AUTHOR'S PREFACE

_Children can be brought to a religious character and experience through
right nurture and training in religion._ This is the fundamental
assumption on which the present volume rests, and it makes the religious
education of children the most strategic opportunity and greatest
responsibility of the church, standing out above all other obligations
whatever.

Further, the successful teaching of religion is based on the same laws
that apply to other forms of teaching; hence teachers in church schools
need and have a right to all the help that a scientific pedagogy
permeated by an evangelistic spirit can give them. They also have the
obligation to avail themselves of this help for the meeting of their
great task.

This book undertakes to deal in a concrete and practical way with the
underlying principles of religious instruction. The plan of the text is
simple. First comes the part _the teacher_ must play in training the
child in religion. Then the spiritual changes and growth to be effected
in _the child_ are set forth as the chief objective of instruction. Next
is a statement of the _great aims,_ or goals, to be striven for in the
child's expanding religious experience. These goals are: (1) fruitful
_religious knowledge_; (2) right _religious attitudes--interests,
ideals, feelings, loyalties_; (3) the _application of this knowledge and
these attitudes to daily life and conduct_.