For a review of the week I must think of Plato; the “Republic,” and “Timæus,” and “Critias,” I have succeeded in looking through; I have heard my “Mental” class read some of the rest. In the “Republic,” I remember it is decided that youths should be taught in music,--no enfeebling melodies, but those which strengthen and build up the soul in all that is vast and true. Plato’s idea of music comprehends more than we read in the word; and I see how it is that an education should be musical,--the spiritual fabric rising like the walls of Troy to the Orphean strains of noble thoughts and impulses. I remember, too, that he would forbid some of the stories of the Gods to be told to children; those which should needlessly alarm them, or weaken their reverence. In that corrupt and yet beautiful system, it was necessary indeed; the same idea might be not injuriously carried out in a system of Christian education. In the Hebrew Scriptures there is much that puzzles the maturest minds, sincere and earnest in their search for truth; yet these narratives are the first knowledge that children often have of the Bible. I would have them learn only the New Testament, until they have learned something of the real nature of the world they are ushered into. When they study other history, they will be better able to understand this; and the history of the Jews is, it seems to me, a wonderful part of the world’s record, so connected with that of other nations as to make them plainer, revealing the handwriting of an Almighty Providence everywhere. I would not have the child begin life with the terror which hung over my childhood: told that I was a sinner before I knew what sin meant, and fearful pictures of eternal punishment which awaited all sinners at death haunting my dreams, so that I was afraid to sleep, and more afraid to die. I know they say (a good man has just said it to me) that there is less vigor of mind and character because these things are less taught as a part of religion than formerly; yet I am sure that blind fear cannot invigorate,--it must degrade. I believe that I went far down from my earliest ideals of life after hearing these things; and it was a long straying amid shadowy half-truths, and glooms of doubt, and stagnations of indifference, before I came back to the first thought of my childhood. No: let a child’s life be beautiful as God meant it to be, by keeping it near Him, by showing to its simplicity the things which are lovely, and true, and pure, and of good report. The knowledge of evil comes rapidly enough, in the petty experiences of life; but a child will soon love evil and grow old in it, if driven away from the divine light of love; if not allowed to think of God chiefly as a friend. And just here is where Christ speaks to the hearts of little children; they know Him as soon as He is permitted to speak, and are known of Him.