We can
never see it as God does. But we shall see it with ever-growing powers
of vision, until that which was to us at first only a rude mass becomes
an exhaustless organized microcosm of wonders.

I do not advocate the overloading of children with verbal statements of
abstruse doctrines, whether of religion or of science. Much less would I
turn them into parrots, to repeat phrases to which they attach no
meaning at all. But when it is demanded, on the other hand, that they
shall learn nothing but what they understand, I demur. I ask for
explanation of the rule. I insist that, every statement of truth which
they learn, even the most elementary, contains depths which neither they
nor their teachers can fathom. I insist that, both in science and
religion, there are certain great, admitted elementary truths, reduced
to forms of sound words with which the whole world is familiar; and that
while these formularies contain many things which a child cannot
understand, they yet contain many things of which even the youngest
child has a fair comprehension. I insist that a carefully prepared
religious creed or catechism, even though it contains many things beyond
a child's present comprehension, is a fit subject for study. Memory in
childhood is quick and tenacious. The treasures first laid away in that
great storehouse are the last to be removed. They may be overlaid by
subsequent accumulations, but they are still ready for use. Forms of
sound words are certainly among the things which parents and teachers
should store away in the young minds of which they have charge. If the
child does not understand all that he thus places in his memory, he
understands portions of it just as he sees certain qualities of the
pebble which he holds in his hand, and he will see and understand more,
as his mind expands and his powers of spiritual vision increase.

VII.

CULTIVATING THE MEMORY IN YOUTH.

Many educators now-a-days are accustomed to speak slightly of the
old-fashioned plan of committing to memory verses of Scripture, hymns,
catechisms, creeds, and other formulas of doctrine and sentiment in
religion and science. Many speak disparagingly even of memory itself,
and profess to think it a faculty of minor importance, regarding its
cultivation as savoring of old-fogyism, and sneering at all memoriter
exercises among children as the chattering of parrots. It is never
without amazement that I hear such utterances. Memory is God's