Page:A happy half-century and other essays.djvu/194

 Evangelical literature of his day, whether designed for young people or for adults, was of a melancholy and discouraging character. The "Pious Deaths of Many Godly Children" (sad monitor of the Godwin nursery) appears to have been read off the face of the earth; but there have descended to us sundry volumes of a like character, which even now stab us with pity for the little readers long since laid in their graves. The most frivolous occupation of the good boy in these old story-books is searching the Bible, "with mamma's permission," for texts in which David "praises God for the weather." More serious-minded children weep floods of tears because they are "lost sinners." In a book of "Sermons for the Very Young," published by the Vicar of Walthamstow in the beginning of the last century, we find the fall of Sodom and Gomorrah selected as an appropriate theme for infancy, and its lessons driven home with all the force of a direct personal application. "Think, little child, of the fearful story. The wrath of God is upon them. Do they now repent of their sins? It is all too late. Do they cry for mercy? There is none to