n they are converted.
The same class of rules apply to them, I suppose, that applied before."

"I shouldn't wonder if a majority of people thought that common sense
had nothing to do with religion," he said, laughing; "and that is what
makes us silly and sentimental when we try to talk about it. In our
effort to be solemn, and suit our words to the theme, we are unnatural.
But your statement with regard to the little children is true; I have
often observed it."

"That other point, about visiting, was the one that troubled me," Marion
said. "It doesn't annihilate it to say that teachers don't visit; they
don't, to be sure, with here and there a delightful exception. My
experience on this matter, as well as on several other matters connected
with the subject, reaches beyond these few weeks of personal experience.
I have had my eyes very wide open; I was alive to inconsistencies
wherever I found them; the world and the church, and especially the
Sunday-school, seemed to me to be full of professions without any
practice. I rather enjoyed finding such flaws. Why I thought the thin
spots in other people's garments would keep me any warmer, I am sure I
don't know; but I was fond of bringing them to the surface.

"Still, because a duty isn't done is no sign that it cannot be. Of
course a teacher with six pupils could visit them frequently, while one
with a hundred could do it but rarely; and yet, systematic effort would
accomplish a great deal in that direction, it seems to me. I don't know
why we should have more than fifty people in our churches; certainly the
pastor could visit them much more frequently, and keep a better
oversight, than when he had eight hundred, as you have; yet we don't
think it the best way after all. We recognize the enthusiasm of numbers
and the necessity for economizing good workers so long as the field for
work is so large.

"But I know a way in which a strong personal influence could be kept
over even a hundred children; by keeping watch for the sick and
sorrowing in their homes, and establishing an intimacy there, and by
making a gathering of some sort, say twice a year, or oftener, if a
person could, and giving the day to them; and, well, in a hundred
different ways that I will not take your time to speak of; only we
teachers of day-schools know that we can make our influence far
reaching, even when our numbers are large; and we know that there is
such an influence in numbers and in discipline