to appear before God. Mere religious exhortation, if it be frequent and long, is apt to weary and disgust children; but this training them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord; this bringing them now to the duty of being Christians, and living like Christians; this bringing them up to the very same standard of piety as that to which advanced Christians come, gains over their consciences, creates a sense of daily reponsibility, and brings the converting word to a daily bearing on their souls.

On the other hand, what can more surely stupify the consciences and harden the hearts of children, than the impression that the lessons of Christianity are not to be strictly and fully applied to their case, until they grow up? What else could keep them more securely, for years, in the quiet sleep of sin? No wonder they are not converted by the power of the Gospel, when we have so securely guarded their consciences and hearts, from all the responsibilities and motives of the Gospel. No wonder that for years they so often remain almost as stupid as heathens, when we have created for them an artificial heathenism. It amounts, in a sense, to the same thing, to keep

the Gospel away from the souls of those whose country it enlightens, as it does to leave the country itself enshrouded in the night of heathenism.

But the neglect of instruction, and the failure of immediate self-application, are not the only ill effects of the sentiment against which we have objected. It also prevents the application of prayer and faith to the present case of our children. There is indeed in it a sort of deceptive homage to the power of God, since it quietly lets the work alone till his time shall come, which is presumed to be some where in the years of maturity; and expects that, then, it will destroy the deadly plant, which has had its roots fattened and its branches supported by the circumstances and temptations of childhood. this, however, is no honour to God; for there is, in truth, a want of confidence in His power to remove the present evil, and to perform the immediate good. Did they believe, they would ask of Him, and would find "that all things are possible to him that believeth;" as that father found who brought his afflicted son to be healed by the Saviour in the days of his flesh. His mo

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dest expression, "Lord I believe, help thou mine unbelief," is suited to the weakness of our strongest faith, when we bring the spiritual necessities of our children to the compassionate Saviour, in the confidence which his own word inspires, that all things are possible to him that believeth."

These effects of the sentiment alluded to, are sufficient to account for the fact, that comparatively few children seem pious; without admitting the false and dangerous principle, that so it must be in the nature of things, or that so it is inevitably ordered in the inscrutable purposes of God.

We are no advocates for the sinlessness of a sinner's offspring, and expect their entrance into the kingdom of heaven, only through the atoning death of the Saviour, and the effectual working of the Holy Spirit; but we do confidently expect it for their childhood; much more confidently than we expect it for men and women already mature in impenitence and unbelief. We believe that this expectation is in the true spirit of that explicit, ancient promise; "Train up a child in the way he should go; and

when he is old he will not depart from it." For this undoubtedly implies, not that men at their maturity shall commence to live with new principles, and with new hopes; but that their adult piety shall be the continuance of the piety of their childhood. We believe that it is in the true spirit of the Christian direction to bring up our children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord; since this must imply, that the children thrive in the use of that holy nourishment, with which their parents feed them.

We do believe that divine grace regards the children of Christian families, and that every one that feareth the Lord, needs only to plant the seed and cultivate the soil, seeking for God's blessing, and he will see his "children like olive plants round about his table ;"—and we beg to present the children of his own family to every Christian parent, as a field full of briars and thorns indeed, but which he may hope to see turned into a very garden of the Lord.

We feel sure that much of present holiness and happiness is lost, and that eventual piety and salvation are dreadfully hazarded by the

practical operation of the opinion on which we have remarked; and we know nothing which would bid fairer to promote the spread of Christianity in our favoured land, than an increased desire and determination in parents to apply the. motives and rules of the Gospel to the every day doing of their children. Thus will every parent most securely avoid the heaviest of all earthly calamities, that of seeing his children continue the votaries of sin; and that awful anticipation which can even shed a gloom over his best and brightest hopes of eternal happiness; that of seeing his children perish for ever, through his own neglect.

The object of this little volume is to promote the immediate piety of children. It has been prepared and issued under the full conviction, that Christianity is sent to them, as to all, with a claim to their immediate reception, as a rule for their daily living, and as an abundant merciful provision for their present and eternal wants. It is, therefore, no other than the old, common lesson of Christianity adapted to the temptations, faults, circumstances, and capacities of children. It aims to come to children