The Age for Confirmation.

Waiapu Church Gazette, Volume XV, Issue 2, 1 August 1924, Page 429

The Age for Confirmation.

The W.A. « ' Church News ' ' has a long article on this subject. After marshalling many convincing arguments for an early agp the article dwells, on the admitted failure to increase the number of communicants and the difficulty of establishing our children m habits of devotion and reverence. The concluding'paragraph runs :— The only . remedy we can see is that we ourselves should be converted and become as little children and try to take the same attitude towards spiritual realities as they so easily and unconsciously dd, and that m Christian families every encouragement should fee given to

children to be confirmed and enter upon the Life m Grace. In families that do not themselves practice the duties of our religion and m Avhich the children receive no encouragement from their parents, We regretfully conclude th^t those poor children must be left to a later age, probably early manhood or womanhood, when they will have enough independence to be able to practice their religion m spite of the home influence, and m their case we must be content with fewer and better communicants instead of more and Avorse. So Aye plead with parents, who . are Christians indeed, not to oppose the early age of confirmation, but to en--courage their children by word and example m order that they may have a strength not their own when they come to face the bigger difficulties and temptations of life. The present customary age is almost certainly the Avrpng age, both physically, psychically and religiously, and though indir vidual eases require individual answers/which may safely be left to discerning Priests and Bieihops to give, we feel strongly that Put future as a church m this land depends largely on 'the way we teach pur children to look to God for grace to live gppd and holy lives; which grace, however, else He may m JBCis mercy minister it, He guarantees to us through the appointed nieans. And of these means the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ is .chief : yet #pne may, according to puy rules rec.eiye this Sacrament unless he has been confii-nied or is ready and willing .to be confiriupd. The Bishop of Bunbury Avrites m the "Church News":—! am sometimes told that some boy or girl is too young for Confirmation at twelve or thirteen. The clergy, however, who have the preparation of candidates, say that the early "teens" are a '^difficult age" for children, and not so suitable as an earlier one. And the neAV science of psychology bears them out m their opinion. William James, Starbuck, Corie and others tell us that the age of eleven is the "favorite age for the conversion experience." For the first six years of life a child thinks only of itself, and how to satisfy its desires for food and drink and mischief, and getting its own way; Towards the age of ten it begins to think of others. Now it can. be led from self-service to God-ser-vice. This is the time to present Christ to children as a loving Friend t<f stand by them for their lives, arid One for a boy or girl to stand by too. As you give a stake or trellis to a plant when it is quite young that it may twine itself round it, so Corifirmajtion should be used that children may twine themselyes round our Lord w their earliest years,