Education in the Home, the Kindergarten, and the Primary School

by Elizabeth Palmer Peabody

"On whom those truths do rest
That we are toiling all our lives to find,"

but in the minds of old sinners who had lost the original purity of soul that "sees God." "I think about God all times!" How interesting it would be to know exactly what she thought! That it was nothing terrific or painful was evident from her habitual mood, which was even joyous. So careful had the Doctor been to educate every bodily and mental activity, that she had none of that discouragement, inelasticity, and indolence of mind, which comes of want of success in childish effort. A genial, educating assistance was always around her, but careful not to weaken her by doing anything for her that she could learn to do for herself. Obstacles, therefore, only stimulated her efforts, and so delightful was her sense of overcoming them, that, for instance, she would laugh exultingly when sewing if her thread became knotted, or if in anything she was doing there was some little difficulty to be surmounted. Her faith in herself seemed never to have been broken; but she rested on the fulcrum of Infinite God, in whom she "lives and moves and has her being."

The only thing we ought to do in the religious nurture of childhood is to preserve this faith which comes from the child's seeing God even more clearly and certainly than it can see outward things. See to it that you use language so as more clearly to define and not to blot out the divine vision, as old Dr. Barnard's cocked hat and black silk gown and seat in the clouds eclipsed the sweet face with which my Creator seemed to own me as his child, as I told you in my last lecture.

Another mistake that was made in my religious education was during a visit that I made to a great-aunt when I was five years old, and was taught to say the Lord's prayer by the servant who put me to bed. I got the idea that some unknown evil might happen to me in my sleep if I did not do this, and was also told that God would be displeased with me if I thought about anything else when I was saying it. But I was involuntarily conscious of having my mind full of images, while the words of the prayer were empty vocables. In order to prevent the intruding thoughts, I would try to rush through the words quickly, going back to the beginning over and over again. But this artificial duty was not associated with the instruction of my mother, who was in general very happy in what she said to me about God, dwelling on his goodness, referring to it everything delightful, making Sunday a day of quiet but constant enjoyment, letting us paint, and cut paper, with other little amusements, devoting herself to making us happy, while the rest of the week she was busy; for she kept a large school, and Sunday was, as she often said, her only and blessed day of rest. Long after, at a time of religious controversy and so-called revival, I was immensely aided by hearing my mother say to a young aunt of mine who affirmed that St. Paul, in saying that we must pray without ceasing was fanatically unreasonable: "Yes, if praying meant saying over prayers; but spiritual prayers mean a devotional attitude of mind towards God which we can have whatever we are doing."

This sentence seemed to pour light into a shady place.

"Don't you say prayers, mama?" I said to her when aunt was gone.

"Not when I am alone," she said; "for God sees my thoughts and feelings, and knows that I love him, and always want his help."

My mother had nothing of the martinet about her. She took it for granted that upon the whole we wanted to do what was right. She was not apt to give the worst, but the best interpretation to doubtful phenomena. She believed that to treat a child with generous confidence invoked generosity and truthfulness, and what was better than all the rest, she did not talk down to her children, but rather drew them up to her own mental and moral level; and interlarded stories from Spenser's Faerie Queen and the Scriptures with stories of the kind and noble deeds of real people around us. (See [Appendix].)

Her religion was moral inspiration to herself and consolation for all calamity, and always very naturally expressed. She more than corrected her first mistake and inadequate talk with me about my Creator, by telling me the story of the Pilgrim Fathers, when I was yet so very young that my fancy clothed her words with grotesque images, but on the whole did better justice to the spirit of the emigration and the ultimate results it has worked out for the world than the exact facts that transpired in history. What I gained from my self-created mythology was that my ancestors knew themselves to be God's children, whom neither tyrannizing king nor priest had any right to prevent from going to him in prayer first hand, and that in order to do his will as their consciences understood it, they left home and country and all the comforts of civilization, and trusted themselves in a frail vessel to be driven over a stormy ocean by the winds, at imminent peril from the waves below, which would have swallowed them up, had not God, who loved them, approved what they were doing, guided the ship (by a power stronger than the wind, for it was his love) through the narrow opening of Plymouth Harbor to the rock where I still seem to see them streaming along, a procession of fair women in white robes as sisters (for so I had interpreted the word ancestors, who strangely enough were all named Ann). I still seem to see these holy women kneel down in the snow under the trees of the forest, and thank God for their safety from the perils of the sea; and then go to work in the sense of his very present help, and gather sticks to make a fire, and build shelters from the weather with the branches of the trees. Among these rude buildings my mother took pains to tell me that they built a schoolhouse where all the children were to be taught to read the Bible.

There is nothing for which I thank my mother and my God more than for this grand impression of all-inspiring love to God, and of all-conquering duty to posterity, thus made on my childish imagination, and its association with the idea of personal freedom and independent action. It never could have been made except by one who herself had faith in God, and believed that he had made all men free to come to him, and also that the mother was his first appointed mouthpiece. The fanciful images which were the effect of the shortcomings of my ignorance did not hide the vital truths which I was as open to accept then as now; namely, that God is my Father, the Father of all souls, from whom no one has a right to shut off another.