ocence of the world, as long as they can be.
They should be told only of God as a Great Friend whom some day they
will need more and understand and know better. That is as much as most
children need. The phrases of religion put too early into their mouths
may become a cant, something worse than blasphemy.

Yet children are sometimes very near to God. Creative passion stirs in
their play. At times they display a divine simplicity. But it does not
follow that therefore they should be afflicted with theological
formulae or inducted into ceremonies and rites that they may dislike
or misinterpret. If by any accident, by the death of a friend or a
distressing story, the thought of death afflicts a child, then he may
begin to hear of God, who takes those that serve him out of their slain
bodies into his shining immortality. Or if by some menial treachery,
through some prowling priest, the whisper of Old Bogey reaches our
children, then we may set their minds at ease by the assurance of his
limitless charity. . . .

With adolescence comes the desire for God and to know more of God, and
that is the most suitable time for religious talk and teaching.

9. GOD IS NOT SEXUAL

In the last two or three hundred years there has been a very
considerable disentanglement of the idea of God from the complex of
sexual thought and feeling. But in the early days of religion the two
things were inseparably bound together; the fury of the Hebrew prophets,
for example, is continually proclaiming the extraordinary "wrath" of
their God at this or that little dirtiness or irregularity or breach of
the sexual tabus. The ceremony of circumcision is clearly indicative
of the original nature of the Semitic deity who developed into the
Trinitarian God. So far as Christianity dropped this rite, so far
Christianity disavowed the old associations. But to this day the
representative Christian churches still make marriage into a mystical
sacrament, and, with some exceptions, the Roman communion exacts
the sacrifice of celibacy from its priesthood, regardless of the
mischievousness and maliciousness that so often ensue. Nearly every
Christian church inflicts as much discredit and injustice as it can
contrive upon the illegitimate child. They do not treat illegitimate
children as unfortunate children, but as children with a mystical and
an incurable taint of SIN. Kindly easy-going Christians may resent this
statement because it does not tally with the