RELIGIOUS EDUCATION

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21988, 24 June 1933, Page 4

RELIGIOUS EDUCATION

By Ampuus. « It does not take great men to do great tilings; it only takes consecrated men. The earnest, resolute man whom God works through is the medium by which His greatest work is done.” Phillips Brooks. HINTS TO POSTER MAKERS. 1. Use clear pictures. Keep your eyes open for pictures that will be useful. File them for further use. 2. Watch the colour scheme, and blend picture, paper, and lettering. 3. Take care with the arrangement of the poster. Arrange the pictures so as to give a restful feeling; the poster should be well-balanced. People should look into Ihe centre, or straight out, rather than away from the centre. Lettering should give a balanced effect. Arrange everything tentatively before doing any lettering. Avoid overcrowding. 4. Study the shades. Shading or contrasting colours make the letters stand out. 5. Take particular care with the lettering. The thickness of the letters is more important than the size. Note the size of the room in which the poster is to be used. The letters must be large enough to be visible from the back. Leave a good space between the words, and a smaller space between the letters of a word. 6. Choose simple, short, interesting mottoes. 7. Draw a margin round the poster, or mount it on a larger paper of a different colour. Strengthen the edges or corners of a poster. YOUTH WORKERS’ INSTITUTE. We would remind our readers of the Youth Workers’ Institute to be held in Knox Sunday School buildings, corner of Frederick and King streets, commencing on Monday night next, and continuing for the

next two nights. This function has been planned to help meet some of the needs of superintendents, Sunday School teachers Bible class leaders and members, and all attending are sure to receive some help from the excellent series of lectures and meetings arranged. For further particulars, see our advertising columns. LEARNING TO KNOW GOD. « Then suddenly God comes, an undoubting immediate sense of God. It is as if one was touched at every point by a being akin to oneself, sympathetic, beyond measure wiser, steadfast, and pure in aim. It is completer and more intimate, but it is like standing side by side with and touching someone that we love very dearly and trust completely.” So said H. G. Wells concerning the inner experience of God. The young child has at the beginning no such consciousness of God, no such awareness of a. Divine Being, no such emotional response towards a felt presence, these have to grow in him just as any other aspects of experience, “ first the blade. . . How docs awareness of God and love for Him come about? 1. The young child naturally and readily accepts and responds to the idea of God, a Being who is present hut not seen. Many have asked, How can you teach the child about God when God is so far beyond the grasp or reach of even the greatest minds? . . , It is only mature minds grown critical that have theological difficulties. The child has none. Such are the processes and patterns of the child’s mind that children of three often have invisible playmates of fancy who are very real to them. All children know and love relatives and friends who are absent from them, i’robably the psychologist is right when he says the child has no “religious instinct. But call it what you will, observation shows that he has a set of mind oi' readiness of nervous reaction that causes him to respond easily to the idea of God as a very present reality of his experience. There is not the least difficulty in creating a very strong God-con-sciousness in any normal child if right

methods are followed. Next a few words as to methods. 2. First concepts of God should be closely related to the child’s immediate interests and activities. A first desideratum is that to the child God shall be a close and intimate reality. But nothing distant or abstract possesses such I'eauty. The child can make nothing out of omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence, but he can understand God as giver and protector. To too many children God is a rather dimly understood Presence found chiefly between the covers of a large book. Parents and teachers (and preachers!) often seem to forget that God was not put into the Bible until He had first been discovered in the hearts and minds of men. The Christian God is a God who is im.mediatcly round about and especially who is within. The shower comes down. “What makes the rain, Mother?” “God sends the rain, my dear.” Uncritically and with full credulity the young child accepts this partial statement which, lacking though it be in scientific fullness, leads one little step towards knowing God at work here and now in His world. If the mother is able to explain how the sun draws the water up into the clouds and the clouds let the drops fall ns rain, so much better and fuller may be the explanation. But she can keep to all related in the mind of the child to God the great Cause. 3. The child’s concept of God should be expanded in the order of the child’s development. There is nothing about the religious phase of experience which makes it possible to grasp abstractions and generalisations beyond his age or capacity. This truism is often forgotten by teachers. No one knows from controlled experiment just what is the best order for the presentation to the child of the various elements which should enter into our concept of God. Both the principles of genetic psychology and common sense, however, throw some light on the question. The child of two or three years is ready to know God as giver, protector, and friendly helper. The child of four or five is ,i ready to know and understand God as

father, maker, source of goodness and love. The child of six and seven can comprehend God as creator, guide, one who approves or condemns. By eight and nine the child can think of God as comrade, friend, judge. By 10 and 11 the thought is comprehensible of God the eternal (though who knows what all this means?), the all-knowing, the everywhere present. And so on. The child brings to his religion the same mental grasp and the same emotional capacity that he employs in other phases of his living and these cannot be forced. 4. The child’s emotions take their tone from the quality of the stimulus which causes them. This is but a technical way of saying that if we want our children to love God we must present to them a lovable God. It will do no good to teach the child that he must love God. Love, any of the true emotions in fact, is not thus subject to volitional control. The very essence of an emotion is its spontaneous response to the object which it calls up. Let it be calculated, purpose, compelled, and it is no longer emotion in the proper sense. This principle leaves no place in the teaching of a child for a concept of God that pleases Him far away, on a great white throne. No child can love from such imagery as this. Nor must God be a cruel or vindictive God, even if the stories are in the Bible. The older student can understand the developing concept of God that is worked out through Hebrew history. Such materials are for the scholar and not for the helpless child feeling 1 his way toward a loving and lovable God. In the foregoing discussion only the human factors involved in teaching the child to know and love God have been taken into account. The Divine factor, the eternal and transforming pull of God on the human heart and mind, has been taken for granted. Our part as parents and teachers is to provide the most favourable conditions possible for this divine alchemy to operate on the lives of our children. —G. H. Betts.