ART. II.-THE RELIGION OF CHILDHOOD.

AN intelligent missionary, upon being asked to name the greatest problems of the world in China, replied: "They are but one-how to present Christ to the Chinese mind. Nothing else on earth is like this mind, so full of monstrosities, atrophies, abnormalities, curious twists; and how to avoid unnecessary difficulties and prejudices is the problem." There is a point of view from which we say that the problems of redeeming the world are but one-how to present Christ to the wonderful child-mind, not full of atrophies and monstrosities, but normal, healthy, receptive, and religious, preoccupied and ensphered by the Spirit of God. This work means more than reaching the submerged tenth; it means the ultimate nonexistence of that tenth; it means the prevention of the drift; it means a world of Christ-children growing "in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man," seeking in all secular life to be about the Father's business.

In our study of the problem we must not frame a system of theology first, and afterward look to see whether the children are taken in or left out; we must not pinch and squeeze the child till his experience takes the shape of our theology; but we must simply look at all the facts of child-life and at all the facts of Christ's life, and ask what we can do to get the child acquainted with Christ and to keep up the acquaintance. Bishop Brooks says that "he who touches a child of any class touches as it were undivided humanity; he speaks to mankind back of the Babel of its divisions." Every loving hand which touches the little ark in the bulrushes did something toward shaping the moral life of the ages. To the Church the word comes, "Take this child and train it for me."

We cannot go far wrong if we take Canon Newbolt's definition of religion, when he says, "Religion is the knowledge and worship of God." The child has a religious life, not because he comes "trailing clouds of glory," but because he is a spirit, never uninfluenced by "the Father of spirits." Because the child is a person he can believe in the highest Personality; because he is a spirit he can love and adore spirit.

The knowledge may be limited, the worship may be inadequate, but there is knowledge and there is worship, and thus there is religion. The child's animism may ascribe personality to any and all objects around him, he may think that things have souls, he may ascribe very human attributes to God; but he gives a soul to things outside himself because he is himself a soul, he thinks of Spirit because he is himself a spirit. He may make his God out of very human elements; his anthropomorphism may be very amusing to his elders; his theology may make great merriment for wise parents; but he will hold to some kind of anthropomorphism as long as he lives, he will talk about his God in the language of this earth as long as he stays here, nor will he need to give up his God because he has to use a human and earthly language. This is only saying that a man has to see with his human eyes, think with his human brain, talk in human language, using concepts furnished from his earthly surroundings; he must remain a human being while he thinks, and cannot get away from himself to a point without himself in order to get another view of himself. He is simply under the limitations of his own language, whether he thinks of the steel or the magnetic current around the steel, of the worlds or of the force which binds the worlds, of the intelligence back of the interacting atoms of his own brain, or of the intelligence back of the interacting atoms of the universe, and whether he chooses to call the intelligence "it" or "He." When we analyze his concepts we find that he is just as anthropomorphic in his most severe scientific studies as he is in his theological speculations. Hence, we cannot rule out the reality of a child's knowledge and worship of God because of the very human terms of expression used. The higher the personality the higher will be the conception of the divine Personality. Caliban's conclusions may be wise for Caliban, but the child is more than Caliban, and the intelligent Christian sees more than Setebos. The conceptions of God will rise with intelligence and spirituality, becoming more rational as mind becomes more Godlike. From childhood to manhood clearer thought and purer life will

Correct the portrait by the living face,

Man's God by God's God in the mind of man.

The religious nature of childhood is a fact; early and exalt ing religious impressions are facts; horror of evil, aspirations for good, a sense of the unseen world, are facts. De Quincey tells us that when, at eight years of age, he was reading his second book in Latin he saw the Athenians erecting a statue in honor of Esop, the slave. "The abyss which yawned between the wretchedness of slavery" in which Esop lived and "the honor of standing forever on that starry altitude" was a thought which gave him his "first and jubilant sense of the moral sublime." Perhaps not all of us read our second book in Latin at eight years of age, and few of us could have been so moved by the story of the statue to a slave as was this little Greek-Eng lishman; but we all had our religious feelings touched by events widely differing; we all had our deep thoughts about the unseen and the divine, or our mother's touch could not have made its lasting impression. We have all lived in this wonderful child-world; we have all been dumb before its questions, humiliated before its prayers, and amazed as we have looked in upon the creative forces of the child-mind. It is a prophecy which has never found its perfect fulfillment, a beauty of dawn which has never found its corresponding day. But we all give thanks for

We cannot fathom the significance of the incarnation in its relation to childhood. The Son of God lived as a child before he spoke as the perfect man. The perfect child made possible the perfect man. The life and words of the King proclaim that children are of the kingdom. They are not the children of the devil, but the children of God, and it is our duty to tell

them so. They are born with good and evil tendencies because their parents have both good and evil in them; but their "sinwardness" does not bring guilt. They are met at the threshold of consciousness and conscious choice by the Spirit of God, who has been from their birth nearer to them than mother. In these years they do not have to repent, and be converted; they are already God's children by the operations of his Spirit, provided through Christ. We may call it regeneration, if we will; it is the work of God. Christ saves the children, though they know him not. There is as yet no conscious rebellion by them, and no real separation from God. In many Christian homes this conscious rejection never takes place; the children are born as God's children and never leave the Father's house. Without irreverence we may turn about the Saviour's words and say, with Horace Scudder, “Their angels do always behold in the face of the child the face of the heavenly Father."

The nonrecognition of this fact has lost more children to the Church than revivals have ever brought back. We have been more ready to trace proofs of their depravity than of their divinity; we have let their moments of temper far outweigh their days of trust and love of God. Treating a child as if he were the child of the devil has often made him the child of the devil. We have found the law against the sinner, then proved that all men were sinners, then tried to make the child feel himself a sinner so that he could repent and be converted and be saved. The effect of this treatment has been to destroy the spiritual life already existing, and to substitute some impressions that they have believed or some crisis of experience in the place of a loving loyalty to Christ as a continuous experience. The crisis type of conversion has frightened many a child away from all thought of beginning a Christian life. By our theology and by our insistence upon this idea of conversion we often forbid the children to come unto Christ. There may be conscious decision and definite profession accompanied by a definite spiritual experience, but this is not the beginning of the religious life, and the child should not be taught that it is. A definite experience does require definite beginning, certainly

not a clear memory of a definite beginning. Conscious love for mother does not depend upon conscious beginning of that love, nor upon memory of its beginning. Jesus in the temple, at twelve years of age, simply lets others know that he loves the Father and would be about the Father's business. And this business for eighteen years afterward was found in making commonplace things beautiful and spiritual.

The word "conversion" hold a place in our religious termi nology which is not warranted by the usage of Scripture nor by mature Christian experience. There is no doubt about the need of the conversion of the sinful and rebellious heart; no doubt as to the necessity of the new birth for the man who has gone into sinful and willful ways; no doubt about the blessed experience of those who, by the way of sincere repentance and true faith, have come suddenly into a new and abiding peace and joy. The relative infrequency, however, of the use of the word "conversion" by the Saviour and the apostles should keep us from insisting upon it as the sole expression of the change by which we are to lead men to the promised life in Christ. We have taught seekers to think more about conversion and their own spiritual states of mind than about Christ. We have looked with satisfaction upon the passing of a crisis in conversion, and have forgotten the laws of the Spirit by which men are led to Christ and which fix habits of trust and service. We have often robbed the child of that which we were anxious to secure a life of religious love and joy— keeping in his mind a term rather than a person, an imperative condition to be met in some moment yet to come rather than a love and a service which can be rendered to-day.

There must be somewhere discoverable what we may call natural laws for the spiritual growth of a child. If we can find ideals rather than rules, or ideals which can blend with rules and take their place; if we can find habits which bring blessings rather than emotions which may mislead; if we can find persons to be imitated rather than dogmas to be believed, we shall have escaped the crime of thrusting upon the child a mechanical religion. Horace Bushnell says of his mother:

[She] prayed earnestly with and for her children, but she did not often mention the religious life to them. She undertook little in the way of