hearts of children against their father, poisoning the very springs of
life. Yet this wrong is done to God. In general, children taught by
their own parents do not suffer so much from these misrepresentations
of God, as those who have been left with servants and ignorant
teachers, themselves warped by a wrong early training. Fathers and
mothers must have within themselves too much intuition of the
Fatherhood of God not to give another tone to their teaching, and
probably it is from fathers and mothers, as they are in themselves
symbols of God's almighty power and unmeasured love, that the first
ideas of Him can best reach the minds of little children.

But it is rare that circumstances admit the continuance of this best
instruction. For one reason or another children pass on to other
teachers and, except for what can be given directly by the clergy,
must depend on them for further religious instruction. This further
teaching, covering, say, eight years of school life, ten to eighteen,
falls more or less into two periods, one in which the essentials of
Christian life and doctrine have to be learned, the other in which
more direct preparation may be made for the warfare of faith which
must be encountered when the years of school life are over. It is a
great stewardship to be entrusted with the training of God's royal
family of children, during these years on which their after life
almost entirely depends, and "it is required among stewards that a man
may be found faithful." For other branches of teaching it is more easy
to ascertain that the necessary qualifications are not wanting, but in
this the qualifications lie so deeply hidden between God and the
conscience that they must often be taken for granted, and the
responsibility lies all the more directly with the teacher who has to
live the life, as well as to know the truth, and love both truth and
life in order to make them loved. These are qualifications that are
never attained, because they must always be in process of attainment,
only one who is constantly growing in grace and love and knowledge can
give the true appreciation of what that grace and love and knowledge
are in their bearing on human life: to _be_ rather than to _know_ is
therefore a primary qualification. Inseparably bound up with it is the
thinking right thoughts concerning what is to be taught.

1. To have right thoughts of God. It would seem to be too obvious to
need statement, yet experience shows