Part 10 (2/2)
Now the true religious nurture is to keep the child in the mood of ineffable joy in which he was created, while he is evolving his sense of individuality and free agency by experi freely, but ht of the central Sun, to which everything he is slowly learning through his senses and his reflection is related; and thisa name to the central Sun that shall express the character of his inmost consciousness of joy and love, which is his vision of God, and needs to be recognized as God in the understanding
In the Old Testament we see that it is the _name_ of the Lord which is set forth as the only ressive spiritual religion The name of the Lord, or Ruler, with the Hebreas JEHOVAH, a word made up of the three tenses of the substantive verb _to be_, ”was, is, and shall be,” and which Philo, the Alexandrian Jewish philosopher, translates THE ETERNAL It was understood by the worshi+ppers to be the ineffable Creative Reality, so that when they came to the word in their sacred ritual they did not speak it, but reverently bowed their heads in a moment's silence, or paraphrased it, THE LORD God
But Jesus, the bright, consummate flower of the Hebrew race, used the name Father (_inal with hiy He nized the vital relation of mankind to its Creator by this word, which any child who has come to see that he and his mother are two can understand and will love
Frbel has proved by his nursery et _this idea_ and name of God from his arten they will generally already have heard some name for God, adequate or inadequate Now all you have to do--but that is a great deal, indeed the greatest thing--is not to cloud the child's intuitive knowledge of God by your inadequate words as was done in the case of M D, as afraid of the omnipresence of God, as I mentioned in my narrative of F H, and in the case of his unfortunate mother at her mother's funeral In the case of little F the iven any name before his sense perceptions hadboy” But you have seen how the shades were dispelled by ranted with him that a Heavenly Father existed, which he joyfully accepted at once, for I knew that
”In the e that did live, And Nature yet re of God in the kindergarten should be in e of spirituality (or aspiration), lifting the soul above the cold level of the intellect that cognizes the correlations of the natural universe Frbel finds support of his faith in the efficacy of song, that puts devout expression into the works of nature, in the historical fact that the civilizing literature of all nations begins in religious hymns The different characteristics and the different destinies of nations are seen in gerree and someti of the Chinese, the Rig Veda of the old Aryans, the Puranas of the Hindus, the Garthas of the Iranians, the recently discovered early poetry of the Egyptians, and even the ical formulas of the Babylonians, all express with more or less exaltation of spirit the pri, and use the particulars ofto that unity of all life that is the music of the spheres Is it not heard in the voice of the healthy infant, which is the most exquisite music on earth, and later seen in the pictures e that is coined by the hu has introduced prosaic, that is, analytic definitions, and drawn the hu its heart on the fruits of the Tree of Life (which are e, which are evil as well as good The kindergarten exercises should begin and end with spiritual songs and hymns; indeed, they should come in any time at the call of the children, who, it will be found, will oftener call for hys
The hyarten repertory should be entirely free from all that is didactic and denominationally doctrinal Their object is not to teach any science, whether intellectual, ical; but to express childish joy in existence, or quicken the original childish faith, which in all ages and nations has expressed itself inof hy of course A good kindergartner begins the day with bringing all the children into co each in turn what is in his eneral question, perhaps about the weather, which always has soht to the attention; then they could be asked, ”Could you have made this weather? Who made it? and would you not like to thank the Heavenly Father for it?” So similar to this should precede all the hymns to rouse their sense of free activity, and prevent routine, and then they will sing with the heart and understanding also I rearten with Mr Alcott when such a preli on, which was followed by this song of the weather, the children esticulations with their aran with the weather of the day, and continued with several varieties, for it is not often the whole song is sung at one tiht of the children when the the weather, poured itself out in the chorus, which they had first learned to sing with a will,--
”Wonderful, Lord, are all thy works, Wheresoever falling
All, their various voices raise; Speaking forth their Maker's praise Wheresoever falling”
(See Appendix, Note F)
Mr Alcott, with his eyes full of tears, turned to me, and said, ”This ious conversation children have the advantage of us in their as yet uneclipsed original vision of God, and we have an advantage of thes and the adaptation of uide them to accoive theet our knowledge by confidingly doing as we direct, and a confidence in the s about the results they have instinctively foreseen We save theirlost or bewildered in the chaos of particulars by winning their attention to the orderly connections of things, and leading thes in order to s, and how opposites are connected in the world around about thenize their own little plans and open their eyes to God's methods and plans; and because they cause new effects, they realize that all effects have causes, and in the last analysis realize one personal cause Theyin God Let thes create order; and you will have influence with the that you respect their free will, and divine in a genial hat they want; and this you can do if you infor your eyes open to what ests; and it is your cognizance of these individualities which makes your part of the enjoyment If there are no two leaves alike, much more are there no two human individuals precisely alike, and hu by these various individualities playing over the surface of the universal race-consciousness If you respect the individuality of a child, and let it have fair play, you gain its confidence Nothing is so delightful as to feel oneself understood It is ive a child's individuality fair play in a company of children, you must open children's eyes to one another's individualities, and you will find that if you suggest their respecting each other's rights in the plays, there is so within them that will justify you The consciousness of individuality is the correlated opposite to the conscience of universality Justice is an intuition The opposite poles of a hu are self-assertion or personal consciousness on the one side, and generosity or _race_ consciousness on the other
We have seen that the artner is toit, cherishes the indispensable innocent self-assertion (which is only changed into selfishness by lack of that social cherishi+ng which keeps generosity wide awake to balance self-assertion) We must sympathize with the play instincts of the child, so that it e of its body in its parts and its powers of loco self-respect to the consciousness of pohile the si fear by experience of the motherly providence, which is the first comprehensible form of that love which in due time calls forth ideal worshi+p of the Infinite God, if God has been adequately named in natural sympathetic conversation with an earnest self-persuasion but without sanctimonious affectation Unless you have unaffected spontaneity of faith yourselves, you should not dare to talk about God to the child
The religious nurture which Frbel proposes therefore consists si with children as to preserve their pri it, as that huhest power in the mother Sympathetic tenderness is the first of all means for moral culture The child's faith in God must be cherished into self-reliance There is a self-distrust that is really a distrust of God, and no harreat as to lead it to doubt its own spontaneity The coious teacher--even a conscientiousthe child's conscious union with God, starts a ious peace In order not to artner read and ponder Frbel's _Mother Love_ and _Cossetting Songs_[12]
If you ask ious nurture, I reply, the naiven to the inmost consciousness, keeps the heart happy and the will self-respecting, by preventing those indefinite fears, incident to a sense of helplessness, which engenders selfishness Hope and Faith are correlatives, and conscious or necessary onies of will in the absence of this support In the ehtiness; and, as Dr Channing used to say, ”there is nothing fatal to child or ement,” which often exists close beside manifestations of pride and self-will
When I kept school, in my earlier life, I beca and conscious wrong feeling Soether spontaneous on the part of the children, and in other cases I took the initiative, drawing out the confidence, by intervening on occasion to console and help, especially when I saw that the sensibility had been wounded, or there was moral puzzle And my experience and observation in this line justified the faith in which I began to keep school; viz, that children are all _but perfectly_ good, in all cases, and are never so grateful for anything else, when they find theiven as _God gives_, ”upbraiding not”
When they are not grateful for rown-up counsellor Even in the worst cases I always took it for granted that nevertheless they loved goodness better than the naughty self which for the hour had got the victory over the better self
Spiritual being, whether finite or infinite, is only to be discerned by aspiring faith Yet I do not think it right or wise to suggest to little children that _their_ wrong-doings, which are ainst God_ Children can comprehend their relations to each other, and the violation of each other's rights to happiness, and can be easily led to sympathize with the pain or inconvenience of those they enerosity; they can appreciate wrong and its consequences to their equals and to thereat to be injured by thery with theht, and annihilates all sense of responsibility, with all self-respect Children can co, in particular cases, is an injury to thehbor; also that they forfeit, for the ti, as it were, in partnershi+p with God incorow; and an occasional hint of this, when they are very happy and successful, is well But to suggest that they are forfeiting this privilege of divine coh, be this forfeiture ever so partial Old sinners are to be disciplined, perhaps, by that love of God which speaks in the thunder, the earthquake, and fire, breaking through the crust of selfish habit to awaken attention to the still, small voice of conscience, in which alone the Lord is _in person_ But the naughty child, at his worst, needs only to think of God as sorry for hial son
I can illustrate this by anecdotes of a child to whose ious sentiment, and even of the specific Christian revelation of pardon for all past wrong repented It was the case of a very sensitive child of nine years of age, whose ination and moral instincts, but was married to a cold, Doht superior to herself, whom she idealized, and endeavored to make her children satisfactory to his worldly ideal The result in their characters waswith the suicide of one This child's conscience of the duty of satisfying both parents I soon found to be abnormal; and her sense of her father's conte that she should satisfy him, so worked on her sensibility that it suspended her reasoning powers; and noan answer to a question in arithood temper when tormented, she fell into despair I endeavored to show her that a mistake in any school exercise was no crihly the thing in hand, and to show her that, unless she had fortitude to bear failures, and courage and hope to overcome them, I could not help her out of thehty manifestation of a moral character of any one in her presence, but she would burst into tears, and tellI askedinteresting that they had heard at church or Sunday-school the day before, when, almost with a shriek, she cried out, ”Oh, don't ask ently, ”Co all the while ”Mr Greenwood preached about the prayers, and he said we should not look about the church, or think of anything else, while the service was being read; and I always do, and I can't help it, because I am so bad” I took her into my arms, and said, ”It is a sure proof that you are not bad, that you are so distressed at the thought of doing wrong Bad people do not care, and so they groorse and worse; but your conscience seeive it to you to discourage you, but to help you to see ay you o, and to reood resolution, which is the prayer of your will”
”But I read in a hy in a book; and at the judgment day He will read it all out to the assembled universe I told a lie once”
”Did you?” said I, tenderly ”Tell me all about how you came to” ”I cannot,” said she, ”because then I should have to tell so ago was it?” ”It e were living at ----” I saw by this that it was several years before
She had a little brother, of whom she was very fond I took hold of a locket that she wore about her neck, that contained the hair of the lady for whoreat virtues had been iination, and said:--
”What if Edward should take this locket and break it, and take out the hair and throw it in the fire?” With a great deal of energy she said:--
”He never would do such a naughty thing”
”He hty; he would not know that you never could get any more of Miss ----'s hair; and he would do it from innocent curiosity--and what if he should do it, ould you do?”