admire what is right, and take pleasure in it, and feel that it is
good to be good, and right to do right; which makes them delight in
reading and hearing of loving, and right, and noble actions; which
makes them shocked, they hardly know why, at bad words, and bad
conduct, and bad people. And woe to those who deaden that
tenderness of conscience in their own children, by their bad
examples, or by false doctrines which tell the children that they
are still unregenerate, children of the Devil, not yet Christians;
and who so put a stumbling-block in the way of Christ's little ones,
and do despite to the Spirit of Grace by which they are sealed to
the day of redemption. I see parents thinking that their children
are to learn the deceitfulness of the human heart from themselves,
and the working of God's Spirit from their parents; but I often
think that the teachers ought to be converted indeed, that is,
turned right round and become the learners instead of the teachers,
and learn the workings of God's Spirit from their children, and the
deceitfulness of the human heart from themselves; if at least the
Lord Jesus's words have any real force or meaning at all, when He
said, not, 'Except the little children be converted, and become as
you,' but, 'Except ye be converted, and become as one of these
little children, ye' (and not they) 'shall in no wise enter into the
kingdom of heaven.'

Believe me, my friends, that your children's angels do indeed behold
the face of their Father which is in heaven; that there is a direct
communication between Him and them; and that the sign and proof of
it is, the way in which they understand at once what you tell them
of their duty, and take to it, as it were, only too readily and
hopefully, and confidently, as if it were a thing natural and easy
to them. Alas! it is neither natural nor easy, and they will find