be permitted to clothe itself in appropriate garments of words.  Those garments must be woven out of the realities of actual experiences in the child’s life.  We cannot prepare or make them for him.  The expression of religion will be consonant with the stage of development.  If his faith is to be real he must never be allowed or tempted to imagine that if only he can use the words, the verbal symbol, he has the fact, the life-experience.  Try then to use words which are simple and meaningful to him and be content to wait for life to lead him to formulate vital verbal forms for himself.

Sec. 4.  PATIENCE AND COMMON-SENSE

Fourthly, we must have faith in God’s laws of growth.  If we be but faithful, furnishing the soil, the seed, the nurture, we must wait for the increase.  Many factors which we cannot control will determine whether it shall be early or late and what form it shall take.  We must wait.  It is high folly that pulls up the sprouting grain to see whether it is growing properly.

Fifthly, manifestations of the religious life will vary in children and in families.  The commonest error is to expect some one popular form alone, to imagine that all children must pass through some standardized experiences.  Mrs. Brown’s Willy may rise in prayer meeting.  Do not be downhearted.  Willy is only doing that which he has seen his parents do, and, usually, only because they do it.  Your boy, or girl, is seeking health of life, of thought, of action; is growing in character.  Let them grow, help them to grow.  You know they love you even when they say little about it; you do not expect them to climb to the housetop and declare their affection.  A flower does not sing about the sun, it grows toward it.  That is the test of the child’s religion:  Is he growing Godward in life, action, character?

Sec. 5.  THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF GOD

Sixthly, deal most carefully with the child’s consciousness of God.  The truth is that the child in the average home has a consciousness of God.  It grows out of formal references in social rites and customs, informal allusions in conversation, and direct statements and instruction.  But frequently the resultant mental picture is a misleading one, sometimes even vicious in its moral effect.  Where superstitious servants take more interest in the child’s religious ideas than do his parents, we have the child whose life is darkened by the fear of an omnipotent ogre.  Nursemaids will slothfully scare small children into silence by threats of the awful presence of a bogey god.  The life of the spirit cannot be trusted to the hireling.  Parents must be sure of the character as well as the superficial competency of those who come closest to childhood.  A child’s ideas are formed before he goes to school.  The family cannot delegate the formation of dominant ideas to persons trained only for nursery tasks.