see their
Heavenly Father's works manifested, and know that they are, as He
is, _Light_. I say, let us teach our children freely and boldly to
know these things, and grow up in the light of them. Let us leave
those to sneer at the triumphs of modern science, who trade upon the
ignorance and the cowardice of mankind, and who say, 'Provided you
make a child religious, what matter if he does fancy the sun goes
round the earth? Why occupy his head, perhaps disturb his simple
faith, by giving him a smattering of secular science?'

Specious enough is that argument: but shortsighted more than
enough. It is of a piece with the wisdom which shrinks from telling
children that God is love, lest they should not be sufficiently
afraid of Him; which forbids their young hearts to expand freely
towards their fellow-creatures: which puts into their mouths the
watchwords of sects and parties, and thinks to keep them purer
Christians by making them Pharisees from the cradle.

My friends, we may try to train up children as Pharisees: but we
shall discover, after twenty years of mistaken labour, that we have
only made them Sadducees. The path to infidelity in manhood is
superstition in youth. You may tell the child never to mind whether
the sun moves round the earth or not: but the day will come when he
will mind in spite of you; and if he then finds that you have
deceived him, that you have even left him in wilful ignorance, all
your moral influence over him is gone, and all your religious
lessons probably gone also. So true is it, that lies are by their
very nature self-destructive. For all truth is of God; and no lie
is of the truth, and therefore no lie can possibly help God or God's
work in any human soul. For as the child ceases to respect his
teachers he ceases to respect what they believe. His innate
instinct of truth and honour, his innate longing to believe, to look
up to some one better than himself, have been shocked and shaken
once and for all; and it may require long years, and sad years, to
bring him back to the faith of his childhood. Again I say it, we
must not fear to tell the children the whole truth; in these days
above all others which the world has yet seen. You cannot prevent
their finding out the truth: then for our own sake, let us, their
authorized teachers, be the first to tell it them. Let them in
after life connect the thought of their clergyman, their
schoolmaster, their church, with their