It does not much matter that a girl should learn her religion young, but it does matter that she should learn it thoroughly, and still more that she should learn to love it.  If you make religion a burden to her, if you always speak of God’s anger, if in the name of religion you impose all sorts of disagreeable duties, duties which she never sees you perform, what can she suppose but that to learn one’s catechism and to say one’s prayers is only the duty of a little girl, and she will long to be grown-up to escape, like you, from these duties.  Example!  Example!  Without it you will never succeed in teaching children anything.

When you explain the Articles of Faith let it be by direct teaching, not by question and answer.  Children should only answer what they think, not what has been drilled into them.  All the answers in the catechism are the wrong way about; it is the scholar who instructs the teacher; in the child’s mouth they are a downright lie, since they explain what he does not understand, and affirm what he cannot believe.  Find me, if you can, an intelligent man who could honestly say his catechism.  The first question I find in our catechism is as follows:  “Who created you and brought you into the world?” To which the girl, who thinks it was her mother, replies without hesitation, “It was God.”  All she knows is that she is asked a question which she only half understands and she gives an answer she does not understand at all.

I wish some one who really understands the development of children’s minds would write a catechism for them.  It might be the most useful book ever written, and, in my opinion, it would do its author no little honour.  This at least is certain—­if it were a good book it would be very unlike our catechisms.

Such a catechism will not be satisfactory unless the child can answer the questions of its own accord without having to learn the answers; indeed the child will often ask the questions itself.  An example is required to make my meaning plain and I feel how ill equipped I am to furnish such an example.  I will try to give some sort of outline of my meaning.

To get to the first question in our catechism I suppose we must begin somewhat after the following fashion.

Nurse:  Do you remember when your mother was a little girl?

Child:  No, nurse.

Nurse:  Why not, when you have such a good memory?

Child:  I was not alive.

Nurse:  Then you were not always alive!

Child:  No.

Nurse:  Will you live for ever!

Child:  Yes.

Nurse:  Are you young or old?

Child:  I am young.

Nurse:  Is your grandmamma old or young?

Child:  She is old.

Nurse:  Was she ever young?

Child:  Yes.

Nurse:  Why is she not young now?