But not a star of all

The unimaginable stars has heard

How He administered this terrestrial ball;

Our race have kept their Lord's entrusted word.

Of those earth-visiting feet

None knows the secret, cherished, perilous— The terrible, shamefast, frightened, whispered, sweet Heart-shattering secret of His way with us.

No planet knows that this

Our wayside planet, carrying land and wave, Love and life multiplied, and pain and bliss, Bears as chief treasure one forsaken grave.

Nor in our little day,

May his devices with the heavens be guessed,
His pilgrimage to thread the Milky Way,
Or His bestowals there be manifest.

But in the eternities

Doubtless we shall compare together, hear A million alien gospels, in what guise

He walked the Pleiades, the Lyre, the Bear.

Oh, be prepared, my soul!

To read the inconceivable, to scan

The million forms of God those stars unroll

When in our turn we show to them-a Man."

IV

THE RELIGION OF CHILDHOOD *

Moreover his mother made him a little robe, and brought it to him from year to year, when she came up with her husband to offer the yearly sacrifice."-I SAM. 11:19.

I

AM very much embarrassed tonight, my friends. I am chafing under the lock of sealed

lips. Your pastor commands me to say nothing about him in this anniversary sermon. I am not to mention his name, not to speak of his work, not to say anything about the conspicuous part he has played in emphasizing the religion of childhood in the Christian Church. He is the originator of the Junior Congregation; but I must not mention it. He is the greatest preacher to children, the severest of all critics, in the world; but I would not dare to say such a thing in this presence. He is loved by the children of Brooklyn and of the country as no other minister; still I can say absolutely nothing about this. He must continue to be loved on in tongueless silence! He has published volumes dealing with the religious life of the child which have become classics; but alas! that is a matter for reviews and

* Anniversary sermon in First Reformed Church, Brooklyn, November 14, 1915.

reviewers-I am not even privileged to refer to it. Am I not in an embarrassing situation indeed? Why, there are so many things that could be said, and ought to be said, at this time; but I must leave them thoughtlessly alone. My lips are sealed; my tongue is tied; I can't even mention Doctor Farrar's name. I would like to tell him how the ministers of the land love him; but I am strictly forbidden. I would like to say to him how grateful we are for his pioneer work on behalf of the children of the nation; but I am doomed to silence. Imagine my unique and solitary loneliness in a day when everybody is talking at everybody, and everybody talking at the same time! Doctor Albert J. Lyman, the golden-souled, said Doctor Farrar brought us a great new thought: To create a real Church out of children instead of merely training them up for the Church. That in itself, so richly characteristic of our vanished velvet heart, ought to be repeated here and now; but alas and alack! I am under promise not to say one word of a personal nature. And I always try to keep my promises-at least some of them. That I am succeeding fairly well tonight, you may judge for yourselves.

Notwithstanding my handicap, however, this is a joyful occasion. Muzzled as I am by the lack of free speech, that dangerous oral shell so recklessly tossed about by Americans and others, I am resolved to wear my fetters becomingly and not un

意

duly kick against the goads. Isn't that orthodoxically Pauline? Every one should be happy, though human-that is my philosophy of life, and I am going to practise it even if I am forbidden to talk as I should like. My subject is, "The Religion of Childhood." I wish to catch at least the afterglow of some of these lightninglike forces flashing to and fro in this unfadingly beautiful picture and story of Samuel's childhood. If I occasionally turn aside to apply the lessons to the children of today, the facts and forces shaping their lives, you must not presumptuously infer that I am speaking of local or personal matters, or of anything that is remotely germane to this anniversary occasion. Am I not under promise to be icily, freezingly impersonal? Have I not said that I would be spinelessly neutral in recounting any of the grave issues between the pastor of this Church and the religious life of children? Meantime, I am going to be brave because I know I have your sympathy and your pity. Imagine a ravenously hungry man within easy reach of the most deliciously appetizing food. Everything he craves is right there before him. All he has to do is to reach forth and take what he wants. And yet he must not eat one bite! He is the victim of touch not, taste not, handle not." Well, that hungry man is my twin brother in tribulation. I am sitting at a feast of memory, at the close of an epoch, at the dawn of a larger beginning. In vision, I see boys and girls, who are now fathers and

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mothers, gone out into all the earth from this original Junior Congregation; and yet-my vision must fade-unvoiced, unworded, unpainted!

I

Turning to this lovely history, the first factor I find in the child's religion-the sweetest, the purest, the simplest this side of the angels-is motherhood. "Moreover his mother!" Ah, what histories, what heroisms, what poems, what consecrations, what loves go forever ringing and singing through the words! As the source lies back of the river, as the sun overhangs the million-tinted meadows of June, as the atmosphere lends itself to the trilling voices of birds in the green of the year, so the mother stands back of her child, overhangs her child, breathes through her child. Who was Augustine? A saint-plus his mother! Who was John Wesley? A statesman-evangelist-plus his mother! Who was Abraham Lincoln? A great human redeemer— plus his mother! Who was Henry Ward Beecher ? Our supreme preacher-plus his mother! And so the story runs the swift, dazzling, fire-footed, soulfashioning stuff that makes the heart of history throb with divine flame. "But that is old," you say. "I have heard it so often." Yes; it is old, very old-as old as the heart of God, as old as the deepmost, innermost genius of the universe, as old as the first atom that went into the making of the