This is no doubt true; but it is also no less true in respect to all the powers and capacities of the human soul, as well as to those pertaining to moral and religious duty.  If the soul itself is the product of the creative agency of God, all its powers and faculties must be so, and, consequently, the development of them all—­and there certainly can be no reason for making the sentiment of true and genuine piety an exception—­must be the work of the same creative power.

But some one may say.  There is, however, after all, a difference; for while we all admit that both the original entrance of the embryo soul into existence, and every step of its subsequent progress and development, including the coming into being and into action of all its various faculties and powers, are the work of the Supreme creative power, the commencement of the divine life in the soul is, in a special and peculiar sense, the work of the Divine hand.

And this also is doubtless true; at least, there is a certain important truth expressed in that statement.  And yet when we attempt to picture to our minds two modes of Divine action, one of which is special and peculiar, and the other is not so, we are very likely to find ourselves bewildered and confused, and we soon perceive that in making such inquiries we are going out of our depth—­or, in other words, are attempting to pass beyond the limits which mark the present boundaries of human knowledge.

In view of these thoughts and suggestions, in the truth of which it would seem that all reasonable persons must concur, we may reasonably conclude that all parents who are willing to look simply at the facts, and who are not too much trammelled by the forms of phraseology to which they are accustomed, must agree in admitting the substantial soundness of the following principles relating to the religious education of children.

Order of Development in respect to different Propensities and Powers.

[Illustration:  THE FIRST INSTINCT.]

1.  We must not expect any perceptible awakening of the moral and religious sentiments too soon, nor feel discouraged and disheartened because they do not earlier appear; for, like all the other higher attributes of the soul, they pertain to a portion of the mental structure which is not early developed.  It is the group of purely animal instincts that first show themselves in the young, and those even, as we see in the young of the lower animals, generally appear somewhat in the order in which they are required for the individual’s good.  Birds just hatched from the egg seem to have, for the first few days, only one instinct ready for action—­that of opening their mouths wide at the approach of any thing towards their nest.  Even this instinct is so imperfect and immature that it can not distinguish between the coming of their mother and the appearance of the face of a boy peering down upon them, or even the rustling of the leaves around them by a stick.