X. Physics, Chemistry, Handwork, Language, Religion

Thus it is of such infinite importance to understand the being of man from the aspect of his development in time. Try for a moment to realize what a difference there is if we teach a seven-or-eight-year-old child about the New Testament, or, having first stimulated a consciousness of universal divinity in the whole of Nature, if we wait until he has reached the age of nine or ten before we pass to the New Testament as such. In the latter case right preparation has been made and the Gospels will live in all their super-sensible greatness. If we teach the child too early about the New Testament it will not lay hold of his whole being, but will remain mere phraseology, just so many rigid, barren concepts. The consequent danger is that religious feeling will harden in the child and continue through life in a rigid form instead of in a living form pervaded through and through with feeling for the world. We prepare the child rightly to realize from the ninth and tenth years onwards the glory of Christ Jesus if before this age he has been introduced to the principle of universal Divinity immanent in the whole world.