the earliest manifestations of the spirit of loyalty in the child is
his desire to have a share in the activities of the home. He would not
only look like those he admires; he would do what they do. This is more
than mere imitation; it is loyalty at work again. The direction of this
tendency is one of the largest opportunities before parents and can make
the most important contribution to character.

The religious life of the child is essentially a matter of loyalty. His
faith, affections, aspirations, and endeavors turn toward persons,
institutions, and concepts which are to him ideal. He does not analyze,
he cannot describe, or even narrate, his religious experiences, but he
affectionately moves, with a sense of pleasure, toward those things
which seem to him ideal, toward parents, customs of the home or school,
the church, his class, his teacher, toward characters in story-books. He
is likely to think of Jesus in just that way, as the one person whom he
would most of all like to know and be with. The life of virtue and the
religious life then will be weak or strong in the measure that the child
has the stimulating ideals which call forth his loyalty and in the
measure that he has opportunity to express that loyalty. His religious
life will consist, not so much in external forms perhaps, still less in
intellectual statements about theology or even about his own
experiences, as in a growing realization of the great ideals, an
increasing sense of their meaning and reality within, and, on the
objective side, a steady moving of his life toward them in action and
habits and therefore in character and quality.


§ 7. IMPORTANT CONSIDERATIONS

It is worth while to insist upon two important considerations. Parents