approval of the God within.  Right ideals must be provided:  religion is “a continually advancing endeavour,” and its reward must not be a material reward.  We ought to lift and strengthen human nature, but we degrade and weaken it when we seek to lead it to good conduct by a bait, even if this bait beckons to a future world.  The consciousness of having lived worthily should be our highest reward.  Froebel goes so far as to say that instead of teaching “the good will be happy,” and leaving children to imagine that this means an outer or material happiness, we ought rather to teach that in seeking the highest we may lose the lower.  “Renunciation, the abandonment of the outer for the sake of securing the inner, is the condition for attaining highest development.  Dogmatic religious instruction should rather show that whoever truly and earnestly seeks the good, must needs expose himself to a life of outer oppression, pain and want, anxiety and care.”  Even a child, though not a baby, can be led to see that to do good for outer reward is but enlightened selfishness.

These suggestions are taken for the most part from the Mother Songs, some from The Education of Man.  Each parent or teacher must use what seems to her or to him most valuable.  Some may from the beginning desire to teach the child a baby prayer, or at least to let him 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 thoughtless ejaculations, or in those of heartfelt thankfulness, children may hear the name of God; that a simple story may have something that stirs thought; that churches are much in evidence; and that the conversation of little playfellows may take an unexpected turn.

To me it seems a great mistake to put before young children ideas which are really beyond the conception of an adult.  There are many stories told of how children receive teaching about the Omniscience or Omnipotence of God.  The stories sound 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 very rude man,” when, in reply to her puzzled questions, she was told that God could see her even in her bath.  And the boy who said, “If I had done a thing, could God make it that I hadn’t?” must have made his instructor feel somewhat foolish.

It never does harm for us honestly to confess our own limitations and our ignorance, and that is better than weak materialistic explanations, which after all explain nothing.  To tell a child that the Great Father is always 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 say that He is able to keep us in all danger, and that even if we are killed we are safe in His keeping, surely that is enough.  He who blessed the children uttered strong words against him who caused the little ones to stumble.