r recalls a troublesome idea of
God that inadvertently secured lodgment in his own mind through the
medium of a picture in his first geography. In the section on China was
the representation of a horrid, malignant looking idol underneath which
was printed the words, "A God." For many years the image of this picture
was associated with the thought of God, and made it hard to respond to
the concept of God's beauty, goodness, and kindness.

Wrong concepts of God may leave positive antagonisms which require years
to overcome. A little girl of nearly four years had just lost her
father. She did not understand the funeral and the flowers and the
burial. She came to her mother in the evening and asked where her papa
was. The stricken mother replied that "God had taken him."

"But when is he coming back?" asked the child.

The mother answered that he could not come back.

"Not ever?" persisted the child.

"Not ever," whispered the mother.

"Won't God let him?" asked the relentless questioner.

The heart-broken mother hesitated for a word of wisdom, but finally
answered, "No, God will not let him come back to us."

Care and wisdom needed.--And in that moment the harm was done. The
child had formed a wrong concept of God as one who would willfully take
away her father and not let him return. She burst out in a fit of
passion: "I don't like God! He takes my papa and keeps him away."

That night she refused to say her prayer, and for weeks remained
rebellious and unforgiving toward the God whom she accused of having
robbed her of her father. How should the mother have answered her
child's question? I cannot tell in just what words, but the words in
which we answer the child's questions must be chosen with such infinite
care and wisdom that bitterness shall not take the place which love
toward God should occupy in the heart.

Another typical difficulty is that children are often led to think of
God as a distant God. A favorite Sunday school hymn sings of "God above
the great blue sky." To many children God is "in heaven," and heaven is
localized at an immeasurable distance. Hence the fact of God's nearness
is wholly missed. Children come to think of God as seated on a great
white throne, an aged, austere, and severe Person, more an object of
fear than of love. And then we tell the children that they "must love
God," forgetting that love never comes from a sense of duty or
compulsion, but springs, when it appears, spontane