While thus relegated to the sublime regions of the sky God is supposed to be doing things, and of course doing them for us, sending down rain and so forth. What seems to impress children most, especially boys, in the traditional account of God is his power of making things. He is emphatically the artificer, the "demiurgos," who not only has made the world, the stars, etc., but is still kept actively employed by human needs. According to some of the American school-children he fabricates all sorts of things from babies to money, and the angels work for him. The boy has a great admiration for the maker, and one small English boy once expressed this oddly by asking his mother whether a group of working men returning from their work were "gods".
This admiration for superior power and skill favours the idea of God's omnipotence. This is amply illustrated in children's spontaneous prayers, which ask for things, from fine weather on a coming holiday to a baby with curly hair and other lovely attributes, with all a child's naïve faith. Yet a critical attitude will sometimes be taken up towards this mystery of unlimited power. The more logical and speculative sort of child will now and then put a sceptical question to his elders on this subject. A boy of eight turned over the problem whether God could beat him in a foot-race if he were starter and judge and refused to let God start till he had reached the goal; and he actually measured out the racecourse on a garden path and went through the part of running, afterwards sitting down and giving God time to run, and then pondering the possibility of his beating him.
The idea of God's omniscience, too, may come readily enough to a child accustomed to look up admiringly to the boundless knowledge of some human authority, say a clergyman. Yet I know of cases where the dogma of God's infinite knowledge provoked in the child's mind a sceptical attitude. One little fellow remarked on this subject rather profanely: "I know a 'ickle more than Kitty, and you know a 'ickle more than me; and God knows a 'ickle more than you, I s'pose; then he can't know so very much after all".
Another of the divine attributes does undoubtedly shock the child's intelligence. While he is told that God has a special abode in heaven, he is told also that he is here, there and everywhere, and can see everything. More particularly the idea of being always watched is, I think, repugnant to sensitive and high-spirited children. An American lady, Miss Shinn, speaks of a little girl, who, on learning that she was under this constant surveillance, declared that she "would not be so tagged". An English boy of three, on being informed by his older sister that God can see and watch us while we cannot see him, thought awhile, and then in an apologetic tone said: "I'm very sorry, dear, I can't (b)elieve you".
When the idea is accepted odd devices are excogitated by the active little brain for making it intelligible. Thus one child thought of God as a very small person who could easily pass through the keyhole. The opposite idea of God's huge framework, illustrated above, is probably but another attempt to figure the conception of omnipresence. Curious conclusions too are sometimes drawn from the supposition. Thus a little girl of three years and nine months one day said to her mother in the abrupt childish manner: "Mr. C. (a gentleman she had known who had just died) is in this room". Her mother, naturally a good deal startled, answered: "Oh, no!" Whereupon the child resumed: "Yes, he is. You told me he is with God, and you told me God was everywhere; so as Mr. C. is with God, he must be in this room."
It might easily be supposed that the child's readiness to pray to God is inconsistent with what has just been said. Yet I think there is no real inconsistency. Children's idea of prayer appears commonly to be that of sending a message to some one at a distance. The epistolary manner noticeable in many prayers, especially at the beginning and the ending, seems to illustrate this. The mysterious whispering in which a prayer is often conveyed is, I suspect, supposed in some inscrutable fashion known only to the child to transmit itself to the divine ear.
Of the child's belief in God's goodness it is needless to say much. For these little worshippers he is emphatically the friend in need who is just as ready as he is able to help them out of every manner of difficulty, and who, if they only ask prettily, will send them all the nice things they long for. Yet, happy little optimists as they are inclined to be, they will now and again be saddened by doubt, and wonder why the nice things asked for don't come, and why the dear kind God allows them to suffer so much.
While a child is thus apt to think of God as nicer than the nicest gentleman visitor who is wont to bring toys and do wondrous things for his delectation, he commonly imports into his conception a touch of human caprice. Fear may readily suggest to a child who has had some orthodox instruction that the wind howling at night is the noise of God's anger, or that the thunder is due to a sudden determination of the Creator to shoot him dead. The sceptical child, again, who is by no means so rare, may early begin to wonder how God can be so good and yet allow men to kill animals, and allow Satan to do such a lot of wicked things.
One of the hardest puzzles set to a child by the common religious instruction is the doctrine of God's eternity. The idea of a vast, endless "for ever," whether past or future, seems to be positively overwhelming to many young minds. The continual frustration of the attempt to reach a resting-place in a beginning or an end may bring on something of mental giddiness. Hence the wearisome perplexities of the first thoughts about God's past. The question, "Who made God?" seems to be one to which all inquiring young minds are led at a certain stage of child-thought. When told that God has always been, unchanging, and knowing no youth, he wants to get behind this "always was," just as at an earlier stage of his development he wanted to get behind the barrier of the blue hills.
Other mysteries of the orthodox faith may undergo a characteristic solution in the hard-working mind of a child. A friend tells me that when a child he was much puzzled by the doctrine of the Trinity. He happened to be an only child, and so he was led to put a meaning into it by likening it to his own family group, in which the Holy Ghost had, rather oddly, to take the place of the mother.