Part 12 (1/2)
The tiionists of whatever denonize that the favorite doctrines and foruish them from each other are a mere superficial crust of that true spiritual life which is to be lived when the grown-up shall all become as little children, who feel that,
”In their work and in their play, God is with the of the ceremonies of the Temple worshi+p, which Moses ious, but which in Paul's day had fallen into such a _reat Apostle said that the _Holy Ghost was not bodily exercise_, but a hopeful, faithful _charity of thought_, _feeling_, _and deed_; and this is what children can be guided into froartner kno to converse and play _with_ the the out _her_ will The play of childhood is the enuine and intense life that is lived, body, heart, and will _conspiring_ entirely; and it is by respecting the child's _will_ and _heart_ that you really help instead of _hindering_ this unification of his threefold nature, which corresponds to the Trinity of the Supre tritheism in his conception
A child cannot be _just_ unless he is _loving_, nor attain the freedonity unless he asserts himself; and there is no way to nurture this self-respect except to express respect to hi as courteous to hi him to explain hi, before you condehts I have ever had into _Divine Truth_, by discovering as the ht of some child, who did what seemed inexplicable, till he told me, or I had divined, his secret reason
It is not mothers alone who can charm out of children their secret, as those knoho have seen soartners talk _with_ their pupils in the opening exercises; but those who are not mothers will always do well to observe carefully those who are On the other hand,their own children's natures _comparatively_ I have known some of the best mothers in the world _do that_, so as to be practically of bad influence over children not their own
Mothers ould be and can be the best kindergartners should therefore none the less study Frbel's science carefully and hu the _threefold nature_ I wish I had tiarten experiences that have coenial kindergartner has assisted in some moral development, whose occasion was very trivial to the superficial observer
Herein lies the iarten, that in it all the virtues and Christian graces can be unconsciously practised on the plane of play, which is theof Soloo, and when he is old he will not depart froe of the Divine Nature, cannot be _mechanically_, but must be morally and spiritually, trained; that is, addressed and treated as free agency
The salutation of the Brahe, is ”to the divinity which is in you I do hoht from the lost Paradise in which arten is to more than restore the race, when it shall have become the universally applied principle of culture for hus (See Appendix, Note F)
FOOTNOTES:
[11] See George Macdonald's _Vicar's Daughter_
[12] This unique book was the text-book Frbel used in his training-school Its profound , and how it points to the divine philosophy of the instinctive play, that is the first phenomenon of human life with mother and child, some of you have heard Miss Blow and Miss Fisher luer than mine, and which I hope they may be persuaded to publish in book form
GLIMPSES OF PSYCHOLOGY
SPIRITUALITY
WE speak of the necessity of studying childhood; we call children living books of nature, and say that we cannot succeed in educating the them into a hare, such as a musical performer has of his instrus”
This fundae of children is not chiefly a discrih observation of these will be e of what is universal in children, essential to the constitution of hus
Frbel never wrote out, in systeives the rational ground to all the details of his s, and in his sayings handed down by tradition, which give such insights, that it can be divined with solimpses as occur to us from time to time--not always in our oords, but as often as we can in Frbel's, and also in the words of other thinkers, whose guesses at this kind of truth light up their writings on many subjects
We must, in the first place, attend to one important fact; there is, in the experience of childhood, somewhat pre-existent to all impressions made by the universe, and consequently to all operations of the understanding--perceiving, co--for these are intentional acts of the pre-existent soul breathed into his body and bidden to ”have dominion”--_Genesis 1_
What is this pre-existent soul, this ton Allston, in his posthumous lectures on Art, has finely said: ”Man does not live by science; he feels, acts, and judges right in a thousand things, without the consciousness of any rule by which he so feels, acts, and judges Happily for hiuide than human science in that _unknoithin hiain, he speaks of ”those intuitive powers, which are above and beyond both the understanding and the senses; which, nevertheless, are so far froe, as, on the contrary, to require--as their effective condition--the widest intis external, without which their very existence must remain unknown”
He does not, however, merely assert this pre-existence of the soul to the understanding, but speaks of the evidence of it that we all can appreciate ”Suppose,” he says, ”we analyze a certain combination of sounds and colors, so as to ascertain the exact relative qualities of the one, and the collocation of the other, and then co perceive between these sounds and colors? And yet a so within us responds to both--a _sis, nay, with myriads of objects, that have no other affinity but with that , which slept with our infancy, and which their presence only seeo back to our own childhood, we may see its illustration in those about us who are now in that unsophisticated state Look at the the birds and flowers; their happy faces speak the harmony within theives them a joy, which perhaps only childhood, in its first fresh consciousness, can know, yet what do children _understand_ of the theory of colors, or musical quantities?”
That thissoul, is the _huraph of these lectures
”What, for instance, can we suppose to be the effect of the purple haze of a summer sunset on the cows or sheep, or even on the more delicate inhabitants of the air? From e know of their habits, we cannot suppose enial temperature?