RELIGIOUS EDUCATION

Evening Star, Issue 22709, 24 July 1937, Page 6

RELIGIOUS EDUCATION

[By Forward.]

THE DEVOTIONAL LIFE OF A LITTLE CHILI). How docs a little child first conic to know and to dove’God? At what ago should ho begin to pray? Should we form tlio words of his first prayer folium? or should we leave him to find his own form of expression? What s|>ecial form should family devotions take when lie is included in the family circle? These are the practical questions to which I have been asked to suggest an answer.

How does a little child first come to a knowledge and love of God —i. 0., to a knowledge and love of a Father whom he cannot sec? Let us imagine a child born at the beginning of the Great War soon after his father had left the home. Imagine that father’s “leave” postponed again and again, so that his baby was four years old before he first saw him. That father would not come as a stranger into his boy’s life. The beginning of his knowledge would have been made through his mother. Thus would form a basis, from which, later on, a fuller knowledge and a stronger love would quickly grow. For even before her baby could understand what she was saying, the mother would have talked to’ him of his father. As he grew older, she would read to him bits of his father’s letters, and through her his father would send him special messages. Through these messages, through all that his mother told him, gradually the child would come to feel as if he knew his father quite well, even though he had not seen him. The time would come when he in his turn would begin to want to -send messages back. It- is a true analogy, for in tlio same way, before a child is old enough to understand, the mother speaks to him —naturally enough—about God, his pnsecn Father and hers. She tells him of the wonderful things which God does. How He loves us and takes care of us, how He wants us to he happy. Together they watch God, the great Creator and great Worker, when they watch the wonders of Nature—the opening leaf buds, the songs of the birds, the scent of the flowers. Every night and every morning, kneeling by his side, she speaks to God in prayer. Gradually the child.comes to know and to love God, just as a child we imagined grew to know _ and love his absent daddy. And just as he wanted himself to send messages to his daddy, so the child wants as it were to send messages to God—i.e., he wants himself to pray. When the child knows and loves God, ho is ready to pray. When the child knows and loves God he is ready to pray, but not before.

Surely the question, whether we ought to teach our children the words of their first prayer answers itself when we look at prayer in this light. No real message' would have been sent by this child to his absent Daddy if his mother had put a pencil into his hands, saying; “ Now write at my dictation, dear, ...” Is a real message sent to God when the child merely repeats what he has been taught to say by some,grown-up person, however simple and close to the child’s experience the words of such a prayer may be? Prayer is not merely asking for things, not merely asking that God’s blessing may rest, upon those whom the child loves, not even ashing to be “ made good.” Prayer is talking with God as a' child talks with a father—sharing his interests with God, sharing his joys and his sorrows with God, telling God all the difficulties of the day. “The children,” writes the author of ‘ The Unrelated Family,’ telling of a home lor deserted children started in a country town in England, “ were taught neither petition nor thanksgiving as an ideal for private prayer, but rather to go to the prayer room —to a room specially set apart—whenever they liked to tell God what they had done during the day.” Their prayers were rather wonderful._ Especially was it interesting to notice how they developed and altered in character as the children themselves developed and grew older. Alfred, four and a-half years old, used to go into lengthy descriptions of everything h© had done during the day. “ Thank you for the lovely day,” he prayed one night, “ and 'for the games we played, and for the nice things we_ took to bed, and baby’s lost Doris’s nightdress so she has to go to bed in Dick’s shirt, and make my mother well again, and take care of father. Amen.” Nine months later he prayed, “Don’t let us grumble when we have to do what wo don’t like, and don’t let me cry; but sometimes,” he continued, in a happy burst of confidence, “ I do bump my head on the barfroom door, and then I don’t cry but I larf!” How real all'these prayers were! How different from tho formal sentences that have no reverberation in the child’s inmost thoughts ! When the child begins himeelf to pray to God he begins to picture Him more vividly, seeing God as a kind of ■ superman or as the great king of all the fairies in His dwelling place above the clouds. This does not really matter. What matters is that God should be real to the child, and intimately associated with all the happy details ol his daily life. God loves mother and father and takes care of them. God takes care of little children, helps them to bo brave and helpful, cheerful, and obedient. God sends the rain and sunshine to help the flowers to grow. When the children plant seeds in the ground and tend them carefully they are co-workers with God. When it isn’t easy to bo good and helpful, and they try hard, then they can realise it is God who helps thehi to succeed, and they are in truth, then, also cowovkers with God. Praying to God, doing things for God, doing things with God, God becomes more real to them every day. What matters at this stage is that the though of God should bo woven inimately into the fabric of their daily lives. When there are little children in the family, family prayer should be of such a nature that this intimate relationship is strengthened. Why, one wonders, are readings from the Bible only used at such times? Why not a few verste of poetry within the little child’s comprehension about birds and flowers, babies and mothers, and little children? We teach them that God speaks in our hearts to-day just as He spoke in the hearts of the wise men of old and in the heart of Jesus, yet wo fail to strengthen the hold upon the child of this “ everywhereness ” and " every-when-ness ” of God by our artificial separation in family prayers of flic Bible from other literature. _ If we have prayers together ns a family, surely such prayers should be .designed so as to make a specially strong appeal to little children, because the emotions which are aroused, and the ideas which arc implanted in thc_ first five or six years of a child’s life in connection with religion constitute the foundation upon which the child’s religions life in tho future will j-est. Kinding suitable readings—poems, stories, and parables—with which tho

chosen Bible readings can be supplemented should not be a difficult matter; so many books are published today from which readings can be chosen. After the reading a few explanatory words could occasionally be added by the mother or the father so as to bring the reading within the_ comprehension of even the youngest child. One more point. In the prayers which we use at such times, surely we need to be careful to avoid what are spoken of to-day as. “ negative suggestions.” If it is bad for a little child as we now know it to be to say: ‘‘ Be careful, mind you don’t slip,” as he is going downstairs, or: *’ Don t be afraid, I am in the next room, ’’ when we leave him to sleep in the dark, because wo are suggesting falling, suggesting fear, it must he equally harmful to suggest fear and wrongdoing in our prayers by repeatedly thanking God for “ keeping us safe from the dangers of the night,” by asking Him.to “ keep ns this dav free from sin,” and so forth. Bather should we thank Him for His good gift of sleep and the gladness .of waking fresh in the morning; thank Him for giving us the power to love one another, and for having so made us that wo can be really happy only when we are kind and considerate and unselfish ami thoughtful of others. I/ong ago, in Palestine, Christ set a child irT the midst of- them, saying: 11 Of such is the Kingdom of Heaven. Perhaps, who can say, our prayers ■ would bo nearer to the heart of God if wo asked the children themselves to suggest what we should thank God for, instead of leaving the form of the prayer for grown folks only to decide. Religion is the outcome of experience, the foundations of the child’s knowledge of God are laid in the child’s knowledge 'of us. It is only through our mysterious human relationships. through the love and tenderness and purity of mothers and sisters and wives, through the strength and courage and wisdom of fathers, and mothers, and teachers, that wo can come to the knowledge of Him in Whom alone “ the love and the tenderness, and the purify and the strength, and the courage, and the wisdom of all these dwell for ever in perfect fullness.” It is not enough to deliver God’s message to the child; wo must fit ourselves to be it. “ How ran T bear wbat von say?” wrote Emerson. “ when what von ore is thundering in my ears?” —Mrs E. 10. R. Miunford.