"soft and resistless" minds do not receive good impressions they will
receive bad ones, and it is the part of wisdom to get the good in first.
Where a mind is "to let," some sort of tenant is sure to occupy.

Coleridge put the case in a nutshell when an English deist inveighed
bitterly against the rigid instruction of Christian homes. The deist
said: "Consider the helplessness of a little child. Before it has wisdom
or judgment to decide for itself, it is prejudiced in favour of
Christianity. How selfish is the parent who stamps his religious ideas
into a child's receptive nature, as a moulder stamps the hot iron with
his model! I shall prejudice my children neither for Christianity nor
for Buddhism, nor for Atheism, but allow them to wait for their mature
years. Then they can open the question and decide for themselves." Later
Coleridge led his friend into the garden, and then whimsically
exclaimed: "How selfish is the gardener to ruthlessly stamp his
prejudice in favour of roses, violets and strawberries into a receptive
garden-bed. The time was when in April I pulled up the young weeds,--the
parsley, the thistles,--and planted the garden-beds out with vegetables
and flowers. Now I have decided to permit the garden to go until
September. Then the black clods can choose for themselves between
cockleburrs, currants and strawberries." The deist saw the point.

Another weakness in our system of religious training for children is
manifest at the adolescence-period of the child. We have been in the
habit of allowing the child to consider the Bible-school as his church.
We send him to the Bible-school in his very early years, but make no
demands upon him as far as specific church-attendance is concerned. And
at the kindergarten-period we are probably wise in this; for after the
child has attended kindergarten for an hour, it is too great a tax upon
him to require him to sit through an hour's church-service. But after