you. If he had not died, you must have gone to hell, but he died, that you might be taken into heaven at last. Will you love him? Will you give him your hearts now? I seem to see him going from seat to seat, and he stops at the little children; many great men would pass you by, but Jesus Christ will not. He seems to stand at the door of little children's hearts, and to say, "Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if any" little children

open the door, I will come in" to be their Saviour. Will you open your hearts to him, dear little children? Will you say, 'Come, blessed Saviour! and I will be thine obedient child'; I will love thee, I will serve thee, and then, when I die and my body is laid in the cold grave, I hope my soul will rise with holy angels to love and praise and pray!'

SERMON VI.

CHILDREN URGED TO HEARKEN TO INSTRUCTION, AND TO FEAR THE LORD.

“Come, ye children, hearken unto me; I will teach you the fear of the Lord."-Psalm xxxiv. 11.

You know, when a minister preaches, he divides his sermon into different parts; sometimes we call them heads of the sermon; and there are some that understand it so well, that they have their pencil and paper and take down each one of the heads. Now I want you to recollect them, whether you write them down or not; because your teacher or your parents will ask you what the heads of the sermon were. I want every child to understand now, what the heads of the sermon mean; they are the different points about which the minister makes his remarks.

Now I am going to give you two general heads in this sermon, and then, under each one of these general heads, several smaller particular heads.

I. I am going to tell you, in the first place, several reasons why children should pay great attention to sermons. COME, YE CHILDREN, HEARKEN UNTO ME.'

I shall give you four reasons why every child ought to listen very attentively to the preacher; now, understand that you must recollect these heads-these four reasons that I give.

1. The first is this: if children do not pay great attention to the sermon, they cannot learn. Children come

to church to learn, just as they go to Sabbath school to learn; but you cannot learn what the minister teaches you, if you do not attend to it. If there are two children in a class at school, that are going to study a lesson in geography-and if one of them, all the time that he ought to be studying, is looking about, is talking to some other child, is reading some other book, or is thinking about something else besides the lesson in geography, which they have to learn-and if the other child attends to the geography, reads the lesson over, thinks of it, or, when the teacher is making any explanation, listens to every thing which the teacher says-you know which of those children will be prepared to recite the lesson in geography when the time comes. Just so in a sermon: that child that fixes his or her eye upon the minister, that child that attends to the minister, is the child that will learn the precious truths the minister teaches; but that child that is looking about, that is talking about any thing, or that is thinking about something else, cannot learn any thing that is taught in the pulpit. I have been quite accustomed to preach and to talk a great deal to the children in my church, and I have some very dear children there that I love a great deal; and I love them because they have paid so much attention to what I have preached to them from the pulpit, and what I have said to them in the meetings where I have addressed them. There was one little girl I will tell you about, to show you what kind of hearers we want among children. I had noticed her as she sat always in her father's seat in the church, remarkably fixing her eyes on me as soon as I rose up in the pulpit to begin the exercises; but I did not know so much about her, till one day, when I was sick and confined to my chamber, her father called to see me, and began to talk about his dear little Mary, that was about nine or ten years of age. Said he, "Have you ever no

ticed how my little girl sits in church?" I said I had not particularly noticed any thing but this, that I used to love to turn to that side of the church, because, if any one is preaching, he loves to see every person's eye on him, and, whenever I looked, this little girl's bright eyes were always fixed on me. But her father told me more about her. He said, that from the time I rose in the pulpit, she never turned her head one moment away from me, except sometimes when I said any thing that touched her heart very much, she would turn round to her mother, and say, "Is not that sweet?" and that was the only time she would turn away from the preacher. But here was what struck me with great force about this little girl, one so young: it was the custom of this father, every Sabbath afternoon, after the second service, to go home and get all his children around him, and begin to talk over the sermon of the morning, and then the sermon of the afternoon; they found the text, and each one read it, and then the father would begin to tell what he recollected of the sermon, and then the mother repeated what she recollected and that he had omitted; and the father assured me, that sometimes they forgot one of the heads of the sermon, one of the divisions, and they would turn to little Mary, and she would recollect it. I was quite surprised; but I have learnt more about little children since then, and I find they can be very profitable hearers of sermons; and ever since that time it has encouraged me a great deal, even when I am preaching to grown people, to talk especially to children, because I find that dear little children can understand me: and that is all a minister wants, for the people to understand him, and think about what he says.

2. Now, children, I have given you one reason why you should pay attention to sermons, and that is, that, if you do not, you cannot learn; and the second reason is,