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How to Teach Religion - Principles and Methods by George Herbert Betts
page 29 of 226 (12%)

Given just the right touch at the opportune moment, and these potential
powers spring into dynamic abilities, a blessing to their possessor and
to the world they serve. Left without the right training, or allowed to
turn in wrong directions, and these infinite capacities for good may
become instruments for evil, a curse to the one who owns them and a
blight to those against whom they are directed.

Children the bearers of spiritual culture.--The greatest business of
any generation or people is, therefore, the education of its children.
Before this all other enterprises and obligations must give way, no
matter what their importance. It is at this point that civilization
succeeds or fails. Suppose that for a single generation our children
should, through some inconceivable stroke of fate, refuse to open their
minds to instruction--suppose they should refuse to learn our science,
our religion, our literature, and all the rest of the culture which the
human race has bought at so high a price of sacrifice and suffering.
Suppose they should turn deaf ears to the appeal of art, and reject the
claims of morality, and refuse the lessons of Christianity and the
Bible. Where then would all our boasted progress be? Where would our
religion be? Where would modern civilization be? All would revert to
primitive barbarism, through the failure of this one generation, and the
race would be obliged to start anew the long climb toward the mountain
top of spiritual freedom.

Each generation must therefore create anew in its own life and
experience the spiritual culture of the race. Each child that comes to
us for instruction, weak, ignorant, and helpless though he be, is
charged with his part in the great program God has marked out for man to
achieve. Each of these little ones is the bearer of an immortal soul,
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