istinct from, and higher than, that of our early teaching;
but yet it is no less true that it comes to us individually recommended,
in the first instance, by the authority of our early teaching, and
received by us, not for its own sake, but for the sake of those who put
it into our hands. What child can, by possibility, go into the evidence
which makes it reasonable to believe the Bible, and to reject the
authority of the Koran? Our children believe the Bible for our sakes;
they look at it with respect, because we tell them that it ought to be
respected; they read it, and learn it, because we desire them; they
acquire a habit of veneration for it long before they could give any
other reason for venerating it than their parents' authority. And
blessed be God that they do; for, as it has been well said, if we their
parents do not endeavour to give our children habits of love and respect
for what is good and true, Satan will give them habits of love for what
is evil: for the child must receive impressions from without; and it is
God's wisdom that he should receive these impressions from his parents,
who have the strongest interest in his welfare, and who have besides
that instinctive parental love which, more surely, as well as more
purely, than any possible sense of interest, makes them earnestly desire
their child's good.

But when our children are old enough to understand and to inquire, do we
then content ourselves with saying that they must take our word for it;
that the Bible is true because we tell them so? Where is the father who
does not feel, first, that he himself is not fitted to be an infallible
authority; and, secondly, that if he were, he should be thwarting the
providence of God, who has willed not simply that we should believe with
understanding. He gladly therefore observes the beginnings of a spirit
of inquiry in his son's mind, knowing that it is not inconsistent with a
belief in truth, but is a necessary step to that which alone in a man
deserves the name of belief--a belief, namely, sanctioned by reason.
With what pleasure does he point out to his son the grounds of his own
faith! how gladly does he introduce him to the critical and historical
evidence for the truth of the Scriptures, that he may complete the work
which he had long since begun, and deliver over the faith which had been
so long nursed under the shade of parental authority, to the care of his
son's own conscience and reason!

We see cl