When such questions arise let us meet them frankly and wisely.  Let us have the spiritual vision and the reverence for truth that will enable us, for example, to show the child how the servants of God in those ancient times used the bold, picturesque figure of “feathers” and “wings” to express the brooding love and care of God; how they told the wonderful story of God’s creation of the world in the most beautiful account they could conceive; how they showed forth God’s care for his children, his companionship with them, and man’s tendency to sin and disobedience by one of the most beautiful stories ever written, this story having its scene laid in the garden of Eden; how these writers always set down what they believed to be true, and how, though they might sometimes have been mistaken as to the actual facts, they never missed presenting the great lesson or deep spiritual truth that God would have us know.

Protecting the child against intellectual difficulties.—­Children taught the Bible in this reasonable but reverent way will be saved many intellectual difficulties as they grow older.  Their reverence and respect for the Bible will never suffer from the necessity of attempting to force their faith to accept what their intellect contradicts.  They will not be troubled by the grave doubts and misgivings which attack so many adolescents during the time when they are working out their mental and spiritual adjustment to the new world of individual responsibility which they have discovered.  They will, without strain or questioning, come to accept the Bible for what it is—­the great Source Book of spiritual wisdom, its pages bearing the imprint of divine inspiration and guidance, and also of human imperfections and greatness.

The developing child should, therefore, be encouraged to use his reason, his thought, his judgment and discrimination in his study of religion precisely as in other things.  His questions should never be ignored, nor suppressed, nor treated as something unworthy and sinful.  The doubts, even, which are somewhat characteristic of a stage of adolescent reconstruction, may be made the stepping-stone to higher reaches of faith and understanding.

The youth who went to his pastor with certain questionings and doubts, and who was told that these were “the promptings of Satan,” and that they “must not be dwelt upon, but resolutely be put out of the mind,” was not fairly nor honestly treated by one from whom he had a right to expect wiser guidance.  He returned from the interview rebellious and bitter, and it was with much spiritual agony and sweating of blood that he fought his own way through to a solution which ought to have been made easy for him by wise enlightenment and sympathetic counsel.