"It is very nice to think
The world is full of meat and drink,
And little children saying grace
In every Christian kind of place."
The succeeding little guests said the dear and familiar "blessing" of so
many children:--
"For what we are about to receive, O Lord, make us truly thankful."
My little friend into whose life so grievous a sorrow had come was the
last to say her grace. It was the poem of Miss Josephine Preston Peabody
entitled "Before Meat:--
"Hunger of the world.
When we ask a grace
Be remembered here with us,
By the vacant place.
"Thirst with nought to drink,
Sorrow more than mine,
May God some day make you laugh,
With water turned to wine!"
There was a silence when she finished, among the children as well as
among the grown persons present. "I don't _quite_ understand what your
grace means," the little girl of the house said at last to her small
guest.
"It means that I still have my mamma, and she still has me," replied the
child. "Some people haven't anybody. It means that; and it means we ask
God to let them have Him. My mamma told me, when she taught it to me to
say instead of the grace I used to say when we had my papa."
The little girl explained with the simple seriousness and sweetness so
characteristic of the answers children make to questions asked them
regarding things in any degree mystical. The other small girls listened
as sweetly and as seriously. Then, with one accord, they returned to the
gay delights of the occasion. They were a laughing, prattling, eagerly
happy little party, and of them all not one was more blithe than the
little girl who had said grace last.
The child's intimate companionship with her mother in the sorrow which
was her sorrow too had not taken from her the ability for participation
in childish happiness, also hers by right. Was not this because the
companionship was of so deep a nature? The mother, in letting her little
girl share her grief, let her share too the knowledge of the source to
which she looked for consolation. Above all, she not only told her of
heavier sorrows; she told her how those greater griefs might be
lightened. Children in America enter into so many of the things of their
parents' lives, is it not good that they are given their parts even in
those spiritual things that are most near and sacred?
I have among my friends a little boy whose father finds God most surely
in the operation of natural law. Indeed, he has often both shocked and
distressed certain of his neighbors by declaring it to be his belief
that nowhere else could God be found. "His poor wife!" they were wont to
exclaim; "what must she think of such opinions?" And later, when the
little boy was born, "That unfortunate baby!" they sighed; "how will his
mother teach him religion when his father has these strange ideas?" That
the wife seemed untroubled by the views of her husband, and that the
baby, as he grew into little-boyhood, appeared very similar to other
children as far as prayers and Bible stories and even attendance at
church were concerned, did not reassure the disturbed neighbors. For the
child's father continued to express--if possible, more decidedly--his
disquieting convictions. "Evidently, though," said one neighbor, "he
doesn't put such thoughts into the head of his child."
Apparently he did not. I knew the small boy rather intimately, and I was
aware that his father, after the custom of most American parents, took
the child into his confidence with regard to many other matters. The
little boy was well acquainted with his father's political belief, for
example. I had had early evidence of this. But it was not until a much
later time, and then indirectly, that I saw that the little boy was
possessed too of a knowledge of his father's religious faith.
[Illustration: "DO YOU LIKE MY NEW HYMN?"]
I was ill in a hospital a year or two ago, and the little boy came with
his mother to see me. A clergyman happened to call at the same time. It
was Sunday, and the clergyman suggested to my small friend that he say a
psalm or a hymn for me.
"My new one, that daddy has just taught me?" the child inquired, turning
to his mother.
She smiled at him. "Yes, dearest," she said gently.
The little boy came and stood beside my bed, and, in a voice that
betokened a love and understanding of every line, repeated Mrs.
Browning's lovely poem:--
"They say that God lives very high!
But if you look above the pines,
You cannot see our God. And why?
"And if you dig down in the mines,
You never see Him in the gold,
Though from Him all that's glory shines.
"God is so good, He wears a fold
Of heaven and earth across His face--
Like secrets kept, for love, untold.
"But still I feel that His embrace
Slides down, by thrills, through all things made,
Through sight and sound of every place:
"As if my tender mother laid
On my shut lids, her kisses' pressure,
Half-waking me at night; and said,
'Who kissed you through the dark, dear guesser?'"
Beyond question the clergyman had expected a less unusual selection than
this; but he smiled very kindly at the little boy as he said the
beautiful words. At the conclusion he merely said, "You have a good
father, my boy."
"Do you like my new hymn?" the child asked me.
"Yes," I replied. "Did your father tell you what it means?" I added,
suddenly curious.
"No," said my small friend; "I didn't ask him. You see," he
supplemented, "it tells _itself_ what it means!"
The things of religion so often to the children tell themselves what
they mean! Only the other day I heard a little girl recounting to her
young uncle, learned in the higher criticism, the story of the Creation.
"Just only _six days_ it took God to make _everything_" she said; "think
of that!"
"My dear child," remonstrated her uncle, "_that_ isn't the point at all
--the _amount_ of time it required! As a matter of fact, it took
thousands of years to make the world. The word 'day' in that connection
means a certain period of time, not twenty-four hours."
"Oh!" cried the little girl, in disappointment; "that takes the
wonderfulness out of it!"
"Not at all," protested her young uncle. "And, supposing it did, can you
not see that the world could not have been made in six of _our_ days?"
"Why," said the child, in surprise, "I should think it could have been!"
"For what reason?" her uncle asked, in equal amazement.
"Because God was doing it!" the child exclaimed.
Her uncle did not at once reply. When he did, it was to say, "You are
right about _that_, my dear."
Sometimes it happens that a child finds in our careful explanation of
the meaning of a religious belief or practice a different or a further
significance than we have indicated. I once had an especially striking
experience of this kind.
I was visiting a family in which there were several children, cared for
by a nurse of the old-fashioned, old-world type. She was a woman well
beyond middle age, and of a frank and simple piety. There was hardly a
circumstance of daily life for which she was not ready with an
accustomed ejaculatory prayer or thanksgiving. One day I chanced to
speak to her of a mutual friend, long dead. "God rest her soul!" said
the old nurse, in a low tone.
"Why did she say that?" the little four-year-old girl of the house asked
me. "I never heard her say that before!"
"It is a prayer that some persons always say when speaking of any one
who is dead; especially any one they knew and loved," I explained.
Later in the day, turning over a portfolio of photographs with the
little girl, I took up a picture of a fine, faithful-eyed dog. "Whose
dog is this?" I asked. "What a good one he is!"
"He was ours," replied the child, "and he was very good; we liked him.
But he is dead now--" She paused as if struck by a sudden remembrance.
Then, "God rest his soul!" she sighed, softly.
Most of the answers I read in response to the question, "Should
churchgoing on the part of children be compulsory or voluntary?" did not
end with the brief statement that it should be voluntary, and the reason
why; a considerable number of them went on to say: "The children should
of course be inspired and encouraged to go. They should be taught that
it is a privilege. Their Sunday-school teachers and their minister, as
well as their parents, can help to make them wish to go."
Certainly their Sunday-school teachers and ministers can, and do. The
answers I have quoted took for granted the attendance of children at
Sunday-school. Not one of them suggested that this was a matter
admitting of free choice on the part of the children. "But it isn't,"
declared an experienced Sunday-school teacher who is a friend of mine
when I said this to her. "Going to Sunday-school isn't worship; it is
learning whom to worship and how. Naturally, children go, just as they
go to week-day school, whether they like to or not; I must grant," she
added by way of amendment, "that they usually do like to go!"
Our Sunday-schools have become more and more like our week-day schools.
The boys and girls are taught in them whom to worship and how, but they
are taught very much after the manner that, in the week-day schools,
they are instructed concerning secular things. That custom, belonging to
a time not so far in the past but that many of us remember it, of
consigning the "infant class" of the Sunday-school to any amiable young
girl in the parish who could promise to be reasonably regular in meeting
it does not obtain at the present day. Sunday-school teachers are
trained, and trained with increasing care and thoroughness, for their
task.
[Illustration: CHILDREN GO TO CHURCH]
Readiness to teach is no longer a sufficient credential. The amiable
young girl must now not only be willing to teach, she must also be
willing to learn how to teach. In the earlier time practically any well-
disposed young man of the congregation who would consent to take charge
of a class of boys was eagerly allotted that class without further
parley. This, too, is not now the case. The young man, before beginning
to teach the boys, is obliged to prepare himself somewhat specifically
for such work. In my own parish the boys' classes of the Sunday-school
are taught by young men who are students in the Theological School of
which my parish church is the chapel. In an adjacent parish the "infant
class" is in charge of an accomplished kindergartner. Surely such
persons are well qualified to help to inspire and to encourage the
children to regard churchgoing as a privilege, and to make them wish to
go!
And the minister! I am inclined to think that the minister helps more
than any one else, except the father and mother, to give the children
this inspiration, this encouragement. Children go to church now, when
churchgoing is voluntary, quite as much as they went when it was
compulsory. They learn very early to wish to go; they see with small
difficulty that it is a privilege. Their Sunday-school teachers might
help them, even their parents might help them, but, unless the minister
helped them, would this be so?
There are so many ways in which the minister does his part in this
matter of the child's relation to the church, and to those things for
which the church stands. They are happily familiar to us through our
child friends: the "children's service" at Christmas and at Easter; the
"talks to children" on certain Sundays of the year. These are some of
them. And there are other, more individual, more intimate ways.
The other day a little girl who is a friend of mine asked me to make out
a list of books likely to be found in the "children's room" of the near-
by public library that I thought she would enjoy reading. On the list I
put "The Little Lame Prince," the charming story by Dinah Mulock. Having
completed the list, I read it aloud to the little girl. When I reached
Miss Mulock's book, she interrupted me.
"'The Little Lame Prince,' did you say? Is that in the library? I
thought it was in the Bible."
"The Bible!" I exclaimed.
"Yes," the child said, in some surprise; "don't you remember? He was
Jonathan's little boy--Jonathan, that was David's friend--David, that
killed the giant, you know."
I at once investigated. The little girl was quite correct. "Who told you
about him?" I inquired.
"Our minister," she replied. "He read it to me and some of the other
children."
This, too, a bit later, I investigated. I found that the minister had
not read the story as it is written in the Bible, but a version of it
written by himself especially for this purpose and entitled "The Little
Lame Prince."
At church, as elsewhere, the children of our nation are quick to
observe, and to make their own, opportunities for doing as the grown-ups
do. When occasion arises, they slip with cheerful and confiding ease
into the places of their elders.
One Sunday, last summer, I chanced to attend a church in a little
seaside village. When the moment arrived for taking up the collection,
no one went forward to attend to that duty. I was told afterward that
the man who always did it was most unprecedentedly absent. There were a
number of other men in the rather large congregation, but none of them
stirred as the clergyman stood waiting after having read several
offertory sentences. I understood afterward that they "felt bashful,"
not being used to taking up the collection. The clergyman hesitated for
a moment, and then read another offertory sentence. As he finished, a
little boy not more than nine years old stepped out of a back pew, where
he was sitting with his mother, and, going up to the clergyman, held out
his hand for the plate. The clergyman gravely gave it to him, and the
child, without the slightest sign of shyness, went about the church
collecting the offerings of the congregation. This being done, he, with
equal un-self-consciousness, gave the plate again to the clergyman and
returned to his seat beside his mother.
"Did you tell him to do it?" I inquired of the mother, later.
"Oh, no," she answered; "he asked me if he might. He said he knew how,
he saw it done every Sunday, and he was sure the minister would let
him."
American children of the present day are surer than the children of any
other nation have ever been that their fathers and their mothers and
their ministers will allow them liberty to do in church, as well as with
respect to going to church, such things as they know how to do, and
eagerly wish to do. In our national love and reverence for childhood we
willingly give the children the great gift that we give reluctantly, or
not at all, to grown people--the liberty to worship God as they choose.