t be life. To know God, and therefore to
love Him and to serve Him, that is salvation.

Now what hinders a little child, from the very moment that it can
think or speak, from entering into that salvation? Not the child's
own heart. There is evil in the child--true. Is there none in you
and me? There is a corrupt nature in the child--true. Is there not
in you and me? Woe to us if we have not found it out: woe to us if
we dare to think that we are in ourselves--or out of ourselves
either--one whit better than our own children. What should hinder
any child whom you or I ever saw from knowing God, and His Name, the
Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit?

Has he not an earthly father, through whom he may know _The_ Father?
Is he not an earthly son; and through that may he not know _The_
Son? Has he not a conscience, a spirit in him which knows good from
evil? holiness from wickedness--far more clearly and tenderly than
the souls of most grown people do? and can he not, therefore,
understand you when you speak of a Holy Spirit, a Spirit which puts
good desires into his heart, and can enable him to bring those good
desires into practice?

I know one hindrance at least; and that is his parents' sins; when
the parents' harshness or neglect tempts the child to fancy that God
The Father is such a Father to him as his parents are, and that to
be a child of God is to look up to his heavenly Father with dread
and suspicion as to a hard taskmaster whose anger has to be turned
away, and not with that perfect love, and trust, and respect, and
self-sacrifice, with which the Lord Jesus Christ fulfilled His
Father's will and proclaimed His Father's glory: or when the
parents' unholiness and lip-religion teach the child to fancy that
the Holy Spirit means only certain religious fancies and feelings,
or the learning by heart of certain words and doctrines, or, worst
of all, a spirit of bondage unto fear; instead of knowing Him to be,
as He is, the Spirit of righteousness, and love, and joy, and peace,
long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, meekness, temperance: or
when, again, parents by their own teaching, do despite to the Spirit
of Grace in their own child, and destroy their child's good
conscience toward God, by telling the child that it does not really
love God, when it loves Him, perhaps, far better than they do; by
telling the child that its sins have parted it from God, when its
sins are light, yea, are as nothing in th