the way of Christ’s little ones, and do despite to the Spirit of Grace by which they are sealed to the day of redemption.  I see parents thinking that their children are to learn the deceitfulness of the human heart from themselves, and the working of God’s Spirit from their parents; but I often think that the teachers ought to be converted indeed, that is, turned right round and become the learners instead of the teachers, and learn the workings of God’s Spirit from their children, and the deceitfulness of the human heart from themselves; if at least the Lord Jesus’s words have any real force or meaning at all, when He said, not, ’Except the little children be converted, and become as you,’ but, ’Except ye be converted, and become as one of these little children, ye’ (and not they) ’shall in no wise enter into the kingdom of heaven.’

Believe me, my friends, that your children’s angels do indeed behold the face of their Father which is in heaven; that there is a direct communication between Him and them; and that the sign and proof of it is, the way in which they understand at once what you tell them of their duty, and take to it, as it were, only too readily and hopefully, and confidently, as if it were a thing natural and easy to them.  Alas! it is neither natural nor easy, and they will find out that too soon by sad experience:  but still, the Divine Light is there, the sense of duty is in their minds, and the law of God is written in their hearts by the Holy Spirit of God, who is sanctifying them, not merely by teaching them to hope for heaven, or to dread hell, but by showing them what is good.

And herein, I say, the simple and noble old Church Catechism, by faith in God’s Spirit, does indeed perfect praise out of the mouths of babes.  Without one word about rewards or punishments, heaven or hell, it begins to talk to the child, like a true English Catechism as it is, about that glorious old English key word, DUTY.  It calls on the child to confess its own duty, and teaches it that its duty is something most human, simple, everyday, commonplace, if you will call it so.  I rejoice that it is commonplace; I rejoice that in what it says about our duty to God, and to our neighbour, it says not one word about those counsels of perfection, or those frames and feelings, which depend, believe me, principally on the state of people’s bodily health, on the constitution of their nerves, and the temper of their brain:  but that it requires nothing except what a little child can do as well as a grown person, a labouring man as well as a divine, a plain farmer as well as the most refined, devout, imaginative lady.  May God bless them all; may God help them all to do their Duty in that station of life to which it has pleased God to call them; but may God grant to them never to forget that there is but one Duty for all, and that all of them can do that Duty equally well, whatever their constitution, or scholarship, or station of life may be, provided they will but remember that God has called them to that station, and not try to invent some new and finer one for themselves; provided they remember that they are to do in that station neither more nor less than every one else is to do in theirs, namely, to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with their God.