VII.

CONVERSION OF YOUNG PEOPLE.

"And that from a babe thou hast known the sacred writings which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus."-II. Tim. iii. 15.

It is no longer a novelty, a strain of interest, for the pulpit to set its heart and eye on the young people present, and to preach the Gospel specially to them while speaking specially in behalf of them. What are the facts? Why, some of the finest activities of civilization are centering more and more on child-life. Hundreds of wise persons are thinking of the child-its nature, its needs, its promise-where one thought a century ago. Hundreds of philanthropists are working for the child where an age ago no one worked. Does a child need protection, sometimes very special protection, from the greed of capital, and even from the selfishness of its parents? The hand of the law has been raised in its behalf, and forever forbids that its little body shall be pinched and dwarfed by hard, unhealthful labor in factory or mine. Can a child learn early, and can it learn rapidly? can knowledge be broken up small enough for its bird-like mouth? And Froebel with the spirit of Christ saying, "Come, let us live for the children," answers with his wonderful kindergarten. Can a child be taught truth by stories, by picture, by song? And the genius of fiction and of art and of

poetry answers with the heart and glory of their work. Can a child be brought to Christ, and live as one of His disciples? And surely the medieval nightmares of theology, with their falsities about children, pass away, and the Sunday-school arises in rebuke of scholastic errors, and gathers the lambs to its bosom, and teaches them the way of the Lord:

The facts are luminous, radiant with hope for the good of humanity. The cry of Hagar's child, thirsting and dying, is heard, and eyes of love are seeing wells of water, and bringing cheer and refreshment. We are beginning to see to-day that little maidens can be touched by human want and woe, and can become a band of a hundred to do good where the Lord opens the door. Strong men and women are ready and glad to be fulfilling the oldtime prophecy that a little child. shall lead them; and we appreciate as never before what the Master meant when He set a little child in the midst of His disciples, as He taught them concerning His Kingdom.

It Is there any

All of this growing interest, this large service, in behalf of the young, we want thus to appreciate in the light of the Bible-its memories, its precepts, its promises concerning children. This interest is of God. is the fruitage of the Gospel of His Son. doubt of it? Or, if there is no doubt of it, yet is there a lack of full, positive, hearty appreciation of it? Are any of us practically skeptical about the conversion and spiritual training of youth? Whenever your boy comes to you, and of his own accord proposes to confess Christ publicly, does it trouble you, and do you put him off with vague excuses? Do any of us hold to that old notion, and do we unhesitatingly, un

blushingly proclaim it? "Oh, I believe in waiting until children are grown, so that they will know what they are doing, and can choose for themselves." Is the secret of this unbelief and indifference that, in the Bible, in the New Testament, especially in the Book of the Acts, the great book of conversions, there appears no distinct instances of child conversion, no express mention of the conversion of one by one, nor one after the other, nor many of them together, while the conversion of adults seems to be absolutely the rule, whether of one man or one woman, or of a large class or some vast crowd in a triumphant day?

Let us look all around the subject, and know the truth and mark our duty. Yes; as we read the history of the progress of the Gospel under Apostolic preaching, it seems that adult conversion is absolutely the rule. The children are out of sight. They make no clear-cut, familiar figure whatever. They do not sit in the front pews nor around the pulpit as Peter preaches on the day of Pentecost. They do not come tripping along with the visitors to Paul's hired house in Rome, thirty years afterwards, to be taught specially the Way of salvation. Nowhere do we read of "Children's Meetings," "Children's Day," "Children's Hour." Are the little ones forgotten? Does not God hear their cry?

Stop. Let us read more carefully, both on the lines and between the lines. Read again Peter's sermon in Acts ii.,-the first complete, full, authoritative proclamation of the Gospel to mankind. The children are not forgotten. They are distinctly mentioned. "For to you is the promise, and to your children," as well as "to all that are afar off." The promise, the

promise of the remission of sins and the gift of the Holy Spirit-it was to those Jews standing there, trembling and convicted, and it was also to their children, as well as to the Gentile world. Let no preacher, in a controversial spirit, slur that phrase "to your children." It does not require to be emptied of its plain, scriptural meaning, in any supposed interests of doctrinal harmony. It is not a rhetorical generality for posterity, in a vague, indefinable sense. It is primarily specific. It means first the children, the living children, of those living Jewish parents. That would be the only way a Jew could first understand the language. It would be altogether natural for him to understand the words in this sense. A man who was taught that "children are a heritage of the Lord;" who was commanded to teach diligently to his children the words of the law; who knew from his Bible that God's very purpose in the origin and propagation of the race from one pair of creatures, was that there might be "a godly seed;" who remembered the poetic note of his religion, “O Lord God, thou art my trust from my youth;" who believed that Jehovah was "a father of the fatherless,"-that man would rather have been astonished if a blessing of Heaven came to him which was not also promised to his children. "For to you is the promise, and to your children"-we may be sure that every Jewish father went home that day, rejoicing that, of course, his children were included in this promise of the salvation of the Gospel, now preached for the first time in the name of the crucified and risen Lord.

But while we are not to dilute the phrase, "your children," we are not to stretch it nor make a blind