The Universalist. [volume] (Chicago [Ill.]) 1884-1897, 1896-03-28
ABOUT CHILD THEOLOGY.

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Spencer Bates, which we print this
week, embodying some of the curious
studies of childhood in Professor
Sully's recent volume, will open up
to many of our readers new lines of
thought respecting the psychology
of childhood. 1t is fond tradition that
all religion was at first childlike in
that it consisted in obedience by man
to precepts announced by Heaven
personally to earth's earliest dwell
ers. When divinity commands in
this wise, one would suppose there
was nothing left but to obey. But
the Presence was not always near and
mans faith in its return probably
wavered, and sin entered the world.
We have travelled very far indeed
from those primitive times and to the
grown up, educated person in this
skeptical, inquiring age, faith, and
the mysteries of life, death, and the
hereafter, press with a burden some
times too great to bear. We are in
danger from ourselves, from the
learning so laboriously acquired, and
from the inherited experience we
have not learned to digest.
We are now much like the good
young minister in beside the Bon
ME Brier Bush," who painfully en-
deavored to give his simple, unlearn-
ed, but spiritually acute hearers in
the free kirk of Drumtochty, course
in German higher criticism. We are
concerned far too much with chaff
and not with the pure grain which
Marget describes as "fallin' like a
rinnin' burn on the corn-room floor,
and CLINT O. the sun through the
window turning it into gold" The
chat of our theological threshing
mills is, as Marget would say, "mair
than anybody can abide" The
threshing must, it is true, be done,
but the operation in itself is not al
ways edifying, and we gladly leave,
when occasion offers, even the thresh
ing floor of Obed for the pure gold,
for instance, of child-like faith and
experience.
The Persian poet adduced as claim
to be considered a poet the fact IL at
he loved God, flowers and little chill
dren. Many who have never dreamed
of calling themselves poets could
make like claim in all truthfulness.
Even agnostics love flowers as rule
and everybody loves children. The
father or mother who does not renew
his or her youth and catch something
of the deeting glory that surrounds
childhood in the lines and sayings of
children is to be pitied indeed, for
children stray near the gates of Eden
and often say things wise and deep
and true, beyond their knowledge
and far beyond the everyday expert
ence of those in mature years.
Wordsworth, in his account of how
he wrote the ode, limitations of I'M
mortality, says:
"To that dream like vividness and
splendor which invest objects of
sight in childhood, every one, be-
lieve, if he would look back, could
bear testimony" The poet far better
describes it in verse;
The earth and every common sight,
To me did seem
kppareled in celestial light,
The glory and the fro shness of dream.
This glory and brightness in the
poem he regards as presumptive evil
dence of a prior state of existence
there still remaining upon earth to the
child something of the glory and the
dream of heaven that "lies about us
in our infancy" 1t is beyond our
purpose here to attempt to discuss
poetry from a theological point of
view. All we wish is to put before
the reader something OF the loving
reverence of the attitude with which
we ought to approach child study.
We are told that we must become as
little children to enter the kingdom
of heaven, and certainly no one who
passes by as unworthy the attention
of a mature mind the sayings of
childhood can have the child-like
spirit of the true disciple and learner.
But the phrases, "child theology"
and "child study" have and must
have to the genuine lover of child
hood something of harshness. Such
a one does not like to think of child
hood being studied either by theo-
Logan or scientist, and rightly. But
a moments reflection will suffice to
show that while our terms may sound
harsh, they are wonderfully softened
and frightened in connection with
the word child. To study childhood,
either theologically or scientifically,
love for the child is the essential pre-
o0Ixo1 a.