182 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD 



child's life that the child that is obedient to his 

 parents, thus fulfilling the highest that he can at 

 that time know, is born from above, is a child of 

 God. This yielding to God by proxy is all that 

 can be expected of him until he has learned about 

 God and His relations. I do not mean by that 

 merely until he has learned to repeat by rote cer- 

 tain definitions from the catechism or elsewhere 

 which teaching I most earnestly commend; but 

 which for the time may be to him but little more 

 than so many words but until that time when his 

 comprehension is intelligent and real. Doing the 

 right and seeking the good is tantamount in his 

 stage of development to yielding himself to God 

 and seeking Him. , 



Accepting God for him must be as the dawning 

 day ; as gradually as the conception is formed, so 

 gradually must be its response. We can not defi- 

 nitely fix the first moment of the first ray, and it 

 would not be of supreme significance if we could ; 

 for the increment of light received the succeeding 

 moment is of as much relative importance as the 

 first dawn. Each succeeding increment of God- 

 consciousness also has its importance. "And if 

 one says, But there must be a time of distinct 

 choice between God and the world, the answer 

 would be that at best this only fixes the beginning 

 of self-consciousness in religion, and not the be- 

 ginning of religion itself. And indeed, self-con- 

 sciousness can rarely be thus accurately dated; 

 but religion in the properly trained Christian 



