In the psychological confession of a writer (Sentenis), a German
philosopher whom his father had submitted to the experiment
advised by the author of “Émile,” he tells us that, left alone
by the death of a tenderly loved wife, this father, a learned
and thoughtful man, had taken his infant son to a retired place
in the country; and not allowing him communication with any
one, he had cultivated the child’s intelligence through the
sight of natural objects placed near him, and by the beauty of
language, almost without books, and in carefully concealing from
him all idea of God. The child reached his tenth year without
having either read or heard that great name. But then his mind
formed what had been denied it. The sun which he saw rise each
morning seemed the all-powerful benefactor of whom he felt the
need. He soon formed the habit of going at dawn to the garden
to pay homage to that god that he himself had made. His father
surprized him one day, and showed him his error by teaching him
that all fixt stars are so many suns distributed in space. But
such was the keen disappointment and the grief of the child
deprived of his worship, that the father, overcome, acknowledged
to him that there is a God, the Creator of the heavens and the
earth.--A. B. BUNN VAN ORMER, “Studies in Religious
Nurture.”
(2673)
=Religious Narrowness=--See REGULARITY, ECCLESIASTICAL.