The Child under Eight

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ell him w

eet in h

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ed immediately after that on the child's attitude to Nature. The actual word religion, which, to hi

aspirations of his fath

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as

level where

rfected m

n's height f

, and a child's religion must

to show." This mother teaches her little one some sort of prayer, and the gesture of reverence, the folded hands, affects the child even if the words mean little or nothing. Akin to the "feeling of community" between the child and his family is the joining in religious worship in church, "the entrance in a common life," and the emotional effect of the deep tones of the organ. Then there is the interdependence of the universe: the baby is to thank Jenny for his bread and milk, Peter for mowing the grass for the cow, "until you come to the last ring of all, God's father love for all." Next to this comes the child's service; others work for him and he also must serve. "Every age has its duties, and duties are not burdens," and it is necessary that feeling should have expression, "for even a child's love unfostered (by action in form of service) droops and dies away." There is also the desire for approbation. The child "must be roused to good by inclination, love, and respect, through the opinion of others about him," and this should be guided until he learns to care chie

hear "God bless you." Others may prefer to wait for a more intelligent stage, perhaps when the child begins to ask the invariable questions-who made the flowers, the animals; who made me? If so, we must remember that children see, and hear, and think, that often in th

d irreverent, and are often repeated as highly amusing, but they are really more pathetic. Miss Shinn tells of one poor mite who resented being constantly watched and said, "I will not be so tagged," and another said, "Then I think He's a v

grieved when we are unkind or cowardly, always ready to help us and to put kindness and bravery into our hearts, that we know He has power to do that if we will let Him, but that His power is beyond our understanding: to sa

ed with flowers, and angels with children's eyes beckon us toward it." This is true, but it does not mean that we are always to be trying to make things sacred, but that we are to realise that al

Brock may well call it "a sacred experience" for the child, when he forgets himself in the beauty of the world. If we could all rise to a wider conception of the meaning of

on of the heights to which it can rise, when it makes us long for faith, courage, and love to go and do likewise, who sha

monition of being surrounded by that which is higher and more "conscious than

te 25:

those steeped in meaning-the unfathomable meaning of life ... such stories teach-even though no lesson was intended-the wisdom o

Education," by Greville Macdona

hepherd boy being carried home from the hillside when hurt, by a man on a white horse, repe

g as the children fail, and believing and trusting as the children believe, and as we at least strive to do, in the ultimate victory of Right over Wrong, of G

ready been passed on to younger teachers in Educ

chiefly

ell him w

ation of God. "I am a being alive and conscious upon this earth; a descendant of ancestors who rose

tance of Faith Allied

(Met

e greatness of God; and man is encouraged and lifts himself up

: The Educat