Fifty-Two Story Talks To Boys And Girls.

by Howard J. Chidley.

FOREWORD

No department of Christian literature is of more importance for the future of the Church than that which seeks to enlist the children in the service of Christ. Mr. Chidley, by his gifts and experience as a pastor and a teacher of the young, is eminently fitted to contribute towards this most vital phase of Christian activity. His successful career in the Central Congregational Church of Brooklyn, where I shared the privilege of his valuable co-operation, and in the Trinity Church of East Orange, New Jersey, of which he is now the beloved and honored pastor, bespeak the merits of this series of addresses to Boys and Girls. They are at once an efficient protest against the Protestant neglect of the young and a remedy for that neglect. Parents, instructors, and guardians of the juvenile members of our Churches will be wise to read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest the teachings and exhortations presented here. It is a book of absorbing interest, and the little folks and those of older years can not fail to be both profited and delighted by it. The revolution in Christian thought concerning the relation of children to the Church and the Kingdom of G.o.d is apparent on every page. Dr. Martineau averred that children do not require to be led so much as not to be misled, and in these "Fifty-two Stories" we have a model application of his weighty aphorism. The receptive and expansive hours of child nature are admirably considered, and what is here written has a direct bearing upon its spiritual development and welfare.

S. PARKES CADMAN.

_The Parish House,_ _Central Congregational Church,_ _Brooklyn, N.Y., March 2, 1914._

INTRODUCTION

In a certain Western university the president receives a salary of ten thousand dollars a year for training young men and young women, while not many miles distant from that university is a stock-farm the superintendent of which receives a salary of twelve thousand dollars for training high-bred colts. That colt-trainer is at hand when the colt is foaled, and before it rises to its feet has rubbed down its head and put a halter upon it, so that from birth it shall be accustomed to the feeling of the halter.

From that time the training of the colt is not suspended for a moment.

If in training it to travel in harness a piece of paper should blow across the training-course, causing the colt to shy, an a.s.sistant holds the paper on the opposite side of the road, so that the animal shall have the kink taken out of its nervous system and its tendency to shy again in the same direction be at once corrected.

The old method was to allow a colt to run wild until two or three years of age, then "break it in." The result was apt to be either a "cowed"

animal or a nervous horse.

Would that we were manifesting as much wisdom in the religious training of our children as that horse-trainer. But unfortunately we are pursuing largely the old method, allowing our children to get full of all sorts of mental kinks up through those first plastic three or four years, and then handing them over to the church kindergarten-teacher for one hour a week, expecting her to straighten out all these aberrations and give back to the parents a normally religious child.

Many parents seem to a.s.sume that the child's brain is lying dormant during those first few years, when, as a matter of fact, the child's mind during these years is most receptive, and expanding at a rate never after equalled. The nervous system is receiving impressions which, though in after-years the child has no _conscious_ memory of it, are yet indelibly chiselled there for good or ill.

It is high time that parents and religious teachers took more cognizance than they do of this fact.

There are other parents who deliberately refuse to give their children any religious training during this period for fear of "unduly influencing" them from the religious standpoint. This point of view is stated, whether seriously or not, in the following quotation from a recent writer: "I think it is a bad thing to be what is known as 'brought up,' don't you? Why should we--poor, helpless little children, all soft and resistless--be squeezed and jammed into the iron bands of parental points of view? Why should we have points of view at all? Why not for those few divine years when we are still so near G.o.d, leave us just to wonder? We are not given a chance. On our pulpy little minds our parents carve their opinions, and the ma.s.s slowly hardens, and all those deep, narrow, up-and-down strokes harden with it, and the first thing the best of us have to do on growing up is to waste precious time beating at the things, to try to get them out. Surely the child of the most admirable and wise parents is richer with his own faulty but original point of view than he would be fitted out with the choicest selections of maxims and conclusions that he did not have to think out for himself. I could never be a schoolmistress. I should be afraid to teach the children. They know more than I do. They know how to be happy, how to live from day to day, in G.o.dlike indifference to what may come next. And is not trying to be happy the secret we spend our lives trying to guess? Why, then, should I, by forcing them to look through my stale eyes, show them, as through a dreadful magnifying-gla.s.s, the terrific possibilities, the cruel explosiveness of what they had been lightly tossing across the daisies, and thinking they were only toys?"

All of which sounds very pretty, but when simmered down, the wisdom, if wisdom it be, of a statement like that can be compressed into the old adage, "Where ignorance is bliss 'tis folly to be wise." But the point is that the world has pretty generally come to the conclusion that bliss is not necessarily the most healthful thing, either for adults or children. "Soft and resistless!" Precisely, there is the crux. If these "soft and resistless" minds do not receive good impressions they will receive bad ones, and it is the part of wisdom to get the good in first.

Where a mind is "to let," some sort of tenant is sure to occupy.

Coleridge put the case in a nutsh.e.l.l when an English deist inveighed bitterly against the rigid instruction of Christian homes. The deist said: "Consider the helplessness of a little child. Before it has wisdom or judgment to decide for itself, it is prejudiced in favour of Christianity. How selfish is the parent who stamps his religious ideas into a child's receptive nature, as a moulder stamps the hot iron with his model! I shall prejudice my children neither for Christianity nor for Buddhism, nor for Atheism, but allow them to wait for their mature years. Then they can open the question and decide for themselves." Later Coleridge led his friend into the garden, and then whimsically exclaimed: "How selfish is the gardener to ruthlessly stamp his prejudice in favour of roses, violets and strawberries into a receptive garden-bed. The time was when in April I pulled up the young weeds,--the parsley, the thistles,--and planted the garden-beds out with vegetables and flowers. Now I have decided to permit the garden to go until September. Then the black clods can choose for themselves between c.o.c.kleburrs, currants and strawberries." The deist saw the point.

Another weakness in our system of religious training for children is manifest at the adolescence-period of the child. We have been in the habit of allowing the child to consider the Bible-school as his church.

We send him to the Bible-school in his very early years, but make no demands upon him as far as specific church-attendance is concerned. And at the kindergarten-period we are probably wise in this; for after the child has attended kindergarten for an hour, it is too great a tax upon him to require him to sit through an hour's church-service. But after the kindergarten-period it seems to me the plain duty of parents to encourage the child to attend church, though not necessarily for the entire service; for if the child does not establish a church-going _habit_ during these plastic years, the probability is that he will never form it. This partially explains why there is such a leakage between the Bible-school and the church. When the child gets "too old for Bible-school," not having formed the church-going habit, he is stranded

"Between two worlds, One dead, the other powerless to be born."

And the result is he drifts away from the Church.

In the endeavour to remedy this situation in his own Church it has been the custom of the writer to have all children from seven to twelve years of age in the Bible-school, which meets on Sunday morning before church, attend the morning wors.h.i.+p for the first fifteen minutes. During this time they hear the Call to Wors.h.i.+p, the Invocation, the Lord's Prayer, the Children's Sermon, and the Anthem by the choir. At the close of the anthem the children file out with their teachers as the adult congregation rises for the Responsive Lesson. In this way the children are establis.h.i.+ng a church-going habit, with the result that they early begin to feel that something is wrong on Sunday if they have not been to church.

A word as to the content of the sermons preached. I believe that a child's religion ought to be largely of the motor type. That is, it should be concerned with getting religion into the child's hands and feet. In other words, it should seek to establish in him a habit of right-doing. For this reason his religion should be of the most practical sort, leaving the theory to come later. He should have sufficient theological pegs to hang his morality on, but he should be troubled little with dogma. For this reason his religion will probably have largely to do with the here and now. He cannot be much interested in an other-worldly religion. The normal child at this period will not sing with any great enthusiasm "I want to be an angel." For this world is to him just then a very interesting and fascinating place. He is for that reason ready also to admire men of action, and is wide open for the influences of hero-wors.h.i.+p. And while he cannot be argued into being a Christian, for he is not sufficiently awake to logic; and while he cannot be coerced, for he possesses the dynamic of a locomotive combined with the resistance of a mule, he can be magnetized into being a Christian if there is set as his teacher and example a virile, magnetic man. The boy will open his soul to him as he does his windows to welcome the breath of May. Such considerations as these have determined the content of these sermons.

The author makes no claim to originality for much of the material presented, but he has given a new setting to old truths, a setting which experience has proved to be interesting to the children of his own congregation.

It may seem that the wording of some of these sermons is beyond the grasp of the children for whom it was intended. Two things are to be noted in this connection. First, a child resents being talked down to.

He soon detects a condescending smile and mock affability in a speaker.

And when he detects these he closes the door of his heart against the message. Second, it is better to give the child something to grow to, provided it is not too far beyond his grasp. But here again experience is the best criterion. The children who have heard these sermons have enjoyed them, and have carried their substance and lessons home with them to repeat to older ears.

They are offered to the public, therefore, in the hope that they may suggest a method, add a little to the scant supply of material for children's sermons, and serve to interest other children as well.

H.J.C.

_Orange, New Jersey._

A BIBLE-RIDDLE

Boys and girls are all fond of riddles, and I am sure you will be surprised to know that there is one of the best riddles of all in the Bible, one that is very hard to guess, and yet one that has a fine lesson in it when I tell you the answer.

This riddle was told by Samson on his wedding-day, and n.o.body would ever have guessed it if his wife had not let the secret out.

But first I must tell where Samson got his riddle. Well, one day with his father and mother he was walking down the road to the land where the Philistines lived. And according to the story, a young lion rushed out at him from behind some bushes, and Samson, being a very strong man, broke its jaws and killed it, and left its carca.s.s behind some bushes by the roadside.

Some time afterward he was going down that road again, and he turned aside to see what had become of the carca.s.s. And what do you think he found there? This: a swarm of wild bees had made their nest in that carca.s.s. Now, Samson was fond of honey, and he took the comb of honey with him and ate it as he walked along the road. And as he walked he made up this riddle: "Out of the eater came forth meat, and out of the strong came forth sweetness." That means that out of this lion which would have eaten him up he got something to eat, and out of this strong beast he got something sweet.

I suppose you will wonder what sort of lesson for boys and girls anyone can draw from that. You say you will never meet a lion on the roadside.

I am not so sure of that. I think boys and girls meet things every day that are very much like lions. Of course, in these days we call them temptations. But, then, they jump out at you very suddenly and unexpectedly sometimes. And they would devour your souls just as this lion would have eaten up Samson had he not killed it. And when you kill a temptation by not giving way to it you can make a riddle just like Samson, and you can say, too, "Out of the eater came forth meat, and out of the strong came forth sweetness." For just like Samson, every time you come to the place where you have overcome a temptation,--it may be to say unkind things, or to be quick-tempered, or to be hateful,--you will find that you will be stronger to overcome it next time. And the remembrance of how you were able to overcome your feelings will be sweet, just as that honey was to Samson. G.o.d says that if we trust Him, "the young lion shall ye trample under foot."

CLOSED GATES

If any of you boys and girls, while riding through a great city on an express train, ever chance to put your head out of the car-window and look forward along the tracks, you will see several blocks ahead of the train people in carriages, on foot, and in street-cars crossing the railway-tracks in great numbers, and it seems as if the train would have to stop, or else it would run over somebody. But the train never slackens speed. The engineer keeps on blowing the whistle, and the train thunders along at the usual rate.

Then you will notice when you get near those crossings that all the gates are down and the railway-tracks are perfectly clear.

That is the way with many of the difficulties we face in life. We set out to do the thing our conscience tells us to do, and it seems as if the road were full of obstructions. But you just go straight ahead, determined to do your duty, and lo, the hindrances disappear. When an earnest man goes right ahead, the crowd usually opens up to let him through.

As you get older and face the world you will find it looks like a great, fierce giant. But really its fierce look is caused by a false-face that it wears to frighten faint-hearted people. You go boldly up and take hold of his beard, as David faced the giant, and you will be surprised to find that not only the beard but the whole mask comes off in your hands, and there is a kindly countenance behind. For the world would rather see you succeed than fail.

I heard of a young man the other day who went into an office in Chicago to sell a bill of goods. The man behind the desk was very brusque and fierce-looking, and snapped out, "Well, what do you want here?"

The young man promptly replied, "I want first to be treated as a gentleman, and then I may talk business to you."