01.000.2. Preface

Preface

Under the title of “Virginibus Puerisque,” three or four sermons to children are published every month in The Expository Times. No part of the magazine, except the Introductory Notes, has been more appreciated. A distinguished American scholar wrote to the Editor recently and said: “This winter, Mrs. B has been reading during our family Sunday afternoon hour, for the benefit of our little girl, the ‘Virginibus Puerisque’ in different numbers, sometimes getting a bound volume from the College Library for the purpose. Each group of sermonettes has been enthusiastically received. Could you hear the ardent exclamations of the little girl about the stories, you would have no doubt that they are appreciated. They are the best for the purpose of anything we have found and we are grateful to you.”

“Virginibus Puerisque” will be continued in The Expository Times. But more is required. The preacher, the teacher, the superintendent, the father and the mother—they have all discovered that a new era has opened for the training of children. The short addresses in The Expository Times are already being read in some day schools, to give taste to the Bible lesson, or to send it home to the heart of the little ones. So there must be one for every day. The Sunday-school teacher also must have a good choice: how otherwise can an address be found suitable to the lesson that is taught? And the preacher must have, not sermonettes to read, but materials in plenty to make his own sermonettes interesting and memorable. Is the preacher afraid that he may become known as a children’s preacher? “Then,” says Bishop McDowell, “your degradation and humiliation will be complete, especially if you have two or more degrees! But do not worry lest your great abilities should be wasted on children. Only be afraid that your false pride and stupidity may prevent your doing a mighty work among them. The preacher or teacher who can keep or set the feet of childhood in the way of life is doing the largest work being done in the world today.” But the mother or the father in the home is most of all in need of such short addresses as this volume and its successors will be found to contain. They are all original. Except in a few cases where they have appeared in The Expository Times, none of them has ever been preached or published before. They are fresh studies of life in the light of God’s word. They are not crude because they are simple; for Principal Davies of Manchester was right when he said that children, “like adults, are susceptible to beauty of thought and language, and it is a mistake to think that ‘anything’ will do for them. They detect also that which is devoid of ideas and false in argument.” A little argument, however, goes a long way. If children are practical and must ask why, they are also strong idealists. To quote Dr. Barber, formerly a teacher of The Leys School, Cambridge, “There is no separation between the spiritual and the material; it is as easy for them to believe in angels or God as in winds, sunshine, the postman, or Santa Claus. The tendency to thinking in water-tight compartments, which is possible in limited mature life, is quite undeveloped in children. Imagination is the gift of their Godlike origin; imitativeness is the mark of their imperfectness. The two combined enable them quite easily to see things earthly after the pattern revealed in the Mount.”