ist Publication
Society in the "Social Service Series."

CHAPTER IX

THE CHILD'S IDEAL LIFE

The modern child is likely to miss one of the great character enrichings
which his parents had, in that he is in danger of growing up entirely
ignorant of the poetic setting of religious thought in historic and
dignified hymns. The great hymns have done more for religious thought
and character than all the sermons that have ever been preached. Even in
the adult of the purely intellectual cast the hymn, aided by rhythm,
music, repetition, and emotion, is likely to become a more permanent
part of the mental substratum than any formal logical presentation of
ideas. How much more will this be the case with the child who feels more
than he reasons, who delights in cadence and rhythm, and who loves a
world of imagery!

Sec. 1. SONG AND STORY

Very early life's ideals are presented in poetic form; plays,
school-life, love of country, friendships, all take or are given metric
expression. So, for children, hymns have a perfectly natural place. The
child sings as he plays, sings as he works, sings in school, and, as
long as life and memory hold, these words of song will be his
possession; in declining years, when eyes are failing and other
interests may wane, fragments of childhood's songs and youth's poems
will sing themselves over in his memory; while in the years between how
often will some stanza or line spring into the focus of thought just at
the moment when it can give brave and helpful direction!

Those years of facile memorization should be like the ant's summer, a
period of steady storing in mind of the world's treasures of thought. No
man ever had too many good and beautiful thoughts in his memory. Few
have failed to recall with gratitude some apparently long-forgotten word
of cheer, light, and inspiration stored in childhood. The special virtue
of the hymn, among all poetic forms of great thoughts, is that memory is
strengthened by the music and the thought further idealized by it, while
frequent repetition fixes it the more firmly and repetition in
congregational song adds the high value of emotional association.

But what kinds of memory treasures are being given to the modern child
in the realm of religion? In by far the greater number of instances in
the United States neither church nor Sunday school nor home brings to
him any knowledge of the great hymns of religion.[15] In the churches
that use these h