The two lessons belong together as the final destiny of man, fixed by
his own act, _this_ or _that_. And they have to be taught with all the
force and gravity and dignity which befits the subject, and in such a
way that after years will find nothing to smile at and nothing to
unlearn. They have to be taught as the mind of the present time can
best apprehend them, not according to the portraiture of mediaeval
pictures, but in a language perhaps not more true and adequate
in itself but less boisterous and more comprehensible to our
self-conscious and introspective moods. Father Faber's treatment
of these last things, hell and heaven, would furnish matter for
instruction not beyond the understanding of those in their last years
at school, and of a kind which if understood must leave a mark upon
the mind for life. [1 See Appendix I.]

5. Eight views of Jesus Christ and His mother. For Catholic children
this relationship is not a thing far off, but the faith which teaches
them of God Incarnate bids them also understand that He is their own
"God who gives joy to their youth"--and that His mother is also
theirs. There are many incomprehensible things in which children are
taught to affirm their belief, and the acts of faith in which they
recite these truths are far beyond their understanding. But they can
and do understand if we take pains to teach them that they are loved
by Our Lord each one alone, intimately and personally, and asked to
love in return. "Suffer the little children to come unto Me, and
forbid them not," is not for them a distant echo of what was heard
long ago in the Holy Land, it is no story, but a living reality of to
day. They are themselves the children who are invited to come to Him,
better off indeed than those first called, since they are not now
rebuked or kept off by the Apostles but brought to the front and given
the first places, invited by order of His Vicar from their earliest