He speaks of God in such a way as to frighten children from trusting Him, and so makes it impossible for them to love Him; they cannot help thinking of Him as austere, morose, and terribly strict a foe to all innocent mirth and merriment."

"It is all along of his mistaken notions of goodness," replied the Doctor, "and partly of his natural temper, and partly of his unhappy instruction, that he has such mistaken notions. He mistakes sanctimony for saintliness, strictness for religiousness; and so it is nothing strange he should have a God after the fashion of such ideas. His way of representing God was once characterized by one of a company of soldiers, after I had been speaking to them of God's love for them notwithstanding the low rank they held in the estimation of men, and however deeply they might have fallen in moral degradation. The man thanked me for what I had said, observing that most of those who preached to them, spoke as if Christ might be their friend, but they must beware of God.

"I told him I was sorry they should ever be so taught.

"Sir,' said he, they make God a Police Sergeant!'

66 That was the poor fellow's own title and function at the post where his troop was stationed."

"What is the function ?" asked Mrs. Oldham.

"To keep a sharp look-out on the men, and bring them up for punishment for all neglect or infraction of orders," replied the Doctor.

"But how good God is. At first thought it would seem one of the mournfullest things in the world that the little folks should be deprived of the sweet influence of right instruction-the blessed sense that they are God's dearly-loved children, and subjected to such teaching as Mr. Grim's— made to think themselves the children of the Evil One, and sure to fall into his clutches at the last, unless they should happen to be among the elect -which it was ten to one they were not. One would think their young life would be overshadowed and chilled to its very centre, by the great black horror of such a creed.

"But God takes care it shall not be so.

"If you chance to come upon a troop of those little ones out of doors at school recess, you will see them running, and scampering, and kicking up their heels like young colts let loose, and filling the air with the merry ring of their shouts and laughter. A strange spectacle and a frightful one

-in a right logical consideration of the creed they are taught--to see the doomed little wretches so joyous and thoughtless amidst the terrific chances of their fate!

"But God, the true loving God, is stronger in their hearts than their Catechism, setting forth a God worse than none, by all the difference between a bad one and none.

"Let us rejoice it is so.

"Let us be thankful that such unwholesome instructions enter so little into the life circulation of children's hearts, but roll off, for the most part, like the little pellets of hail from the windows, without any adhesion at all.”

"But, husband, do you think that the parents. and elders really hold any such terrible doctrines?

66 Well, they think they do; some of them only think they do, but in reality do not-they hold only the words; some perhaps hold the doctrines, but without seeing or believing in the consequences. Which is another blessed thing. Then, too, being fathers and mothers has a wonderful influence it is one of God's contrivances in behalf of little children. He takes care that there shall be a blessed inconsistency between a mother's head and a mother's heart, between a father's creed and a

father's love and so through God's love in them and their parents' love surrounding them, the little ones get a chance for a joyous childhood-unless in the midst of very unhappy outward circumstances. O when will all those be friendly! I never think of the social life of highly civilized nations, with so much sorrow for its evils in any of its other relations, as in its bearing upon the unfolding of childhood."

CHAPTER IX.

MORE TALK ABOUT CHILDREN. THE GOOD LORD'S CONTRIVANCES TO PREVENT THEIR BEING SHUT OUT OF THE WORLD OF FICTION.

MRS. OLDHAM had been sitting for some time in silence, her scissors busily running in and out the indented edge of a collar she was trimming for Lilly. Fred and his sister were on the other side of the table, each absorbed in reading-the one Ivanhoe, the other Miss Yonge's beautiful tale of Heart's Ease. The Doctor was looking over the newspaper.

"Husband," said Mrs. Oldham at length, casting her eyes upon the children, "how different the feeling among good people now from what it used to be about novels and works of fiction."

"Yes," replied the Doctor, "they did not understand, in the days of your grandmother, that it is through the world of fiction children first enter into the divine and eternal world."