3. Advice to the Catechist.

It would be well for the pastor to begin with the youngest children, and, if he is to have them under his direction for many successive years, to proceed leisurely with their instruction If he is to have them for a short time, he will, I apprehend, be obliged to use a Catechism. But whether he will be under this necessity (and especially in the case now supposed), or whether the Catechism is to come after the Bible, the use of this manual will require special care. It is difficult to make a Catechism, and there are but few good ones. All things else being equal, I should prefer the most elementary-one which, conceived after a Christian plan, and reducing all things to a small number of principles, presents only the fundamental ideas on each subject, but expressed with vigor and feeling. Of all the Catechisms with which I am acquainted, I still give my preference to that of Luther. By adding to it a collection of passages, we shall have all we need.*

Whatever mode of catechising may be adopted, whether the Bible or some manual be its text, if it be public, it should be adapted to the class for which it is specially intended, I mean for children. It is very desirable that adults should take interest in the exercise, and be attendants on it, but we should not think ourselves obliged to change its character on their account. It would be unfaithfulness in respect to the children, and would be rather a damage than a benefit to the adults. Religion is never more penetrating, nor is instruction really more profound, than when Christianity is put in an infantile point of view. To present it thus, is to make it attractive to adults; the best sermon is not so attractive as a catechetic exercise, well managed.

Whether in public or private, we must prepare ourselves well for it, and not say to ourselves, I have only to speak to * Make use of good religious tracts.-Réal, Fabre.

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children; for in this, as in every thing, maxima debetur puero reverentia.* It is certainly no easy matter to speak well to children the talent to do this belongs not to every one. Our manner with children should be such as to give exercise to their intuitive power, incisory, penetrating; but then the danger is at hand of violating propriety. On this point I have pleasure in citing a remarkable confession of Bernard Overberg: In his journal he says, "I am again in school this morning without sufficient preparation. O God! help me to reform in this matter. I am deceived by saying to myself, That will do well enough—you know your business; something else is more necessary than preparation for it; for every thing which can be postponed is less important at this moment than this duty. The want of preparation involves many inconveniences; it makes teaching dry, confused, loose, diffuse; the children are embarrassed, they can not fix their attention, and the lesson becomes uninteresting to them and to myself.†

Preparation for catechising, even public catechising, called oratory,‡ does not include a discourse written and learned by heart, much less preparation for private instruction given in the pastor's domicile. It is most valuable when it has the character of a free and familiar conversation, difficult to be retained in a written discourse. But the best preparation for it should always be made. In general, if the elements of preparation, under its two forms, are not the same, we may say they compensate one another.

Gentleness and patience are the first qualifications; ridicule is unpardonable; hardly less so is embarrassing a child

* JUVENAL: Sat. xiv., v. 47. "We can not be too respectful to a child."

t Notice sur Bernard Overberg, instituteur à l'Ecole Normale de Münster, etc., by J. H. SCHUBERT, professor at Münich; published in French by the Society of Neufchâtel,1840, p. 26.

In German, Predigtcatechismus.

in the presence of the others.

Gentleness should be paternal, but manly. Love for children is the sure means of an amiable deportment toward them, and will happily replace an affectedly mild and evasive manner. As to familiarity, it should certainly not be wanting, but it should be serious: Seldom should smiling, never laughing, have place in religious instruction. We must be interesting, not amusing. We have the way of intermixing anecdotes with our instructions; but they ought to be interspersed with moderation; to be serious, and well brought forward.

The physical comfort of children in the time of the catechetical exercise is not to be disregarded..

The exercise should not be continued too long: We should especially guard against going beyond bounds in exposition, and economize time for questioning, which less fatigues children, because they have a part in it. We should not say every thing in the exposition, but leave it to the questioning to complement general ideas by particular ideas. The worse way of conducting the business is to allow of digressions which exclude from view the principal object, and from which neither the children nor the pastor can well return. This is the danger of the Socratic method; an excellent one, and also too little in use. In the absolutely Socratic mode, the child is too quickly persuaded that it is he who has found out every thing, who has said every thing: This will injure the pastor's authority, and the child himself, by exciting his self-love. And then we can not foresee how far we shall go with our familiar detail in giving a simple answer to the child's question. We should avoid too much circuity.

We can not judge of a child with certainty from the answers he gives in the course of instruction; we must, toward the end of the course, see and examine him by himself: They are not the best who know the most. We ought to see him also, in order to establish him in the true views of the communion to which he is to be admitted. We must ex

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plain the Lord's Supper to the child. In a practical point of view, the Lord's Supper is a subject about which many prejudices prevail. This is, in part, the fault of the human heart. In general, the child has no prejudices, but he is 1gnorant; he should well understand what he is about to do ; and the confirmation of the baptismal vow should be presented to him in its true character. The formula used among us is very defective; it says nothing of the Lord's Supper, nor of that grace of God which it is so necessary to have in thought when so awful a promise is made as is required in the formula. This promise should rather be a declaration. The formula, then, ought at least to be complete.

The age at which this confirmation takes place among us* seems to be suitable, having regard to the idea of confirming the baptismal vow freely, with knowledge of its nature. What, besides, is to be had in view as to the question of admitting or not admitting, is true knowledge of the mystery of piety according to each one's capacity, and especially the intelligence of the heart, the religious appreciation of this mystery. For the first, we have a measure; for the second, we have no sure means of knowing it. In respect to the last point, of course, unless we have decisive evidence that the child has dispositions directly contrary to Christianity, we ought to admit him. We have a right to adjourn, to refuse confirmation; but it is exorbitant to arrogate to ourselves the right of preventing another pastor from granting, if he thinks he can do so, what we have refused. We have discharged our responsibility if we have given our brother warning.

* Sixteen years.

SECTION THIRD.

CARE OF SOULS, OR PASTORAL OVERSIGHT.

CHAPTER I.

OF THE CARE OF SOULS IN GENERAL.

§ 1. Its Relations to Preaching. Ground of the Duty of the Care of Souls.

IN treating successively of the office of the preacher and that of the pastor, we have not meant to say, most assuredly, that preaching was not a pastoral office, and that it did not itself include the care of souls. No more would we say that the care of souls, properly speaking, is substantially distinct from preaching, since it is through the word that the care of souls is accomplished, and, under one form or another, preaching reappears every where. We may say, in one sense, that the preacher is to the pastor what a part is to the whole; but, in making of these two offices two parts, which are united to one another in order to make together a whole, we easily perceive differences as well as relations between them. The preacher instructs; the pastor trains up (in German, erziehet). The one acts on the mass, the other on individuals.

The one receives and nourishes those who come; the other seeks those also who do not come. We may further add, that the first occupies himself with spiritual interests; the second unites with these, more or less, temporal interests. For the pastor, in the full extent of his employment, and as

*See, in the introduction to the Course on Homiletics, what we have said of the word in the Christian religion.