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.

And for those who do answer to this call, how really true is it that
they do soon become dead, in great measure, to the law of the place
where they are living! How little do they generally feel its restraints,
or its tasks, burdensome! How very little have they to do with its
punishments! Led on by degrees continually higher and higher, their
relations with us become more and more relations of entire confidence
and kindness; and when at last their trial is over, and they pass from
this first life, as I have ventured to call it, into their second life
of manhood, how beautifully are they ripened for that state! how
naturally do all the restraints of this first life fall away, like the
mortal body of the perfected Christian; and they enter upon the full
liberty of manhood, fitted at once to enjoy