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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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There is a charm in the very name of c Hymns for Children . ' Unconsciously as the words may fall from their lips , the song of praise is ia accordance with the spirit of childhood , and can never be heard without corresponding emotion . It sends us back to the knees and smiles of a parent , reviving the first fresh feelings of affectionate veneration and awe , and combining them with a consciousness of their worth , and with regret that they have ever been stifled or sullied . With few exceptions , all
children love hymns ; they love them for the melody , and for the sacredness which is attached to them ; they love them , in many instances , from an association with the time ajid place and manner of repetition , and they are capable of entering into the general meaning and object of a devotional exercise before they can be made to understand each particular phrase . We are not to rest satisfied with this mechanical devotion , nor ( on the other hand ) should we disdain to employ it . One powerful early association on the side of goodness is worth volumes of logic . If religion were only a science , if it were a question of imparting truths and not of generating affections , we might be content to wait till the mind was prepared far those truths , till its powers were in full play , and reason had learnt to discriminate , weigh , and decide . It would be as absurd , on such a supposition , to forestal a child ' s mind with a hymn ,, as it is to entangle him in the
mysteries of the Athanasian Creed or the Assembly ' s Catechism . If we had only to learn to believe , it would not much matter when we began , nor ( comparatively speaking ) how we conducted the process . But believing ( as we all do ) that religion is a taste , an affection , a habit , a vital principle of enjoyment and of action , and , as it were , another soul within our inmost soul , when should it be implanted but when all other tastes , affections , and habits , are formed—when the vital spark is just kindled , and enjoyment and action
are new ? Why should not the spirit brood over the little world of unformed mind , and wake it into life and order ? Wh y should not the same sun which ripens the fruit , be permitted to call forth and colour the blossoms ? We should rather say , how can it ripen the fruit , if it be not permitted , in its due season , to call forth the blossoms ? Or how can we ever create in the mind what should have been springing up there , and strengthening from day
to day from the first dawn of existence ? No force of conviction in after life will ever rival the force of early impression ; demonstration itself will not vie with it in its power over the heart . * I can never remember to have been so affected with any proofs of the attributes of the Deity , " says an eminent German poet , " as I always am with a single verse of a psalm which I was wont to hear in my childhood . " The verse in question was , " Before the mountains were brought forth , " &c , which is in itself sublime and worthy of the admiration of a poet . But early association can supply the place of poetical merit . ' I have derived great consolation at many periods of my life , " says Mrs . Cappe , " and felt my mind soothed by the recollection of a hymn which I have heard my mother sing very sweetly when I was a child . " It began , if we remember right , as follows : " I myself besought the Lord , And He answer ed me again , And me delivered speedily From all my fear and pain . " * Sini |> lr Hymns and Scripture Son ^ s for Children , H \ a LaHv .
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HYMNS FOR CHILDREN . *
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), June 2, 1830, page 374, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2585/page/14/
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