Must throw away his pen and paint,
      Kneel with worshipers.

    Then, perchance, a sunny ray,
      From the heaven of fire,
    His lost tools may overpay,
      And better his desire.

Thus buying Bibles for yourselves, my friends, see that your children buy themselves the Bible in the same good coin.

(a.) Read with them the tales of its noble men.

Do not hesitate to read with them these stories of the ancients, because there may be the commingling of legend with history, of myth with fact.  You do not hesitate to read them the story of William Tell, although there are woven into it the elements of a very old and wide-spread sun-myth.  These mythic elements have been woven around some real historic hero, and the spirit of his heroism breathes through every fold of the drapery.  How charmingly Kingsley tells the tales of the Grecian heroes!  Through his crystalline language we seem to inhale the crisp, clear air of the morning of Greece, in which the simple souls of child-men thus shaped their dreams of duty around their older dreams of nature.  Conscience fashioned these primitive fancies upon its form, and pulses through them its quickening life; the touch of which makes our children buoyant with aspiration, so that they mount on high, like Perseus of the winged feet.

Thus read the matchless stories of the Hebrews, mindless of legend or of myth.  The Spirit of Holiness breathing through these tales will inspire the souls of the children, without restraint from the questions that the reason may raise.  Tell them no lies if they ask you questions.  Read these ancient stories as stories, of good and noble men; stories written down long ago, and told from father to son through longer ages before they were thus written out.  Leave the children to detect the legendary elements.  I find them quick enough at that work without parental help.  The bright child feels the unreal in the tales that he most loves; but he loves them none the less, perhaps all the more, because of the spell upon his imagination that he would not break; while through them, upon his open soul, streams in the holy power of these sacred stories.  Do you concern yourselves with impressing the moral of these God-breathed tales.

Read with your children the stories of the dear Master, and make His life grow real to them, till He shall draw them after Him, in the steps of His most holy life.

(b.) Form in the children the habit of daily reading in the Bible.

Say to each of them, in your own way, that which Sir Matthew Hale wrote to his child: 

   Every morning read seriously and reverently a portion of the Holy
   Scriptures.  It is a book full of light and wisdom, and will make you
   wise to eternal life.

(c.) Cultivate in them a genuine interest in the Bible.