in the time during which the children will remain at
school; and, secondly, that even if this objection did not exist, it
would cost too much.

I attach no importance whatever to the first objection until the
experiment has been fairly tried. Considering how much catechism,
lists of the kings of Israel, geography of Palestine, and the like,
children are made to swallow now, I cannot believe there will be any
difficulty in inducing them to go through the physical training, which
is more than half play; or the instruction in household work, or in
those duties to one another and to themselves, which have a daily and
hourly practical interest. That children take kindly to elementary
science and art no one can doubt who has tried the experiment
properly. And if Bible-reading is not accompanied by constraint and
solemnity, as if it were a sacramental operation, I do not believe
there is anything in which children take more pleasure. At least I
know that some of the pleasantest recollections of my childhood are
connected with the voluntary study of an ancient Bible which belonged
to my grandmother. There were splendid pictures in it, to be sure; but
I recollect little or nothing about them save a portrait of the
high priest in his vestments. What come vividly back on my mind are
remembrances of my delight in the histories of Joseph and of David;
and of my keen appreciation of the chivalrous kindness of Abraham in
his dealings with Lot. Like a sudden flash there returns back upon
me, my utter scorn of the pettifogging meanness of Jacob, and my
sympathetic grief over the heartbreaking lamentation of the cheated
Esau, "Hast thou not a blessing for me also, O my father?" And I see,
as in a cloud, pictures of the grand phantasmagoria of the Book of
Revelation.

I enumerate, as they issue, the childish impressions which come
crowding out of the pigeon-holes in my brain, in which they have lain
almost undisturbed for forty years. I prize them as an evidence that a
child of five or six years old, left to his own devices, may be deeply
interested in the Bible, and draw sound moral sustenance from it. And
I rejoice that I was left to deal with the Bible alone; for if I had
had some theological "explainer" at my side, he might have tried,
as such do, to lessen my indignation against Jacob, and thereby have
warped my moral sense for ever; while the great apocalyptic spectacle
of the ultimate triumph of right and justice might have been