The means which we use to awaken or impart the feelings of sorrow for sin, submission to God, and cordial good-will to man, in which all true piety consists, must be means that are appropriate in themselves to the accomplishment of the end intended.  The appliance must be water, and not sand—­or rather water or sand, with judgment, discrimination, and tact; for the gardener often finds that a judicious mixture of sand with the clayey and clammy soil about the roots of his plants is just what is required.  The principle is, that the appliance must be an appropriate one—­that is, one indicated by a wise consideration of the circumstances of the case, and of the natural characteristics of the infantile mind.

Power of Sympathy.

5.  In respect to religious influence over the minds of children, as in all other departments of early training, the tendency to sympathetic action between the heart of the child and the parent is the great source of the parental influence and power.  The principle, “Make a young person love you, and then simply be in his presence what you wish him to be,” is the secret of success.

The tendency of young children to become what they see those around them whom they love are, seems to be altogether the most universally acting and the most powerful of the influences on which the formation of the character depends; and yet it is remarkable that we have no really appropriate name for it.  We call it sometimes sympathy; but the word sympathy is associated more frequently in our minds with the idea of compassionate participation in the sufferings of those we love.  Sometimes we term it a spirit of imitation, but that phrase implies rather a conscious effort to act like those whom we love, than that involuntary tendency to become like them, which is the real character of the principle in question.  The principle is in some respects like what is called induction in physical science, which denotes the tendency of a body, which is in any particular magnetic or electric condition, to produce the same condition, and the same direction of polarity, in any similar body placed near it.  There is a sort of moral induction, which is not exactly sympathy, in the ordinary sense of that word, nor a desire of imitation, nor the power of example, but an immediate, spontaneous, and even unconscious tendency to become what those around us are.  This tendency is very strong in the young while the opening faculties are in the course of formation and development, and it is immensely strengthened by the influence of love.  Whatever, therefore, a mother wishes her child to be—­whether a sincere, honest Christian, submissive to God’s will and conscientious in the discharge of every duty, or proud, vain, deceitful, hypocritical, and pharisaical—­she has only to be either the one or the other herself, and without any special teaching her child will be pretty sure to be a good copy of the model.