Probably no answer that she could have made would have been so comprehensive and so convincing of the real grasp of the truth as this word her baby intelligence had coined.
Examples can easily be found to show at how early an age a child may be influenced for good or evil. “I have seen,” says a parent, “a baby trained to habits of cleanliness in six weeks of life,” and it is doubtless true that the difference between good and evil first of all means to a child what is allowed or what is forbidden. But together with this it must always be remembered that there is the sense of safety and of love which, originally connected with “Mother,” is (in the case of a religious parent) speedily carried onwards and upwards to the love and care of God.
Olive Schreiner.
In this connection a passage in Olive Schreiner’s “Story of an African Farm” can hardly be omitted. It runs thus: “The souls of little children are marvellously delicate and tender things, and keep for ever the shadow that first falls on them, and that is the mother’s, or, at best, a woman’s. There never was a great man who had not a great mother: it is hardly an exaggeration. The first six years of our life make us: all that is added later is veneer. And yet some say, if a woman can cook a dinner or dress herself well, she has culture enough.”
All that has been so far written in this chapter on Children’s Religion is of necessity vague and rather difficult. To arrive at facts is almost impossible. The best that can be done is to speak of probabilities in the light of that faith which has been handed down. The religion of children of less tender years presents fewer difficulties, and to the consideration of this it is proposed now to turn.
But while the difficulties are fewer, they do not altogether disappear. It is often, for instance, extraordinarily difficult to determine in the case of a child of six or seven years how far his or her religion has even at that age become directly personal, or whether God is not often a Being to whom access is only possible through someone else.
Religion of Rather Older Children.
A Child’s Faith.
The evidence obtainable on this point is most contradictory. A mother writes, “Children’s faith soon becomes a real thing between them and their God. My little boy of five is perfectly delightful in the fulness of his faith. Only to-night when I had gone up, as I always do, to tell him a Bible story or sing some hymns before he went off to sleep, he suddenly said, ‘Mother, don’t you wish Jesus was on earth now?’ When I said, ‘Why do you wish it?’ he answered without the least hesitation, ‘Because I should go to Him and ask Him to make me good for always.’ And then, a little time afterwards, he suddenly started up, when I thought he was asleep, and said, ‘Oh! mother, wouldn’t it be dreadful if we had not got a God!’”
A Doubting Thomas.