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weekly allowance, which will at least prevent her from absolute starvation. "Come and see her," said Mr. Catlin, "you will be surprised to find how near she seems to live to God; she lives more in heaven than on earth." And we found that the character of her conversation, so devout and so expectant, savoured much of the higher life of communion. In that mean, half-empty room, the abode of want and suffering, there was an enraptured spirit, full of Christ, and of hope of eternal bliss.

Her language was that of a highly educated person, and it was savoury with gratitude. The bliss of soon being in another and brighter world; the deep sorrow of being surrounded by sin in this; the contrition of a heart that had duly estimated its own unworthiness; the anxiety for the highest welfare of those ignorant of God; these were the characteristics of her excellent conversation. As we left the room, and the house, we thought much of her words and of the work which had brought us into connection with those words of ripened piety.

"Would you like to see other instances of God's work here ?" we were asked.

"Thank you, not now." Would that the Christian public had seen what we have already witnessed. Here is a man working night and day among a poverty-stricken people, receiving but a small income and content with this, troubled sometimes for pecuniary means for carrying on all his organisations, with a district untouched by any other missionary, needing, craving, praying for money wherewith to secure an assistant missionary, to visit every one of these wretched homes-homes that may become, as we have seen, the abodes of godliness-but the help so much desired has not yet come. It should come.

Let the writer indulge in an application. He claims for Mr. Catlin no supreme gifts for usefulness; there is no assumption of such gifts. He goes among the poor, the outcast, does not hesitate to be familiar with them, becomes indeed one in sympathy with them, does not live much above them; yet hearts that are obdurate yield to his hearty grasp of the hand and gentle utterance, and feel that in touching them, he is like his Master who did not hesitate to put forth his hand to touch the ghastly withered skin of the leper, from whom all else shrunk as from a plague. Such oneness with the poorest and the most degraded cannot be lost upon them.

"The kindly plans devised for others' good,
So seldom guessed, so little understood;
The quiet, steadfast love that strove to win
Some wanderer from the woeful ways of sin
These are not lost.

Not lost, O Lord, for in thy city bright,
Our eyes shall see the past by clearer light;
And things long hidden from our gaze below,
Thou wilt reveal, and we shall surely know
They were not lost."

THOSE

On the Religion of Childhood,

BY VERNON J. CHARLESWORTH, OF THE STOCKWELL ORPHANAGE. HOSE who discredit child-piety are influenced by one of two errors; either that which denies the possibility of early conversion, or that which demands of children the exhibition of an adult piety. There are those who discredit child-piety altogether, and there are others, who, believing in its possibility, fix the standard too high for a child to reach.

The Pharisaic scepticism, which denies to children the possibility of conversion, has taken a deeper root than we have been wont to imagine, and has exerted a powerful influence upon the minds of many adult Christians. If it is not avowed as a formal article in their creed, the belief is acted upon, that, in the common order of things, children will grow up in the neglect of religion, until they attain the riper judgment of mature years. They would be shocked to hear it avowed that there is nothing in the word of God, nothing in the nature of the case, why children should not become, in very early life, the recipients of divine grace, and, under the fostering influence of Christian nurture, become true disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ. No doubt these good people imagine they have Scripture warrant for their incredulity, for they refer you at once to the hackneyed text-" Cast thy bread upon the waters and thou shalt find it after many days," not forgetting to emphasise the latter clause, "after many days." That the Saviour said, "Suffer the little children to come unto me," does not modify their judgment, nor enlarge their charity; that he pointed adults to little children, as the best exponents of Christianity, is a fact they ignore altogether; that he urged the assimilation of his followers to the spirit of a little child, as proving their moral fitness for the kingdom of God, is an argument they fail to appreciate. Now this is very lamentable, and indicates one of the worst features of organised Christianity in its modern development. In the early church it would seem that believing children had a definite place; for they were not only recognised as members of the Christian family, but as constituents of the Church of God. Church fellowship was not considered to carry with it a qualification for church government, but the privilege of Christian worship and spiritual nurture and oversight. The modern assumption that church membership necessarily involves a voice in church rule has tended to narrow the door of admission to the exclusion of children. Now-a-days, if children are admitted to the house of prayer at all, they are generally relegated to the dullest corners of the back seats, and doomed to sit motionless upon hard benches, too high to permit their little feet to touch the ground. Of the prayer and sermon, in which they are seldom taken into account, they can hear but little, and understand less. The attitude of many churches in this respect is most reprehensible, for it is an absolute and wilful departure from apostolic precedent, and discredits the love and grace of that Spirit who touched the hearts of Samuel and Timothy in the first budding of their early childhood. The doctrine is not of Christ that "the plastic nature of childhood must first be hardened into stone, and stiffened into enmity towards God and duty, before it can become a

candidate for Christian character." The good and gracious Shepherd never designed that the lambs should be exposed to rude storms and pitiless blasts, before they are eligible for admission to his peaceful fold. Would that every adult Christian, especially Pastors, Parents, and Teachers, had escaped the thraldom of this pernicious error, and expected the children of their charge to become converted and to develop a Christian character, under the influence of pious teaching and holy example, through the blessing of the Spirit of God, just as in a congenial soil, and under the fertilizing influences of sun and shower, we expect the tender plant to burst into blossom, enchanting the eye with its loveliness, and perfuming the air with its refreshing fragrance. If we would lead but one child to the tender embrace of the loving Saviour, we must get rid of the very last remnant of that spirit of scepticism, which refuses to believe in the possibility of child-piety.

But do not misunderstand me to teach that we have only to develop a latent goodness in the hearts of children to make them Christians, or to ignore the necessity of the work of the Holy Spirit to regenerate the heart. "Evil is bound up in the heart of a child," and "Salvation is of the Lord." I simply contend that there is no necessity for the change from nature to grace to be delayed till adult years. I claim the possibility of our children growing up, like Samuel and Timothy, in the fear and love of God, and never owning allegiance to the enemy of souls. If the possibility is not realised, let us not take refuge in the unrevealed decrees of divine sovereignty, but charge the failure upon ourselves for our want of faith and holy zeal.

But there is a second error into which many have fallen, as influential in its operation, and as pernicious in its effects, as the former. They believe in the possibility of youthful conversion, but they demand the exhibition of an adult piety. Now, as you cannot put an old head upon young shoulders without caricaturing humanity, so you cannot extort an adult Christian experience from a child without producing a miserable distortion of Christianity. Everything is beautiful in its season, and the artless piety of early childhood is beautiful, if we had the spirit of a little child to discern and appreciate it. I pity those who fail to discover the piety of a child because, according to their chronology, it has come too soon; and I feel a supreme contempt for those who ignore it altogether, because it is not exaggerated into an artificial unreality. It is monstrous to expect a child to be other than childlike, because he has become a Christian. A Christian boy might shock the Puritanical notions of his Pharisaic seniors were he to be detected climbing a tree, leaping a ditch, or playing at marbles; and a Christian girl might provoke the frowns of some antiquated, maidenly aunt were she to confess a love for dolls and skipping ropes, or a romp on the lawn; but they might be good Christians notwithstanding. A man does not forfeit his claim to the title of Christian by his attention to business; neither does a child by his devotion to his games. The transition from the family altar to the counting house or the shop is not more violent to an adult than the return to play is to a Christian boy. Why, then, should a love of play be regarded as unworthy a Christian boy, while devotion to business is not thought to be unbecoming in an adult professor? It is a dangerous expedient to frown down the love of play in a child,

because he has professed to love the Lord Jesus Christ. The rigid austerities of medieval professors are revolting in an adult, and to impose them upon a child is to dishonour God, and rob childhood of its chief charms. The body is redeemed, and to affect to despise it, is to dishonour the temple of the Holy Ghost. Every manly exercise, which promotes the culture and development of the body, is essentially Christian. The sickly pietism, which lives a dreamy existence, is a burlesque of humanity and a dishonour to the Creator. Until we escape the pernicious influence of those juvenile tales, whose heroes are all made to forswear play and find their chief exercise in dry reading, the church will languish for want of men of the true type. If our children are weaklings, our men will be dwarfs. If we rear the young as hot-house plants, we unfit them for the severer atmosphere of the outer world, and thus hinder their usefulness. Work is worship to an adult Christian, and so may play be to a child.

A child may be a true Christian without being able to fix the precise moment when his heart was made obedient to the gospel of God; but. how many little ones have been frowned back, because they were not conscious of the first pulsations of the divine life within their souls. The rude treatment which many have received at the hands of those, who claim to be the representatives of him who was gentleness incarnate, has chilled the ardour of their youthful desires, and sown the first seeds of a godless Scepticism. Many a youthful Timothy has been ignored by the elder children of the Lord's family, because the hour of his spiritual birth was not duly registered. Existence is a sufficient proof of birth; and, the faintest indications of the divine life in the soul should be held to prove that a child has been born again. As we do not discredit the shining of the sun when, from his meridian altitude, he flings a halo of golden glory over the charming landscape, even though we cannot fix the precise moment when the first ray of light shot across the horizon; neither should we refuse to believe that the Sun of righteousness is shining in the soul, because we are unable to decide when the gloom of nature's darkness first began to yield to his rising beams. Of all tests applied to ascertain the genuineness of child-piety, the chronological is one of the worst.

If a chronological test is bad, so also is a doctrinal one. Christianity is more a thing of the heart than the head, and this is especially the case with children. We dare not adjudge a man to be a Christian by the dogmas he believes, for he may credit all the doctrines of revelation from justification by faith downward, and yet never attain that spirit of trustfulness by which we repose for salvation in the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. Too many have overlooked this, and have been content to urge the acceptance of the articles of a creed as the crucial test of Christianity. The established church of our country rests upon this rotten foundation, and has no surer guarantee of her speedy downfall. It is not what is believed, but the person in whom faith finds a resting place, which decides the question of the soul's salvation. Christ is "the way," not all the catechisms ever constructed by the profoundest assembly of divines; Christ is "the truth," not all the creeds ever elaborated in the crucible of polemics; Christ is "the life," not all the jargon faiths of schismatic Christendom. To

embrace Christ by a living faith and a loving heart, is to find the way, know the truth, and receive the life. The filmy veil of our orthodox creed may hide the Saviour from the soul, as well as the dense screen of utter disbelief; and, the formulated articles of a creed may constitute a winding sheet to enshroud a dead soul. Oh, it is not the assent of the intellect to systematised theology, but the conscious repose of the soul in the divine Redeemer, which should guide us in our verdict as to who is on the Lord's side. Do not, then, offend the little ones of Christ, who believe in him, simply because their knowledge is defective, or their creed imperfect. The promise is, "If any one will do his will, he shal! know of the doctrine." A correct creed will shape itself to the mind in the conscious submission to the Father's will.

Once more, a child may be a true Christian, and yet have very crude notions of morality, and may often be betrayed into actions other than virtuous. Much that is to be condemned in an adult with the sternest judgment, in children only calls for the gentlest rebuke and the mildest remonstrance. As an occasional act of disobedience in a child does not argue a want of filial love, neither does a culpable action constitute a sufficient proof of the absence of love to the Saviour. But, if a child is overtaken in a fault, how often is it made a fresh occasion for urging the necessity of a new heart, as if there were no work of grace in the erring one already. If those who judge so harshly were subjected to the same treatment, how often would they require a new heart? How many conversions would they need in a day? There are many who would declare a boy unworthy the title of Christian, were he to be detected in taking advantage of his mother's absence to test the quality of the jam in a newly opened jar, and yet the same people never suspect their own Christianity, notwithstanding their confessions in the prayer-meeting that they have violated the entire decalogue. While this utter want of charity blinds the judgment, we do not wonder at the failure to recognise the true features of child-piety.

It is unsatisfactory to test a child's piety by requiring him to tell his experience. The heart of a child may be beating in full sympathy with the heart of the loving Saviour, and the dear little one be altogether unable to describe its pulsations. A child in good health is conscious of joyous existence, although he cannot tell you how he feels; and, if he is a Christian, he may be conscious of an altered condition of soul, but fail to describe it. To demand of such a child a description of his experience is to throw him into a state of utter bewilderment, and discourage the hope that he is a Christian at all. The effect of this test is often most injurious, for it keeps the soul from the true ground of peace. Remember, it is not by prying into our hearts, and gazing upon the sad picture there discernable, that we grow in grace; but, by "Beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, we are changed into the same image from glory to glory, as by the Spirit of the Lord." If our Christianity is to be judged by our ever-varying experiences, we shall never believe ourselves to be Christians two days in succession. Let us not impose upon children a test which breaks down in the case of adults. As well might we refuse to recognise our children as our own offspring, unless they could pass an examination in human physiology, as to ignore a Christian child who is ignorant of his spiritual anatomy.

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