learning are assured.

4. The child's religious interests will be identical in character with
the other interests of this period. He will not be interested in the
Being or attributes of God, but God in His great activities as Creator
and Wonder-Worker, and in His relation as Father. Jesus will make
appeal, not in His discourses, but in His acts of helpfulness and power,
and His love.

The great law of teaching is here involved, that interest in and
knowledge of the unknown can come only through interest in and knowledge
of something which is like it. Paul says in Romans, "For the invisible
things of Him since the world began are clearly seen, being perceived
through the things that are made, even His everlasting power and
divinity." Therefore the first definite religious instruction which the
child receives, must be upon spiritual truths illustrated in his own
known world of interests.


IMITATION

The result of the efforts of curiosity, senses and activity is a
constantly increasing store of ideas in the child's mind, relating to
these things in which he is interested. As these ideas enter his mind,
applying this term to the "intellectual function of the soul," he
immediately wants to act upon them, according to a law inborn that an
idea always tends to go out into action, unless it is held back. Adults
have fixed habits of expressing ideas that come to them, but not so the
child. An interesting activity is always a suggestion to him to
reproduce it exactly, if possible. This difference between habit and