I told you this morning what I believe that salvation was,—­to know God, and Jesus Christ, whom He has sent.  To know God’s likeness, God’s character, what God has shown of His own character, what He has done for us.  To know His boundless love, and mercy, and knowing that, to trust in Him utterly, and submit to Him utterly, and obey Him utterly, sure that He loves us, that His will to us is goodwill, that His commandments must be life.  To know God, and therefore to love Him and to serve Him, that is salvation.

Now what hinders a little child, from the very moment that it can think or speak, from entering into that salvation?  Not the child’s own heart.  There is evil in the child—­true.  Is there none in you and me?  There is a corrupt nature in the child—­true.  Is there not in you and me?  Woe to us if we have not found it out:  woe to us if we dare to think that we are in ourselves—­or out of ourselves either—­one whit better than our own children.  What should hinder any child whom you or I ever saw from knowing God, and His Name, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit?

Has he not an earthly father, through whom he may know The Father?  Is he not an earthly son; and through that may he not know The Son?  Has he not a conscience, a spirit in him which knows good from evil? holiness from wickedness—­far more clearly and tenderly than the souls of most grown people do? and can he not, therefore, understand you when you speak of a Holy Spirit, a Spirit which puts good desires into his heart, and can enable him to bring those good desires into practice?

I know one hindrance at least; and that is his parents’ sins; when the parents’ harshness or neglect tempts the child to fancy that God The Father is such a Father to him as his parents are, and that to be a child of God is to look up to his heavenly Father with dread and suspicion as to a hard taskmaster whose anger has to be turned away, and not with that perfect love, and trust, and respect, and self-sacrifice, with which the Lord Jesus Christ fulfilled His Father’s will and proclaimed His Father’s glory:  or when the parents’ unholiness and lip-religion teach the child to fancy that the Holy Spirit means only certain religious fancies and feelings, or the learning by heart of certain words and doctrines, or, worst of all, a spirit of bondage unto fear; instead of knowing Him to be, as He is, the Spirit of righteousness, and love, and joy, and peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, meekness, temperance:  or when, again, parents by their own teaching, do despite to the Spirit of Grace in their own child, and destroy their child’s good conscience toward God, by telling the child that it does not really love God, when it loves Him, perhaps, far better than they do; by telling the child that its sins have parted it from God, when its sins are light, yea, are as nothing in the balance compared to the sins they themselves commit every day, while