There is no need of trying to implant faith in a child’s nature, for it is there to begin with. But there is need of training a child’s faith, so that it shall be rightly directed and wisely developed. Every child has the instinct of faith, as surely as it has the instinct of appetite. The inborn impulse to seek nourishment is not more real and positive in a normal child, than is the impulse in such a child to cling to and to trust another. Both instincts are already there, and both need training.

The faith here spoken of is that faith that rests on a person, not that miscalled “faith” which applies to an assent to a series of dogmas. True faith, indeed, always rests on a person. Any other use of the term is only by accommodation, and is liable to be misleading. One of the best definitions of Christian faith is, “That act by which one person, a sinner, commits himself to another person, a Saviour.” Even before a child is old enough to learn of a Saviour, the instinct of faith is one of the child’s qualities; just as the instinct of hunger is a child’s quality before the child is old enough to know the nature of its fitting food. If a mother, or a nurse, or even a stranger, puts a finger into the chubby hand of an infant, that little hand will close over the proffered finger, and cling to it as for dear life. And it is not until a child has learned to distrust, that it is said to be “old enough to be afraid.” While a child’s faith is yet undisturbed, as also after a child’s faith has become discriminating, a child’s faith needs wise directing and developing; and to this end there is need of wisdom and of care on the part of those who have the responsibility of this training.

While the instinct of faith is innate in the child, a knowledge of the One on whom his faith can rest with ultimate confidence is not innate. A knowledge of God comes to man by revelation; and whoever has responsibility for a child’s moral training, has the duty of revealing to that child a knowledge of God. But a child can understand God, and can grasp a true conception of him, quite as easily as the profoundest philosopher can. A child does not need to be led by degrees into a knowledge of God. As soon as he is capable of learning that his voice can be heard by his loving mother or his loving father in another room, he is capable of learning that his voice can be heard by a loving Father whom he has never seen; who is always within hearing, but never within sight; who is the loving Father of his father and mother, as well as of himself and of everybody else; who is able to do all things, and who is sure to do all things well. In the knowledge of this truth, a child can be taught to pray to God in faith, as early as he can speak; and even to know something of the meaning of prayer before he can utter words intelligently.

From the very beginning the child can take in the great truths concerning God’s nature, and the scope of God’s power, as fully as a theologian can take them in. Therefore there need be no fear that too much is proffered to the child’s mind in this sphere, if only it all be proffered in simplicity as explicit truth, without any attempt at its explanation.

Bishop Patteson, in his missionary work among the South Sea Islanders, found it best to begin with John’s Gospel, in imparting religious instruction to untutored natives; for they could take that in easier than they could comprehend the historical books of the Bible. It is much the same with children. They can receive the profoundest truths of the Bible without any explanation. When they are older, they will be better fitted to grapple with the difficulties of elementary religious teachings. The idea that a child must have a knowledge of the outline of the Bible story before he knows the central truth that Jesus Christ is his loving Saviour, is as unreasonable as it would be to suppose that a child must know the anatomy of the human frame before he is able to believe in his mother’s love for him.

The first lesson in the training of a child’s faith is the lesson that he is to have faith in God. Many a child is told to have faith in the power of prayer, or faith in the value of good conduct, without being shown that his faith should rest wholly and absolutely on God. He is told that he can hope to have whatever he prays for; and that if he is a good boy he can expect a blessing, while if he is a bad boy he cannot expect to be blessed. With this training the child’s faith is drawn away from God, and is led to rest on his personal conduct; whereas his faith ought to be trained to rest on the God to whom he prays, and in loving obedience to whom he strives to be good.

If you tell a child that God is able and ready to give him everything that he prays for, the child is prompt to accept your statement as a truth, and so he prays for a pleasant day, when a pleasant day is desired by him. If the pleasant day comes accordingly, the child’s faith in prayer is confirmed; but if the day be a stormy one, the child’s mind is bewildered, and a doubt is likely to creep into his mind whether prayer is always so effective as he had been told to believe it to be. And the case is similar when the child prays for the health of one whom he loves, or for some gift which he longs to receive, or for success in some personal endeavor, and the issue is not in accordance with his petition.

If, however, on the other hand, you plainly tell a child that God knows what is best for us better than we know for ourselves, and that, while God is glad to have us come to him with all our wishes and all our troubles, we must leave it to God to decide just what he will give to us and do for us, the child is ready to accept this statement as the truth; and then his faith in God is not disturbed in the slightest degree by finding that God has decided to do differently from his request to God in prayer. On every side, children are being taught to have faith in prayer, rather than to have faith in God; and, in consequence, their faith is continually subject to shocks which would never have disturbed it if it had been trained to rest on God instead of resting on prayer.

If you tell a child that God loves good children, and that he does not love bad children, the child will believe you; and then, when he thinks he is a good child, he will be glad that there is a God who can appreciate him; but when he knows he is a bad child, he will perhaps be sorry that there is a God in the universe to be his enemy. So far as your training does its legitimate work, in this instance, the child is trained, not to have faith in God, but to have confidence in his own merits as a means of commending him to the God whom you have misrepresented to him. If, on the other hand, you tell a child that God is love, and that his love goes out unfailingly toward all, even toward those who have no love for him, and that, while God loves to have children good, he loves them tenderly while they are very bad, the child will take in that great truth gratefully; and then he is readier to have faith in God, and to want to be good because the loving God loves to have him good. And in this way a child’s faith in God may be the means of quickening and shaping his desires in the direction of well-doing.

As a means of training a child’s faith in God more intelligently and with greater definiteness, the fact of the Incarnation may be disclosed to him in all the fulness of its richest meaning. A very young child can comprehend the truth that God in his love sent his Son into this world as a little child, with the name Jesus—or Saviour; that Jesus grew up from childhood into manhood, that he loved little children, that he died for them, that he rose again from the dead, and ascended into heaven, that still he loves children, that he watches over them tenderly, and that he is ready to help them in all their trials and needs, and to be their Saviour forever. With this knowledge of Jesus as God’s representative, a child can be trained to trust Jesus at all times; to feel safe in darkness and in danger because of his nearness, his love, and his power; to be sure of his sympathy, and to rest on him as a sufficient Saviour. That a child is capable of such faith as this, is not fairly a question. The only question, if question there be, is whether any one but a child can attain to such faith. One thing is as sure as the words of Jesus are true, and that is, that “whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child shall in no wise enter therein;” or, in other words, that a little child’s faith is a pattern for the believers of every age.

The training of a child’s faith is the most delicate and the most important duty that devolves upon one who is set to the work of child-training. More is involved in it for the child’s welfare, and more depends upon it for the child’s enjoyment and efficiency in life, than pivots on any other phase of the training of a child. He who would train a child’s faith aright has need of wisdom, and yet more has need of faith,—just such faith as that to the exercise of which he would train the child of his charge. Peculiarly has a parent need to watch lest he check or hinder unduly the loving promptings of a child’s faith; for it is our Lord himself who has said: “Whoso shall cause one of these little ones which believe on me to stumble, it is profitable for him that a great millstone should be hanged about his neck, and that he should be sunk in the depth of the sea.”