Parent and Child Volume III., Child Study and Training

by Mosiah Hall

The Influence of the Church Is Essential to Aid the Home in Developing the Religious Instincts and Emotions of the Child

Religious emotions and belief are among the most deeply imbedded instincts of the race. They are also some of the earliest manifestations of childhood. They accompany the individual throughout his entire life, exercising a profound influence over his thoughts and conduct, and they become the chief anchor of the soul when sorrow or old age comes. It would be a great calamity, therefore, if religious instincts and sentiment should suffer eclipse or disappear.

Rightly cultivated and trained, these natural feelings of religion grow to spiritual power within us. Without such power, man is of little consequence.

Upon the home naturally falls the duty of fostering the first feelings of reverence towards God. The child who learns to lisp his prayers at his mother's knee is started aright. The home must give the first lessons in the love of God and goodness. If it fails, they are likely never to be learned.

But the home needs the influence of the church here. It must have it to round out the child's religious development. The church can do many things for the child that the home cannot accomplish. It introduces him to religious ceremonies and observances that satisfy his soul, and it helps greatly to train him in religious habits.

One cannot estimate the value of all this upon the character of the child. As a restraint from wrong conduct and an encouragement to right action, the work of the church is most salutary. The solemn ceremonies, the sacred music, the exhortations pointing heavenward, the general spirit of the group at humble worship—all exercise upon the child an influence for good, mysterious yet profound.

Clean, beautiful surroundings and orderly behavior are also very impressive. The work of our Sabbath Schools is most beneficial. They offer to parents a strong reinforcement in cultivating right religious habits and emotions in the child. To go into one of our well-conducted Sunday Schools, where order prevails, where the spirit of peace and prayer is uppermost, to join in the singing, to listen to the uplifting instruction, or, better still, to be given opportunity to take active part in this religious service—all these make a deep and lasting impression upon the youthful soul. Parents can do nothing better for their children and themselves than to support loyally their Sunday Schools and other religious organizations.

The habit of attending church should also be impressed during the habit-forming period. But the supreme opportunity of the church lies in its ability actually to convert the youth or maiden during the adolescent period. This is a privilege which neither the church nor the home has adequately comprehended. When the emotional nature of the individual is at white heat, as it then is, impressions made are lasting, and conversion, if made then, will be so deeply impressed that it is likely to last forever.

Churches in general fail to make the most of their opportunity here. They too often stuff the heads of children with religious facts and formulae, feeding them with the husks of theology, instead of giving them the upbuilding food they need. Children, too, often are starving for real spiritual food, hungering for the bread and thirsting for the water of life.

Parents and teachers generally need to correct their methods of presenting the gospel to children, especially to the adolescent, if they would get the results desired. It is their failure to meet the child on his own religious ground, not his indifference to religion that makes the boy and girl leave Sabbath School during the time he most needs such an influence. Let them study and master these problems: Are boys and girls being given ample opportunity for spiritual self-expression? Are the beautiful lessons of the gospel being translated into terms that appeal to their lives?