giving a reality in their minds to this part of his history, and trying to
rouse in them a habit of referring their conduct to the standard of his. If
we do not thus employ our imagination on sacred things, his example can be
of no use to us except in exactly corresponding circumstances--and when can
such occur from one end to another of our lives? The very effort to think
how he would have done, is a wonderful purifier of the conscience, and,
even if the conclusion arrived at should not be correct from lack of
sufficient knowledge of his character and principles, it will be better
than any that can be arrived at without this inquiry. Besides, the asking
of such questions gave me good opportunity, through the answers they
returned, of seeing what their notions of Jesus and of duty were, and thus
of discovering how to help the dawn of the light in their growing minds.
Nor let anyone fear that such employment of the divine gift of imagination
will lead to foolish vagaries and useless inventions; while the object is
to discover the right way--the truth--there is little danger of that.
Besides, there I was to help hereby in the actual training of their
imaginations to truth and wisdom. To aid in this, I told them some of
the stories that were circulated about him in the early centuries of the
church, but which the church has rejected as of no authority; and I showed
them how some of them could not be true, because they were so unlike those
words and actions which we had the best of reasons for receiving as true;
and how one or two of them might be true--though, considering the company
in which we found them, we could say nothing for certain concerning them.
And such wise things as those children said sometimes! It is marvellous how
children can reach the heart of the truth at once. Their utterances are
sometimes entirely concordant with the results arrived at through years of
thought by the earnest mind--results which no mind would ever arrive at
save by virtue of the child-like in it.

Well, then, upon this evening I read to them the story of the boy Jesus in