sion of the
divine life, we might regard him as very unfitted, from some natural
harshness of temper, or some coldness of heart, or some infirmity of
judgment, for being a missionary of religion to the children under his
care. At one period early in life we spent many a leisure hour in
drawing up a gossiping little history of our native town, and found,
in tracing out the _memorabilia_ of its parish school, that the Rev.
John Russell, afterwards of Kilmarnock and Stirling, and somewhat
famous in Scottish literature as one of the clerical antagonists of
Burns, had taught in it for twelve years, and that several of his
pupils (now long since departed) still lived. We sought them out one
by one, and succeeded in rescuing several curious passages in his
history, and in finding that, though not one among them doubted the
sincerity of his religion, nor yet his conscientiousness as a
schoolmaster, they all equally regarded him as a harsh-tempered,
irascible man, who succeeded in inspiring all his pupils with fear,
but not one of them with love. Now, to no such type of schoolmaster,
however strong our conviction of his personal piety, would we entrust
the religious teaching of our child. If necessitated to place our boy
under his pedagogical rule and superintendence, we would address him
thus: Lacking time, and mayhap ability, ourselves to instruct our son,
we entrust him to you, and this simply on the same division of labour
principle on which we give the making of our shoes to a shoemaker, and
the making of our clothes to a tailor. And in order that you may not
lack the power necessary to the accomplishment of your task--for we
hold that 'folly is bound up in the heart of a child'--we make over to
you our authority to admonish and correct. But though we can put into
your hands the parental rod--with an advice, however, to use it
discreetly and with temper--there are things which we cannot
communicate to you. We cannot make over to you our child's affection
for us, nor yet our affection for our child: with these joys 'a
stranger intermeddleth not.' And as religious teaching without love,
and conducted under the exclusive influence of fear, may and must be
barren--nay, worse than barren--we ask you to leave this part of our
duty as a parent entirely to ourselves. _Our_ duty it is, and to you
we delegate no part of it; and this, not because we deem it
unimportant, but because we deem it important in the highest degree,
and are s