Page:The Relation of the Sunday-school System to our Christian Patriotism.pdf/3



is a strong contrast: a child with a gray-haired man; a poor child with a king. How feeble the one, how powerful the other! But the child is already wise; the king, untaught by age, is obstinate in folly. Wait a few years, and the child may be on the throne, the king degraded to poverty. “Better is a poor child” educated in sound principles, “than an old and foolish king, who will no more be admonished.” The child, having begun in piety, will grow in virtue; the folly of the king is inveterate and his amendment beyond hope: the one gives promise of a long and honourable usefulness; the other is nigh an infamous end of a mischievous career.

This decision by the great preacher of the Old Testament is confirmed by the greater preacher of the New. Our adorable Lord, the founder of Christianity, has laid down two cardinal rules for the government of his church in the sanctification of the world, under the divine blessing:, and.

The first, no sincere Protestant Christian may for a moment doubt; it is the characteristic distinguishing our religion from heathenism. Knowing that God is a Spirit, we know that he is not “worshipped by men’s 3