Another typical difficulty is that children are often led to think of God as a distant God.  A favorite Sunday school hymn sings of “God above the great blue sky.”  To many children God is “in heaven,” and heaven is localized at an immeasurable distance.  Hence the fact of God’s nearness is wholly missed.  Children come to think of God as seated on a great white throne, an aged, austere, and severe Person, more an object of fear than of love.  And then we tell the children that they “must love God,” forgetting that love never comes from a sense of duty or compulsion, but springs, when it appears, spontaneously from the heart because it is compelled by lovable traits and appealing qualities in the one to be loved!

The concept of God which the child needs.—­The concept of God which the child first needs, therefore, is God as loving Father, expecting obedience and trust from his children; God as inviting Friend; God as friendly Protector; God ever near at hand; God who can understand and sympathize with children and enter into their joys and sorrows; God as Creator, in the sunshine and the flowers; but above all, God filling the heart with love and gladness.  The concept which the child needs of Jesus is of his surpassing goodness, his unselfish courage, and his loving service.  All religious teaching which will lead to such concepts as these is grounding the child in knowledge that is rich and fruitful, for it is making God and Christ real to him.  All teaching which leads to false concepts is an obstacle in the way of spiritual development.

THE CHILD’S CONCEPT OF RELIGION

Gradually throughout his training the child should be forming a clear concept of religion and the part it is to play in the life.  This cannot come through any formal definition, nor through any set of precepts.  It must be a growth, stimulated by instruction, guided by wise counsel, given depth of meaning through the lives of strong men and women who express the Christian ideal in their daily living.

Matthew Arnold tells us that religion is “morality lit up by emotion.”  We turn to God for our inspiration, for the quickening of our motives, for fellowship, communion and comfort; but it is when we face the duties and relationships of the day’s work and its play that we prove how close we have been to God and what we have received from him.  As there can be no religion without God, neither can there be religion without morality; that is, without righteous living.

Connecting religion with life.—­One of the chief aims in teaching the child religion should therefore be to ground him in the understanding that religion is life.  Probably no greater defect exists in our religion to-day than our constant tendency to divorce it from life.  There are many persons who undertake to divide their lives up into compartments, one for business, one for the relations of the home, one for social matters, one for recreation and amusement, and one for religion.  They make the mistake of assuming that they can keep these sections of the life separate and distinct from each other, forgetting that life is a unity and that the quality of each of its aspects inevitably colors and gives tone to all the rest.