with the processes themselves.

VI.

TEACHING CHILDREN WHAT THEY DO NOT UNDERSTAND.

It is not uncommon to hear persons declaim against teaching children
what they do not understand. If by this is meant that children should
not learn a set of words as parrots do, merely by the ear, and without
attaching any idea to what they utter, no one will dissent from the
propriety of the rule. But if the meaning is that they should learn
nothing except what they fully comprehend, the rule certainly needs to
be hedged in by some grave precautions.

There are indeed few things which any one, the oldest or the wisest,
fully comprehends. Who knows what matter is? Certainly not the most
eminent of philosophers. They do not pretend to know. We pick up a
pebble. Who can tell what it is, absolutely? We say that it is something
which has certain qualities. But even these we know mainly by negations.
The pebble is hard, that is, it does _not_ yield to pressure. It is
opaque, that is, it does _not_ transmit light. It is heavy, that is, it
does _not_ remain still, but goes towards the centre of the earth unless
intercepted by some interposing body.

Who knows the meaning, absolutely, of a single article of the Creed?
Certainly not the most eminent of divines. We know certain things about
the great mysteries of the Godhead, and even these things we know, not
directly, but by certain faint, distant analogies, and we express our
knowledge in terms chosen mainly from Scripture and arranged with care
by wise and learned men. These venerable formularies, containing the
most exact verbal expression which the Church has been able to frame, of
what the Scriptures teach about God and his ways, we commit to memory,
and we repeat them with comfort and edification. But we do not pretend
to penetrate the very essence of their meaning. Who by searching can
find out God? One must be God himself to understand him.

We read that Christ was tempted of the devil in the wilderness. There
are many things in this transaction which we may be said, in a certain
sense, to know. But a man will not proceed far in analyzing this
knowledge before he will discover that there are mysteries underlying
the whole, which he cannot penetrate. He knows some of the surface
relations. But the things themselves, in their essence, are unknown. Was
Christ tempted, as the devil tempts us, by suggesting thoughts in the
mind? Was the devil present in a bodily shape? Did h