“If your child’s to love and cherish
Life that needs him day by day,
Give him things to tend that perish
If he ever stops away.”—M., p. 84.
The child is “to feel within himself Nature’s close interdependence”:
“Whenever opportunity occurs, make this inner dependence of life clear, visible, impressive, tangible and perceptible to your child, even though it be in only a few of the essential links of this great chain, until you come to the last ring that holds all the rest, God’s Father-love for all. The baker cannot bake if the miller brings him no flour, the miller can grind no flour if the farmer brings him no corn, the field can yield no crop if Nature does not work towards it in harmony, and Nature could not work in harmony if God had not placed in her power and material, and if His love did not guide everything to its fulfilment.”—M., p. 148.
And again, as always, follows the need for expression of some kind. The children are not to be disturbed while they “say grace” over their doll’s feast.
“It is no drawing down of the sacred into outer life; no, this is the germ which gives the outside actions of life the inner meaning and higher consecration, which life so much needs. For how is your child to cultivate innocently in himself a lively feeling for what is holy, if you will not grant that it takes form for him even in his innocent games.”—M., p. 148.
It may be as well before leaving the subject to notice here one or two other points in connection with feeling that are touched upon by Froebel.