Early Impressions of Good and Evil.
Thirdly, there are the parents who desire beyond all things that their children shall lead religious lives, and are anxious to do their utmost to start the little feet on the right path. It is this class of parent who is often perplexed to know what is best. The difficulties are certainly great. Children differ so widely that what is good for one child may be harmful for another. But in almost all cases the tendency is to put off religious teaching too long. The mind of a very young child—one who would be commonly described as a baby—has been proved again and again to be remarkably receptive of evil as well as of good influences and impressions, and the earlier a baby’s mind can be filled with the very simplest religious truths the less room there will be for evil, and the greater the likelihood of a firm belief in truths that have been absorbed almost with the mother’s milk.
This leads to the question of how far a very young child has any direct personal religion; any feeling, that is, of a direct communication even of the most elementary kind between itself and its God without the intervention of any human being.
A Child’s Direct Personal Religion.
Religion through the Mother.
It would probably be true to say that at first this is impossible, but that at a very early age the sense can be imparted. To quote the words of a mother who has brought up a number of children in the fear and love of God, personal religion in children “of course begins by being mixed up with Mother, who, if she is a real mother, is to her babies the representative of warmth, comfort, love, and everything that they want.” When, in addition to this a child has depended for months upon its mother for food, and has constantly slept in her arms, the influence of that mother is so great that her religion naturally becomes the religion of the child, who accepts every word she says absolutely. Thus, the “God bless you” and the words of loving prayer which come so often and so naturally to a mother’s lips are absorbed by the child until its faith in some unconscious way grows into its life and becomes a real thing between itself and its God.
Thus, it will be seen that there is a certain truth underlying a statement made by the French author quoted above when he says: “Children’s reverence and love attaches itself to the human beings who are kind to them, but to nothing which is invisible or distinct from their species. Their instinct of finality is wholly objective and utilitarian.” It is true that in the first instance a baby’s reverence and love attaches itself to the mother, but to assert that afterwards it rejects anything invisible or apart from its own species is to deny the influence of a religious feeling flowing through the mother to the child, and to limit the power of the Spirit of God who can surely dwell in the heart of a very little child.
An example of the way in which children of very tender years can and often do grasp the great truths of the religion which they inherit from their parents has lately been told to the writer by the mother of the child in question.
Where She was Heavened.
She was a little girl of three and a half years old, and was taken one day by her father into the church in which she had been baptized. Pointing to the font, he said, “Do you know what happened to you there?” For a moment the child looked perplexed, and nestling up to her father said, “You tell me, daddy.” “No,” he replied, “I want you to tell me.” There was another moment’s hesitation, and then she looked up at him and very solemnly said, “I was heavened there!”