But this strongly developed religious feeling in a child is both unnatural and harmful, and can never, because it is unreal, produce any lasting good effect. Yet is it none the less true that, at an early age, differing much in different children, the "spiritual sense" does show signs of awakening; that children soon begin to wonder about things around them, and to ask questions which can only find their true answer in the name of God. How to meet these questions, how to train this growing sentiment without crushing it on the one hand, and without unduly stimulating it on the other, is a source of deep anxiety to many a mother's heart in the present day. They are unable to tell their children the stories which satisfied their own childish cravings: no longer can they hold up before the eager faces the picture of the manger at Bethlehem, or dim the bright eyes with the story of the cross on Calvary; no longer can they fold the little hands in prayer to the child of Nazareth, or hush the hasty tongue with the reminder of the obedience of the Virgin's son. To a certain extent this is a loss. A child quickly seizes the concrete; the idea of the child Jesus or the man Jesus is readily grasped by a child's intellect; the God of the Old Testament, the "magnified man," is also, though more dimly, understood. These conceptions of the childhood of humanity suit the childhood of the individual, and it is far more difficult for the child to realize the idea of God when he is divested of these materialistic garments. Yet I speak from experience when I say that it is by no means impossible to train a child into the simplest and happiest feelings as regards the Supreme Being, without degrading the Divine into the human. By one name we can speak of God by which He will be readily welcomed to the child's heart, and that is the name of the Father. Most children are keenly alive to natural beauties, and are quick to observe birds, and flowers, and sunshine; at times they will ask how these things come there, and then it is well to tell them that they are the works of God Thus the child's first notions of the existence of a Power he cannot see or feel will come to him clothed in the things he loves, and will be free from any suggestion of fear.* Even those who regard God from the stand-point of Pantheism may use natural objects so as to train the child into a fearless and happy recognition of the constant working of the Spirit of Nature, and so guard the young mind against that shrinking from, and terror of God, which popular Christianity is so apt to induce. The lad or girl who grows up with even the habit of regarding God as the calm and mighty motive-power of the forces of Nature, changeless, infinite, absolutely trustworthy, will be slow to accept in later life the crude conceptions which incarnate the creative power in a virgin's womb, and ascribe caprice, injustice, and cruelty to the mighty Spirit of the Universe.