as a restraining influence in the growing lives of the new generation,
the nature and extent of the changes is fairly obvious.

Let us suppose that to-day the average little children still have the
beginnings of their religious training in much the same way as it has
always been. And a large proportion of them undoubtedly do, because
that is one of the family traditions which almost any mother would be
loath to change.

The children, then, are taught to say their daily prayer--they are told
that God hears them and sees them--that God is all-wise and
all-powerful--that He loves good people and rewards them, while people,
who do wrong, anger Him and cannot escape His punishment. And this
teaching is continued and developed in the Sunday school, as soon as the
children are old enough to go there.

The child mind absorbs all this, accepts it with the same simple faith
with which it has accepted Santa Claus.

If we consider the period of early childhood carefully, we find that
these two beliefs, so to speak, go hand in hand--and there is much
similarity between them. Most children are also taught about Santa Claus
from the earliest days. He becomes very real and wonderfully important
in the child imagination. He, too, has a mysterious way of knowing
whether people are good or bad; he, too, loves the good ones and rewards
them by bringing them beautiful presents--and if the bad ones are too
bad, he is liable to punish them by giving them no presents at all.
Instead of praying to him at night, you can write him letters which he
has a way of getting from the chimney, so that he, too, can understand
the innermost wishes of your heart.

Sooner or later, however, the time must come when the existence of Santa
Claus is called into doubt. The doubt usually begins with some remark
made by an older boy or girl. But even if older boys and girls kept
their mouths shut, the time would surely come when a growing mind would
begin puzzling, reasoning, doubting, and by putting two and two
together, would be forced to the conclusion that this pretty idea was
only a make-believe, a myth, a humbug. A little further reflection might
tell it that the myth must have been invented by some one, long ago, and
was kept alive and carried on by people, generation after generation, on
account of the value and influence it was found to have in bringing up
children.

Even after a child has become too wise to believe any longer in Santa
Claus, when