VII. HAPPY SUNDAYS FOR CHILDREN.

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VERY first thing continues forever with a child. The first color, the first music, the first flower, paint the foreground of life. Every new educator effects less than his predecessor, until at last, if we record all life as an educational institution, a circumnavigator of the globe is less influenced by all the nations he has seen than by his nurse.

So says Richter; but he does not add the most important point of all, the nurse should always be the mother; and perhaps there is no one circumstance connected with our childish days, which leaves so powerful an impression, or lingers so long, upon the memory, as the manner in which our Sundays have been passed. Has the day been to us a stern tyrant, dark-browed, sombre-visaged, compelling us to relinquish every childish joy, and substituting wearying, burdensome rules in their place, making us hate its coming and hail its going? or has it come like some bright angel from a better land, with gentle footstep and love-laden looks, bringing ever in its train a brightness, happiness, and enjoyment of its own, peculiarly its own?

Accordingly as we have considered the day in one or other of these aspects in childhood, as we have taken

the tyrant or the angel view of it, so shall we usually

find ourselves looking upon it later in life. We have seen the evil results of false training upon this point affect a whole life; leading children to connect religion and restraint, and cheerfulness and carelessness, in a way which they seemed unable to separate as they attained maturer years.

We have seen unhappy little creatures, victims to a mistaken sense of duty on the part of rightly-meaning parents, and pitied them from our heart as we watched every treasured toy torn from their baby-grasp, with nothing to take its place, nothing to amuse, nothing to please; and, to the infant pleadings for some enjoyment, the only response is, "No! no! it is Sunday!"

We feel confident that this could not have been the course pursued by Dr. Livingstone when training the natives of Africa, who are little else than children. He tells us, in his recent interesting work, that many of them came to him when he was instructing his class, begging that they might be "Sundayed too." We find much in the expression to prove that he had managed to connect something pleasing to their minds with the very name of the day. Surely, had they been deprived of every enjoyment, and made to submit to stern and rigid rules, we should not have found them thus seeking to be "Sundayed."

There is something monstrous in thus linking Sunday and sadness in the brain of a child; and be very sure any one so taught will conclude, by a process of induction

which begins in children's minds far earlier than we are aware, that the Creator of such a Sunday cannot be the loving, tender Father which he is represented to be. Children are active observers, and often settle difficult points for themselves long before parents or friends realize that they have any power to do this.

We are far from meaning that the day should not be marked to children as something distinct from other days; but let it be by linking holiness and happiness, by changing their amusements, not annihilating them. We may please them by showing and explaining to them some coveted volume of sacred pictures, and provide for them pencil and paper, should inclination prompt their copying what they see; grant them privileges on that day given on no other. Tell them, in winning phrase, those Bible stories, which, so learned, they never will forget; and, above all, you who are fathers, talk to them, and lead them to talk to you. The business of the week necessarily engrosses and separates you; but, upon Sunday, let your children feel that you give yourself to them. Study their characters, guide, teach, and lead them.

It is wonderful how a child's mind will unfold under your explanations, and how curious it is to watch its working! Some years since, we were struck by this fact in the case of a little boy, to whom a whip, with sounding cracker, was a recent acquisition and great treasure. The thoughts of the new toy could not be laid aside

with the article when Sunday came, and Sunday pleasures were substituted. To his father, explaining to him the wonderful power of God, he said, "Can He do every thing? Could he snap a whip without taking hold of the handle?"

This to him was, at that moment, the highest reach of power which his opening mind could grasp, and probably conveyed all the more to him from having been his own thought.

Even in very trifling ways, or what seems so to us, but we should remember they are not so to the little ones, - it is well to mark the day with some pleasure or gratification. We know of a lady who always gives preserves or sweetmeats to her children on Sunday, simply that they may have the remembrance of something agreeable connected with the day. It is well, on the same ground, to reserve the appearance of a new dress, new bonnet, new coat, or those treasures to children, new shoes, for Sunday. This has a double advantage, the one we have just mentioned, of forming a pleasant connection in the mind of the child, and also making him feel that Sunday is a day upon which the best of every thing is to be used.

Strict cleanliness, both of person and dress, and also of all the arrangements of chamber or play-room, should be insisted upon. This rule is quite as important for grown persons ås for children. It may not be in the power of many to afford fine or expensive clothing, but