“Suffer little children to come unto me;” Christ used the child to admonish those older grown.  The Church is following in His footsteps when it makes the child the subject of constant thought and solicitude.  It is when we deal with the child that we get the clearest conception of the superiority of faith over reason.  The foundations of character are laid in faith and not in reason; they are laid before the reason can be accepted as a guide.  No one who exalts reason above faith can lead a child to God, but a child can understand the love of the Saviour and the tender care of the Heavenly Father.  For this reason the Sunday school increases in importance.  Its lessons build character; its songs echo throughout our lives.

The law arbitrarily fixes the age of twenty-one as the age of legal maturity.  No matter how precocious a young man be, the presumption of law is against his intelligence until he is twenty-one.  He cannot vote; he cannot make a valid deed to a piece of land.  Why?  His reason is not mature, and yet the moral principles that control his life are implanted before he reaches that age.  His ideals come into his life long before the reason can be regarded as a safe guide.  Before the reason is mature he believes in God or has rejected God.  If he lives in a Christian community he has accepted the Bible as the Word of God or rejected it as the work of man; if he is acquainted with Christ he has accepted or rejected Him.  A child’s heart cannot remain a vacuum.  It is filled with reverence or irreverence.  Those who think that the mind can remain unbiassed until one becomes of age and then be able to render impartial decisions, know little of human experience.  Love comes first, reason afterward; the child obeys and later learns why it should obey.  Morality rests upon religion and religion, taking hold upon the heart, exercises a control far greater than any logic can exercise over the mind.

Look back over your lives and see how much of real moral principle you have added since you became of age.  You can better explain your faith; your will is more firm, your determination more deeply rooted, but what new seed of morality has been sown since you reached the age when the reason is presumed to be mature?

While Christianity builds upon the affirmations of the New Testament and the positive virtues taught by the Saviour it is loyal, as Christ was, to the Commandments which God gave to the people through Moses.  Most of these commandments—­those relative to man’s duty to man—­are written unto the statutes of state and nation; they form the basis of our laws.  Those which relate to man’s duty to God and which are not, therefore, legally binding are binding on the conscience of Christians.

The Christian Church from its earliest beginnings has enforced respect for parents.  Parental authority is not only essential to the child’s welfare during youth but it is necessary as a foundation upon which to build respect for government and for laws.  The Christian home is the nursery of the State as well as of the Church.  Loyalty to God and loyalty to government are easily learned by those who from infancy are taught obedience to those who have the right to instruct and direct.