This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

How did the early Evangelicals pass on their beliefs to their children? This book is a study of a strangely neglected part of Evangelical history. But it is not merely, nor even especially, a historian's book - it is of general interest, absorbingly so. The reader is plunged into the child's world of the late eighteenth century, a world both surprisingly familiar and terrifyingly unknown. Their home life is examined, their schools and Sunday Schools, the sermons preached for them, the books and tracts and magazines they read, the diaries they wrote. Much of the atmosphere is death-haunted and repellent, entirely foreign to educational thought today. And yet ... the final proof of the efficacy of any system must be its fruits. Actual case-histories are considered, and conclusions attempted. The power of Evangelicalism must have vanished from the earth in a generation, had the fathers not nurtured the children, believing devoutly in their own educational abilities. Yet their many detractors have called them bigots, fanatics, fools and madmen. How fair is this judgment? And for today, how much of those first beliefs do we retain? What is our debt to those Evangelical fathers? A fascinating piece of social history is unfolded - often grim, even macabre, sometimes pathetic, occasionally gay but never, never dull.