which no other or after teacher of the child can possess.1 Their charge is committed to them during the most tender and susceptible period of its existence; they are bound to

gether to others the education of their children

they become guilty of a neglect the immediate consequences of which are sometimes startling, and the less direct and obvious consequences beyond calculation. I scarcely know any cause from which the community suffers so much. . . The teaching of special subjects may be delegated; but there is much in education which cannot be delegated, very much which can only be done at home, and a great deal which can be done only by the father. . . . His neglect of this duty to a great extent paralyses the schoolmaster; ..the teacher can do little for the pupil for whom his parents have done nothing." (Prof. SEELEY: Lectures and Essays.)

"Let parents remember that, as the paternal is the most honourable relation, so it is also the greatest trust in the world, and that God will be a certain and severe exacter of it; and the more so, because they have such mighty opportunities to discharge it."-(Dr. SOUTH: Sermons.) "Home is the first and most important school of character. It is there that every human being receives his best moral training or his worst; for it is there that he imbibes those principles of conduct which endure through manhood, and cease only with life."-(SMILES: Character.) "The relation of parent and child is the strongest that can exist between human beings: and the duty of reverence towards parents is, therefore, justly accounted as one of the first of nature's laws, as standing at the head of the moral duties of mankind, and as one of the brightest in the constellation of the virtues."-(Lord KAMES.) "A mother's teachings have a marvellous vitality in them; there is a strange, living power in that good seed which is sown by a mother's hand in her child's heart in the early dawn of the child's being, when they two are alone together, and the mother's soul gushes forth on her child, and the child listens to his mother as to a god."-(Dr. W. L. ALEXANDER.) "One good mother," says George Herbert, "is worth a hundred schoolmasters." "What the child will eventually become mainly depends upon the training and example which he has received from his first and most influential educator (the mother)."-(S. SMILES.) "Holily preserve," says Richter, addressing parents, "childlike trust, without which there can be no education.. Never forget that the little dark child looks up to you as to a lofty genius, an apostle full of revelations, whom he trusts altogether more absolutely than his equals; and that the lie of an apostle destroys a whole moral world." (LEVANA.) "As children have everything to learn, it is absolutely necessary that there should be one quarter in which they may and must place implicit confidence. And how singularly providential is the adaptation of this infant's mind to your instructions, when it is observed that mere testimony or affirmation is all that is wanted; for upon your simple affirmation he confidently and without hesitation relies." (ANDERSON: Domestic Constitution.) "The child is placed under parental authority for the very purpose, it would seem, of having the otherwise abstract principle of all duty impersonated in his parents, and thus brought home to his practical embrace."-(Dr. BUSHNELL.)

2 The parent receives the child in a condition perfectly fitted to be moulded and stamped. The child sees everything through the parent's seeing; hears everything through the parent's hearing; believes everything through the parent's believing. It is sympathetic,

it by the strongest ties of love and affection; and towards them are first called forth those feelings and emotions that subsequently enter into the service of God. To the child its parents stand at first in the place of God,3 and God himself can assume no higher or dearer relationship to His people than that of "Father."

Failing the parents, and in addition to them, the duty, to our mind, clearly devolves upon our churches and congrega

truthful, and imitative."-(H. W. BEECHER.) "The child opens into conscious life under the soul of the parent streaming into his eyes and ears, through the manners and tones of the nursery. A little farther on it is observed that a smile awakens a smile, any kind of sentiment or passion playing in the face of the parent awakens a responsive sentiment or passion. Irritation irritates, a frown withers, love expands a look congenial to itself, and why not holy love?"-(Dr. BUSHNELL.) "The parent's action is upon minds that are soft like wax to receive impressions, and that are apt to become hard like marble to retain them." -(Rev. D. THOMAS.)

166 The natural affection of parents for their children is unequalled in strength by any other feeling among living beings. It begins with the birth of the child, and never afterwards slumbers. By night as by day, in sickness as in health, it is always on the alert. Corresponding

to this parental care there grows up gratitude and love in the child. This love shows itself strikingly in the implicit confidence with whichthe child accepts as truth whatever lessons the parent teaches, and, above all, what is taught as the true religion."-(Dr. NEIL ARNOTT.) 2"Family government is never conceived in its true nature except when it is regarded as a vicegerent authority, set up by God and ruling in his place. 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 their unseen Father and Lord is Himself discovered, there is to be a piety made ready for him-a kind of house religion, that may widen out into the measures of God's ideal majesty and empire." (Dr. BUSHNELL: Christian Nurture.) Excepting in the article of worship, the duty of children to their fathers and mothers, as prescribed in the Scriptures, consists in the same particulars as our duty to God-viz., in love, honour, and obedience."-(Mrs. TRIMMER.)

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"As regards mankind in general, whatever be your station, low or high, as parents unquestionably you are next to God." (ANDERSON: Domestic Constitution.) "Religion is that state of mind towards God which a good child exercises toward a parent. It is the same principles and the same affections fixing themselves on an infinitely higher object."—(H. WARE: Christian Formation.) "Earthly parents are, in respect of their children while in an infant state, the representatives of their heavenly Father; and parental authority is a proper type or shadow of the Divine authority."-(Mrs. TRIMMER.) "If you know how to love father and mother' you know how to love your greater Father in heaven.”—(H. W.Beecher.(

"By our blessed Saviour we are taught to contemplate God as the universal parent, and to address our devotions to Him under the endearing title of our Heavenly Father. And we may consider earthly parents, the

1

tions of seeing to and providing for the religious education of the young. They undertake to provide for the religious wants of the people, of whom the young form a most important part; and hence by neglecting them they are overlooking a chief portion of their work. If, in place of neglecting the young, as is so generally the case at present, and trusting simply to such instruction as they may receive at the ordinary schools, they would make special and adequate provision for their proper religious training, we believe

father and the mother, as the joint delegated representatives of the great Parent of the universe to their offspring till the latter can be made sensible of the relation they stand in to their Heavenly Father.-(Mrs. TRIMMER: Christian Education.)

"God has given the religious culture of the child into the hands of the parent and the Church; and the highest idea of a national education would be secular instruction in the school-the Church, as it ought to do, taking care of the religious culture."-(Rev. T. BINNEY.) "The responsibility (as to their religious training) is common both to the parents and the Church-to the parents directly, to the Church indirectly, as represented by its chosen and accepted pastor."-(Dr. R. HALLEY.) respect to irreligious parents who neglect domestic religious training, there the Church should come in with its benevolent agency in the form of Sunday-schools and Bible-classes, which might open to receive and welcome those who needed them."-(Rev. T. BINNEY.)

In

2"Every Christian Church being a witness for Christ, a pillar and ground of truth, is under the most sacred obligation to impart the knowledge of Christian truth to all who are placed under its instruction. . . The Church is bound to feed Christ's lambs-to take care of the education of the young. By administering baptism to them it engages to do this work and labour of love."-(Rev. Dr. R. HALLEY: On the Duties of Churches to Baptised Persons.) In country districts, "where the people convene to the doctrine but once in the week, then must either the reader or the minister there appointed take care of the children and youth of the parish, to instruct them in the first rudiments, especially in the Catechism." --(First Book of Discipline.) "The curate of every parish shall diligently, upon Sundays and Holy days, after the second lesson at Evening Prayer, openly in the church instruct and examine so many children of his parish sent unto him as he shall think convenient, in some part of this Catechism." -(Book of Common Prayer.) "There is in our exercise of the ministry no systematic plan on which people are taught and brought on gradually towards the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.' And the results are most mischievous; piety degenerates into a series of shallow emotions, which evaporate in the absence of stirring appeals to the conscience."-(Dr. E. M. GOULBURN: On Personal Religion.) "Much of the time and labour which is spent (in the pulpit) might be much more profitably bestowed in catechising youth from the desk." (Dr. R. SOUTH: Sermons.) "It is to a well or ill-managed education that the Church, in a great measure, owes her successes or disappointments, either in her pastors or people."- (GEO. MONRO: Essay upon Education.)

that in a few years they would have much less reason to complain of general apathy in regard to religious matters than at present.1 They can only expect their churches to be filled by robust and healthy Christians when they are at the trouble to train them to be such from their early years.2

Further, we believe that a duty rests upon our churches and congregations, in connection with baptism, of seeing that those whom they have admitted as members of Christ's

1 "What, in respect to Christ's kingdom in the world, and, therefore, to the spiritual interests of mankind at large, is the great want of our day?

Not so much an increase in the numbers of those who have faith in it, as a bright evidence in their life of the power and worth of their faith." (Rev. D. THOMAS.) "This will be the surest way to make our Church flourish and prosper. If the youth be brought up to understand her doctrines and to practise her rules, they will one day be both supports to it and ornaments of it."-(Dr. WATERLAND.) "I take schoolmasters to have a more powerful influence upon the spirits of men than preachers themselves, forasmuch as they have to deal with younger and tenderer minds, and consequently have the advantage of making the first and deepest impression upon them."-(Dr. R. SOUTH.) "The most likely and hopeful reformation of the world must begin with children. Wholesome laws and good sermons are but slow and late ways. The timely and most compendious way is good education. This may be an effectual prevention of evil; whereas all after ways are but remedies, which do always suppose some neglect and omission of timely care.' -(TILLOTSON: Sermons.) "How careful," says Mr. J. Manton, in his Introductory Epistle to the Confession of Faith, "should ministers and parents be to train up young ones whilst they are yet pliable, and, like wax, capable of any form and impression, in the knowledge and fear of God." "We need, for the conflict with Christ's adversaries, which is growing hotter every day, not so much more, as better soldiers.' (Rev. DAVID THOMAS.)

2 "Children ought to be recognized as a part of the Church the moment they are baptised; a system of instruction ought to be provided for them in all the truths of religion suited to their tender age and capacity; their morals should be watched and guarded with assiduous attention; their obligations to personal repentance and faith ought to be urged upon them as soon as they are able to understand their nature; their true conversion to God should be sought, and any dawnings of good nurtured and encouraged. Till this course be pursued no Church has a right to complain in disappointed grief, as those who expect to reap where they have not sown." (Dr. DIXON: Life of McNichol.) "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 radical 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."-(Dr. BUSHNELL: Christian Nurture.) "The bringing up of our children in an early knowledge and sense of their duty, and to a constant discharge of it, will be the most likely way to promote the service of God, and the practice of true religion and piety in any nation."-(Religious Education.)

Church are receiving a training in accordance with their high calling.1 We are not of those who believe in what is commonly called baptismal regeneration, but we do believe that if the parents are Christian parents, and if they set themselves honestly and intelligently to carry out their baptismal obligations, baptism and regeneration will go hand in hand, and to be baptised will be equivalent, or all but equivalent, to being regenerated. Apart from the

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1 The Church" provides for the baptism of its children by its recognized pastor, and in doing so receives them under training for the privileges and duties of its members. Unless this be implied in the services, baptism is an unmeaning and worthless ceremonial."-(Dr. R. HALLEY.) "Baptism constitutes every child a bona fide member of the fold of Christ, or it does nothing for him. And the same obligation rests on the Church to provide suitable and edifying means, whatever they may be, to promote the salvation of its infant charge as its adult."-(Rev. Dr. DIXON.) Baptised children are to be regarded as under preparatory training and education for the fellowship of the Church."- (Dr. HALLEY.) "The relation which baptised children bear to a Christian Church is, as Dr. Wardlaw justly says, 'in training for the full fellowship of the people of God in all the ordinances of His house.""-(Ditto.) "No modern Church has made any express and suitable provision for the spiritual wants of the children placed by holy baptism within its pale. It initiates them by that sacred rite into its visible communion, and then, by a strange neglect, leaves them to the influence of incipient depravity, the temptations of the world, and the incapacity and inattention of their parents, without any provision for their Christian instruction or direct efforts for their conversion. In this state of things, can it be a matter of surprise if the Church lose her children? Their conversion, humanly speaking, is an accident."-(Rev. Dr. DIXON.) In an obituary notice of the late Dr. Paul, of the West Church, Edinburgh, we read that "he took a great interest in the future of all the children whom he had baptised, and, no matter whether they had left his church, or even the communion of the Church of Scotland, he made a practice of visiting such persons after they had grown up in years, at least once every twelve months, if at all practicable."-(Scotsman, May 1873.)

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"If infant baptism were uniformly followed by earnest, judicious, prayerful, and persevering instruction, the failures among us would be few, at least compared with the many that occur in our general neglect of plain and obvious duty."-(Dr. R. HALLEY.) "If infant baptism," says Philip Henry, "were more improved, it would be less disputed;" and his biographer tells us that "in dealing with his children about their spiritual state, he took hold of them very much by the handle of their infant baptism, and frequently inculcated upon them that they were born in God's house, and were betimes dedicated and given up to him, and therefore were obliged to be his servants. Psal. cxvi. 16.-'I am thy servant, because the son of thy handmaid."" "If I understand the office of baptism aright, it indicates that the baptised infant, through the efficacy of the spiritual grace bestowed in the holy sacrament, is cleansed from the defilement of original sin, freed from the penalty of everlasting death, adopted as a child of God, and made an inheritor of the kingdom."--(Mrs.