As the children ask very absurd questions about sex, so they ask very absurd questions about God. As we are taken aback, and say foolish things to them over the one subject, so we do over the other. As we ought to prepare ourselves for the one opportunity, so we ought for the other. As we must answer properly about sex, so we must answer properly about God. It is bad enough to shut them up over sex; it is worse to shut them up over God. They are trying to get at something. They, at their end of life, are like Sir John Falstaff at his end of life――you remember the account of his death, by the hostess of the Boar’s Head Tavern: So ’a cried out――God, God, God!――three or four times. Now I, to comfort him, bid him ’a should not think of God; I hoped there was no need to trouble himself with any such thoughts yet. Whatever we say to the children we must never say that. But who will teach us what we ought to say? Perhaps we might make a rule that we will try not to play down to their childish notions. On the contrary, we will try to tell them that our grown-up notions are hardly less childish than theirs. We cannot worship their little graven image, but we can confess to them that our own image is a very poor thing. They will be glad to hear of the feebleness of our thoughts. We want to lead them out of their first position: we want to get them a little further on the interminable quest. We shall not do that by accepting and adopting their idea of God, using it as an argument or weapon against them. But we may perhaps be of use to them, if we explain to them that we, even we, are nothing better than babies, when it comes to attempting to think of what we really mean by the Divine Name. Let us inform them plainly, that the best that we can do for them is to conduct them out of the poverty of their minds into the poverty of ours. It is possible, also, that we might find it a good rule with children, to make less use of the word “God,” and more use of the word “the Spirit,” or “the Holy Spirit.” This word “Spirit” is not associated in their minds with any bodily shape; it may thus help them, as time goes on, to forsake their little graven image. I do believe that these two ideas――the idea of sex, and the idea of God――are of the utmost importance to us in our dealings with children and with adolescents. If we are to think of constructing and reconstructing human lives as if they were houses, let us have the proper materials for it, and let us handle them wisely. These two ideas are good materials; they will take any amount of construction and of reconstruction, and, if we build as we ought, they will stand the very heavy strain which will be put on them. Please forgive me, that I am treating my subject on these old-fashioned lines; I did not choose it: the authorities chose it for me. They ought to have given it not to a mere grandpapa, but to somebody worthy of the unmusical name of an educationalist.