Small use to catalogue the fine qualities
of heart and mind we would train in our children and then fail of our
aim because we choose wrong tools with which to work. Not all facts
found in the Bible are of equal worth to children, nor are all religious
truths of equal value. Nothing should be taught _just because it is
true_, nor even because it is found in the Bible. The final question is
whether this lesson material is the best we can choose for the child
himself; whether it will give him the knowledge he can use, train the
attitudes he requires, and lead to the acts and conduct that should rule
his life.

The material must fit the child.--The subject matter we teach _must
also be fitted to the child_. It must be within his grasp and
understanding. We do not feed strong meat to babes. What may be the
grown person's meat may be to the child poison. It does no good to load
the mind with facts it cannot comprehend. There is no virtue in truths,
however significant and profound, if they are beyond the reach of the
child's experience. Matter which is not assimilated to the understanding
is soon forgotten; or if retained, but weighs upon the intellect and
dulls its edge for further learning.

There can be little doubt that we have quite constantly in most of our
Sunday schools forced upon the child no small amount of matter that is
beyond his mental grasp, and so far outside his daily experience that it
conveys little or no meaning. We have over-intellectualized the child's
religion. Jesus was "to the Greeks foolishness" because they had no
basis of experience upon which to understand his pure and unselfish
life. May not many of the facts, figures, dates, and events from an
ancient religion which we give young children likewise be to them but
foolishness! May not the lessons upon some of the deepest, finest and
most precious concepts in our religion, such as faith, atonement,
regeneration, repentance, the Trinity, be lost or worse than lost upon
our children because we force them upon unripe minds and hearts at an
age when they are not ready for them?

Let us then, _not forget the child_ when we teach religion! Let us not
assume that truths and lessons are an end in themselves. Let us
constantly ask, as we prepare our lessons, Will this material work as a
true leaven in the life? Will it take root and blossom into character,
fine thought, and worthy conduct? While our children dumbly ask for
living bread let us not give