Comenius exaggerated the importance of religious training during the child’s earliest years. While recognizing that reasoning was necessary for the best results in religious instruction, he nevertheless overburdens the memory with formal religious instructions. Before the child is six years old he is to be taught the Lord’s Prayer, the Apostles’ Creed, the Confession of Faith, the Ten Commandments, and numerous hymns. In spite of his unreasonable demands on the memory, most of Comenius’ counsels to mothers on the religious instruction of their little ones are sane and helpful. The spirit of the parents, he rightly suggests, is all important in religious instruction; outward piety is not enough. The religious nature unfolds slowly, and unusual patience and foresight are required in its nurture and development. All this training—physical, mental, moral, and religious—has been preliminary to the formal training in the school, which is to begin in the sixth or seventh year of the child’s life. The transition step from the home to the school is now to be made; for just “as little plants after they have grown up from their seed are transplanted into orchards, for their more successful growth, so it is expedient that children, cherished and nurtured in the home, having acquired strength of mind and body, should be delivered to the care of teachers.” CHAPTER VIII STUDY OF LANGUAGE Dominance of Latin in the seventeenth century—Methods of study characterized by Comenius. The _Janua_—Purpose and plan—Its success. _Atrium_ and _Vestibulum_—Their relation to the _Janua_. The _Orbis pictus_—How conceived—Its popularity—Use of pictures. _Methodus novissima_—Principles of language teaching—Function of examples—Place of oral and written language in education. Recalling that Latin occupied such an exalted place in the schools of Comenius’ day, it is not at all surprising that he gave so much attention to the study of language. Latin absorbed practically all the energies of the pupils, and with results that were far from satisfactory. A historian of the period says, “Boys and teachers were alike unhappy; great severity of discipline was practised, and after all was done, and all the years of youth had been spent in the study mainly of the Latin, the results were contemptible.” The study of Latin is thus characterized by Comenius: 1. The Latin language is taught abstractly without a knowledge of the things which the words denote. Words should be learned in connection with things already known; it is false to conclude that, because children know how to utter words, they therefore understand them.