Page:Authority and Knowledge.djvu/24

 the authority of mere strength would long ago have been laughed at or defied. Do you not see then how necessary it is that parents should train their children in the knowledge of their Father above, and that they should so use their own authority as those who are ruling for Him, who do not order about and scold and punish their children 'for their own pleasure,' but guide them with a quiet, firm, loving authority, which may be their first simple lesson of what a Father in heaven is, and which the simple reverence and faith of children will quite readily take for what indeed it is, that is for an authority speaking from God? So also with our Schools. Do you not see how precious it is to us that they should be Christian Schools, that their authority over the children should speak as it were for God, and should be set over them by God? Sooner probably, and more deeply than we at all think, there sinks into their young conscience a sense that it is a good and right power which is over them, that it is one which they ought to obey, and not only one which they must obey perforce till they can deceive it or escape from it. I think if we had secular schools we should see the difference in the children's tone And so as to the knowledge, is it not a precious thing that the knowledge should come to them not from an 'Education-shop,' where they buy so much, to spend it again in other things,