186 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD 



and not entirely adjusted to human problems and 

 human nature. The child is God's own from the 

 foundation of the world; it is hard to believe 

 that he could be God's only by some strange work- 

 ing against his nature, and subsequent to childish 

 development, and at the best God could only have 

 a mere remnant of his life. 



Believing earnestly, as we do, in the normality 

 of childlike religion, we nevertheless believe that 

 the growing youth is to have some crises in his 

 development. He may proceed gradually on the 

 upgrade of life, when suddenly a new vision, a 

 wider horizon, opens upon him, with greater op- 

 portunities, new privileges, and heavier responsi- 

 bilities than those before known. Will he enter 

 upon this larger day? The decision is not the 

 question of conversion from a life of sin; but it 

 is a question of the further progress or retrogres- 

 sion of life. ' ' We have failed to make the proper 

 distinction between conversion and the coming 

 into clearness of spiritual consciousness. This 

 latter is necessary in the case of every person, but 

 conversion is necessary only in the case of those 

 who have fallen away from God through volun- 

 tary sin. Failing to make this distinction, we have 

 fallen into the error of regarding certain expe- 

 riences which come naturally to children in their 

 moral and spiritual development as conversion, 

 where in reality it is only what may be called * the 

 spiritual awakening/ that is a necessary incident 

 to the spiritual life, when that which lies latent 

 and undefined in the mind becomes active and 



