Children do not naturally love God. They have no great capacity for
an idea so subtle and mature as the idea of God. While they are still
children in a home and cared for, life is too kind and easy for them to
feel any great need of God. All things are still something God-like. . . .
The true God, our modern minds insist upon believing, can have no
appetite for unnatural praise and adoration. He does not clamour for
the attention of children. He is not like one of those senile uncles who
dream of glory in the nursery, who love to hear it said, “The children
adore him.” If children are loved and trained to truth, justice, and
mutual forbearance, they will be ready for the true God as their needs
bring them within his scope. They should be left to their innocence, and
to their trust in the innocence of the world, as long as they can be.
They should be told only of God as a Great Friend whom some day they
will need more and understand and know better. That is as much as most
children need. The phrases of religion put too early into their mouths
may become a cant, something worse than blasphemy.
Yet children are sometimes very near to God. Creative passion stirs in
their play. At times they display a divine simplicity. But it does not
follow that therefore they should be afflicted with theological
formulae or inducted into ceremonies and rites that they may dislike
or misinterpret. If by any accident, by the death of a friend or a
distressing story, the thought of death afflicts a child, then he may
begin to hear of God, who takes those that serve him out of their slain
bodies into his shining immortality. Or if by some menial treachery,
through some prowling priest, the whisper of Old Bogey reaches our
children, then we may set their minds at ease by the assurance of his
limitless charity. . . .
With adolescence comes the desire for God and to know more of God, and
that is the most suitable time for religious talk and teaching.