Three years ago the writer was conducting a series of meetings in the First Presbyterian Church of Cleveland, O. Riding home with, the pastor, Rev. H. C. Haydn, after an evening service, he asked me: "Do you know of a really good text-book for the training of these children?" I did not; neither did he. The Spirit seemed to say to me: "Write one." I was just then finishing the biography of my beloved friend, Mrs. Woodbridge; but I began at once to revolve in my mind the plan of some such a book as is now given to the public. Had not my mind and heart become filled with the subject of the baptism with the Holy Spirit, and its blessed consequences, which resulted in my volume, "Holiness and Power for the Church and the Ministry," this book would have been issued a year ago, and less perfectly than now.

While going about the country from church to church as an evangelist, I have been profoundly impressed with the fact that a vast deal of the strength and energy of the churches is spent in misdirected effort. A great deal of attention -- none too much in fact and probably not enough, but relatively too much is given to the conversion of a comparatively few old, hardened sinners, while the great mass of children are passed by and quite neglected on the ground that they are too young to be subjects of saving grace. The most promising, and by far the most fruitful, part of the vineyard of the church is thus neglected. The first command of Jesus is to feed his lambs -the children of his flock. The church that succeeds best is the one that cares most for the training of the children. "Children are the preface to the book of life." "An adult converted is a unit; a child is a multiplication table." Rev. Tyng, of New York, used to say that if he had to choose between one child and two adults, he would choose the child every time; yet long experience teaches me that it is easier to secure the hopeful conversion of ten children than of one adult. Rev. Thomas Guthrie says: "Youth is the critical period of man's life. An infant is a bud unblown. Early childhood corresponds to the next stage -- the bud is now blown out into a lovely, fragrant flower; but whether, as the bud has changed into the flower, the flower will change into fruit, who can tell? I have seen the blast strew the ground with the hopes of the garden, and trees stand barren in autumn that had been white with blossoms as with a shower of snow. However genial the spring, or cloudless and warm the skies of summer, there is a critical period when the two seasons shade into each other. This which holds the fruits of autumn in its hand lies in those few days and nights when the fruit is setting. Such a period is youth in human life. Then impressions are received which remain forever; then the character, like the color made in the cloth by the mordant, is fixed; then the die is struck; then a life of virtue or vice is begun; then the turn is taken either for God or the world; then the road is entered which leads either to heaven or to hell." Dr. Cuyler says: "The most important ten years of life are from five to fifteen years of age. The great majority of those who pass twenty irreligious are never converted at all. I have been permitted, during my ministry, to receive nearly one thousand persons into the church on confession of their faith, and not one dozen of these had outlived their fiftieth year."

Rev. Amos Chesebrough says: "Somewhere between the ages of seven and ten occurs a transition from the impressional period to that of completed conscious personality. The child learns to reflect and to reason out difficulties for himself. Here, then, and now, is the pastor's golden opportunity . . . to mold with the trowel of truth the plastic material of their character into fabrics of beauty and strength. But let him remember that his grandest opportunity is passing by, to be succeeded by a period of less promise. The tongue of time strikes nine, ten, eleven, twelve. Now has come the high moon of hopefulness. The year following the twelfth birthday is the acme of hopefulness in the lives of children who have had a Christian nurture; and even in respect to those whose early training has been defective it holds forth a larger promise of success in labors for their salvation than any subsequent age. The tongue of time is not long silent. It strikes thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen. The sun is on the descending grade; and, while the beautiful light may long linger, the brightest hours have passed. I am not to be understood as handing over the years of young manhood and womanhood to hopelessness, or saying anything to discourage earnest efforts in their behalf. It is the. silver age, this from sixteen to twenty-five. having in it much of beauty and promise. But it is plain that the golden hours of the pastor's privilege lie in the preceding period. To have lost them is an irreparable calamity. To have neglected them, is it not a crime?"

Some five years ago, a prominent evangelist, speaking in Chicago, said: "In a very large proportion of the churches in this country that are successful, filled with the Spirit of God and the power to save souls, more than half of the membership have joined the church before they were fifteen years old, many of them before they were twelve years old, some before they were ten, and not a few beautiful members of the church joined at six years of age, who lived as Christians during the remainder of their days. We need to remember Jesus' words about little children. You can hang a boy in one of our States when he is eight years old, and it is an awful thing if there be in any of our homes a child even approaching that age who is not a faithful, consecrated follower of the Lord Jesus Christ."

This may start the question, How early may a child be converted? In the Advance for October 6, 1892, seventy-one corporate members of the American Board Of Foreign Missions gave their testimony as to their religious experience. Of these, nineteen were converted so early in childhood that they could not tell when it was, and thirty-four were converted somewhere between infancy and fourteen years of age. Rev. Hastings, of New York, was converted at the age of eight, and so was Bishop McCabe. But thousands are converted as early as that. The great Jonathan Edwards was converted at seven, and so was the mother of Bishop Fitzgerald. The leading business man in a Massachusetts town, and a deacon in the Congregational church, testified publicly in my presence that he was converted at seven. The wife of a Presbyterian pastor whose church is on Euclid Avenue, Cleveland, O., told me that she was converted at seven, her daughter at four, and her daughter's daughter was converted at six and joined the church. The famous temperance worker, Jennie F. Willing, testifies that she was converted at five. The wife of the evangelist, Rev. H. H. Wells, gave me the account of the conversion of her little daughter (Charlotte Lucena) at the age of four and a half years. From that time until her triumphant death at the age of four years, nine months and twenty-seven days, she gave the clearest evidence of a changed heart. Jonathan Edwards tells of. one Phoebe Bartlett, who at four years of age was a suitable candidate for church membership, and from her sprang Rev. Justin Edwards. Hannah Whitall Smith tells us in the beautiful biography of her son Frank, who died at eighteen, that he w as clearly converted at four years of age, when his nature met with a most decided change. He certainly after that lived a life of remarkable purity and spiritual earnestness. Two mothers in Oberlin have recently confided the fact that a son of each was converted at three years of age. One of them is today one of the noblest Christian young men in the college.

I can not tell how early a child may be converted. I stand in awe before the inmates of the nursery. I know from experience as a parent and a pastor that children can very early be successfully taught to love Jesus, and exercise saving faith in him. It is said of Voltaire that he became an infidel at five years of age; and he is reported to have said: "Give me the first five years of a child's life, and I will cause that child to disbelieve in the immortality of the soul, to reject Jesus as a Redeemer, and to doubt the very existence of a Creator and God." All this means that God has graciously arranged that the religious faculty has early development and may be easily and early perverted, and that the conditions and saving truths of salvation are few and simple and easily apprehended. Jesus prayed: "I thank thee, O Father, that thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes." The old and the learned and the wise get so hardened and conceited and self-sufficient that they miss the way, while the children and the childlike, with their teachable spirit, enter in and find Christ.

Mirabeau, when asked how he would inculcate the principles of national liberty, replied that he would begin with the infant in the cradle, and let its first lisping utterance be the name of Washington. The wise believer will rise higher than this, and say: Would you have a nation free indeed, politically, socially, morally, blessedly free? would you witness the spread of principles that must inevitably, if they have free play, overturn all despotisms, and crush out more than half the sorrows of human nature? Would you have the children become clean and pure and holy? -then begin with the infant in the cradle, and let the first name it lisps be the all-prevailing name of Jesus -- the divine Redeemer of humanity.

"But," some will ask, "is not that giving the child a prejudice in favor of religion?" Very likely it is, and could he have a more helpful or healthful inclination? When some one said to Coleridge that children ought not to be prejudiced in favor of religion, he took him out into a garden full of weeds and pointed to it as a garden not prejudiced in the spring in favor of fruits and flowers. As for himself, he said, he preferred a garden prejudiced in favor of strawberries and roses. The child's mind ought to be prejudiced in favor of God, and all that is good and pure and true and holy. There is no neutrality. It is either that or a prejudice toward sin and the devil. Which shall it be?

The importance of the conversion of children can not be overestimated. Modern life is like a hot-house, producing early moral development, either for good or evil. Most people are converted young or never, as the following facts will show: A prominent evangelist tested an audience in Portland. * Eleven hundred were converted under twenty. One hundred and eighty were converted between twenty and thirty; thirty-five between thirty and forty; fourteen between forty and fifty; eight between fifty and sixty; over sixty, only two. A year and a half ago the State Sabbath-school Convention met in Detroit, Mich. One of the great audiences was tested. It was found that more than two thousand were converted under twenty years of age; 103 were converted between twenty and twenty-five; forty-one between twenty-five and thirty; twenty-three between thirty and forty; two between forty and fifty, and over fifty only two. Only 171 were over twenty years of age at conversion out of at least twenty-two hundred Christians.

For more than three years I have kept a record of the age of those professing conversion in my meetings. Of 3,108 converts, only 412 were over twenty; a larger proportion than is usual, but still how small! Such facts teach their own solemn lesson to all pastors, parents and Christian workers. The great harvest is to be gained among the young; and with multitudes it is, be converted early or never. Says Rev. Newell: " The incredulity and lethargy of some parents upon the subject of their children's conversion is most appalling. It is the ruin of thousands." Facts that are continually brought to my notice prove the truth of his words. Let me cite a few. A pastor holding a series of meetings turned to a mother and said: "Will you not bring Henry to the meeting?" He was then twelve years old. "No," said the mother; "he is too young." Only five years afterwards he was six feet high and weighed 190 pounds, and a man said of him: "Henry can stand before the bar and drink the biggest drink of raw whisky of any man I ever saw." Five years later this only son died a most horrible death, eaten up by his vices. The same pastor turned to another mother that same night and said: "Will you not let Tom come to the meetings?" He was ten years old. She replied: "Husband and I think we know a thing or two; we don't want Torn to come to the meetings." Six years later that " husband " was dead, and that mother, who thought she knew so much, confided to the pastor that Tom was so ugly she could hardly live with him. Soon after she, too, died, and that boy was left, an "ugly," Christless, ruined son.

Last week a woman and a church-member in the city where I am writing sneered at a child ten years of age who had that day given herself to Christ: "Ridiculous that a girl as young as that knows what she is about!" That very woman, I am told, has three sons who are impure and drunken sots, for whom the father has paid large sums of money repeatedly to keep them out of jail. When they were boys the mother had no faith that they could he converted.

This morning at the breakfast table I was told of a worldly professor of religion who some years ago did not want her son and daughter converted because she wanted them to "have a good time " while they were little. The daughter had it, and soon covered her family with ineffaceable shame. I say it in all solemnity, measuring my words: Such parents are the most efficient agents the devil has in securing the damnation of their children.

Are converted children of an early age fit subjects for church membership? Most certainly. Rev. J. O. Peck, one of the most efficient pastors of Methodism, says that more and more his ministry became pervaded with confidence in and earnest work for the conversion of children. He testifies that the best Christians he has ever seen were converted in early childhood. "One boy of six years was converted, and his Christian life for nearly twenty years since has been as steady as the march of a planet." "Mr. Spurgeon," he says, "was a careful shepherd of children, and toiled to bring them early to Christ. Before his death he made the statement that he had excluded from his church forty-two members, but that he had never expelled one converted in childhood. This is remarkable evidence of the genuineness of the conversion of children.

At four years of age Count Zinzendorf made this covenant with Christ. "Be thou mine, dear Savior, and I will be thine." His famous saving, that which Tholuck adopted as his motto, "I have one passion, and that is He -- He alone," was the keynote of his whole life, he fathered the Moravian Church, which the British Encyclopædia pronounces "the missionary church par excellence."

Adam Clark, one of the great scholars and commentators of Methodism, was converted at four years age, and the world has never had any occasion to doubt the genuineness of his piety. It is said that Bishop Simpson was converted at four years of age. I write these lines in the study of a noble Congregational pastor, born and educated in New England. His oldest daughter has just graduated from Wellesley, and has consecrated her life to missionary work in Africa. Her father tells me that she had a clear, definite conversion at four years of age; that she began to lead others to Christ at six years of age; that at eight years of age she came before the committee of a New England church to pass examination for church membership. She stated her experience, was questioned, and left the room. An old deacon wiped the tears from his eves, and said: "That is the most remarkable statement of religious experience ever made by any person of any age before the committee of this church," All her life has proved that her experience was genuine.

This book is given to the public because the writer is firmly convinced that the hope of the kingdom of Christ lies in the conversion of the young; that the pastor who most faithfully leads the lambs to Christ is the greatest and most successful, and that the church that gives the best and most faithful religious training to the children holds in its hands the destiny of the future.