In offering any suggestion in this direction it should be borne in mind that natural religion or the religion of nature makes a strong appeal to the child.  He readily believes in the presence of God in animate nature with all its wonder and beauty.  Creatorship and the expression of the divine will in the normal processes are taken for granted.  The orderly world is to him proof of mind and method; and perhaps the first mistake in the average religious teaching is the departure from this broad basis of faith to what is termed “revealed religion” and is at the same time the religion of miracle.  The introduction of miracle as a basis of faith amounts to sowing the seeds of adolescent skepticism.

The child should be taught to deal with Jewish folk-lore as with that of any other people.  While the incomparable religious value of the biblical literature should be used to the full, the Bible as a book should not be given artificial ranking.  Nor should any belief contrary to his reason be imposed as an obligation.  But the ever-open possibility of things that surpass present human comprehension should be preserved, and the sense of wonder which the scientist may ever have should be carefully nurtured.  If the teacher violates the child’s right to absolute honesty here let him not bemoan nor condemn the skepticism of later years.

The child can also believe in the presence of God in his own moral discernment.  He can be taught to obey his sense of “ought” and to enjoy thereby, from very early years, a rich measure of harmony.  Through such experience he discovers to himself the joy of being at one with God.  He has proof of the constructive power of righteousness, and conversely he learns the destructive power of sin.  He finds that the constituted order is essentially moral and that the duty of all alike is to conform to that fact.

He can easily comprehend also the struggle of the better self to rule over the worse self.  The battle of the rational and spiritual to gain supremacy over the instinctive and animalistic is known to him.  To be master of himself and to exercise a control that is more and more spiritual, to get the better of things and circumstances, to reduce his world to obedience to his gradually enlightened will—­that is his task.  In this he proves, under right guidance, the supremacy of the spiritual and may be encouraged to project it into a hope of personal immortality.

Very early, too, he gets some proof of the fact of human solidarity; especially so if he has brothers and sisters.  The social character of good and the anti-social character of bad conduct is demonstrated day in and day out in the family.  And enlargement of the concentric circles that bound his life only demonstrates over and over again the social nature of goodness.  On this basis sufficient inspiration for personal righteousness and altruism is afforded by the world’s need of just these things.  Every normal child responds to the appeal of living to make the world better.  Children always “want to help.”