Conclusion 383 



I pass to the psychology of religious belief as it has been studied 

 from another side. The literature is abundant ; a satisfactory 

 survey of the subject is Professor Pratt's " Religious Consciousness," 

 This writer makes a useful fourfold classification, which we may 

 call either four aspects of religion, or four temperamental kinds of 

 religion. These are : the traditional, based on the authority of 

 the past ; the rational ; the mystical ; and the practical or moral. 

 These four aspects are to be found in every genuinely religious 

 person ; but in varying degrees according to circumstances, 

 temperament, and, not least, according to age. 



Wordsworth's well-known line, " heaven lies about us in our 

 infancy," can hardly be accepted without qualification. The 

 child's mind is a garden where flowers and weeds grow together. 

 The perverted ingenuity of the psycho-analysts has laid bare the 

 roots of unpleasant vices even in the apparent innocence of the 

 nursery. The child believes in God because he has been told that 

 He exists, and probably imagines Him as resembling in character 

 one or both of his parents. He readily assimilates the supernatural 

 stories of the Old Testament, and it is a serious problem how to 

 teach him without making him believe many things which he will 

 afterwards learn to be untrue. It is not easy for his elders to know 

 what really goes on in the mind of the child. Much of the 

 religiosity which unwise parents delight to observe in their children 

 is pure imitation or innocent hypocrisy And on the other side, 

 the child's inner life is often a turmoil of terrors and anxieties of 

 which his parents know almost nothing. And yet we must always 

 remember that young children not infrequently have an exquisitely 

 beautiful saintliness of character, *' walking with God " in a simple 

 directness of realisation which is rare in adult life, except among 

 the highest saints. Sometimes when a child is called early from 

 this world, the experience of sickness seems to accomplish in a few 

 months all that a lifetime of devotion and sustained moral effort 

 could have produced. 



The period of adolescence has engaged the attention of many 

 researchers, especially in America. It is said to be a time of storm 

 and stress, of repressed cravings, morbid brooding, and alternations 

 of communion with and alienation from God. The ages between 

 eighteen and twenty-five are the usual time for what is called con- 

 version. The subject has been investigated in America by means 

 of the questionnaire, a method which, in my opinion, is unsafe if 



