* The ordinary shrinking of a child from the idea of a
Presence which he cannot see, but which sees him, will not
be felt by children whose only ideas about God are that He
is the Father from whose hand come all beautiful things. In
any home where the parents' thoughts of God are free from
doubt and mistrust, the children's thoughts will be the same;
religion, in their eyes, will be synonymous with
happiness, for God and good will be convertible terms.
There is a deep truth in the idea of Pantheism, that "Nature is an
apparition of the Deity, God in a mask;" that "He is the light of the
morning, the beauty of the noon, and the strength of the sun. He is the
One, the All... The soul of all; more moving than motion, more stable
than rest; fairer than beauty, and stronger than strength. The power of
Nature is God... He is the All; the Reality of all phenomena." The child
fed on this food will have scarcely anything to unlearn, even when he
begins to believe that God is something more than Nature; "the created
All is the symbol of God," and he will pass easily and naturally on from
seeing God in Nature to see Him in a higher form.
Of course, as a Theist, I should myself go much further than this: I
should speak of all natural glory as but the reflection of the Deity,
or as the robe in which He veils His infinite beauty; I should bid
my children rejoice in all happiness as in the gift of a Father who
delights in sharing His joy with His creatures; I should point out that
the pain caused by ignorance of, or by breaking natural laws, is God's
way of teaching men obedience for their own ultimate good: in the
freedom and fulness of Nature's gifts I should teach them to see the
equal love of God for all; through marking that in Nature's visible
kingdom no end can be gained without labour and without using certain
laws, they should learn that in the invisible kingdom they need not
expect to find favouritism, nor think to share the fruits of victory
without patient toil. To all who believe in a God who is also the Father
of Spirits such teaching as this comes easily; as they themselves learn
of God only through His works, so they naturally teach their children to
seek Him in the same way.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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