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authority, but as simple, honest witness, that the New Testament brings us emancipating power.

Now, this is the priceless and indispensable service of the Bible. And it is the more indispensable to the modern man, the more deeply he has entered into the modern spirit. For the deeper our moral consciousness, the greater our sense of moral need. For the modern man who has awakened to full moral consciousness, many an ancient way of approach to God is decisively closed; and if he is to come into communion with God at all, it must be by a manifestation of God great enough to make certain both the holiness and the forgiveness of God. Now, it is just through this witness of the New Testament writers, that we find in Christ for ourselves a fact so great, so transcendent, that we come back to it again and again with calm assurance, to find in its simple presence the indubitable conviction of the spiritual world, of our own intended destiny, of God, and of His holiness and His love. Christ does not merely tell us these things: He does much more — He makes us able to believe them. He and no other as He - searches us, humbles us, assures us, and exalts us at the same time. Only through Him do we come with assurance into the great convictions, the great hopes, and the great aspirations; and these measure us as does nothing else. Only through Him do we come thus to real consciousness of ourselves, in our sin and in our weakness, and yet in our majestic possibilities as children of the living, loving God. Only through Him are we brought into living communion with the living God.

To have sounded thus the depths of the Bible, is to have sounded, at the same time, the depths of our own nature. Here indeed " deep calleth unto deep."

THE CHURCH AS A FACTOR IN PERSONAL RELIGIOUS

DEVELOPMENT

RT. REV. WILLIAM LAWRENCE, D. D., S. T. D.

BISHOP OF MASSACHUSETTS, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS

Given a child in whom is developing a personal religious life through the consciousness of God and the study of the Bible, what place has the Church in filling out the character?

I shall mention six points of influence.

1. The discovery that there is a Church, a Congregation of the faithful, gives practical reality to the child's religious faith. We may lead a child through prayer and experience; through a study of the heroes of the faith in the Testaments, Old and New, to a consciousness of God; but the kingdom of God is still far away; something more is needed. Then on a Sunday morning, perhaps through a martial hymn, or the presence of a great congregation of friends and neighbors, or the service of baptism, there sweeps over the boy the conception of the Church as a great company of men, women, and children, loyal to the cause of Christ. The cross, the symbol of sacrifice and leadership, stands before him and them. Now faith becomes real, practical, and present; the mystic consciousness of God melts into action; the ancient heroes of the faith, Joshua, David, and Peter, take on the lineaments of the men of the boy's own day and country. His whole conception of religion expands, character develops, and into its texture is woven the strong and living fiber of social duty.

2. I said "the ancient heroes of the faith," and "the men of the boy's own day and country." These emphasize only the beginnings of the Church, and its present day. But the Christian Church has been a living thing throughout the nineteen centuries. The historic Church looms before the thought of the maturing boy; and he gains a conception of the solidarity of the Church, the communion of the saints of all the ages.

Why is it that typical New Englanders like James Russell Lowell were almost overwhelmed with the glory of the great cathedrals of Europe? Partly, I believe, because through their religious traditions and ecclesiastical horizon, limited to the Bible and New England, they had, though unconsciously, been yearning for the inspiration of the historic Church of the ages; and in Westminster, Canterbury, Chartres, or St. Mark's, there flashed before them the glory of the ages of chivalry and romance, the traditions of the monk and the cavalier. In their medi

tations and worship there swept in upon them, at all events there has swept in upon tens of thousands, a conception of the organic life of the Church, satisfying and uplifting.

Such a revelation gradually opens itself to the boy maturing in the faith. He knows the Bible heroes, he has known a few saints about him in his home. Reading and thought open up the vistas of the past. He discovers that the parish church wherein he worships has an ancient lineage, vital and noble. Some story sends his thoughts back through the days of the Pilgrims and the Reformation to the times of the monastery, of chivalry, and the martyrs thrown to the lions. He lives in them; his faith was their faith; his Christ, the Chríst for whom they died. There is pride in his Church, buoyancy in his religious life, a firm confidence in the strength of his cause. Through the historic Church, art, literature, and poetry have been saturated with the finest sentiments of sage and seer. As, therefore, the boy reads, thinks, and matures, his faith is shot through and through with the finest threads of wisdom, beauty, and song. His character gains proportion, refinement, and grace.

3. Thus far, however, the boy has not really had the confident assurance that he is as yet in and of the Church. His parents are in the Church, the minister is, older people who go to the Lord's Supper are; but where is he? Is he looking upon the Church from without, or is he really a part of its very life?

I.

Here I may emphasize a point with which you may not all agree. I believe that only by that ancient form and sacrament of Baptism in earlier childhood can the child be incorporated into the Church and made to realize, as he grows older, that he is in fact a child of the Church.

I do not speak of baptism as the dedication of a child to Christ by his parents. I speak of it as a sacrament whereby the child is received and incorporated into the very organic life of the Church; whereby he is declared a child of God, and by a service, founded upon a conception of the ideal, made an inheritor of the kingdom of Heaven. Henceforth he is not outside the Church. He is not within it by the courtesy or sufferance of his elders; but he is within it by his own right, a living member of the body; and upon him is thrown the responsibility, or rather to him is given the privilege, of living as becomes a child of the Church. Thus the constant appeal through boyhood is to his honor.

4. In the Church a boy finds a definite statement of faith-a creed. I know that a definite creed is the last thing that some people feel should be taught a child. He should, it is said, be led up to the faith by influence, hero-worship, imitation, and by happy, pure associations.

Of course he should; nevertheless, he should, I believe, be given, by the authority of his elders and of the Church, a definite statement of faith. Authority is an essential element in child development. By authority, as well as by example, he first learns of right, truth, and justice; later he reasons out their relations and adjusts their proportions.

Our great mistake has come in the next step of development-a mistake which, I believe, has been at the bottom of much of the distrust of the creeds and of authoritative teaching in childhood. The teacher or parent, having given the child some definite foundation to build on, has not trusted the boy, as he matures, to do the building, but has done the building for him. Thus the youth have been driven to live and think in the dogmatic houses of their elders, and religion and faith have become unreal and insincere.

The form into which each boy builds his faith is as different as is the character of each boy from his comrade. Who knows what that expression, "I believe in God the Father Almighty," means to a child? Who knows what it means to the wisest theologian? Neither can express himself adequately. Both will mature in their conception as years pass. Children are deeper and wiser than we think. Give them some definite spiritual facts to start from; that is, give them a real creed; then guide, talk, and reason with them on to maturer faith. Do not compel them, but trust and lead them.

Without the Church, how long would the teaching and preaching of Christian truth endure?

Through the Church's teaching and preaching the child is led step by step to a fuller conception of the faith, a higher ideal of life and a larger sense of duty to others. I believe that much of our preaching to children is unworthy of their consideration, and they know it. Children's intelligence, discrimination, and intuition are worthy of respect. The language should be simple and clear as was Christ's in the fields of Galilee, but the thoughts must be deep. A child does not respect the speaker who leaves him where he found him; he wants to be led up. The habit and desire of his school life is promotion by some hard work.

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The grouping of work and grading of lessons in Sunday school is, of course, necessary and wise, but I believe that this modern popular classification of ages, so common in parish life and worship-infants, children, young people, middle-aged people, old people (soon we may lect those in their dotage)—has its grave perils. It is bringing into the Church the evils of classified institutionalism, of orphan asylums, and homes for old men. The family is the ideal; the common worship of old and young; the sermon so clear and simple that from it the youth

catches some suggestions of inspiration, perhaps by a story, some fire of enthusiasm; while the older people beside him are kindled with a deeper love for God and a fuller sense of duty toward the youth.

6. Great as is the influence of worthy preaching to children, I am not sure that the influence of worthy forms of worship is not greater, for there is a strong appeal to that most potent of factors, the child's imagination.

We children of the Reformation, in our reaction against the abuses of teaching by the rites and ceremonies of the Church, do not begin to realize the worth and power of these rites and ceremonies in kindling the imagination of children and teaching them the truths of the Gospel.

What conception of the beauty of holiness, the heroes of the faith and the joy of Christian discipleship can a child have who associates these truths with the dreary basement of the church, a dusty floor, ungainly benches, bad air, pictures of terrifying men, upon the bare white walls, called heroes of faith, and the sound of a melodeon droning in quick time weak tunes, unworthy of children's voices and intelligences? It is no wonder that as they grow older they protest that they will find God, or pleasure at all events, in the woods and fields where are sunlight and beauty. The fact that noble faiths and lovely sainthood have been nurtured in bare, ugly churches is a testimony to the power of Christian truth.

Now that the children of the Reformation have protested for some four or five hundred years against the dangerous evils of some things associated with the historic Church, is it not time to take up some of the once discarded beauties? Children will appreciate them if their elders do not; the restrained use of symbols and sacraments, the adoption of architecture fitted to the system of worship within the Church. A Puritan service in a Gothic church with a deep chancel is as unfitting as an Anglican service in an honest, dignified meeting-house. Why not make the best use of the suggestion of Christian truth in glass, ornament, and mural painting; the glorious voice of organ, with uplifting anthem and massive hymn; the response of minister and people; the Common Prayer, and even the Litany, for child nature has its minor as well as its major key? Thus through action, words, and impression, the child's imagination is kindled, as through preaching and teaching the reason is roused, and thought and sentiment combine to create the fiber of Christian character

Thus through the open door the youths go forth to meet life, to realize the brotherhood of man, and in social relations to apply the spiritual power caught within the Church.

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