While a child is thus apt to think of God as nicer than the nicest gentleman visitor who is wont to bring toys and do wondrous things for his delectation, he commonly imports into his conception a touch of human caprice. Fear may readily suggest to a child who has had some orthodox instruction that the wind howling at night is the noise of God's anger, or that the thunder is due to a sudden determination of the Creator to shoot him dead. The sceptical child, again, who is by no means so rare, may early begin to wonder how God can be so good and yet allow men to kill animals, and allow Satan to do such a lot of wicked things. One of the hardest puzzles set to a child by the common religious instruction is the doctrine of God's eternity. The idea of a vast, endless "for ever," whether past or future, seems to be positively overwhelming to many young minds. The continual frustration of the attempt to reach a resting-place in a beginning or an end may bring on something of mental giddiness. Hence the wearisome perplexities of the first thoughts about God's past. The question, "Who made God?" seems to be one to which all inquiring young minds are led at a certain stage of child-thought. When told that God has always been, unchanging, and knowing no youth, he wants to get behind this "always was," just as at an earlier stage of his development he wanted to get behind the barrier of the blue hills. Other mysteries of the orthodox faith may undergo a characteristic solution in the hard-working mind of a child. A friend tells me that when a child he was much puzzled by the doctrine of the Trinity. He happened to be an only child, and so he was led to put a meaning into it by likening it to his own family group, in which the Holy Ghost had, rather oddly, to take the place of the mother. Thoughtful children by odd processes of early logic are apt when interpreting the words and actions of their teachers to endow God with surprising attributes. For example, a boy of four asked his aunt one Sunday to tell him why God was so fond of three-penny bits. Asked why he thought God had this particular liking, he explained by saying that he noticed that on Sunday morning people ask for a three-penny bit "instead of" three pennies, and that as they take it to church he supposed that they gave it to God. I have tried to show that the more thoughtful children seek to put meaning into the communications about the unseen world which they are wont to receive from their elders. Perhaps these elders if they knew what is apt to go on in a child's mind would reconsider some of the answers which they give to the little questioner, and select with more care the truths which, as they flatter themselves, they are making so plain to their little ones. CHAPTER VII. THE BATTLE WITH FEARS: (_a_) THE ONSLAUGHT.