The Republican journal. [volume] (Belfast, Me.) 1829-current, 1911-07-20
The Christianity of Childhood.

little "child-prophet' of Shiloh, as a
concrete illustration of this subject. The
career of Samuel, in whatever portion
considered, greatly interests any thought
full person and stirs their admiration. In
it's purity, strength and symmetry, to
me it seems the most nearly perfect in
stance of human life, at normal, that
the Bible describes. We instinctively
want to know something of the childhood
out from which such a man grew. And
the child Samuel becomes very easily
pleasantly known to us; for just those
incidents and details are preserved and
recorded that make him to be easily
understood, and shape our imagination
so that we love him and feel at home
with him as if some neighbours child.
And then the references made to his
childhood cover just those stages of
young development that are most inter-
esting to us and least understood by us
the religious ones.
1t is always wonder to me that not
m ore is said about children in the Bible.
About all scriptural biography relates to
grown-ups. All the converts of the New
Testament appear to have been adults.
The Pulpit all the way of its history
has been shy or uncertain about the
child. The children seem to have been
theologically an unknown quantity.
Evidently a child does not admit of state
ment. The ordinary processes of So
called conversion do not seem quite to
apply to them. Either they do not know
enough to be made better, or are not
quite bad enough to be made better.
This sort of indeterminateness puts both
parents and pastors upon dealing with
these lambs of the flock in practice
but tentatively. 1t would be fine thing
to see child's nature mapped, arranged
chronologically, processes and transit
tons fixed and dated These little peo
pie have vast amount of experience
that lies pretty close at least to Christian
life; but experience that does not formu
late readily, nor reduce easily to rules,
nor fall into the grooves of adult life.
In this way the minds of even Christian
parents become full of questions and
their teachers attitude enshrouded with
hesitancies.
Perhaps something precise and practi-
cal can be obtained by these and all from
this account of this child Christian and
boy priest, Samuel. And in order to get
the benefit we seek from this biography
we must rest assured that however eX-
ceptional child Samuel may have been,
he was certainly not an abnormal. Sam
uel's childhood differed, in some particu-
lars, from the childhood of a great many
children, of course; but these were Who'll
ly incidental, perhaps even accidental.
But there is nothing in the narrative to
even suggest that he started in life with
dowry differing from that with which
he average child, born of godly par
ents, always begins life; or that influ-
ences were gathered about him that were
essentially distinct from those that might
ordinarily be expected to obtain in the
usual associations of the Christian home
and church. Though in certain respects
unusual child, he was not miracle
hid, nor an impossible child. For there
is nothing practical in an impracticable
model; nothing exemplary in an inimit-
able example. This story presents Sam
uel as naturally conceived, naturally
born, naturally developed and matured
individual.
There is no child explicable apart from
its parents. In an important sense the
child begins to live when its father be-
gins to live The child is simply the
parent continued down into new gen
ration. Hence Scripture biography,
much of it, begins with a statement and
e EXPOSITION of parentage. 1t was so with
John and Jesus, and so Samuel. Science
today lays large stress on heredity.
Revelation emphasized heredity long be-
fore science was born. A French author
says: 1.-THE lives of the mothers of great
men form an important branch of bio
graphical literature. The author OF
this biography of Samuel quietly asserts
the same fact by first telling US about
his mother.
And then, as believers in the Bible, we
have an interest in heredity that it is be-
y ond the power of secular science either
to induce or appreciate. There are num-
erous intimations in Scripture that in
the bequest of spiritual legacies the law
of heritage works with peculiar con-
stancy and vigor 'The promise is unto
YOU and to your children" 81 will es-
ablish my covenant with Isaac with an
everlasting covenant, and with his seed
after him." This principle, appears as
a frequent and favorite statement in the
Jewish record, and is as though God held
parent and child in one individual COM
pact of grace; parental faith working in
and for the child vigorously; the faith of
the parent becoming in time the child's
faith, just as by physical law the features
of the parent re-appear in time in the
child's face in growing distinctness