h their attention; but it ought also to be a bridge
conducting them over to the habit of listening to all that is said
there. If they acquire the habit, they are our best hearers. A boy of
twelve or thirteen can follow nearly anything; and there is no keener
critic of the logic of a discourse or warmer appreciator of any
passage which is worthy of admiration.

But, while we respect the intelligence of the young, there is
something else which we need to believe in still more. We do not half
realise the drama of religious impression going on in the minds of
children. We forget our own childhood and the movements excited in our
childish breasts under the preaching of the Word--how real the things
unseen were to us; how near God was, His eye flashing on us through
the darkness; how our hearts melted at the sufferings of Christ; how
they swelled with unselfish aspirations as we listened to the stories
of heroic lives; how distinctly the voice of conscience spoke within
us; and how we trembled at the prospect of death, judgment and
eternity. What we were then, other children are now; and what went on
in us is going on in them. It is the man who believes this and reveres
it who will reap the harvest in the field of childhood.

There is no surer way to secure for ourselves the interest of the old
than to take an interest in the young. Of course a forced interest in
children, shown with this in view, would be hypocrisy and deserve
contempt. We must love the children for their own sakes. Yet we may
quite legitimately nourish our interest in the young by observing that
it is one of the strongest instincts of human nature which makes
fathers and mothers feel kindnesses shown to their children to be the
greatest benefits which can be conferred on themselves. An Edinburgh
minister, who has had conspicuous success in preaching to children as
well as in every other department of the work of his sacred office,
once, in a gathering of divinity students, of whom I was one, told an
incident from his own life which is almost too sacred to be repeated
by any lips except his own, but which I hope he will excuse me for
enriching you with, as it puts in a memorable form one of the truest
secrets of ministerial success. On the morning of the day when he was
going to be ordained to his first charge, he was leaving his home in
the country to travel to the city, and his mother came to the door to
bid him good-bye. Holding his hand at parting, she