While stating that the prayers said by girls after their early meal are short, I ought to have added that the same rule is followed with regard to children of both sexes.
We even vary our forms of worship and services to suit different ages. Before my reign adults and children went to the same places of worship, repeated the same prayers, and listened to the same discourses, most of which being perfectly unintelligible to those of tender years, the evils and inconveniences resulting from the practice were very great. The children, finding the routine irksome, the constrained decorum required of them during a time which seemed to them never ending (for the services were then very long) was painful in the extreme, though they were sometimes relieved by turning their thoughts in other directions, perhaps to subjects irrelevant if not opposed to the ostensible object of the meeting.
Thus pain and weariness became then and in after life naturally associated with the most sacred of duties, and generally those, who at an early age had been obliged to attend most regularly to an unintelligible and irksome routine, were in after life those who absented themselves most frequently from the place of worship. I have known some, and this will scarcely be credited, who from an early age had in obedience to their parents' commands attended church with what was to them painful and monotonous regularity, and who, as soon as they were old enough to leave the parental jurisdiction, never entered a place of worship again until the day of their death, so great had been their stifled repugnance, created by the unnatural surfeit which had been inflicted upon them.
This was not all: the repugnance thus engendered often extended even to the faith itself which the prayers and discourses had been intended to inculcate, and led the way in after life to doubt and disbelief.
There was another though a secondary evil, attendant upon these old formalities. In our climate, where children are very susceptible, it happened that when on rare occasions any striking observation attracted their attention, they would put questions very difficult for their parents or preceptors to answer.
The forms of worship and service are now adapted to three several ages and classes of intelligence. The first series is for children of from seven to ten years of age, the second for children from ten to sixteen, the third for adults. If the children, however, show any deficiency of intelligence, they are kept in the first or second series, though the stated age has been passed.
The discourses addressed to the young people are adapted to their age and intelligence, and ordinarily bear reference to their own passing actions, and consequently to their hours of play and of study. They are intended to inculcate lessons of self-control, love for parents or associates, contentment, and the mode of showing gratitude for benefits received, by cultivating the faculties which God in His goodness has bestowed. The discourse often points out the mode of contending against any bad feelings that might possibly be awakened. They might be told, for instance, that if during play any dissatisfaction with their companions arose, and they felt they could not control themselves, they ought immediately to retire from the game, in order that their feelings might have the opportunity of returning to their proper channel, and on no account to urge anything against the supposed offender until they had advised with some friendly adult, or more especially a Character-diver.
The children are encouraged not only in their affection to their parents and immediate associates, but in brotherly love to all, and the whole discourse, which is very short, is pointed to their duty to God, being calculated to instil feelings of love and adoration for His goodness.
In the first series, for very young children whose intelligence is undeveloped, we have forms and ceremonies, the tendency of which is to fix their attention and inculcate thoughts and habits of a good tendency.
In the second series the addresses are of a more elevated character, and are accompanied by fewer forms and ceremonies.