ral
law of spiritual growth.

The bearing of this truth upon our teaching is that we must seek for the
unfolding of the child's spiritual nature and for the turning of his
thought and affections toward God from the first. We must not point to
some distant day ahead when the child will "accept Jesus" or become "a
child of God." We must ourselves think of the child, and lead the child
to think of himself, as a member of God's family.

This does not mean that the child, as he grows from childhood into youth
and adulthood, will not need to make a personal and definite decision to
give God and the Christ first place in his life; he will need to do this
not once, but many times. It only means that from his earliest years the
child is to be made to feel that he belongs to God, and should turn to
him as Father and Friend. Day by day and week by week the child should
be growing more vitally conscious of God's place in his life, and more
responsive to this relationship. Only by this steady and continuous
process of growth will the spiritual nature take on the depth and
quality which the Christian ideal sets for its attainment.

Ideals and ambitions.--In order that religion may be a helpful reality
to the child it must extend to his developing ideals and ambitions. For
even children have ideals and ambitions, however crude they may be, or
however much they may lack the serious and practical nature they later
take on. Probably no child reaches his teens without having many times
secretly determined that he would do this or become that, which he has
admired in some hero of his own choosing from actual acquaintance or
from books or stories. There is no normal child but who has his own
notions of greatness and importance, of success and fame, and who wishes
and longs for certain things ahead upon which he has set his heart, and
which he purposes to attain. The things that he thus values are his
ideals, goals to be reached. Ideals are, therefore, guides to action
and effort, something to be striven after and sacrificed for. They are
the things most worth while, for which we can afford to forego other
things of lesser value. It was the force of a great ideal which led Paul
to say, "This one thing I do"; and to the attainment of that ideal he
gave all his purpose and effort.

To form true ideals requires a trained sense of values; one must develop
a power of spiritual perspective, and be able to see things in their
true proportions.