first pillar supporting the domed heavens! And yet this old, old thing is so enchantingly new that it thrills us, it awes us, it inspires us. Oh, how movingly, how fascinatingly new it is! New as the smile of innocence upon the faces of little children! New as the love which each generation of lovers whisper in moonlight and starglow! New as the last prayer of faith that soars up from a quickened soul to the throne of grace! New as the newest aspiration stirring our wills to do God's will on earth even as it is done in Heaven! Truly, this factor of motherhood so shaping her child that her child shapes the world into which he comes for righteousness and for God, is very old and very new. But, better than being old or new, it is everlastingly true.

How many mothers, think you, have been brought to a more vivid consciousness of the meaning of their motherhood by the Junior Congregation and its Father? No man can say, because they are a multitude, scattered here, there, and yonder, which no man can number. But of this much it is our plain, unvarnished duty to bear witness: Mothers have been recalled to a deep new sense of their mothering responsibilities by seeing the unfolding religious life of their children normally developed in this great little Church dedicated to the service of little great people! And if I were not under promise to be stoically impersonal, I would turn aside just here to say that because of his work for

children, Doctor Farrar's name is a household word in countless homes.

II

A second factor in the religion of childhood is discretion. "His mother made him a little robe." Hannah did not try to make her husband's religious clothes fit little Samuel, the prophet-to-be. She knew that Samuel had his own religious life to live. It must not be a forced, stereotyped, mechanical, unnatural religion. The child's religion is untaught and untrained, of course, yet it is spontaneous and sincere. Therefore, it must be bright, joyous, wholesome, healthful. Henry Drummond was fond of repeating this story of a little girl. She said to her father: "Papa, I want you to say something for God to me, something I want to tell Him very much. I have such a little voice that I don't think He could hear it away up in Heaven; but you have a big man's voice, and He will be sure to hear you." Taking the child in his arms, the father told her that, though God were at that moment surrounded by his holy angels, singing to Him one of the grandest and sweetest songs of praise ever heard in Heaven, he was sure that God would say to them: Hush! There's a little girl away down on the earth, who wants to whisper something in My ear." Was he not a wise father? Was he not a Christian father? Did he not have the genius of making re

ligion real to that realest of all mortals, the child?

Now, graciously emphasizing this factor of discretion in dealing with the spiritual life of our children, is one of the fine contributions the Junior Congregation makes to the well-rounded activities of the Church. When we consider how much indiscretion there has been and still is in this matter, we ought to appreciate that contribution all the more. "Do you think my little girl is old enough to join the Church?" asked a mother. "How old is she?" rejoined the pastor. "She is only seventeen," replied the mother. Poor little thing! Verily, she is old enough for church membership! Moreover, if she had had the privilege of growing up in a Junior Congregation, which, as Dr. Lyman says, creates a Church out of children instead of merely training them up for the Church, the mother might never have asked that rebukingly accusing question.

III

Vigilance, watchfulness, is a third factor in the religious life of children. Samuel had a mother—a godly mother; she was discreet-a disciple of common sense; and she was keenly awake to her boy's growing, unfolding life. She did not bring up last year's robe for this year's Samuel; she "brought it to him from year to year." Samuel is the same, and yet not the same. Samuel retains his self-identity from year to year, but he does not experience

the same religious thoughts and emotions during each successive year. The miracle of growth is in his nature; the inner and outer powers of expansion are asserting themselves; it has been decreed from eternity that Samuel is a moving, changing being in a moving, changing world. Which way shall he move? How shall he change?

These questions may be helpfully answered by the vigilant eyes of parents, preachers, and teachers. From year to year we must enter more deeply into our children's religious thinking. From year to year we must make an ampler, finer robe for their spiritual natures. From year to year we must approach them more understandingly, more sympathetically. They are young and fresh and sparkling; for them life's at the spring; they are rigid critics of the antiquated and out-of-date. We may be tempted to grow wickedly old, cynically unchildlike, losing touch with this strange, mystical, new human world unfolding itself before our very eyes.

Just here, it seems to me, comes in one of the essential values of the work we are commemorating tonight. It keeps pace with the inner, unfolding life of boys and girls. It does not allow our children to pass through their plastic years, receive the mould of little pagans, then wander away into the far country, eventually coming back to decency broken and bleeding specimens of what they might have been. Rather, it seizes the truth that the soul be

longs to God; that all souls have been redeemed in Christ; that every soul may be trained, not to succeed in life, but to succeed in living; that the time to begin is childhood; and the time to end-never! God will complete that good work which we have here begun. "My son writes to me every night before he sleeps," a justly proud mother said to me the other evening. Many faithful sons and daughters have been born in this old Church. If, in various parts of the world, they look with increasing gratitude to their mother church, it is because the mother church took them in their childhood and taught them that Christianity is not something to be patched onto the robe of life; but that it is the robe itself, woven without seam throughout, dynamically inspiring, beautifully comforting and nobly sustaining all through their checkered, unfolding human years. This Church has simply given its little folks a chance to develop and express their own religious hopes and aspirations. It is what every church should do; and because of your noble example and wise leadership, churches everywhere are going to give this matter its rightful place in their thought and practice.

IV

The fourth factor I mention is fatherhood. Who accompanied this ancient mother, as she journeyed year after year to Jerusalem, carrying a new robe