XXXVIII. BEAT THYSELF.

I SAW a mother threatening to beat her little child for not rightly pronouncing that petition in the Lord’s prayer: And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against us. The child essayed and offered as well as it could to utter it, adventuring at tepasses, trepasses, but could not pronounce the word aright. Alas! it is a shibboleth to a child’s tongue, wherein there is a confluence of hard consonants together; and therefore if the mother had beaten defect in the infant for default, she deserved to have been beaten herself.

The rather because what the child could not pronounce the parents do not practise. O how 226lispingly and imperfectly do we perform the close of this petition: As we forgive them that trespass against us. It is well if with the child we endeavour our best, though falling short in the exact observance thereof.