Now, what is the case in the Scripture?  Men had been subject to a strict law of rewards and punishments, appealing directly to their hopes, and to their fears.  The gospel offered itself to them, as a declaration of God’s love to them; so wonderful, that it seemed as though it could not but excite them to love him in return.  It also raised their whole nature; their understandings, no less than their affections; and thus led them to do God’s will, from another and higher feeling than they had felt heretofore; to do it, not because they must, but because they loved it.  And to such as answered to this heavenly call, God laid aside, if I may venture so to speak, all his terrors; he showed himself to them only as a loving father, between whom and his children there was nothing but mutual affection; who would be loved by them, and love them forever.  But to those who answered not to it, and far more, who dared to abuse it; who thought that God’s love was weakness; that the liberty to which they were called, was the liberty of devils, the liberty of doing evil as they would; to all such, God was still a consuming fire, and their most merciful Saviour himself was a judge to try their very hearts and reins; in short, the gospel was to them, not salvation, but condemnation; it awakened not the better, but the baser parts of their nature; it did not do away, but doubled their guilt, and therefore brought upon them, and will bring through all eternity, a double measure of punishment.

Now all this applies exactly to that earlier and, as it were, preparatory life, which ends not in death, but in manhood.  The state of boyhood begins under a law.  It is a great mistake to address always the reason of a child, when you ought rather to require his obedience.  Do this, do not do that; if you do this, I shall love you; if you do not, I shall punish you;—­such is the state, most clearly a state of law, under which we are, and must be, placed at the beginning of education.  But we should desire and endeavour to see this state of law succeeded by something better; we should desire so to unfold the love of Christ as to draw the affections towards him; we should desire so to raise the understanding as that it may fasten itself, by its own native tendrils, round the pillar of truth, without requiring to be bound to it by external bands.  We should avoid all unnecessary harshness; we should speak and act with all possible kindness; because love, rather than fear, love both of God and man, is the motive which we particularly wish to awaken.  Thus, keeping punishment in the background and, as it were, out of sight, and putting forward encouragement and kindness, we should attract, as it were, the good and noble feelings of those with, whom we are dealing, and invite them to open, and to answer to, a system of confidence and kindness, rather than risk the chilling and hardening them by a system of mistrust and severity.