I. We hold +that we are justified by faith,+ that is, by believing,
and that unless we are justified we cannot be saved. Of all men
whoever believed this, those who gave us the Church catechism
believed it most strongly. Believing really what they taught, they
believed that children were justified. For if a child is not
justified in being a member of Christ, a child of God, and an
inheritor of the kingdom of heaven, what is he justified in being?
They knew that the children could only keep in this just, right, and
proper state by trusting in God and looking up to Him daily in faith
and love and obedience.
II. +These old reformers were practical men and took the practical
way.+--They knew the old proverb, "A man need not be a builder to
live in a house." At least they acted on it; and instead of trying to
make the children understand what faith was made up of, they tried to
make them live in faith itself. Instead of puzzling and fretting the
children's minds with any of the controversies then going on between
Papists and Protestants, or afterwards between Calvinists and
Arminians, they taught the children simply about God, who He was, and
what He had done for them and all mankind, that so they might learn
to love Him, look up to Him in faith, and trust utterly to Him, and
so remain justified and right, saved and safe for ever. By doing
which they showed that they knew more about faith and about God than
if they had written books on books of doctrinal arguments.
III. +The Church catechism, where it is really and honestly taught,
gives the children an honest, frank, sober, English temper of mind
which no other training I have seen gives.+--I warn you frankly that
if you expect to make the average of English children good children
on any other ground than the Church catechism takes, you will fail.
If it be not enough for your children to know all the articles of the
Apostles' Creed, and on the strength thereof to trust God utterly and
so be justified and saved, then they must go elsewhere, for I have
nothing more to offer them, and trust in God that I never shall
have.--_C. Kingsley._