Let him continue to exercise and enjoy freely his faculty of Wonder. His mother should tell him of things that are really wonderful and past finding out: and as he grows old enough, let her point out to him that all things in nature are wonderful, and past our finding out, from the punctuality of the great sun and blessed moon, to the springing of the blade of grass. Let her sympathise in his feeling that there is something awful in the thunderstorm, and in the incessant roll of the sea. Let her express for him, as far as may be, his unutterable sense of the weakness and ignorance of child or man in the presence of the mighty, ever-moving universe, and of the awful unknown Power which is above and around us, wherever we turn. Let her show respect to every sort of superiority, according to its kind—to old age, to scholarship, to skill of every sort, to social rank and office; and above all, to the superiority that goodness gives. Let her thus cherish and indulge her child's natural faculty, and permit no one else to thwart it. But she must give her utmost pains to exercise at the same time his inquiring and knowing faculties, and his courage and self-respect. Among the many wonders which she cannot explain, there are many which she can. He should be encouraged to understand as much as anybody understands, and especially of those things which he is most likely to be afraid of. He should be made to feel what power is given to him by such knowledge: and led to respect this power in himself as he would in any one else. I knew a little child whose reverence for Nature was so strong as almost to overpower some other faculties. She was town-bred: and whenever it chanced that she was out in the country for more than a common walk, she was injuriously excited, all day long. She was not only in a state of devout adoration to the Maker of all she saw: but she felt towards the trees, and brooks, and corn-fields as if they were alive, and she did not dare to interfere with them. One day, some companions carried home some wild strawberry roots for their gardens, and persuaded her to do the same. She did so, in a great tremor. Before she had planted her roots, she had grown fond of them, as being dependent on her; and she put them into the ground very tenderly and affectionately. As it was now near noon, of course she found her strawberries withered enough when she next went to look at them, as they lay drooping in the hot sun. She bethought herself, in her consternation, of a plan for them: ran in for a little chair: put it over the roots, stuffing up with grass every space which could let the sunshine in; watered the roots, and left them, with the sense of having done a very daring thing. It was sunset before she could go to her garden again. When she removed the chair, there were the strawberries, fresh and strong, with leaves of the brightest green! It was a rapturous moment to this superstitious child—this, in which she felt that she had meddled with the natural growth of something, and with success. And it was a profitable lesson. She took to gardening, and to trying her power over Nature in other ways, losing some superstition at every step into the world of knowledge, and gaining self-respect (a highly necessary direction of the spirit of reverence) with every proof of the power which knowledge confers.
What the parent has to do for the child in whom the sentiment of Reverence appears disproportionate, is to give him Power in himself, in every possible way, that he may cease to be overwhelmed with the sense of power out of himself on every hand. If he can become possessed of power of Conscience, his religious fear will become moderated to wholesome awe. If he can become possessed of power of understanding, the mysteries of Nature will stimulate instead of depressing his mind. If he can attain to power of sympathy, he will see men as they are, and have a fellow-feeling with them, through all the circumstances of rank and wealth which once wore a false glory in his eyes. If he can attain a due power of self-reliance, he will learn that his own wonderful faculties and unbounded moral capacities should come in for some share of his reverence, and be brought bravely into action in the universe, instead of being left idle by the wayside, making obeisance incessantly to everything that passes by, while they ought to be up and doing.
What should be done with the pushing, fearless child, who seems to stand in awe of nobody, is plain enough. As I have said, he reverences something: for no human being is without the faculty. His parents must find out what it is that does excite his awe: and, however strange may be the object, they must sympathise in the feeling. I have known a fearless child of three reverence his brother of four and a half. We may laugh; but it was no laughing matter, but a very interesting one, to see the little fellow watch every movement of his brother, give him credit for profound reasons in everything he did, and humbly imitate as much as he could. Supposing such a child to be deficient generally in reverence, it would be a tremendous mistake in the parents to check this one exercise of it. They should, in such a case, carefully observe the rights of seniority among the children; avoid laughing at the follies of the elder, or needlessly pointing out his faults, in the presence of the younger, while they daily strive to raise the standard of both. They must also lead the imagination of the little one to contemplate things which he must feel to be at once real and beyond his comprehension. They must, at serious moments, lead his mind higher than he was aware it would go, even till it sinks under his sense of ignorance. They must carry his thoughts down into depths which he never dreamed of, and where the spirit of awe will surely lay hold upon him. I do not believe there is any child who cannot be impressed with a serious, plain account of some of the wonders of nature; with a report, ever so meagre, of the immensity of the heavens, whose countless stars, the least of which we cannot understand, are for ever moving, in silent mystery, before our eyes. I do not believe there are many children that may not be deeply impressed by the great mystery of brute life, if their attention be duly fixed upon it. Let the careless and confident child be familiarised, not only with the ant and the bee for their wonderful instinct, but with all living creatures as inhabitants of the same world as himself, and at the same time, of a world of their own, as we have; a world of ideas, and emotions, and pleasures, which we know nothing whatever about,—any more than they know the world of our minds. I do not believe there is any child who would not look up with awe to a man or woman who had done a noble act,—saved another from fire or drowning, or told the truth to his own loss or peril, or visited the sick in plague-time, or the guilty in jail. I do not believe there is any child who would not look up with awe to a man who was known to be wise beyond others; to have seen far countries; to have read books in many languages; or to have made discoveries among the stars, or about how earth, air, and water are made. If it be so, who is there that may not be impressed at last by the evident truth that all that men have yet known and done is as nothing compared with what remains to be known and done: that the world-wide traveller is but the half-fledged bird flitting round the nest: that the philosopher is but as the ant which spends its little life in bringing home half a dozen grains of wheat: and that the most benevolent man is grieved that he can do so little for the solace of human misery, feeling himself like the child who tries to wipe away his brother's tears, but cannot heal his grief! Who is there that cannot be impressed by the grave pointing out of the mystery of life, and the vastness of knowledge which lie around and before him; and by the example of him who did none but noble and generous deeds, and bore the fiercest sufferings, and felt contempt for nothing under heaven! How can it but excite reverence to show that he, even he, was himself full of reverence, and incapable of contempt!
II. Having said thus much about nourishing and balancing the faculty of reverence, I need only point out the directions in which it should be trained.
The point on which a child's veneration will first naturally fix will be Power. It must be the parents' first business to fix that veneration on Authority, instead of mere power. Instead of the power to shut up in a closet, or to whip, the child must reverence the authority which reveals itself in calm control and gentle command. The parents must be the first objects of the child's disciplined reverence. Even here, in this first clear case, the faculty cannot work well without sympathy: and the child must have sympathy from the parents themselves. He must see that his parents respect each other; that they consider one another's authority unquestionable in the household; and that they reverence their parent—if Granny be still among them.
Beyond this, there is no reason why the sympathy between parents and children should not be simple, constant, and true, as to their objects of reverence.
The child may revere as very wise, some person whom the parents know not to be so: but they may join their child in revering the wisdom which they know to be his ideal. The child may go into an enthusiasm about some questionable hero,—the exemplar of some virtue which the parents feel to be of a rather low order: but they will sympathise in the homage to virtue—which is the main point. They may be secretly amused at their child's reverence for the constable: but they feel the same in regard to that of which the constable is the representative to the child—the Law. They will lead him on with them in their advancing reverence for knowledge; for that moral and intellectual knowledge united which constitute wisdom; and will thus turn away his regards from dwelling too much on outward distinctions, which might otherwise inspire undue awe.
Yet nearer will their hearts draw to his in veneration for goodness; for intrepid truthfulness, for humble fidelity, for cheerful humility, for gentle charity. And at the ultimate point, their hearts must become one with his; in the presence of the Unknown; for there we are all,—the oldest and the youngest—the wisest and the weakest,—but little children, waiting to learn, and desiring to obey.