and thought narrow the significance to commercial uses only? Shall we not rather lift up our eyes and recognize in them their grander prophetic meaning, "Prepare ye the way of the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed"?

THE RELATION OF CHILDREN TO THE CHURCH.

BY REV. GEORGE B. SPALDING, D. D., OF MANCHESTER, N. H.

THAT day has gone forever by when one need feel at all hesitant about bringing before an assembly of however grave and philosophical a character the subject of the children.

Scientific conventions, in which are gathered men of profound research and learning, and of most comprehensive spirit as respects the future well-being of human society, are more and more turning their eyes towards the cradle of infancy as holding, in itself the solution of the problems that most preplex us.

The church of God, a hundred years ago, as by a new revelation from Heaven, came into some understanding of this subject, and the modern system of Sunday-school instruction is the splendid result.

To-day the church is feeling a new sense of the momentous nature of this question. The ever-lessening number coming into her membership from those of mature age is forcing the church to a wiser consideration of this matter of childhood religion, as holding in it the whole question of not only the growth and prosperity, but the very existence of the church of Christ on the earth.

Thus the ever-wakeful providence of God, by our very fears for the future welfare of the church, is turning our attention into this largest and most hopeful field of childhood for those enlistments which shall not only keep the church roll filled, but which shall mightily increase it. If God is diminishing our recruits from those in mature life, and from those brought in from what we call revivals, is it not that in our very despair we shall turn our energies to the saving of the young. And will not this pressure of necessity, which God seems to be placing upon us, issue in new methods of church work, and in larger and more scriptural ideas of the religious capacities of children, and of their place in the church?

It is given to no one man, or to no one period, to exhaust the interpretation and application of any truth. It was a great thing that English Christians in their reading of the Master's words should have seen that little children were included in the scope of His great commission. It is hardly to be wondered at that they failed to view it in all its implications. They straightway set themselves to the work of the religious instruction of youth. They failed to see how these instructed youths stood related to the church. They failed in their method and hopes to bring these Sunday-school children into any warm, vital connection with the church as the body of Christ.

John Wesley, in a dimly prophetic way, swept the margin of this great Christly idea, when, just ninety-nine years ago, he recorded in his journal these words:" I find Sunday schools springing up wherever I go. Perhaps God may have a deeper end therein than men are aware of. Who knows but some of these schools may become nurseries for the churches?" It remains for this period to catch in noonday clearness that vague vision of the great Methodist, to make the Sunday school the church nursery, and to make children at their earliest conceptions of Christian truth, and their first consciousness of Christ's grace, members of His church. But before we can take this step with the ever-onward movement of God's providence, we must enlarge, or perhaps greatly modify, our ideas of the nature and mission of the Christian church.

If we regard the church as a sacred repository, into which are to be gathered only the selectest virtues and graces of a redeemed humanity; if we say the church is "the home of God's saints," meaning to include in it only those who have become strong by God's discipline, learned in His wisdom, sanctified by His grace, who are secure against temptation, with no liability to any great lapse into sin, altogether rooted, and grown up into Christ, – if this is our idea of the church, it is at once apparent that it sustains no very vital relation to children. There is no place in this divinely beautiful museum for the exhibition of their crude knowledge, undisciplined virtues, and feeble, immature characters. In whatever way the church may undertake to touch these children, it cannot be otherwise than at arm's length, striving to shape them into spiritual grace by distant and secondary methods, drawing them to her bosom, not until they have been nourished at some less tender source, taking them to herself only when they shall

have become strong and fair enough to add lustre to her own shining beauty.

We may take another view of the church in addition to, or altogether separate from the last. We may regard the church as a vast organization, equipped with a splendid leadership and soldiery, and most wise and elaborate methods of warfare. Its mission is to do good, to go out into the world and conquer it for Christ. It institutes and plies, with energy and skill, its various instrumentalities, its young men's associations, its praying and singing bands, its Bible classes, its Sunday schools, its foreign and home missionary societies; these and many other great enterprises which so largely distinguish the Christian church of to-day. The church as some view it is thus fulfilling its mission. It is going forth like an army, bearing aloft its banners, shouting for Christ, fighting and dying for Him.

Of course with such an idea of the church as this, and none other, or with this the supreme one, it has no place in its marching, fighting ranks for children. In council their wisdom would be foolishness. Along the dusty, sun-beaten way their strength would fail. In the smoke and rush of the battle their timid bearts would quake with fear. Not until their muscles have become hardened, their brains steadied, their hearts courageous, may they take their places among the wise counsellors, the great generals, the veteran soldiers who make up the "Church Militant" on earth.

Now, whatever phases of the truth there may be in these representations of the church of Christ, they are only portions of the truth, they are only fractions, small fractions too, of the grand whole. When held to exclusively or mainly, they are worse than falsities. There is no such dangerous thing in this world as a halftruth. It is the truth in the error that gives to the error its handle and edge.

My appeal for the true and complete idea of the church of God here on earth is to the Bible, and very largely to the words of our Saviour. Let me preface this appeal by a single observation in respect to those terms in which the apostles, in their epistles, so frequently addressed the members of Christian churches. In many instances the apostles styled those to whom they wrote "saints"; most often the words are "called to be saints." Not that these men and women, members of these different churches, had really come into the fulness of their sainthood, or that they were actually holy in character. In the epistle to the church at Corinth the

Apostle Paul speaks of its members as "called to be saints," as "temples of the Holy Ghost," and yet, in the same epistle, he describes them as 66 carnal and walking as men." As we read further on we find that these early Christians had, as yet, developed but a little of the distinguishing grace of the new religion. As another has said of them, "They carried into the church the savor of their old life, for the wine-skin will long retain the flavor with which it has once been imbued." We find from these epistles that gross immorality still existed, and was even considered a thing to boast of. We find their old philosophy still coloring their Christianity. They held to some false notions; they denied some most essential doctrines; they turned the observance of the Lord's Supper into a scene of selfishness and even riotous excess. And yet these are addressed as "saints." Let us understand this matter. Let us cast aside all unreal, roseate notions of the early church. The apostle addressed these members of the church in reference to what they ought to be, in reference to what they should ever be striving to become, in reference to what he had faith that they would yet attain. The truth is, the Christian church was based upon the idea that men, women, and children were at a very low spiritual state, and that its office and functions were to so deal with these feeble, ignorant, sinful ones, so sheltering them, so nourishing them, so bearing with them, so rebuking and encouraging them, that in the church and through the church they would be steadily advanced into something nobler and better, until they would be made meet for the perfect, the ideal church, even the heavenly.

I am anxious not to be misunderstood. I would not, for what the world holds, lower one whit the lofty standard of holiness in the churches. I would insist, with an undiminished emphasis, upon the necessity of every church member striving with an unrelaxable prayer and effort to rid himself of all sin, to become even like Christ himself. That is the distant goal, that is the shining prize. And yet it is not to be lost sight of that the Apostle Paul, and the other great workers in the early Christian church, looked upon men just as they were, beheld in them the feeble, struggling germs of grace, saw in them the beginning of goodness, and by virtue of what they saw, or, perhaps not clearly seeing, sometimes hoped for, opened wide the portals of Christ's church that it might receive these into itself, that the feeble faith might be strengthened, that the slow life might be quickened, that the spark in the smoking flax might

be fanned into a flame. And all this was in perfect consonance with what the Master had said and done before them. Their every idea had received its mould from His own shaping hand.

For I call you to notice the first text in the New Testament, in which is given to those who associated themselves with Christ their distinctive name. "He went up into a mountain, and when He was set, His disciples came unto Him." These followers of His are called "disciples," "His disciples." It was only a few days before this that He had met, for the first time, John and Andrew, and, more recently, Peter, and more recently still, the others, to draw them into companionship with Himself. And these He called at once His disciples. They were not called by any of those appellations by which His followers are known to-day; i. e., professors,' ," "churchmen," "believers," "saints," or even "Christians." They were called in the first mention of them, disciples." There is something in this very noteworthy; but there is something even more significant.

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In turning over the pages of these gospels, in which Christ is ever speaking to and of these followers of His, they are called disciples " no less than two hundred and thirty-eight times. Once the Master called them "friends"; another time He called them "witnesses." With these exceptions, He always called them "disciples." Turning to the other books of the New Testament, we find that they are called there, most often, by the name " disciples." Now who can' deny that there is utmost meaning in this uniform use of the word? There must be something in the very word itself which presents the Christian life and the Christian church to us in some most distinct and important way. It opens to us a new and wealthy region of truth, which is not as familiar as it should be to our ordinary religious thought. The word is disciple; that is, a pupil, a scholar, - in plainest English, a learner. To be a Christian. is simply this: to be a learner of Christ.

The time allotted me will not permit me to enlarge this idea as I would like, to guard it as it ought to be guarded from any and all possible misconceptions of it. I will only say, lest you may think that I am too greatly simplifying, and, perhaps, belittling the idea of the Christian character and life, that much - that everything of a Christian nature - is involved in this word learner. There is implicit faith in the teacher. I cannot put myself to school to any teacher, and hold myself open to any instruction from him, without having a personal faith in his wisdom, in his sincerity, in himself.