man-serving man or woman with the love of purity, honor, truth, and
goodness speaking through the life, we may well pause, realizing we need
more than a sentimental desire that the child may reach the heights of
goodness: we must know the way there and the methods of leading the life
in that way. True devotion to God and to childhood will mean more than
petitions for the salvation of children; it will mean the prayer that is
labor and the labor that is prayer to know how they may attain fulness
of spiritual life; it will mean reverent searching into the divine ways
of growth in grace. The study of the means and methods of religious
education, especially of children, in the home and family, is one of the
most evident and important religious duties resting on parents and all
who contemplate marriage and family life.


§ 5. WHAT IS MEANT BY THE RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD?

In discussing the development of character in children one hears often
the question, "Which is the earliest virtue to appear in a child?"
People will debate whether it is truthfulness, reverence, kindness, or
some other virtue. All this implies a picture of the child as a tree
that sends forth shoots of separate virtues one after another. But the
character desired is not a series of branches, it is rather like a
symmetrical tree; it is not certain parts, but it is the whole of a
personality. The development of religious character is not a matter of
consciously separable virtues, but is the determination of the trend and
quality of the whole life. Moral training is not a matter of cultivating
honesty today, purity tomorrow, and kindness the day after. Virtues have
no separate value. Character cannot be disintegrated into a list of
independent qualities. We seek a life that, as a whole life, loves and
follows truth, goodness, and service.