Little children in the church of Christ

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Contents

Chapter

I. Shall We Have a Religious Meeting

for the Little Children ? .

I. Shall We Have A Religious Meeting For The Little Children ?

CHRIST'S offer of salvation is really to every creature. During his visible sojourn among men, he showed the sincerity of this offer by graciously receiving every sort of man who came, every woman, even the vilest, with tender love, and by his extraordinary welcome to the children. Those who stood in the way of the approaching child greatly displeased him. He thus made Christianity unique, as also the religion for the child. The child not simply to be one of its subjects, but the typical subject. All souls must come to Christ as the little child comes.

This Gospel concerning children has now so thoroughly permeated human thoughts and feelings that unusual imagination is required to put ourselves for the moment into the attitude of some ancient nations regarding the child. Yet for a more just appreciation of the Gospel let us make the effort. We go to ancient Sparta, the land of Lycurgus and Leonidas, and how we are horrified to find along the roadside, or in a clump of bushes, an abandoned infant ; another, a little farther on it may be, pitifully moaning out its spark of life. No one is concerned about it ; and if some one is annoyed, and dashes out the little life, it is as if you killed a limping chick on the farm. Possibly another is brought while you stand reflecting, and is cast into the same place. Why this barbarism in a people otherwise really far advanced ? You are told it is the custom and law of their civilization that all delicate or defective infants shall be cast out to perish, to be devoured by wild beasts, or to be reared, by any one who will, to a life of shame.

But you say it must be better at Athens. Sparta is proverbially cruel, and under a stern military system. Athens surely has more humanity and tenderness. You proceed to the city of the greatest intellects of all time, and the same heartless practice of " exposure " of certain classes of infants prevails. There is a great " chasm," according to Plutarch, into which the condemned innocents are cast. Herod slew a few children in Bethlehem, and the world has wept with Rachel for eighteen hundred years. But Athenian customs out-Herod Herod.

Worst of all, Plato, in his ideal republic, could conceive of nothing better than such a disposition of unpromising offspring. And Aristotle advocated it. " Let it be the law," he said, "that nothing imperfect or maimed shall be brought up." Plato's ideal was the entire sundering of the family tie, and the herding together of children under official nurses.

This was Greece in her loftiest civilization. When we go to the Brahmanism of India, what horrors of infanticide in the name of religion meet us. Rachel weeps at Bethlehem, but the gods steel the hearts of Hindu mothers. The sacred Ganges has buried more children than all the cemeteries of America. The Old Testament makes us familiar with Moloch, that horrible idol into whose iron arms, made red-hot, little children were laid in sacrifice, while deafening drums drowned their pitiful cries. Girl babies in all heathen lands, how unfortunate ! Unwelcome when they come, if not murdered at birth, how rough and thorny their way !

Who does not praise God for the teachings of Christ concerning children ? But let us beware lest we fail to get his full loving purpose concerning them. The Christian world is yet far from looking upon children with the eyes of Christ.

Writing for those who are learning, though late, thus to see somewhat with the eyes of Christ, we feel the need of a Children's Meeting supplementary to the Sunday-school. We have nothing but praise for the enthusiastic and effective labors of the faithful teachers, now the rule in our Sabbath-schools ; and the love for Bible study they have patiently developed is largely the cause of the present extraordinary interest in all Biblical discussions. But the Sunday-school is ever a school, with a school atmosphere necessarily, and properly, in view of the importance of Bible knowledge, and cannot, therefore, satisfy the religious needs of the child any more fully than those of the adult. The Christian father and mother want a prayer meeting, a testimony meeting, and preaching ; and the peculiar spiritual help which these supply, in addition to the best possible Sunday-school, is also needed by the child.

And as an easy transition to church fellowship, the Children's Meeting has an important place. The Catechumen Class of the Lutheran and Reformed Churches leading to a decision

SHALL WE HAVE A RELIGIOUS MEETING? fj

to become Christians and to unite with the church, is such a meeting, but something like it for much younger children is required. The Pastoral Lectures given in courses by many Presbyterian and Baptist ministers, which are evangelistic meetings for the salvation of young people, are similar, but also fail to reach down far enough. Children under ten years, under six years of age — indeed, at two or three, as we know by many actual cases — are deeply interested in religious instruction, and ought to have the very best that our day can furnish. And meetings for children ought to be continuous, not falling into the mistake so justly criticised in Methodist winter revival meetings, that of caring little or nothing to save souls the rest of the year.

The Methodist Episcopal Church has probably the most advanced provision for children of any Protestant church. Though growing out of infant baptism, it is not dependent upon that, and churches not practicing such baptism might adopt its Children's Meeting, as leading up to baptism instead of following it. In fact, provision is made that children unbaptized shall also be admitted. They have equal rights in it with the others, and a meeting of this kind in a Methodist Church might be held with not a baptized child in it, if such a Methodist Church could be found.

We give the substance of the Methodist law on this subject : *

"We hold that all children, by virtue of the unconditional benefits of the Atonement, are members of the kingdom of God, and therefore graciously entitled to baptism ; but as infant baptism contemplates a course of religious instruction and discipline, it is expected of all parents or guardians who present their children for baptism that they will use all diligence in bringing them up in conformity to the word of God ; and they should be solemnly admonished of this obligation, and earnestly exhorted to faithfulness therein.

" We regard all children who have been baptized as placed in visible covenant relation to God, and under the special care and supervision of the church.

" The preacher in charge shall organize the baptized children of the church, at the age of ten years or younger, into classes, and appoint suitable leaders (male or female), whose duty it shall be to meet them in class once a week and instruct them in the nature, design, and obligations of baptism, and the truths of religion nec-

* Methodist Discipline, pp. 37"4 2 -

SHALL WE HAVE A RELIGIOUS MEETING i J

essary to make them wise unto salvation ; urge them to give regular attendance upon the means of grace ; advise, exhort and encourage them to an immediate consecration of their hearts and lives to God, and inquire into the state of their religious experience ; provided, that children unbaptized are not to be excluded from these classes.

" Whenever baptized children shall have attained an age sufficient to understand the obligations of religion, and shall give evidence of piety, they may be admitted into full membership in the church, on the recommendation of a leader, with whom they have met at least six months in class, by publicly assenting before the church to the baptismal covenant, and also to the usual questions on doctrine and discipline.

" Whenever a baptized child shall, by orphanage or otherwise, become deprived of Christian guardianship, the preacher in charge shall ascertain, and report to the leaders' and stewards' meeting the facts in the case ; and such provision shall be made for the Christian training of the child as the circumstances of the case admit and require."

This is an admirable care of the children in the church. The class, or Children's Meetings provided by it, may be held in towns and villages on Saturday afternoon ; in country places before the morning service, and in cities, a forty-minute service on some week-day, in the church after school hours.

Indeed, with a due sense of the necessity of more direct and systematic work for the conversion and training of children, some time will always be found for the little company to gather.

The general church is coming profoundly to believe in the reality and power of a child's conversion, and in the clearness and joy of his salvation. The Children's Meeting is to deal specially with this young religious life, and to bring the child into actual church fellowship by easy stages. The Christian Endeavor and other young people's societies are no more useful than such a spiritual meeting for the little ones may become.

Under ten years of age life-long impressions are unquestionably made. Every adult has personal experience of some such impression. Shall we not then surround the child with the sunniest and most powerful spiritual influence ? Moral and mental habits are begun and in building. Up with our scaffolding, and see that the soul is erected after heavenly drawings and plans.

Church history teems with the incalculable value of early conversion and intelligent Christian training. In a few families this is given by the parents, but we must extend the same opportunities to all the children under the influence of the church.

Let this instruction be worthy of a place beside the public school training, and the physical culture now being advocated. This, at least; it ought to be better, if possible.

What saith the Lord ? " Suffer the little children to come unto me and forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom of God." " Lovest thou Me ? " . . . •" Feed my lambs."

The Junior Christian Endeavor Society and the junior departments of denominational young people's societies, like the Epworth League, the Baptist Young People's Union and others, are rapidly and enthusiastically organizing religious work among the children. Constitutions, plans, programmes and all necessary helps are so easily obtainable, that we will not take space here even to outline the highly commendable features of this new Christian movement. The sermons of this book will serve as the religious talk for these meetings, to be given by the leader or the pastor, if possible. We suggest elsewhere series of Bible lessons which ought to be inculcated with all the skill, perseverance, and expectation of the results of the best public school teachers, and with far greater enthusiasm and impressiveness. Practical Christian work, to an extent surprising to the uninformed, has already been undertaken and successfully accomplished by very small children. Great interest is aroused by reports of such work called for in the meeting and presented by them.

II. The Children S Five-minute Sermon

FEW Christian parents now require their children to attend church services regularly with them. Here and there, only, is an entire family on Sunday morning facing the man of God with his message. Many influences have combined to relax parental rule over children's religious habits, and it is sadly significant that many ask whether, were it possible, it would be wise to urge parents generally to compel the presence of their children at the church services. It were better not to make it necessary to compel them, because the special provisions for children's instruction drew them. But even in the absence of these talks to the children, or the general attractiveness of the preacher to them, it will, in the judgment of the best Christian observers, be a sad mistake not ii to take the child very early in life to the House of God, and to enact in every Christian household the unchangeable law that old and young, down to the baby, must go to church every Sabbath morning.

What an inspiration would be whole families at church regularly ! Do you say this was the case not many years ago ? Yes ; but then the services were really interesting to the children without extra provision for them. But now glance outside at the attractions for the childmind ; at schools, from the enchanted ground of the kindergarten to the wonderful public schools, with drawing, sewing, calisthenics, manual training, cooking lessons, flowers, pictures ; everything winsome, enthusiastic, inspiring ; see the stores, with children's departments having a bewildering array of dolls, toys, mechanical, ingenious, beautiful. Any doll will not do for the little girl of to-day ; she discriminates, and revolves in her mind the respective merits of the doll which is double-jointed and can stand, of the doll which can cry and say " mamma," or the sailor boy, or black Topsy. Think of satisfying her with a painted corn-cob or a stuffed rag doll ! The boy, her brother, even in a home of ordinary comforts, has his steam engine, his box of tools, his bicycle, or, with different tastes, a most remarkable boy's museum of curios.

Then see the children's magazines, papers, books ~— a marvelously entertaining and instructive child literature flooding the land. The entire home is the home of children more than ever was dreamed of by the little boys and girls who, fifty years ago, went demurely to the family pew in the loved church. Their grandchildren ought to go as faithfully. But turning to the duty of the church in the matter, is it not imperative that the church provide as well for the children, as the world does ? Coming from special attentions received everywhere else, will not our boys and girls greatly feel the lack if the church forgets their needs ? We cannot return to the old days in church alone. We must wipe out toy stores, child literature, schools, amusements as they exist to-day, to accomplish it. But who would desire to pay such a price, to say nothing of its impossibility ?

There is no alternative, if we would have children voluntarily in our preaching services, but to provide for them ; and to do it as nearly as may be with the masterly skill and wisdom which characterizes other attractions for them. If we love Christ we must show it by feeding his lambs, and if the care of the bodies and the minds of children has become so advanced, let us rejoice, and determine that spiritual care shall be even better.

We offer the five-minute sermon Sunday morning as a suggestive experiment. It will commend itself in actual practice. " But the transition to the sermon ? " If the sermon itself be above the children, even at the worst they will have five minutes, where otherwise they would have nothing. And many older persons will have five minutes of helpful service, instead of, to them, strange depths and heights and wanderings.

Even the preacher needs these Five Minutes of special clearness, directness and freedom. It will soon open a highway for all the children into his learned sermons — and they cannot be too learned, if clear — and give them sympathy with his cultured breadth of view, which, again, cannot be too comprehensive or philosophical if directly bearing upon present needs and perplexities. But if he is determined to go on discoursing immature thought in learned technicalities, the older people will fall asleep, but the bright boys and girls will sound his depths and find him out. What a blessed change to brightness, simplicity, power of vivid illustration and general wide awakeness, comes often from the five-minute sermon to the children, which many of our friends already practice.

The lambs must be fed with the great truths of the Gospel of Christ, in striking form and beauty. Literary finish and grace to some extent, historical and scientific allusions of the simplest kind only, unless time for detailed explanation be found. Anecdotes have been the staple of talk to children, and are important always ; but fresh anecdotes only are thoroughly impressive, or old ones very brightly related, and not repeated in other lessons.

Anecdotal preaching is wearisome to any real thinker. There are thinkers among the children who would rather have argument, definition of great truths which solve their perplexities, or plain statement of great duties of life.

I have seen children, from six years up, held for half an hour by a talk with not an anecdote in it, but whose characteristic was the plain and bright setting forth of Christian doctrine and duty. Beware of anecdotes which are like a large bowl of thin soup, with a little piece of a moral swimming somewhere in it. Give the children the little bit of meat, and just a sip or two of the soup.

A parable is better than an anecdote, and we may freely construct modern parables ; and if

1 6 THE CHILDREN^ FIVE-MINUTE SERMON.

anecdotes are scarce, suppose cases which can then be manufactured to be full of the lesson you would teach. However, a fresh and apt anecdote is a prize to be treasured.

Five minutes is long enough to make a powerful impression. Teach with intense earnestness and affectionate interest, but not in a childish manner. The five-minute sermon will be interesting to old as well as young, and your most mature and intellectual business men will object most strongly to their discontinuance. We are all helped by illustrative teaching. It was the great Teacher's method who out-of-doors had the sower, the vine, the sheepfold, the birds and flowers to point to as he spoke.

The preaching of the future to all will have to be more intense, vivid, immediately impressive. We must flood mind through eyes and ears at once, as Christ did, and a good beginning to make is with the children's sermon. It will be more like the Saviour's own preaching than any other we give.

III. Some Impressible Points In The Child Mind

A CHILD is the easiest of all intelligent beings to impress, and the quickest to learn up to his full capacity. He is the soul most thoroughly alive, and it is a strange idea that children are hard to teach religious truth, or difficult to interest in it. Of course, they do not become enthusiastic over what is Greek to them, but they go more patiently to hear Greek than they will at any later period in life. My aim in the present chapter is to indicate some of the impressible points in the child mind. Our limits, however, preclude any attempt at exhaustive study of juvenile psychology. I can offer simply a series of suggestions.

i. What is the healthy, typical child? He is a being with unbounded delight in his perceptive faculties, especially in seeing ; and there

*7 is no door of his mind so gladly opened, and that very wide, as his eyes. If we show him spiritual truths in familiar objects, we increase his natural delight, and turn it to permanent profit. We train him to look beneath the surface for the deep things of good and bad. Our conventional methods of preaching and teaching scarcely touch this open door, and seldom make any use of these inviting avenues for great truths to the tender soul. That the impressions from sight are to a child more powerful than those from hearing, is probable, but we need not stop to discuss this ; we now simply point out an additional access to the child. To me, the call is imperative to use it. How can it be otherwise ?

2. The perceptive faculties are all intensely active. Let all be kept busy carrying truth in spiritual lessons. Let the child feel softness, hardness, sharpness, dullness, solidity, etc. ; let him both see and hear the brightest, most beautiful, most charming truths and stories of the Bible, of Christian life, of working for Christ ; let him both see and hear the pathetic, the sad warnings, the terrible results of sins ; all the great truths of the wonderful Gospel, in terms plain and vivid, but never childish. Let them physically feel the good illustration of the truth, and their hearts will feel the truth itself mightily. They will not forget what they greatly enjoyed seeing. Even perfumes were used in that wonderful school of object teaching under Moses and Aaron — the Tabernacle ceremonial services — and may be used in many lessons to-day. Thus taste, smell, sight, hearing and feeling may be flooded with truth by the wise teacher. Will the truth be any too well impressed with all these? Dare we confine ourselves to hearing, and bury the other four?

3. The child's vivid imagination. Suggest a point or two of a picture, and almost any child fills it out. Give a surprising fact in barest skeleton, and the children clothe it in flesh and fullest detail of garments before they reach mother. The exaggerations in statement, and the many pure inventions of childhood, which trouble innocent parents so much, are not intentional lies. They are the exuberance of a lively imagination, and the wise parent will try neither to break a child's will, nor to extinguish a child's fancy. He had really better break the child's back, and put out its eyes. We can get truth-telling, not by whipping the bewildered little being, but by calling it more accurately to perceive.

" Are you sure there are a hundred cats in the yard ? Did you really hear a noise like thunder ? Look again ; think ; try to remember exactly."

We must save imagination and use it for spiritual good. Here is the value of variety of suggestiveness in object lessons. The children will take the bones and fill out the sermon.

4. What child does not love beauty ? What open eyes for it, what unbounded pleasure ! Use this sensibility to convey the deep lessons of purity, like the lily and the snow, love like the rose, truth like the blue heavens, faith like the baby running to mamma, hope like the beautiful morning. And the sense of ugliness to depict sin. Make letters of serpents, thorns, black stumps, chains, dark repulsive pictures stirring the aversions of the soul.

5. Children are not childish in their own estimation. They feel themselves to be little men and women. The girls play, you say, but work, in their own mind, at housekeeping, taking care of their children (dolls), teaching school, making fashionable calls, etc. All in sober earnest, with womanly manners and feeling. The boys are manly in their thoughts, and it is important discriminatingly to recognize this child feeling. A dignified manner of speech to children, while continuing perfectly plain, a loving, genuine courtliness will increase the right kind of self-respect among them, and give your words great weight. They observe how you address men and women, and will resent any coming down to "babyisms," when turning to them. You are talking to very earnest little men and women, but to children none the less, and your manner must skillfully meet this complex requirement.

6. The consciences of children are peculiarly tender and responsive. Lessons to them may be ethical, hortatory, advisory, to a degree which might become tiresome to older minds ; but if given in bright style, with familiar illustrations, will arouse great interest. However, it is doubtful whether ethical subjects are as dull to the average man as preachers usually think. The sermon on duty may be dull, as it may be on any subject, but from a man who is in touch with the problems of modern life, who has studied the perplexities of good people in daily life, who has some knowledge of human nature, and himself a keen conscience, so that he can helpfully solve practical difficulties, a discourse on ethics will always have closest attention. Let there be more just appreciation of the perplexities of true Christian living, which are as many and as great as any doctrinal difficulties can be, and let them be philosophically studied, and the sermons following will have no lack of hearers, young and old. Sermons to children ought to present ethical problems, and have the children decide them. Give exercise to conscience.

7. There is intense pleasure and immense value in the opportunity for free self-decision by the child. Over-instruction in duties, giving every matter ready to the child's hand, is like over-cultivation of plants. Teach the sense of moral responsibility to God, and remember that character is built up by this free moral activity.

8. Meet the restless activity of the child by jumping from point to point in your lesson, by surprises of thought, by many details. Touch suggestively rather than exhaustively. Intense mental activity during your teaching by many things, but all logically bearing upon the one truth you are seeking to impress.

9. The attractiveness of novel things to children is well known. Occasionally an object altogether foreign to the child's experience will be useful, especially if the child is likely to have to do with it in after life. The explanation or description of the new thing will impress your thought all the more.

10. The child's enthusiasm ought to be constantly utilized. The child nature is deep, true and earnest. Frivolity is educated into children, often very early. But naturally there is enthusiasm for great and serious concerns of life. Not to put old heads on young shoulders, for this is done when frivolous, shallow old heads of foolish parents are imparted, to th% exclusion of the frank and deeper young soul'; not to sadden the young life, but to turn into it streams of perpetual joy ; not to cloud its clear sky, but to bring the Sun of Righteousness into it forever. Earnestness and enthusiasm are essential to the joy of a child at play, and we only increase his joy when we skillfully turn these into the stream of his great duties. 11. Refreshing frankness is a trait of childhood. Keep in harmony with this by calling a spade a spade, a lie a lie, a mean act mean. The words "naughty," " telling stories," or "fibs," " taking things," are but a minifying of evil actions. Children delight in vigorous, direct, ringing, plain English, and to use the terms adults employ about life and character. Namby-pamby utterances in moral instruction disgust the manly boy, who, too often, by pendulous reaction, swings to the supposed power of oaths and curses. Give that boy pure, strong Anglo-Saxon, which expresses intense feeling against evil, yet is reverent and courteous, and he will not be so likely to swear. Be frank with the children.

12. Voracious memory. Everything about the child is grasping to possess. The memory is most active and acquisitive now. Use the well-known helps to memory : alliteration, repetition, rhyming.

13. But how impressible the child's heart! That which presently the folly of parents, inculcating the pettiness of conventional society, will render flippant and affected, is at earliest consciousness tender and responsive to affection's touch; the child heart is hungry for love, and quick to recognize it. Take to it the precious love of Christ very early.

14. Other avenues to the child nature, such as the manufacturing instinct, the delight in talking, the mother nature in girls and the soldier in the boys, may often be appealed to. The kindergarten system of teaching, by the genius of Froebel, has suggested much also very useful to the teacher of spiritual truths. Let us do not merely good work, but the best possible work, in young souls for Christ's sake. For the lambs of Christ ought to have the most "tender" grass in the greenest pastures into which the flock is led.

IV. Essentials Of A Profitable Talk To

CHILDREN.

THE suggestive outline sermons which make up the body of our little manual, will probably be more helpful than ten times as much theorizing or description. Yet a few points may be important to note here.

i. Originate your own outlines and talks. There is danger of running into servile imitation of the merely curious and ingenious objects, which will rather confuse the child mind. Look about for new objects with which to impress the Gospel. One original lesson is worth many gotten up by another. Be very free with the lessons herein given. Add new points, or modify any of the schemes. Combine two or more in one, or divide lessons. Not to be fantastic, but to be fresh, and to secure that hearty

26 ESSENTIALS OF A PROFITABLE TALK.

enthusiasm in yourself which comes from original work.

2. The object or the blackboard illustration used, and the address upon it, should be the direct and simple teaching of a really great truth. Use all the variety, beauty, color and surprises which will clearly help to enforce the truth, and no others. Far-fetched, complicated, abstruse additions should be avoided as so much foreign matter stirred into the milk of the Word. Great truths will stand without props ornamental, and they will also produce the best impression when they are earnestly and clearly converged to a point. Discriminate here. No beauty is superfluous, no surprises or novelty to be unused which will open the child mind and move the child heart, but all not for their own sake, but for Christ's and the truth's sake.

3. Be very reverent in tone and subject matter. Let there be no approach to undue familiarizing of the deep mysteries of our religion. It seems easy to some minds to find natural analogies to the Trinity, to cleansing by the blood in chemistry, and so on; but it is of very doubtful propriety, even with adults, and with children, already too prone to irreverence, it is very harmful. No analogies on