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themselves, but not entitled, on any other ground, to be a whit more reverenced. It is to facilitate this 'realizing' that such books as Abbot's talk of the greater attention that would have been paid him if he had been a gentleman living on his own estate, and a hundred other things much worse; and that these books talk of his wanting his supper, and sending his disciples to look after a man with a jug. In one word, strip scripture characters of everything which a young child cannot understand, (that is to say, of everything which makes scripture precious,) and then the young child will understand it. Yes! he will, and so long as he lives, will read, and understand it in the same way; that is to say, as a common-place history of every-day life, not calculated to excite any higher emotions than a novel or a newspaper. Great obligations, indeed, will he have to the mother, or governess, who set him 'realizing' at three years old, when all his notions were confined to the nursery and bread and butter, and his emotions to the remembrance of pain, when he cut himself, or knocked his head against the table, or his passions, which required control and extirpation." - Vol. xiv. Pp. 553

-555.

"The reviewer takes his leave of these books with a very serious and earnest request to all parents to consider well what they are doing in putting such matter into their children's hands, and whether it is not their solemn duty to endeavour, by degrees, to raise their children's minds to the level of scripture, as far as that can be, and not to lower scripture and its blessed Author to the level of babies' capacities, by the use of words and phrases which will effectually prevent them in after life from giving scripture the reverence due to it." - P. 560.

If we have any objection to these judicious observations, it is that, while vindicating the dignity of sacred things, they rate that of children too low. By the books in question, not only is injustice done to heavenly truth, but also to minds more fitted for its reception than the reviewer seems to allow. Children surely have, pre-eminently have, capacities for veneration and for realizing greatness; they have, they are "familiar" with, "emotions connected with the sublime;" their minds can be impressed "with the sublime ideas which the world of nature presents," and still more "with those awful exhibitions of the majesty of the Deity to be found in the Book of Revelation." If one thing more than another moves our ire, it is needless condescension of language in addressing children, or in preaching to the poor. There is an insolence in it which we think both classes have penetration to perceive, and self-respect to resent. Of course, neither should be addressed in language of which it knows nothing; of course scientific terms, and a logical cast of our sentences are to be avoided when we are speaking to either. But though our speech must thus be very plain, it needs not, therefore, be undignified; and if it be, we can have no readers or hearers more quickly alive to the defect than the classes in question. Children and the poor know what dignity is as well as we do, and they look for it both in books and in the pulpit; their fancies may, now and then, be tickled by an unexpected departure from it in either, but their healthy judgments disapprove of such departure notwithstanding. Besides, the trick is apparent; they know it to be meant for condescension to them;

for the positive value of the communication, therefore, they lack assurance; the writer or the preacher is not saying what he would say to others, or speaking as he would naturally express himself.

But after all, is anything gained in real plainness? How is a child the better for reading of the Creation in "Line upon Line," as follows:

"My dear children,-I know that you have heard that God made the world. Could a man have made the world? No; a man could not make such a world as this.

" Men can make many things, such as boxes and baskets. Perhaps you know a man who can make a box. Suppose you were to shut him up in a room, which was quite empty, and you were to say to him, 'You shall not come out till you have made a box,' - would the man ever come out? Nonever. A man could not make a box, except he had something to make it of. He must have some wood, or some tin, or some pasteboard, or some other thing. But God had nothing to make the world of. He only spoke, and it was made.

"Making things of nothing, is called 'creating.' No one can create anything but God.

Do you know why God is called the Creator? It is because he created all things. There is only one Creator. Angels cannot create things, nor can men. They could not create one drop of water, or one little fly.

"You know that God was six days in creating the world. I will tell you what he did on each day.

"I. On the first day, God said, 'Let there be light,' and there was light. "II. On the second day, God spoke high; that water is called the clouds. There was nothing but water to be seen. but you know the air cannot be seen.

again, and there was water very There was also water very low. God filled every place with air:

"III. On the third day, God spoke, and the dry land appeared from under the water; and the water ran down into one deep place that God had prepared. God called the dry land Earth, and he called the water Seas. We walk upon the dry land. We cannot walk upon the sea. The sea is always rolling up and down; but it can never come out of the great place where God has put it. God spoke, and things grew out of the earth. Can you tell me what things grew out of the earth? Grass, and corn, and trees, and flowers.

" IV. On the fourth day God spoke, and the sun and moon and stars were made. God ordered the sun to come every morning, and to go away in the evening, because God did not choose that it should be always light. It is best that it should be dark at night, when we are asleep. But God lets the moon shine in the night, and the stars also; so that if we go out in the night, we often have a little light. There are more stars than we can

count.

"V. On the fifth day God began to make things that are alive. He spoke, and the water was filled with fishes, and birds flew out of the water, and perched upon the trees.

"VI. On the sixth day, God spoke, and the beasts came out of the earth: lions, sheep, cows, horses, and all kinds of beasts came out of the earth, as well as all kinds of creeping things, such as bees, ants, and worms, which creep upon the earth.

"At last, God made a man. God said, 'Let us make man in our likeness.' To whom did God speak? To his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ: his Son was with him when he made the world. God made man's body of the dust, and then breathed into him. The man had a soul as well as a body. So the

man could think of God. Afterwards God made the woman of a piece of the flesh and bone from the man's side, as you have heard before.

"God gave all the other creatures to Adam and Eve; and he blessed them, and put them into the garden of Eden, and desired Adam to take care of the garden.

"When God had finished all his works, he saw that they were very good. He was pleased with the things he had made. They were all very beautiful. The light was glorious; the air was sweet; the earth was lovely, clothed in green; the sun and moon shone brightly in the heavens; the birds, and beasts, and all the living creatures, were good and happy, and Adam and Eve were the best of all, for they could think of God, and praise him."-Pp. 1—6.,

instead of in chap. i. of the Book of Genesis?

We venture to say that a child who can read (as is supposed in either case), will, even with no person by him to explain the one or two hard words, gain every fact from the latter that is told in the former. And if there be, as we may always take for granted, a parent or instructor by him, how easy and how soon performed the task of telling him the meaning of the one or two words which are beyond his power of guessing! How many are they? Created, form, void, firmament, abundantly, multiply, image, dominion, replenish, subdue, these pretty nearly complete the list; and, even if they be unexplained, the chapter, as we have said, is very intelligible notwithstanding. When, however, the child has been told that created means made; form, shape; void, empty; firmament, sky, &c. he understands the whole narrative pretty nearly as well as any one can understand it during our present condition, quite as well as he will understand it when he reads it in "Line upon Line;" and with this twofold advantage, that he considers what he reads to have sacred authority, and that while the diction is simplicity itself, it is rhythmic, sonorous, beautiful, and solemn. Again, why need children learn the story of Job in any other words than those of the Bible? Much of its sublime poetry must of course be unintelligible to them, yet the story has touching features which can reach their hearts, and as regards the rest, Nature cannot be hurried; because a high style of beauty cannot yet be revealed to them, there is no reason why we should present them with a degrading substitute.

What is quoted from "Line upon Line" was by no means one of its offensive passages; nor do we mean to dwell on such at present. To show the inconsistency of the book, we must inform our readers that the children who are supposed unable to understand the simple majesty of the sacred history, are to read and, we imagine, understand the following verses, in which, if there be nothing very difficult, there is nothing very plain, and, as we may trust our readers to perceive, something very shocking.

"In deepest gloom of darkest night,
Between two walls of wondrous height,
Pharaoh, with all his men of might,
Poor Israel's host pursue.
The wind is high-the path is dry,
Horsemen and chariots swiftly fly:
We'll overtake,' they loudly cry,

'And kill that slavish crew.

"But sudden-drag their chariot-wheels,
A sudden horror o'er them steals,
While God on high his wrath reveals
From yonder fiery cloud.
The lightnings play the thunders roar,
The skies a mighty torrent pour:
Were e'er such lightnings known before,

Or thunderings so loud?

"The sound, the sight, o'erwhelm with fright,
Horsemen and chariots take to flight.
'Does not their God for Israel fight?'
The horsemen trembling cry.
But while with furious speed they go,
God makes the western wind to blow,
And o'er their heads the waters flow:
Like stones the horsemen lie.
"Beneath the deep their bodies sleep-
And they shall rise to wail and weep,*
And God upon their heads shall heap
Hailstones, and coals of fire.
What piercing cries shall rend the skies,
When all who were God's enemies
Shall meet the Judge's angry eyes,
Flashing with terrors dire!

"How vain to try from Him to fly,
Who made the sea, the earth, and sky,
Whose arm can reach the mountains high,

And deepest pits beneath!
How vain to try from Him to fly,
Who can all secret things descry,
Whose power no angel dare defy,

Whose word can blast with death! "-Pp. 187, 188.

It may indeed be alleged that oral explanations of heavenly truth to children are indispensable accompaniments to reading of any sort, however plain; it being out of the question that a child should always receive the meaning even of simple sentences on the first statement-that a diversity of illustration beyond what any writer has scope for is requisite to insure the success of his words; and that such oral explanation, and such diversity of illustration, always do and must partake of the same character as that here objected to in the works before us; i. e. they must be undignified in themselves, intrinsically unworthy of their subjects, and irreverent if viewed apart from their purpose. But let it be considered that there is neither the same dignity, nor, in one sense, the same authority, in such oral explanation as in writing. The one, the child knows to be extemporaneous, and designed for himself only; the other, to be deliberately prepared for himself and others. The one is conversation, and if happy, it must be familiar and intimate conversation, in which no dignity is expected; the other is printed in a book, and to a child that is itself a point of mysterious dignity; accordingly he is startled and amazed to find things which he thought fit only for the most ordinary conversation introduced there, and in connexion with the most sacred subjects. So far from being less fastidious on the score of dignity in print than an adult, a child, we suspect, will be generally apt to be more so, because he has not yet acquired any habit of, nor been provided with any materials for, connecting remote thoughts, whereby the great things of the universe bear up and give meaning and value to those which would be otherwise mean and insignificant.

* How dares the authoress to pronounce on the eternal condition of Pharaoh's army?

Add to this, that the oral explanation is transient. As soon as it has done its work, as soon as it has enabled the child to see the meaning of the written sentence, that meaning remains ever after annexed to the latter, and the former is soon forgotten. But "what is writ is writ;" there it remains, a fixed form, round which associations, suitable or unsuitable, have time and repeated occasion to gather, and to which they will cling.

Moreover, the parent or instructor can watch and can guide the moods that may appear, can, by gesture and by inflexions of the voice, turn off any rising irreverence, and by such like means modify and correct the whole in a way that is incalculable.

If incapacity for all this be pleaded, let it be considered whether such incapacity be not blameworthy-whether it amount not to an incapacity of doing the task and fulfilling the post providentially assigned to parents and instructors-whether, therefore, it be an incapacity that faith can admit or excuse. For parents, especially, cannot devolve the religious teaching of their children on a book; they cannot, as Christians, escape living intercourse with their little ones on this great subject; the main work must be done by means of that there is the place for fillings up, illustration of all sorts; while reading should be liturgic, dignified, belonging to the more markedly solemn periods of the day. Nothing is so desirable as to make it worth while to sacrifice reverence; and childhood is the season when alone reverence can ordinarily be acquired and fixed in the character. It is one of the many things which cannot be left to time, its absence is no mere blank, the want of it is irreverence, its negation is, therefore, a frightful positive. The adult peni

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