54 . CRITIQUES AND ADDRESSES. [n. 



difficulty in inducing them to go through the physical 

 training, which is more than half play ; or the instruc- 

 tion in household work, or in those duties to one another 

 and to themselves, which have a daily and hourly 

 practical interest. That children take kindly to elemen- 

 tary science and art no one can doubt who has tried 

 the experiment properly. And if Bible-reading is not 

 accompanied by constraint and solemnity, as if it were 

 a sacramental operation, I do not believe there is any- 

 thing in which children take more pleasure. At' least 

 I know that some of the pleasantest recollections of my 

 childhood are connected with the voluntary study of an 

 ancient Bible which belonged to my grandmother. There 

 were splendid pictures in it, to be sure ; but I recollect 

 little or nothing about them save a portrait of the high 

 priest in his vestments. What come vividly back on 

 my mind are remembrances of my delight in the 

 histories of Joseph and of David ; and of my keen 

 appreciation of the chivalrous kindness of Abraham 

 in his dealings with Lot. Like a sudden flash there 

 returns back upon me, my utter scorn of the pettifogging 

 meanness of Jacob, and my sympathetic grief over the 

 heartbreaking lamentation of the cheated Esau, " Hast 

 thou not a blessing for me also, my father ? " And I 

 see, as in a cloud, pictures of the grand phantasmagoria 

 of the Book of Kevelation. 



I enumerate, as they issue, the childish impressions 

 which come crowding out of the pigeon-holes in my 

 brain, in which they have lain almost undisturbed for 

 forty years. I prize them as an evidence that a child 

 of five or six years old, left to his own devices, may be 

 deeply interested in the Bible, and draw sound moral 

 sustenance from it. And I rejoice that I was left to deal 

 with the Bible alone ; for if I had had some theologica . 

 "explainer" at my side, he might have tried, as such 



