ATTENDANCE OF CHILDREN AT CHURCH.
By John S. Hart
The trustees of the church, or whoever have the ordering of the material arrangements, have much to do with securing the attendance of children. These little ones need a kind of church accommodation which they rarely get. They need comfortable seats. If the big people who have the ordering of such matters, could be compelled to sit for a few Sabbaths as the children-do, on seats so wide that their backs can get no support except by a painful curvature of the spine, and so high that their feet can by no possibility reach the floor, and their legs must by necessity hang dangling in the air, they would appreciate better the dislike which children often acquire against going to church. The same child who sits with pleased delight on his snug, low bench in the school-room, runs with aversion from that cruel perch to which the church people assign him. If you want children to attend church and to love so to do, you must make it comfortable for them. They must have seats in church, as they do in their homes, suited to the size of their bodies and the length of their limbs. Such of them, too, as sit by themselves, instead of being thrust afar off into some remote corner of the gallery, as far as possible from the minister, should be brought close beneath the notice of his kindling eye and his winning smile. Children, beyond all others, are moved by sympathy. Our Saviour did not place them on the outer and most remote circle of his congregations, but placed them in the midst, close to his person, and took them in his arms. A certain minister of a country church actually had small, low benches placed for the children, in the open space just in front of his pulpit, and not only so, but he let them fill the pulpit steps. The consequence was, the little ones thronged with delight to his church, and their parents followed them, and in a few months his congregation more than doubled. But it is in vain to entice children to church unless you have something for them to hear or to do after they are there. Let any one ask himself, after attending almost any church service, certainly any five out of six, what there has been in this long session of an hour and a half or two hours, to interest the attention of a child? The singing has been either so scientific or so grum that no child, at least, could enter into it with any emotion. Seldom does he hear either a prayer for him specifically, or a prayer into which he as a child can enter. The sermons, like the rest of the services, are above his range. The minister not only never preaches specially to the children, but he never, while distributing the bread of life to the grown folks, pauses to drop a few crumbs here and there to the little ones. Why could not a clergyman sometimes break in upon this chilling routine of the sermon, and after having set forth some portion of doctrine for the benefit of the seniors, pause for a moment and say, "Children, this applies to you too, and I will now show you how?" How the young, and the old too, would wake up at such an announcement! Christian ministers, if you want your young people to cleave to you, and to love your ministrations, and not to wander off into other folds, see that you let no Sabbath pass without giving them some kindly word of recognition. Let no sermon be considered complete which does not contain at least one paragraph of warning or encouragement for the young, and so spoken as to be within the comprehension of even the youngest. Let there be no child in your audience who shall not, at some time, have occasion to feel, "The minister must have been thinking of me when he said that." All ministers have not the gift that some have, of talking to the young. But if any minister really has the young substantially and habitually in his thoughts and on his heart, he will find expression for his emotion, and the children of his congregation will feel that they have some real interest in being in the house of God.—J. S. Hart.