f tender years, the evils
and inconveniences resulting from the practice were very great. The
children, finding the routine irksome, the constrained decorum required
of them during a time which seemed to them never ending (for the
services were then very long) was painful in the extreme, though they
were sometimes relieved by turning their thoughts in other directions,
perhaps to subjects irrelevant if not opposed to the ostensible object
of the meeting.

Thus pain and weariness became then and in after life naturally
associated with the most sacred of duties, and generally those, who at
an early age had been obliged to attend most regularly to an
unintelligible and irksome routine, were in after life those who
absented themselves most frequently from the place of worship. I have
known some, and this will scarcely be credited, who from an early age
had in obedience to their parents' commands attended church with what
was to them painful and monotonous regularity, and who, as soon as they
were old enough to leave the parental jurisdiction, never entered a
place of worship again until the day of their death, so great had been
their stifled repugnance, created by the unnatural surfeit which had
been inflicted upon them.

This was not all: the repugnance thus engendered often extended even to
the faith itself which the prayers and discourses had been intended to
inculcate, and led the way in after life to doubt and disbelief.

There was another though a secondary evil, attendant upon these old
formalities. In our climate, where children are very susceptible, it
happened that when on rare occasions any striking observation attracted
their attention, they would put questions very difficult for their
parents or preceptors to answer.

The forms of worship and service are now adapted to three several ages
and classes of intelligence. The first series is for children of from
seven to ten years of age, the second for children from ten to sixteen,
the third for adults. If the children, however, show any deficiency of
intelligence, they are kept in the first or second series, though the
stated age has been passed.

The discourses addressed to the young people are adapted to their age
and intelligence, and ordinarily bear reference to their own passing
actions, and consequently to their hours of play and of study. They are
intended to inculcate lessons of self-control, love for parents or
associates, contentment, and the mode o