to seek religion for themselves, and to find the pearl of great price, which is to them their most precious treasure.

Mark, however, that I said legitimate steps, for upon that I think turns the whole question of the religious education of children.

By "legitimate" I mean all the difference between dogmatic and undogmatic teaching. I yield to none in my repugnance to dogmatism, even in the teaching of children. I would never teach a child anything whatever in religion as absolute truth, still less as a thing to be believed on any word of mine, or of a Bible, or of a church; only and solely to be believed if it commends itself to the child's understanding and conscience. It never shocks or distresses a child for us to say, in answer to some perplexing question, "We do not know," "We hope so," "We believe it to be so," whereas if we give them as knowledge what is only belief or hope, their rude awakening to our mistakes may be a shock hereafter to their religious convictions from which they may never subsequently recover.

As a matter of fact, religion in its purest forms is in singular harmony with the unsophisticated instincts of childhood. I have known nervous timidity, fear of solitude, fear of the dark, and similar weaknesses, entirely removed by teaching the child to trust in the tender loving care of the ever present, ever watchful Spirit. I have never yet found a child who did not feel as by instinct that its words of falsehood or deeds of cruelty were displeasing to Him who gave it powers of speech to use only for truth, and energies for action only to help and to comfort others. I have found, too, in quite early life, that the sorrows and disappointments of childhood have lost more than half their weight and sting when assigned to the order of a loving providence which was working only for the best. But all this and such like teaching can be given without any dogmatism, without any petrifaction of the child's mind, or stifling of its enquiries.

The child will be sure to ask in time, "Why do you believe this or that?" and then the parent, if he be wise, will be ready with the true answer, "Because it is more reasonable," and not "because it is written in a book, or laid down by a church.

Elsewhere, in the 6th Vol. of The Sling and the Stone, I have gone much into the details of this question, and so I need not repeat here what I have already said.

As parents, if we have found religion to be in very truth

the soul and centre of our peace and joy, and the inspiration of all our highest thoughts and deeds, we not only have the right to help our children to become religious, but we can do no less. The more deeply, tenderly and disinterestedly we love them, the more intense will be our desire to see them happy inheritors of that blessing which the whole world can neither give nor take away.

UPFIELD GREEN, Printer, Tenter Street, Moorgate Street, E.C.

The Reward of Virtue.

A SERMON

PREACHED AT THE LANGHAM HALL, 43, GREAT PORTLAND STREET, W., NOVEMBER 28, 1875, BY THE

REV. CHARLES VOYSEY.

PROVERBS XI, 25.

"The liberal soul shall be made fat, and he that natereth shall be watered also himself."

THERE can be no doubt that in the early stages of morality and religion, the hope of reward held a very prominent place.

It may be rightly said that the genius of the Jewish precepts consisted in the promises of earthly prosperity for righteousness, and in threats of adversity for unrighteousness. A wide margin must of course be left for admitting that the great body of precepts and promises were addressed to the nation as a nation, and had reference to their national conduct and national welfare; so that the terms could not well be other than they were. Still, after this allowance is amply made, we find that even individuals were encouraged to do right by the hope of reward, and that seldom is any precept given without a promise of some kind of prosperity contingent upon obedience.

We find no fault with this feature in the ancient Scriptures, so long as they are regarded as the faithful transcript of the times and circumstances in which they were written. It is only when they are urged upon us, as Divine rules and as methods of Divine government, which are to last for all time and to be of universal application, that we venture to object to them as no longer right in principle.

Rev. C. Voysey's sermons are to be obtained at Langham Hall, every Sunday morning, or from the Author (by post), Camden House, Dulwich, S.E. Price one penny, postage a halfpenny.

The race of mankind, just as the individual man, passes through the various stages of infancy, childhood, boyhood and manhood; and for each successive stage there is its own proper discipline and mode of government. We may well believe, therefore, that there was an epoch in the history of the Jews, as in that of all other races and in that of each individual, when the proper stimulant to virtue was the hope of reward, and the best deterrent from vice was the fear of punishment. Nor can we shut our eyes to the fact, that this condition of childhood lasted down to the days of Jesus of Nazareth, in whose teachings may everywhere be traced the old Jewish stimulants of bribes and threats. Even the Sermon on the Mount, with all its sweetness and refinement, is permeated throughout by the same principle. To every beatitude is added a promise, and every deed of kindness is backed up by an assurance of an overflowing return. "Give, and it shall be given unto you," is the watchword of the morality of Christ.

But again-I declare that this is no blemish, so long as that kind of tendency was necessary, or even the most appropriate to those to whom it was addressed; and as it is certain that the mass of men and women to-day are still in the condition of moral childhood, we might make a terrible mistake if, in our zeal for a higher standard of motive for right action, we were to assail the moral teaching of the Bible and weaken its power to incalculate righteousness, on the ground that it appealed to human selfishness.

Many Christians, without knowing it, have grown entirely out of this childish condition, and would be surprised to find how far they have left behind them the hopes and fears, on which even Jesus Christ himself built up his exalted code of morals.

To them the utterly pure and disinterested goodness and self-sacrifice of their master, is a subject of unwearied admiration, and yet they can read, again and again, without suspicion, without the slightest shock to their moral sense, that monition of the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews, to look unto Jesus, the author and finisher of their faith, "who, for the joy that was set before him, endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of God."

For a Christian to repeat this now, in the language of the day, would be impossible. It would wound and shock him,

to hear it said that his master had endured all his bitter sufferings for the sake of some immense future gratification which those present sufferings were to procure; that Christ indeed would not have died for mankind, but for the "great recompense of the reward" which awaited him.

That such a libel was cast upon Jesus, by a writer in the New Testament, was only natural, and any higher view of his passion would have been an anachronism. But this shows how wide is the gulf between the loftiest standard of motives in that age and the loftiest standard in our own.

The best men and women of to-day would be ashamed to own to themselves any admixture of selfishness, in their deeds of mercy and kindness ; nay, they could hardly reverence Christ himself, if they thought that, while pretending to benefit his fellow men, he was all the while seeking his own honour and glory, and paying in advance for a celestial triumph, by a brief period of earthly humiliation.

The whole merit of brotherly kindness, let it be manifested in whatever form, is now believed to consist in absolute purity and singleness of motive. To do good to others is, or ought to be, the sole impulse behind every virtuous action; and this performed with total indifference to its consequences to ourselves, whether painful or pleasant. The action should partake of the nature of a spontaneous impulse, as when we stretch out our hand to save a falling child, or run to lift up a stranger who lies prostrate in the street. Not that our best and highest work for others is thus spontaneous, for on the contrary, that requires the most laborious toil of head and hand, and should be done only with grave deliberation; but when I call it spontaneous and compare it to impulse, of course I only mean that the good of others only must be allowed to move us, and every personal consideration whatever must be rigidly excluded.

The new thought about virtue-albeit written by many a schoolboy in his copybook-is that virtue is its own reward. We have babbled this over and over (as infant lips have been taught to repeat the Lord's Prayer and many a hymn), without the slightest attention to its meaning or sense of its tremendous import.

To be able to do right is our highest privilege; to have