Part 5 (2/2)

”Don't you _say prayers_, one

”Not when I as, and knows that I love hi of the ranted that upon the whole anted to do as right She was not apt to give the worst, but the best interpretation to doubtful phenoenerous confidence invoked generosity and truthfulness, and as better than all the rest, she did not _talk down_ to her children, but rather drew them up to her own mental and moral level; and interlarded stories from Spenser's _Faerie Queen_ and the Scriptures with stories of the kind and noble deeds of real people around us (See Appendix)

Her religion was moral inspiration to herself and consolation for all calamity, and always very naturally expressed She more than corrected her first mistake and inadequate talk with ri that es, but on the whole did better justice to the _spirit_ of the eration and the ultimate results it has worked out for the world than the exact facts that transpired in history What I gained froy was that my ancestors knew the nor priest had any right to prevent fro to him in prayer first hand, and that in order to do his will as their consciences understood it, they left home and country and all the comforts of civilization, and trusted themselves in a frail vessel to be driven over a stormy ocean by the winds, at imminent peril from the waves belohich would have sed them up, had not God, who loved theuided the shi+p (by a power stronger than the wind, for it was his love) through the narrow opening of Plymouth Harbor to the rock where I still see, a procession of fair women in white robes as _sisters_ (for so I had interpreted the word _ancestors_, who strangely enough were all named _Ann_) I still seem to see these holy women kneel down in the snow under the trees of the forest, and thank God for their safety froo to work in the sense of his very present help, and gather sticks to make a fire, and build shelters fro these rude buildings my mother took pains to tell me that they built a schoolhouse where all the children were to be taught to read the Bible

There is nothing for which I thank rand i love to God, and of all-conquering duty to posterity, thus ination, and its association with the idea of personal freedom and independent action It never could have been made except by one who herself had faith in God, and believed that he had made all men free to come to him, and also that the es which were the effect of the shortconorance did not hide the vital truths which I was as open to accept then as now; namely, that God is ht to shut off another

That first schoolhouse, which I fancied that I saw the ”Ann Sisters”

building, taught me as no mere words ever could have done, that it was the most acceptable service to God to educate all his children to know him and his works That first idea of hurown, but still believe universal education is the true culture of the American people, the reasonable service they owe to him who called them out of the Old World to be a nation of individuals There was nothing fatal, therefore, in that first false notion of God (which I received for a tih it was for a time more of an evil to me than it would have been to a child less subjective, or of s without Liveliness of perception brings so s before the mind, and so stimulates its volatility, that it undoubtedly prevents the stereotyping of le impression and fancy that does injustice to spiritual truths; and false ily associated with terror or some other ly as the ies that are consistent with the eternal laws of mental evolution, such, for instance, as that human face divine hich I had instantaneously clothedits temporary eclipse, has hauntedto the educator to know that the innocent soul of childhood has so much more affinity with truth than with falsehood, because the best and most careful educator cannot sequestrate children entirely from false impressions But what finds no echo in the spirit passes off, unless the mind is shocked into passivity by fear or pain

When the soul is active, it has a certain superiority to passive iinative production It is, therefore, desirable to keep children eentle activity which has successful results, and happy in the s, by which God is working with us in the sa us to be his partners, as it were, in this work, because it educates us It is not uncoin life all over again with the knowledge they have gained froination really _live with our children_, as Frbel says, whose motto explains what Christ meant when he bids us to be converted and become little children

FOOTNOTES:

[9] _Idea_ is a word I always use in the sense of _insight_, as Plato uses it, rather than in the sense of _notion_, as Locke uses it

[10] See note A in Appendix, and the Record of a School

LECTURE VI

A PSYCHOLOGICAL OBSERVATION

PART FIRST

I SAID in my last lecture that had I possessed the power to talk in Laura Bridgeed Dr Howe to let me have soht about God all tiht learn what God had taught her concerning Himself It was a wonderful chance for a ical observation of the innocent mind of childhood, and would have afforded, doubtless, a luminous illustration of the truth that the hu thewith the children in the Socratic manner

But already in ical observation, etting evidence of the inition of the Heavenly Father's name in the for and the develop the declaration which Frbel has h a child is the extre as effect to cause, as absolute want to infinite supply, all these terht, which nize each other, and whose loss of equal companionshi+p is a

”Grief, past all balsa

I have somewhere, very careful memoranda, made at the time, which I have unfortunately mislaid, but I will present froical observation, though I as said and done which were perhaps not uniin, I will observe that I tell it to the class to show the difference between talking to and conversing with children, and to illustrate several truths

First, There is an innate Idea, not as a thought but as a feeling, given to every child, of an all-e Love (named by Jesus, Father), one in substance with the deepest consciousness of self;

Second, That this Idea becomes a child's personal and individual perception only when he has a realizable name for it;

Third, That such a nan, to which the intuition of his heart gives vital ;

Fourth, That an adequate name for God is the axis of the intellect, and the revolution of thought around it gives perfect globular for the centripetal force of individual self-assertion with the centripetal force of a Divine Love, co Before God was named to and by this child of whom I am about to speak, you will see that he was a dreary little chaos ”without forently the na to tell you

But first I e of being the first person to name God to this child when he was four and a half years old He was the son of a most conscientious ious terrors Her earliest recollection, as she toldbeen the death-bed, and immediately after, the burial of herto coround; and she rehtful cruelty, were pere care of her, that God who made the heavens and the earth willed it to be so and would punish her if she did not acquiesce Little did the thoughtless and heartless person who thus dealt with the distressed little heart think, how disastrously she was e it with such an ie of ruthless power divorced fro years after that her ihtful falsehood; and when she caht was to keep hinorant of the fact of death, and the nah to understand theht and benevolent, but her i depression, was of feeble wing, and she was taciturn In consequence, her child, though most tenderly cared for as to his body, was starved in mind and spirit His face continued to be an infant's countenance, and he was strangely without that childish joyousness called anirew older; for he was sequestered to the society of his silent mother, ould not even be read to in his presence, lest, as she said, some chance hich he could not understand should excite some fear