[5] I may be permitted to add, that if children do not discover any propensity to these studies, we should neither neglect nor despise them; provided their dispositions and conduct be good and regular in other matters. Besides, nothing conclusive can, at first, be drawn from their inattention to these subjects; for a child at _twelve_ years of age may evince as great a _regard_ for them, as she did _indifference_, at _ten_. There is little consistency in the human intellect at such a volatile period: the girl of gaity and dissipation at _eighteen_, may become the devotee at _five and twenty_. _T._ To discourse or description, may be added the sight of _pictures_, which represent sacred subjects. Prints will be sufficient, which may be preserved for ordinary use--but when an opportunity offers of shewing a child _good paintings_, it must not be neglected: for the force of colouring, and the grandeur of composition, will strike the imagination with greater effect. CHAP. VII. _Of Inculcating Principles of Religion in the Minds of Children._ It has been before observed that the first years of childhood are not calculated for reasoning: not that children are divested of those ideas and general principles of reason which hereafter become manifest, but that they are ignorant of many facts, which hinders the application of their reason; and, moreover, leaves that agitation of the brain, which prevents them from connecting their ideas. We should, however, without pressing them, gently direct the use of their reason towards a knowledge of God. Persuade them of Christian truths, without giving them subjects of doubt. They observe some one to be dead: they know that burial afterwards follows: say to them--"Is this dead person in the tomb?" "_Yes._" "He is not then in paradise?" "_Pardon me, he is._" "How can he be in the grave and in paradise at the same time?" "_It is his soul which is in paradise--his body only in the grave._" "His soul and body then are not the same thing?" "_No._" "The soul, therefore, is not dead?" "_No--It will live for ever in heaven._" Add: "And you, do you wish to be saved?" "_Yes._" "But what is being saved?" "_It is the soul's going into paradise._" "And what is death?" "_It is the mouldering of the body into dust, when the soul has left it._" I do not pretend to say that children may _at first_ be taught to answer in this manner: though I may add that many have given me such answers when they were four years of age. Let us, however, suppose a child to be extremely reserved and uninstructed:--the worst that can happen is, the waiting only a few more years with patience.