interested and curious in regard to things, since he spends
all his physical activity upon them, since he desires them and thinks
about them, we would expect that things, together with experiences and
ideas associated with them, would naturally fill his memory. Any
observer of childhood knows that this is true. The memory of a little
child is overwhelmingly for the concrete, the impressions through the
senses and from what he does being far more easily retained than ideas
alone. A child will recall the story of the Good Samaritan more readily
than the isolated verse, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." The
reward or punishment of an act makes a more lasting impression than the
dissertation upon it. Since the concrete must be the starting point of
thinking, it must come to his soul at some time, and, judged by every
condition, this is God's time for it.

The child's needs are also a guide in this matter. The soul is growing
in every direction, intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually if
properly nurtured, and memory holds the constantly increasing food for
its growth. Is it to be treated as a stockroom, where packages
unavailable for the present are to be laid away until needed, or as a
store-house supplied with nourishing food for the present? If memory is
a stockroom, then it should be filled with definitions, statements,
terms, facts, anything which may be needed sometime. This can be done,
for the brain will retain the sound of the words, but meantime, what
shall the child feed on? What shall he use? The soul can feed on or make
use of only that which is at least partially understood. This means
largely the concrete, for abstract statements can be understood only
through the experience or reason, and the child has meagre resources in
either direction. Only when a thought embodies what he has experienced,
can he grasp and use it.

Is it not the work of nurture to see that memory is provided with that
out of which it can supply every need of the developing life today?
That, "Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the evidence of
things not seen," may mean much to his mature heart, but what if the
child should be frightened tomorrow and need to have his budding faith
strengthened from memory? Would not the story of God's care over the
baby Moses, Jesus' care for the disciples in the blackness of the storm,
with the words, "He careth for you," if these were stored in memory,
quiet more quickly the beati