The Child in Church : Part 6

The American Child
by Elizabeth McCracken

(Page 12 of 13)

Our Sunday-schools have become more and more like our week-day schools. The boys and girls are taught in them whom to worship and how, but they are taught very much after the manner that, in the week-day schools, they are instructed concerning secular things. That custom, belonging to a time not so far in the past but that many of us remember it, of consigning the "infant class" of the Sunday-school to any amiable young girl in the parish who could promise to be reasonably regular in meeting it does not obtain at the present day. Sunday-school teachers are trained, and trained with increasing care and thoroughness, for their task.

Readiness to teach is no longer a sufficient credential. The amiable young girl must now not only be willing to teach, she must also be willing to learn how to teach. In the earlier time practically any well- disposed young man of the congregation who would consent to take charge of a class of boys was eagerly allotted that class without further parley. This, too, is not now the case. The young man, before beginning to teach the boys, is obliged to prepare himself somewhat specifically for such work. In my own parish the boys' classes of the Sunday-school are taught by young men who are students in the Theological School of which my parish church is the chapel. In an adjacent parish the "infant class" is in charge of an accomplished kindergartner. Surely such persons are well qualified to help to inspire and to encourage the children to regard churchgoing as a privilege, and to make them wish to go!

And the minister! I am inclined to think that the minister helps more than any one else, except the father and mother, to give the children this inspiration, this encouragement. Children go to church now, when churchgoing is voluntary, quite as much as they went when it was compulsory. They learn very early to wish to go; they see with small difficulty that it is a privilege. Their Sunday-school teachers might help them, even their parents might help them, but, unless the minister helped them, would this be so?

There are so many ways in which the minister does his part in this matter of the child's relation to the church, and to those things for which the church stands. They are happily familiar to us through our child friends: the "children's service" at Christmas and at Easter; the "talks to children" on certain Sundays of the year. These are some of them. And there are other, more individual, more intimate ways.

The other day a little girl who is a friend of mine asked me to make out a list of books likely to be found in the "children's room" of the near- by public library that I thought she would enjoy reading. On the list I put "The Little Lame Prince," the charming story by Dinah Mulock. Having completed the list, I read it aloud to the little girl. When I reached Miss Mulock's book, she interrupted me.

"'The Little Lame Prince,' did you say? Is that in the library? I thought it was in the Bible."

"The Bible!" I exclaimed.

"Yes," the child said, in some surprise; "don't you remember? He was Jonathan's little boy - Jonathan, that was David's friend - David, that killed the giant, you know."

I at once investigated. The little girl was quite correct. "Who told you about him?" I inquired.

"Our minister," she replied. "He read it to me and some of the other children."

This, too, a bit later, I investigated. I found that the minister had not read the story as it is written in the Bible, but a version of it written by himself especially for this purpose and entitled "The Little Lame Prince."

At church, as elsewhere, the children of our nation are quick to observe, and to make their own, opportunities for doing as the grown-ups do. When occasion arises, they slip with cheerful and confiding ease into the places of their elders.

One Sunday, last summer, I chanced to attend a church in a little seaside village. When the moment arrived for taking up the collection, no one went forward to attend to that duty. I was told afterward that the man who always did it was most unprecedentedly absent. There were a number of other men in the rather large congregation, but none of them stirred as the clergyman stood waiting after having read several offertory sentences. I understood afterward that they "felt bashful," not being used to taking up the collection. The clergyman hesitated for a moment, and then read another offertory sentence. As he finished, a little boy not more than nine years old stepped out of a back pew, where he was sitting with his mother, and, going up to the clergyman, held out his hand for the plate. The clergyman gravely gave it to him, and the child, without the slightest sign of shyness, went about the church collecting the offerings of the congregation. This being done, he, with equal un-self-consciousness, gave the plate again to the clergyman and returned to his seat beside his mother.

"Did you tell him to do it?" I inquired of the mother, later.

"Oh, no," she answered; "he asked me if he might. He said he knew how, he saw it done every Sunday, and he was sure the minister would let him."

American children of the present day are surer than the children of any other nation have ever been that their fathers and their mothers and their ministers will allow them liberty to do in church, as well as with respect to going to church, such things as they know how to do, and eagerly wish to do. In our national love and reverence for childhood we willingly give the children the great gift that we give reluctantly, or not at all, to grown people - the liberty to worship God as they choose.