The Savannah morning news. (Savannah, Ga.) 1900-current, 1901-03-29
RELIGION OF THE CHILD.
Discussed by Miss Backus Before
Child study Class.

Child study Class.
The religion Of the child was the sub
ject discussed by Miss Backus at the
tenth meeting of the Glass in Child Study
yesterday morning at the Philbrick Kin
dergarten.
1.-THE child has a strong religious in
stinct," said Miss Backus, land a strong
often misunderstood or treated wrongly,
and so become perverted. little child
needs the gospel of love and truth,
beauty and goodness, and we too often
meet him with dry doctrines and dead
theology. From the first time an infant
recognizes his mothers smile of love with
an answering smile, he has become a
spiritual being. for little animals may pet
and caress and play, but they do not
smile. When a baby looks into his
mothers face with a smile, it is love an
swering love, and from that day we can
make him feel the power of love, until
we lead him to the God Of Love. Never
give the child the image of God OF
Fear or of Anger or OF Vengeance, to
make his sensitive mind a torment Of
horrible pictures to him.
There is one way" said Miss Backus
(which even the smallest child can be
made to feel the love of God, and that is
though His works. A child develops
along the lines of the development of the
races, and first of all reverences power,
so that Gods great power in making the
wind to blow, the tides to turn, and the
flowers to grow, can be the starting point
of his religious instruction. 1t is when
the child is parallel with the age of
primitive man that he begins to make
the wonderful myths that cause such
CONSERVATION in the minds of prosaic or
mepsychologlcal parents and teachers
After this the child parallels the races of
early civilization and believes in many
strange things, and in some mythical de-
mon. self-created. who equals God in
power. Some grown persons never have
left this stage, but If we are to lift our
children to the highest we must make
them see the Importance Of the God of
Love"
"If," said Miss Backus, "ws show the
child the Creators works, we give him
the image of a spiritual God, If we try
to explain the deity, we leave him most
material God often a most repulsive one
A child once said to me, God is a big
strong man like giant with three heads,
and he burns up bad little children l
sifted the matter and traced the image
back to the well-meant but ill-consdered
attempts of a Sunday-scho0l teacher to
explain the trinity to a class of small
children.
Stories come next to nature as helps
to unfolding the spiritual part of the
childs being. Tell him all the simple
Bible stories that end happily, and show
the workings of love, all good fairy sto-
ries that are based on some virtue, and
all nature stories about things nearest
the chi.d's life. These awaken thoughts
and feelings that are purely spiritual,
that is. if the effect of the story is not
rendered useless, by a moral tackled on
at the end. You tell the story well and
graphically and the child will find the
moral for himself, but it is human nature
to object to have morals fired at you from
the mouth of a cannon. The still small
voice is in every child let us not drown
its whispering with our noisy lessons; the
germ of the spirit is folded up in the
childs nature, only waiting for the sun
shine of one love and the wisdom OF one
care to help it open into the perfect
flower so let our first and last lesson
teach the child that
Gods in His Heaven:
All's right with the world"