To be near unto God - pagina 598

praying with the child, so that the child feels more disturbed in his religious impulses than led and helped. It is equally cruel and painful, in the presence of the child, to be unsympathetic, rough and hard in holy things. This hurts the heart of the child, and then it does not take long for the tender germ of religion in the heart of the child to be choked. It is cruel also to let the years of childhood pass without training the child in holy things, and to think that religion will come somehow to him later on. The early years of life are the appointed time in which to let the foundation of all religion, which is fellowship with God, crystallize in the heart of the child.

In the childheart there is natural receptivity which, when it is led and trained in a reverent way, imparts a bent to the heart whose effects will be beneficial for all of later life. On the other hand, if this is not cultivated, and this first receptivity is destroyed, even though the religious sense may awaken later on, it may always lack that fervor and tenderness which Jesus demands in our childlikeness. This danger can only be averted by bringing the child at once, in his own way, after his nature and type, into fellowship with God himself. The child should learn to know sacred history, the sacred truths of the faith, and hymns and sacred songs. All this is excellent. But this will not avail unless first of all the child's instinctive perception of a mysterious world unfolds into an immediate perception of his fellowship with the all-seeing, all-knowing,

omnipresent God. B04

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