Editors' Preface 



The Beacon Course in Religious Education, to 

 which this book belongs, provides a manual for each 

 year for pupils from four to twenty-one years of age. 

 Its purpose throughout is to guide those who use it 

 into noble and serviceable manhood and womanhood. 

 This it aims to do by acquainting them with the 

 religious aspects of nature and of social relations, 

 quickening in them at the same time an earnest 

 desire to serve their day and generation. In such a 

 training, knowledge of the world in which we live, its 

 origin and its laws, is of evident importance. 



A study of nature seems peculiarly fitting to 

 pupils entering upon tife Junior period. They have 

 come to that stage in their development when im- 

 agination begins to give place to observation, and 

 desire is quickened to know the world as it actually 

 is. That world they will in some fashion come to 

 know. It is the privilege and therefore the obligation 

 of the teachers of religion to see that the first im- 

 pressions children get of the marvelous world in 

 which they live are religious impressions, and that 

 the habit of associating things seen and physical 

 with things unseen and spiritual is formed early in 

 life. 



The book here offered is intended for use with 

 pupils nine years of age. It can be used with those 



