m
suggestions that will impel, to say to them the "same thing" that was
said to the children of more austere times about remembering their
Creator; but so to say it that they feel, not that they will be unhappy
if they do not remember, but that they will be happy if they do. It is
the love of God rather than the fear of God that we would have them
know.

Is it not, indeed, just because we do so earnestly desire that they
should learn this that we leave them so free with regard to what we call
their spiritual life? "Read a chapter in your Bible every day, darling,"
I recently heard a mother say to her little girl on the eve of her first
visit away from home without her parents. "In Auntie's house they don't
have family prayers, as we do, so you won't hear a chapter read every
day as you do at home."

"What chapters shall I read, mamma?" the child asked.

"Any you choose, dear," the mother replied.

"And when in the day?" was the next question. "Morning or night?"

"Just as you like, dearest," the mother answered.

But there is a religious liberty beyond this. To no one in America is it
so readily, so sympathetically, given as to a child. We are all familiar
with the difficulties which attend a grown person, even in America,
whose convictions necessitate a change of religious denomination. Such a
situation almost invariably means distress to the family, and to the
relinquished church of the person the form of whose faith has altered.
In few other matters is so small a measure of liberty understandingly
granted a grown person, even in America. But when a child would turn
from one form of belief to another, how differently the circumstance is
regarded!

One Sunday, not long ago, visiting an Episcopal Sunday-school, I saw in
one of the primary classes a little girl whose parents, as I was aware,
were members of the Baptist Church.

"Is she a guest?" I asked her teacher.

"Oh, no," she replied; "she is a regular member of the Sunday-school;
she comes every Sunday. She was christened at Easter; I am her
godmother."

"But don't her father and mother belong to the Baptist Church?" I
questioned.

"Yes," said the child's Sunday-school teacher. "But she came to church
one Sunday with some new playmates of hers, whose parents are
Episcopalians, to see a baby christened. Then her little friends told
her how they had all been christened, as babies; and when she found that
she hadn't been, she wanted to be. So her father