Christian Theology - Media Sabda Org

found. If we wish them to be wise, we should lead them unto God, by
means of his word and ordinances. It is natural for a child to inquire,
"What do you mean by this baptism? by this sacrament? by praying? by
singing psalms and hymns?" &c. And what fine opportunities do such
questions give pious and intelligent parents to instruct their children in
every article of the Christian faith, and every fact on which these articles
are established! O why is this neglected, while the command of God is
before our eyes, and the importance of the measure so strikingly obvious?
A child should be taught what is necessary for it to know, as soon as
that necessity exists, and the child is capable of learning. Among children
there is a great disparity of intellect, and in the power of apprehension
and comprehension. Many children have such a precocity of intellect as
to be more capable of learning to read at two than others are at five years
of age: and it would be high injustice indeed to prevent them from
acquiring much useful knowledge and some hundreds, if not thousands
of ideas, by waiting for a prescribed term of "five" years. When a child is
capable of learning any thing, give that teaching: but let the teaching be
regularly graduated; let it go on from step to step, never obliging it to
learn what it cannot yet comprehend. We begin very properly with letters,
or the elementary signs of language; teach the child to distinguish them
from each other, and give them in their names some notion of their
power. We then teach them to combine them into simple syllables;
syllables into words; words into sentences; sentences into speeches, or
regular discourse. This process is as philosophic as it is natural: but who
follows it through the successive steps of education? Scarcely any.
Because a child can understand a little, and shows aptness in learning,
parental fondness, or the teacher's ignorance, comes into powerful
operation; and the child is pushed unnaturally forward to departments of
learning to which it has not been gradually inducted. The mind is puzzled
and bewildered; a great gulf is left behind which cuts off all connection
with what has been already learned, and what is now proposed to the
understanding; and the issue is, the child is confounded and discouraged,
and falls either under the power of hebetude, or learns superficially, and