and causes, and wants, 
 and conditions, and persons, as possible, chiming in the 
 suit of it ; so that God may answer it for harmony's 
 sake, and not against harmony. It may seem that I 
 have led you a long way to reach this conclusion, espe- 
 cially when my subject is family prayer. But we shall 
 now be able — 
 
 II. To dispatch that particular subject as much more 
 briefly ; and besides, I have been able to hit upon no 
 other method, which promised to unfold the real condi- 
 
FAMILY PRAYERS. 395 
 
 tions of family prayer, and show the reasons of utter 
 failure and abortiveness in it so distinctly and im- 
 pressively. 
 
 The great infirmity of family prayers, or of what is 
 sometimes called family religion, is that it stands alone 
 in the house, and has nothing put in agreement with it. 
 Whereas, if it is to have any honest reality, as many 
 things as possible should be soberly and deliberately 
 put in agreement with it ; for indeed it is a first point 
 of religion itself, that by its very nature, it rules pre- 
 sidingly over every thing desired, done, thought, plan- 
 ned for, and prayed for, in the life. It is never to finish 
 itself up by words, or word-supplications, or even by 
 sacraments ; but the whole custom of life and character 
 must be in it and of it, by a total consent of the man. 
 And more depends on this, a hundred times, than upon 
 any occasional fervors, or passional flights, or agoniz- 
 ings. The grand defect will, in almost all cases, be, in 
 what is more deliberate, viz : in the want of any 
 downright, honest, casting of the family in the type of 
 religion, as if that were truly accepted as the first 
 thing. 
 
 Sec just what is w^anted, by what is so very com- 
 monly not found. First of all, the mere observance 
 kind of piety, that which prays in the family to keep 
 up a reverent show, or acknowledgment of religion, is 
 not enough. It leaves every thing else in the life to be 
 an open space for covetousness, and all the gay lust- 
 ings of worldly vanity. It even leaves out prayer ; for 
 the saying prayers is, in no sense, really the same thing 
 
396 FAMILY PEAYERS. 
 
 as to praj. Contrary to this, there should be some real 
 prayer, prayer for the meaning's sake, and not for the 
 shell of religions decency in which the semblance may 
 be kept. This latter kind looks, indeed, for no return 
 of blessing from God, but only for a certain religious 
 effect accomplished by the drill of repetitional observ- 
 ance. There is also another kind of drill sometimes 
 attempted in the prayers of families-, which is much 
 worse, viz : when the prayer is made, every morning, 
 to hit this or that child in some matter of disobedience, 
 or some mere peccadillo into which' he has fallen. 
 Kothing can be more irreverent to God than to make 
 the hour of prayer a time of prison-discipline for the 
 subjects of it, and nothing could more certainly set 
 them in a fixed aversion to religion and to every thing 
 sacred. This kind of prayer prays, in fact, for ex- 
 asperation's sake, and the effect will correspond. 
 
 In the next place, what is prayed for in the house by 
 the father, is, how commonly, not prayed for by the 
 mother in her family tastes and tempers, and is even 
 prayed against, in fact, by all the instigations of appear- 
 ance, and pride, and show, which are raised by her 
 motherly studies and cares. And this, too, not seldom, 
 when her prayers themselves are burdened with much 
 feeling, and bear the appearances of much earnest long- 
 ing for the piety of her children. Her prayers sound 
 well in the wording, and she verily thinks that she 
 means what she asks for ; but the notions of standing 
 she fe putting in the head of her son, or the dress she 
 is just now getting up for her daughter, pray, a hun- 
 
FAMILY PRAYERS. 397 
 
 dred fold harder than her prayers, only just the other 
 way ; calling in results of feeling and character that 
 are selfish, worldly, earthly in the last degree. 
 
 It is a matter of the greatest importance, too, as re- 
 gards the successful training of children, that they 
 should be inducted into ways and habits of prayer 
 themselves, as very frequently they are not. Sometimes 
 even Christian mothers, who pray much for their chil- 
 dren, never lead them into the practice of prayer for 
 themselves. They are kept from so doing, by the sup- 
 posed orthodox belief, first, that their children are of 
 course in the gall of bitterness, and secondly, that such 
 can ofier no prayer, which is not an abomination to the 
 Lord ; in both which conclusions they are, in fact, 
 neither orthodox nor Christian, and what to the children, 
 at least, is even worse than that, consent to let them 
 grow up in no personal habit of religion. How then 
 can they be reached by the prayers of the house, when 
 they are deliberately put outside of the possibility, even 
 of beginning to pray for themselves ? Sometimes they 
 are taught to pray only in the sense of saying prayers, 
 or repeating some little formula appropriate to their age. 
 And there is nothing ill in this, if they only do it occa- 
 sionally. But the much better method, in general, is 
 for the mother to word a simple prayer for them herself, 
 and let them follow after in the repetition of it, sentence 
 by sentence. The prayer in this case, will have respect 
 to the particular matters of the day ; what has been 
 seen, felt, enjoyed, wanted, suffered, and needs to be 
 forgiven. Yery soon the child himself, practiced in 
 
 34 
 
898 FAMILY PRAYEKS. 
 
 this way, will begin to drop in a sentence, here or there, 
 that comes directly out of his feeling, and it will not 
 be long before he will be able to word a whole prayer 
 for himself, and will so be led along into the habit of 
 praying with his mother, and be grown, so to speak, 
 into the ruling desires and prayers of the house. In 
 this method, regularly pursued, the child may be trained 
 to a perfectly open state in the matter of prayer; so 
 that when the father is absent, or is taken away by 
 death, he will be ready, at a very early period on his 
 way to manhood, to take his father's place. There will 
 be nothing ghostly, or sanctimoniously separated from 
 the common going on of life, in the way of prayer thus 
 maintained. Having it for the element of childhood, 
 and being grown into the practice of it, the very 
 geniality, and sweetness, and good cheer of home, will 
 seem to be lapped in it, and it will be so far natural, that, 
 if it were taken away, the course of life itself would 
 seem to be even painfully unnatural. A house without 
 a roof, would scarcely be a more indifferent home than 
 a family state unsheltered by God's friendship, and the 
 sense of being always rested in his Providential care and 
 guidance. No sweetness of life is so indispensable to a 
 family, brought up thus, in the open state with God, as 
 to have all the cares, affections, partings, sicknesses, 
 afflictions, prosperities, marriages, deaths, and all kinds 
 of works, habitually blessed, by the sense of God ap- 
 pealed to, and consciously witnessing in them. 
 
 But this again, depends on yet another fact, where 
 commonly the defect is manifold greater than it is in the 
 
FAMILY PRAYERS. 399 
 
 points already referred to. It is not only necessary to 
 tlie genuine state of family religion, or the open state of 
 godly living in the honse, that the prayers should be 
 prayers and not observances, and that both the parents 
 should be truly in them together, and the children care- 
 fully bred into them also as the common joy of their 
 home ; but it is necessary also that the practical ends, 
 tastes, plans, aspirations, and works of the house, should 
 all come into the same circle of concert, and join their 
 petition to reinforce the suit of the prayers. And here, 
 as I have already intimated, is the great cause of failure 
 in family religion. It is not difficult to get a Christian 
 father into such a strain of desire for his children, that 
 he will faithfully maintain the prayers of the house, and 
 press himself at times into great fervors in his suit for 
 them. These fervors will, too often, be kindled, in fact, 
 by the conviction of really great derelictions of duty, 
 such as come between the family and all God's blessings 
 upon them. No, the difficult thing here is, not to get 
 even the fervors of prayer, but to get the life itself and 
 its works into that honest and deliberate agreement 
 with the prayers, that will give them a genuine power 
 and meaning, without any such flights and passional 
 vehemences. The difficulty is that almost nothing, in 
 the arrangements, tempers, and practical ends of the 
 house, agrees with the prayers. The father prays in 
 the morning that his children may grow up in the 
 Lord, and calls it even the principal good of their life, 
 that they are to be Christians, living to God and for the 
 world to come. Then he goes out into the field, or the 
 
400 FAMILY PRAYERS. 
 
 shop, or the house of trade, and delving there, all day, 
 in his gains, keeps praying from morning to night, with- 
 out knowing it, that his family may be rich. His plans 
 and works, faithfully seconded by an affectionate wife, 
 pull exactly contrary to the pull of his prayers, and to 
 all their common teaching in religion. Their tempers 
 are worldly, and make a worldly atmosphere in the 
 house. Pride, the ambition of show and social stand- 
 ing, envy to what is above, jealousy of what is below, 
 follies of dress and fashion, and the more foolish elation 
 felt when a son is praised, or a daughter admired in the 
 matter of personal appearance, or what is no better, a 
 manifest preparing and foretasting of this folly, when 
 the son, or daughter, is so young as to be only the more 
 certainly poisoned by the infection of it — these un- 
 spoken, damning prayers! how many are they, and 
 how totally do they fill up the days I The mornings 
 open with a reverent, fervent-sounding prayer of words, 
 and then the days come after piling up petitions of ends, 
 aims, tempers, passions, and works, that ask for any 
 thing and every thing, but what accords with the 
 genuine rule of religion. The prayer of the morning 
 is that the son, the daughter, all the sons, all the 
 daughters, may be Christian ; and then the prayers that 
 follow are for any thing but that, or any thing, in fact, 
 most contrary to that. Is it any wonder, when we 
 consider this common disagreement between the pray- 
 ers, even the fervent prayers of the family, and all the- 
 other concerns, enjoyments, and ends of the common 
 life beside, that so many fine shows of family piety are 
 
FAMILY PRAYERS. 401 
 
 yet followed, by so mucli of godless and even repro- 
 bate cbaracter, in the children ! 
 
 Here then, my brethren, is the great lesson of family 
 religion ; it is that religion, being the supreme end and 
 law of life, is to have every thing put in the largest 
 possible harmony with it. And this is to be done by 
 no superlative fervors, or heats of piety and prayer, 
 but by the sober, honest, practical arrangement of life 
 and its plans. Thus, if your children are to grow up 
 into Christ, that is to be made their prayer, and the 
 prayer of both the parents, and the prayer of all the 
 buildings, migrations, plans, toils, trades, and pleasures 
 of the house. All these are to pray, in sober earnest, 
 that the children, as the practically best thing possible, 
 and most to be desired, may be Christian in their life. 
 There is no difficulty in forming a whole family to God, 
 when there is grace enough in the parents to make 
 that really the object, and set every thing in the largest 
 harmony with it. The only difficulty is in doing it, 
 when the prayers and the family religion are one side 
 of every thing else, in a department by themselves, and 
 the whole body of life's practical works and ends is 
 operating directly against the result desired and prayed 
 for. Prayer, in a certain proper view of it, is only one 
 of the great causes of the world, and all the causes, 
 natural as well as supernatural, are, in a certain broad 
 sense, prayers. What is wanted, therefore, is to put all 
 the causes, all the prayers, into a common strain of en- 
 deavor, reaching after a common good, In God and his 
 friendship. The relijpious affinities of the house then 
 
 34* 
 
402 FAMILY PRAYERS. 
 
 take tlie mold of the prayers, and become a kind of 
 prayer themselves. The children grow into faith, as it 
 were, by a process of natural induction — only it will be 
 intensely supernatural, because their faith is both quick- 
 ened and grown in the atmosphere of God's own Spirit, 
 always filling the house. He molds the prayers to 
 agreement with God's will, and the prayers of each to 
 the prayers of all, and the works and plans and tastes 
 of all to the prayers; and then, as a consequence, 
 which is also an answer, fills the house with his in- 
 grown sanctifying power, and seals the members with 
 his seal of life. 
 
 Let us stop here now, in our closing, and contem- 
 plate the dignity and power of a genuine family relig- 
 ion, thus maintained. Consistency and solid reality, 
 we have seen, are its great distinction — the whole order- 
 ing of the house is worshipful, and faithfully chimes 
 with the prayers. The very table is sanctified with, as 
 well as by, the blessing invoked upon it ; so that when 
 the house are feeding animal enjoyments, and, so far, 
 saying that they are animals, they do not become such. 
 Their sensuality is kept under by a divine spirituality 
 above it. It is not so much their bodies as their souls 
 that are fed. By their holy charities and prayers, the 
 family property is also sanctified, and all the industries 
 by which it is obtained. The training of the house 
 does not end in money, the conversation is not about 
 money, the plans are not plans turning on the supreme 
 good of money, the only losses dreaded or shunned are 
 
FAMILY PRAYERS. 403 
 
 not losses of money. Their tb oughts and affections 
 therefore, mellowed by the family piety, do not clink 
 in their souls, as we sometimes almost hear them with 
 a hard-money sound. For the love of God penetrates 
 and savors, all through, even the works of thrift and 
 all the ennobled virtues of a genuine economy. The 
 mental life also is raised by the family religion, for they 
 live thoughtfully, as in contact with God, and all the 
 highest themes of existence. Events, providences, nay 
 even things themselves, take on senses related to intel- 
 ligence, feeling, and the uses of faith. And so their 
 very talent grows into volume, because it is never im- 
 prisoned, or stunted by the external measures of things ; 
 but is led forth, always, into what things signify, as 
 related to the broader affinities and the half-poetic life 
 of religion. They are refined, in this manner, without 
 any ambition to copy the mannerisms of refinement ; 
 refined by the fining of their intelligence and feeling. 
 They are not emasculated by their culture, but grow 
 manlier in it ; because of the good and great thoughts, 
 and high subjects, into which they are trained by the 
 sober, honest piety of their practice. 
 
 The family is thus exalted, every way, by the family 
 religion ; because there is suck reality and all-diffusive 
 harmony in the scope of it. In the prayers of the day 
 it recalls, in one way or another and with filial reverence, 
 the ancestors that have gone before, and looks hopefully 
 on to the great reunion of the future. Its births are so 
 many arrivals, or presentations, at the gate of eternity ; 
 its baptisms and baptismal namings are titles recorded in 
 
404 FAMILY PRAYEES. 
 
 the family register of God ; its deatlis are only the mi- 
 grations of so many into life, to be followed by the mi- 
 gration of all; and the sense of a good future, to be 
 their common heritage, imparts a trustful, quietly cheer- 
 ful air to their waiting. For that bright gathering of 
 the house, after the storms are over, gilds their adversi- 
 ties and sicknesses, and kindles a beautiful expectancy 
 in their prayers — keeps them looking up and away, with- 
 out any instigations of asceticism, or false antipathy to 
 the world. The godly father dwells in such a house, 
 even as the apostle pictures Abraham, dwelling in tab- 
 ernacles with Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him of the 
 same promise viz : that of a city that hath foundations. 
 Heirs with him — not heirs of his fee-simple, not legatees 
 in his will, waiting patiently or impatiently for him to 
 die, but heirs with him of a great angelic future that 
 rests in character and fruits of well doing, in which 
 they bless, and by mankind as well as God, are blessed. 
 What scene of family dignity is more to be admired ? 
 The highest splendors of wealth and show, have but a 
 feeble glow-worm look in the comparison — a pale, faint 
 glimmer of light, a phosphorescent halo, enveloping 
 what is only a worm. Even the poor laboring man, 
 thanking God, at his table, for the food he earned by 
 tUe toil of yesterday, singing still, each morning, in his 
 family hymn, of the glorious rest at hand, moving on 
 thitherward with his children, by single day's journeys 
 of prayer and praise, teaching them, even as the eagles 
 do their young, to spread their wings with him and 
 rise — this man, I say, is the prince of God in his house, 
 
FAMILY PRAYERS. 405 
 
 and the poor garb, in which he kneels, outshines the 
 robes of palaces. 
 
 The beauty of such family scenes has not escaped the 
 notice of poetry itself, or even of mere worldly observa- 
 tion. But we must not, for a moment, forget that the 
 charm of all such family pictures depends on that sound 
 reality of worship, which puts every thing in the house 
 in keeping with the prayers, and carries back the mean- 
 ing of the prayers into every thing in the house. A 
 flourish of prayer in the morning, followed by all flour- 
 ishings of vanity and prosperous selfishness, for the 
 rest of the day, will not answer. We look in upon the 
 Christian family, where every thing is on a footing of 
 religion, and we see them around their own quiet hearth 
 and table, away from the great public world and its 
 strifes, with a priest of their own to lead them. They 
 are knit together in ties of love that make them one ; 
 even as they are fed and clothed out of the same fund, 
 interested in the same possessions, partakers in the same 
 successes and losses, suffering together in the same sor- 
 rows, animated each by hopes that respect the future 
 benefit of all. Into such a circle and scene it is that 
 religion comes, each day, to obtain a grace of well-do- 
 ing for the day. And it comes not by itself, as in the 
 public assembl}^, not in a manner that is one side of life 
 and its common affairs. There is no pretense, no show, 
 no toilet practice going before, no reference of thought 
 to fashion, or dress, or appearance. It leads in the day, 
 as the dawn leads in the morning. It blends a heav- 
 enly gratitude with the joys of the table ; it breathes a 
 
406 FAMILY PRAYERS 
 
 cheerful sense of God into all tlie works and tempers 
 of the house ; it softens the pillow for rest when the day 
 is done. And so the religion of the house is life itself, 
 the life of life ; and having always been observed, it 
 becomes an integral part even of existence, leaving no 
 feeling that, in a proper family it could ever have been 
 otherwise. A family state, maintained without a fire, 
 would not seem to be more impossible or colder. Home 
 and religion are kindred words ; names both of love and 
 reverence ; home, because it is the seat of religion ; re- 
 ligion, because it is the sacred element of home. 
 
 This training, in short, of a genuine, practically all- 
 embracing, all-imbuing family religion, makes the fami- 
 lies so many little churches, only they are as much bet- 
 ter, in many points, as they are more private, closer to 
 the life of infancy, and more completely blended with 
 the common affairs of life. Here it is that chastity, 
 modesty, temperance, industry, truth — all the virtues 
 that give beauty, and worth, and majesty, to character, 
 get their root. Here it is, above all, that they who 
 are born into life, are led up, in their gracious training, to 
 knit the green tendrils of existence to God. And so, in 
 all the future scenes of duty, and wrong, and grief 
 through which they are to pass, it will be found that 
 they were furnished here, with supplies of grace, and 
 armed with shields of confidence from God, to meet 
 every encounter, bear every burden, and maintain every 
 kind of well doing, till the victory of life is won. 
 
 Holding, now, this conviction, as Christian parents, 
 of the importance of a true family religion, allow your- 
 
FAMILY PRAYERS. 407 
 
 selves never to forget tlic condition which alone makes 
 it of so great value, viz : that it has such scope as to 
 include and harmonize all the ways, and works, and 
 cares of the house. See that you plan to be, in your 
 undertakings, just what you pray to be in your prayers. 
 Set the general concert of your affairs in God's own 
 order, to accomplish only what is agreeable to his will, 
 so to be always praying with you, and the prophet's 
 rich valley, teeming with all fruits of abundance and 
 luxury, will but feebly represent the unfailing, never 
 blighted, always fruitful, piety of your children. 
 
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