THE MOTHERS IN ISRAEL. Thrice blessed Covenant of Christ's loving Word! The birthright given when Jesus breathed on earth; The birthright left when from the grave our Lord, The Resurrection and the Life, arose, The Life of Faith, the terror of his foes. To you the glory of his Life is given, Thus, O ye blessed Pilgrims, know your Friend, The Way, the Truth, the Life, when, all unknown, And having loved you, loves you to the end! Now from his Presence in the Mount go down, For the whole duty of your life shall be, For this, the Lord of Heaven became a child, The supernatural charm, and by it live, Its growing likeness God's own grace would keep, In lines and colorings so divine and deep, Engraved by pencil of the Mother's faith, The Seal of Dying Love, to keep the soul for God! Such wondrous privilege your Lord hath given, A cloud of angels, at divine command, Till thou with them in Christ's dear presence stand. O what immortal bliss to parents given, To train on earth their little ones for Heaven! But O the grace! when thou amazed, shalt see CHAPTER VI. THE EXAMPLES OF NIEBUHR AND FRANKLIN, RELIGIOUSLY AND POLITICALLY, FOR OUR OWN COUNTRY. NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT IMPOSSIBLE WITHOUT THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION AND A CONSCIENCE TOWARDS GOD IN THE EDUCATION OF EACH SUCCESSIVE GENERATION. ALL TRUE FREEDOM FOR THE STATE DEPENDENT ON SUCH AN EDUCATION IN RELIANCE UPON GOD. THE LESSONS FROM HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY IN EVERY AGE ON THIS SUBJECT. THE DANGER OF RUIN FROM IGNORANCE OF THE SCRIPTURES, AND THE CONSEQUENT HABIT OF SCEPTICISM AND UNBELIEF FROM CHILDHOOD. OH, that we knew what gifts of grace are ours, As thou mayst give the light conferred on thee. One question asked, How didst thou treat the child? With worldly gifts and promises beguiled? Or by the Pilgrim's Heavenly Progress taught, What soul can stand the judgments of that day, HE importance of a right education for our THE children is so infinite in extent and grandeur, both for this world and the next, that there can be no excuse for neglecting or excluding it from the constant and careful consideration of every member of the community. We have some of the most instructive lessons on this subject ever given in human society, by the experience of such men as Franklin in America, Niebuhr in Germany, Coleridge and Wordsworth and De Quincey and Ruskin in England, and by the whole history of the Reformation in the Middle and Modern Ages of the World. Nothing can be more conclusive and instructive than the lessons given by such men as Pascal, Latimer, Luther, Hooper, Butler, Baxter, Newton, Bunyan, and every other lover of the Scriptures of God. The habit of doubt from childhood is scrofulous, poisonous; and some of the noblest natures in Germany and England have nearly perished by it. It fills the whole spiritual system with germs of deadly disease. We could multiply examples profoundly impressive and instructive, from before and after the revival of learning and the Reformation. The most conclusive and satisfactory of all instances is that of the profound and candid German scholar and statesman, Barthold Niebuhr. His views of education, which he regarded as being valuable only so far as it is the approximation to a true spiritual life, he carried out in the careful training of his son Marcus. Lamenting his own tendency to scepticism, and his want of a childlike faith in the Word of God, Niebuhr records his determination that his beloved child Marcus shall be protected and preserved from such an evil, "by the fostering of the habit of faith from early childhood, by the discipline of faith in God and his Word as a FACULTY OF MIND AND HEART, beginning in the groundwork of the soul;" even as the book of Ecclesiastes affirms, that God hath set eternity in the hearts of men from infancy. All other treatment of the child's mind is only savage cruelty. But the teaching of God's love, by the parent to the child, becomes the sacred germ of a living faith in the love of the Heavenly Father, that by the fostering Divine Spirit shall be proof against all infidelity. "I am thinking a great deal about my son's |