=Relation to Almighty God.=—I have set before the reader the proposition that a human being comes into the world, not to develop his faculties nor to acquire knowledge, nor even to earn his living, but to establish certain relations; which relations are to him the means of immeasurable expansion and fulness of living. We have touched upon two groups of these relations—his relations to the universe of matter and to the world of men. To complete his education, I think there is but one more relation to be considered—his relation to Almighty God. How many children are to-day taught to say at their mother’s knee, to learn from day to day and from hour to hour, in all its fulness of meaning—‘My duty towards God is to believe in Him, to fear Him, and to love Him with all my heart, with all my mind, with all my soul, and with all my strength; to worship Him, to give Him thanks, to put my whole trust in Him, to call upon Him, to honour His holy name and His word, and to serve Him truly all the days of my life’? Whether children are taught their duty towards God in these or other words matters little; but few of us will venture to say that, in this short summary, more is demanded than it is our bounden duty and service to yield. But I fear that many children grow up untaught in these matters. The idea of _duty_ is not wrought into the very texture of their souls; and _duty_ to Him who is invisible, which should be the very foundation of life, is least taught of all. I do not say that children are allowed to grow up without religious sentiments and religious emotions, and that they do not say quaint and surprising things, showing that they have an insight of their own into the higher life. =Sentiment is not Duty.=—But duty and sentiment are two things. Sentiment is optional; and young people grow up to think that they _may_ believe in God, _may_ fear God, _may_ love God in a measure—but that they _must_ do these things, that there is no choice at all about the love and service of God, that it is their duty, that which they _owe_, to love Him ‘with all their heart, with all their mind, with all their soul, with all their strength,’ these things are seldom taught and understood as they should be. Even where our sentiment is warm, our religious notions are lax; and children, the children of good, religious parents, grow up without that intimate, ever-open, ever-cordial, ever-corresponding relation with Almighty God, which is the very fulfilment of life; which, whoso hath, hath eternal life; which, whoso hath not, is, like Coleridge’s ‘lovely Lady Geraldine,’ ice-cold and dead at heart, however much he may labour for the free course of all other relations. “I want,—am made for,—and must have a God, Ere I can be aught, do aught;—no mere Name Want,—but the True Thing, with what proves its truth,— To wit, a relation from that Thing to me, Touching from head to foot:—which Touch I feel, And with it take the rest, this Life of ours!”