"O mother," interrupted her little girl, "what did grandfather write in it?" "Go and look," her mother said. "You will find it on the table by my bed." The child eagerly ran out of the room. In a few moments she returned, the Bible of her mother's childhood in her hands. It also was a beautiful book; bound, too, in crimson leather, and with the name of its owner stamped on it in gold. And on the fly-leaf was written,-- "To my daughter, on her seventh birthday, from her father." Beneath this, however, was inscribed no modern poetry, but "Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth, while the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them." [Illustration: IN THE INFANT CLASS] The little girl read it aloud. "It sounds as though you wouldn't be happy if you _didn't_ remember, mother," she said, dubiously. "Well, darling," her mother replied, "and so you wouldn't." The child took her own Bible and read aloud the verse her father had written. "But, mother, this sounds as though you _would_ be happy if you _did_ remember." "And so you will, dear," her mother made reply. "It is the same thing," she added. "Is it?" the little girl exclaimed in some surprise. "It doesn't _seem_ quite the same." The child did not press the question. She left us, to return her mother's Bible to its wonted place. When she came back, she resumed the exhibiting of her birthday gifts where it had been interrupted. But after she had gone out to play I said to her mother, "Are they _quite_ the same--the text in your Bible and the lines in hers?" "It _is_ rather a long way from Solomon to William Blake, isn't it?" she exclaimed. "But I really don't see much difference. The same thing is said, only in the one case it is a command and in the other it is an impelling suggestion." "Isn't that rather a great deal of difference?" I ventured. "No, I think not," she said, meditatively. "Of course, I admit," she supplemented, "that the idea of an impelling suggestion appeals to the imagination more than the idea of a command. But that's the _only_ difference." It seems to me that this "only" difference is at the very foundation of the religious training of the children of the present day in our country. We do our best to awaken their imaginations, to put to them suggestions that will impel, to say to them the "same thing" that was said to the children of more austere times about remembering their Creator; but so to say it that they feel, not that they will be unhappy if they do not remember, but that they will be happy if they do. It is the love of God rather than the fear of God that we would have them know.