In all Christian worship the dramatic element survives. It finds its
most elaborate expression in the Roman Catholic mass, but even the
simple order of service in the church of Puritan lineage has certain
dramatic elements. The sacraments of baptism and of the Lord’s Supper
in those communions are intensely impressive to children simply because
of their dramatic elements.
In liturgical churches, where the entrance of the clergy and the
choristers in processional is followed by a variety of consecutive
and historic ceremonies, performed by rising, sitting, kneeling and
going to the altar in turn, and concluding with the recessional of the
celebrants, children who have been trained in churchly ways find a keen
and lifelong delight. Surely, nothing but the dramatic character of
such services can explain the joy which little children take in going
to church where the sermon and much of the service are incomprehensible.
The festival, even more than the ordinary service of worship, makes
its dramatic appeal to children. No one could have been present in
an Italian city on some high feast day, when the main street of the
village was decorated for the great procession, when all the treasures
of the church were exposed to view, and when the band, the crowd of
venders, the best clothes of everybody, and, most of all, the dramatic
services themselves, both in the church and on the street, were
heightening the impression, without realizing that here is the secret
of much of the power of the church in the lives of these imaginative
people. To be in such a village at Christmas time and to go into the
lighted church and see before the high altar the Christmas crèche,
with its cardboard scenery and its toy images of Joseph, Mary, and the
Christ-child, the shepherds and the Wise Men, thronged, as it is, with
wide-eyed children, is to appreciate the wisdom of the Roman Church in
visualizing for the children the drama of the incarnation.
Those who have been brought up in a colder atmosphere can hardly
fail to remember the thrill which they felt when they witnessed or
participated as children in the dialogues, exercises, and choruses
of Sunday school concerts. There has been of late the beginning of a
revival, even in Protestant churches, of the miracle play, in which
boys as well as girls have been delighted to take part, and in which
the spiritual impression of the enacting of Scripture stories without
scenery has been profound upon both actors and audience.
The religious pageant, as well, with its simple yet suggestive scenery,
and its appropriate music, lights the imagination of the children and
young people until they themselves live through, in a measure, the
experiences of those staunch men and women who lived centuries ago
in the Holy Land. By making these Bible characters seem real human
beings, who thought and acted much as we do to-day, we help to make
them a real power to shape character in the lives of our boys and
girls. The program of the church needs to consider more fully the power
of appeal through the dramatic and imaginative instincts of its youth.