d hopes. It is not difficult to get it, if only we are simple and
genuine. Children will approach their minister gladly, and make him
their confidant, if only he is accessible to them. By the ministers of
an older generation they were kept at an awful distance. When they
were out of temper or doing wrong, they were threatened with a visit
from the minister in the same way as they might be threatened with the
policeman, or the parish beadle, or a still more awful functionary of
the universe. This, let us hope, has passed away, and in most parishes
a ministerial visit is spoken of as a promise instead of a threat. A
minister is proud nowadays if a child flies up to him in the street
and ruffles his feathers with boisterous familiarity, or if a group of
children pin him into the corner of a room and order him, under pains
and penalties, to tell them a story. We are returning to the ideal of
Goldsmith, in the _Deserted Village_:--

"The service past, around the pious man
With steady zeal each loyal rustic ran;
Even children followed with endearing wile,
And plucked his gown to share the good man's smile."

More important even than accessibility is genuine respect for the
children.

We ought to respect their intelligence. When we are preaching to them,
we should give them our very best. I venture to say, that a much
larger proportion of the sermons preached to children is never written
out than of sermons to adults. The preacher, having thought of two or
three lines of remark and got hold of two or three stories, enters the
pulpit with these materials lying loosely in his mind, and trusts to
the moment for the style of the sermon. Of course, if a man has
trained himself to preach in this way always, it is all right; but, if
not, it is a mistake. Children are greatly affected by felicity of
arrangement and the music of language; they do not know to what their
pleasure is due, but they feel it; and, if a preacher has the power
of original thought or of beautiful diction, there is no occasion when
he should be more liberal in the use of it than when he is addressing
them.[47] The truth is, it is a complete mistake to make the
children's sermon so different from other sermons as to create the
impression that it is the only utterance from the pulpit to which they
are expected to listen. It is not easy to get children to begin to
listen at all to what is said in church; the children's sermon is a
device to catc