And this leads us to reflect, in the eighth place, that we ought to be very careful, in our conversations with children, and especially in addresses made to them in the Sunday-school, or on any other occasion, not to say any thing to imply that we consider them yet unconverted sinners.

No one can possibly know at how early an age that great change which consists in the first faint enkindling of the Divine life in the soul may begin to take place, nor with what faults, and failings, and yieldings to the influence of the mere animal appetites and passions of childhood it may, for a time, co-exist.

We should never, therefore, say any thing to children to imply that, in the great question of their relations to God and the Saviour, we take it for granted that they are on the wrong side.

We can not possibly know on which side they really are, and we only dishearten and discourage them, and alienate their hearts from us, and tend to alienate them from all good, by seeming to take it for granted that, while _we_ are on the right side, _they_ are still upon the wrong.

We should, in a word, say _we_, and not _you_, in addressing children on religious subjects, so as to imply that the truths and sentiments which we express are equally important and equally applicable to us as to them, and thus avoid creating that feeling of being judged and condemned beforehand, and without evidence, which is so apt to produce a broad though often invisible gulf of separation in heart between children, on the one hand, and ministers and members of the Church, on the other.
_Promised Rewards and threatened Punishments_.
9.