So said the author of “Tom Brown” in an address to Rugby School delivered on a recent Quinquagesima Sunday. This is plain speaking; education is only worthy of the name as it teaches this lesson; and it is a lesson which should be learnt in the home or ever the child sets foot in any other school of life. It is an insult to children to say they are too young to understand this for which we are sent into the world. A boy of five, a great-grandson of Dr. Arnold, was sitting at the piano with his mother, choosing his Sunday hymn; he chose “Thy will be done,” and, as his special favourite, the verse beginning, “Renew my will from day to day.” The choice of hymn and verse rather puzzled his mother, who had a further glimpse into the world of child-thought when the little fellow said wistfully, “Oh, dear, it’s very hard to do God’s work!” The difference between doing and bearing was not plain to him, but the battle and struggle and strain of life already pressed on the spirit of the “careless, happy child.” That an evil spiritual personality can get at their thoughts, and incite them to “be naughty,” children learn all too soon, and understand, perhaps, better than we do. Then, they are cross, “naughty,” separate, sinful, needing to be healed as truly as the hoary sinner, and much more aware of their need, because the tender soul of the child, like an infant’s skin, is fretted by spiritual soreness. “It’s very kind of God to forgive me so often; I’ve been naughty so many times to-day,” said a sad little sinner of six, not at all because any one else had been at the pains to convince her of naughtiness. Even “Pet Marjorie’s” buoyancy is not proof against this sad sense of shortcoming:-- “Yesterday I behaved extremely ill in God’s most holy church, for I would never attend myself nor let Isabella attend, ... and it was the very same _Devil_ that tempted Job that tempted me, I am sure; but he resisted Satan, though he had boils and many other misfortunes which I have escaped.”--(At six!) We must needs smile at the little “crimes,” but we must not smile too much, and let children be depressed with much “naughtiness” when they should live in the instant healing, in the dear Name, of the Saviour of the world. FOOTNOTES: [4] “Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton.” Messrs. Kegan Paul & Co. [5] Catholics say “who art.” CHAPTER VII _THE PARENT AS SCHOOLMASTER_ “The schoolmaster will make him sit up!” “Sit up,” that is, “come when he’s called,” apparently, for the remark concerned a young person who went on spinning his top with nonchalance, ignoring an intermittent stream of objurgations from his mother, whose view was that bedtime had arrived. Circumstances alter cases, but is it unheard of in higher ranks of life to trust to the schoolmaster to make a child “sit up,” after a good deal of mental and moral sprawling about at home? “Oh, he’s a little fellow yet; he will know better by-and-by.”