and pure religion, should, by the folly of man,
(in yoking them together on erroneous principles,) neutralize each other's
beauty, or even form a combination positively hateful The religion
becomes nonsense, and the child becomes a hypocrite. The religion is
transfigured into cant, and the innocent child into a dissembling
liar.[12]

God, be assured, takes care for the religion of children wheresoever his
Christianity exists. Wheresoever there is a national church established,
to which a child sees his friends resorting; wheresoever he beholds all
whom he honours periodically prostrate before those illimitable heavens
which fill to overflowing his young adoring heart; wheresoever he sees the
sleep of death falling at intervals upon men and women whom he knows,
depth as confounding to the plummet of his mind as those heavens ascend
beyond his power to pursue--_there_ take you no thought for the religion
of a child, any more than for the lilies how they shall be arrayed, or for
the ravens how they shall feed their young.

God speaks to children also in dreams, and by the oracles that lurk in
darkness. But in solitude, above all things, when made vocal by the truths
and services of a national church, God holds "communion undisturbed" with
children. Solitude, though silent as light, is, like light, the mightiest
of agencies; for solitude is essential to man. All men come into this
world _alone_--all leave it _alone_. Even a little child has a dread,
whispering consciousness, that if he should be summoned to travel into
God's presence, no gentle nurse will be allowed to lead him by the hand,
nor mother to carry him in her arms, nor little sister to share his
trepidations. King and priest, warrior and maiden, philosopher and child,
all must walk those mighty galleries alone. The solitude, therefore, which
in this world appals or fascinates a child's heart, is but the echo of a
far deeper solitude through which already he has passed, and of another
solitude deeper still, through which he _has_ to pass: reflex of one
solitude--prefiguration of another.

Oh, burthen of solitude, that cleavest to man through every stage of his
being--in his birth, which _has_ been--in his life, which _is_--in his
death, which _shall_ be--mighty and essential solitude! that wast, and
art, and art to be;--thou broodest, like the spirit of God moving upon the
surface of the deeps, over every heart that sleeps in the nurseries of
Christendom. Like