The following piece is about training children in religion; it is from a liberal perspective and many that are very conservative will have difficulty with this because he doesn't hold the view of original sin; be that as it may, there are many thoughts contained in this piece that are worthy of serious contemplation.

  "Childhood is emphatically the period of safe instincts; and in many ways they simply ask to be let alone, and suffer no perversion: give them room to open out; use no premature compression to drive them back; and they will check each other and find a fairer proportion than can be given by your rules.

In these shrewd days, in which it has become the cleverest thing to suspect the Devil everywhere, and God nowhere. Our concern is to nurture the child, once born in the image of God, but long ago twisted into our miserable likeness, by the sight of our luxuries, the contagion of our selfishness, the hearing of our lies; and we teach them to blaspheme their own nature, to confess a sham guilt, and jabber of an unreal rescue from an unfelt danger. Having first spoiled all the children with its absurdities, and then produced them in its court in evidence of original depravity. But if the World and the Church will only learn what the child's simple presence may teach, instead of teaching what he cannot innocently learn, the truth may dawn upon them, that he seldom requires to be led, --only not to be misled.

  Whatever is thought about this doctrine, it cannot be denied that there is, in early years, an openness to habit, which, while it quickly punishes our neglect, as quickly answers to or care. No ready-made obstruction, no ruined work, is given us to undo. Wise direction alone is needed. Now this is largely true, not only of the acts of the hand, but of the methods and persuasions of the mind: for childhood has a ready faith, that may be most blessedly used or most wickedly abused; a faith so open to the sense of God, that almost unspoken, and as by look of holy sympathy, it may be given; so eager that it will seize on all the nourishment of thought within its reach; so trustful, that it feels no difficulty, and will cause you none. Your problem of guidance will therefore be, not so much to evade present embarrassments, as to prevent the shock of future perplexities that must arise when finite thought attempts to grasp an infinite faith.

Your faith cannot be the same as his: and if you speak without sympathy, if you forget your different latitude of mind, you may repel rather than instruct, and give root to a choking thorn of hatred, instead of a fruitful seed of love. If the name of God is to be sweet and solemn to young hearts, it must stand for their highest not ours: and many a tone to us, must be shunned as sure to jar on spirits differently attuned.

  How many children grow up to say, "Talk to me no more; I hate the name of God?" Yet, not the God that ever lives and loves, but the stiff idol of the catechism, looking rigorous from the narrow niche of a decaying Puritanism. Not the God whose kiss is in the light, whose gladness on the riding sea, whose voice upon the storm; who shapes the little grass, and hides in the forest, and rustles in the shower; who bends the rainbow, and blanches the snow: for children delight in nature, and from wonder at its beauty easily slide into adoration of it Lord.

Children love justice, mercy, and truth, and they will trust themselves freely to Him in whom they dwell beyond degree.

  Nor is it only in its conception of God that the faith of the child must differ from that of the man. Its moral element is also peculiar. To him religion, applied to life, presents itself exclusively as a Law, and a law that there is no serious difficulty in obeying. Prescribing a clear scheme of duty, and a natural and delightful state of affection, it seems to him so simple and practicable, that he is full of courage and goes forth with joyous step, and with confiding look gazes straight upon the open countenance of the future.

He cannot understand the penitential strains that float from the older world around him: what have these people been about, that they have so much evil to bewail? They appear to him very worthy, nay altogether faithful and meritorious Christians; and it is very strange that they should speak so grievously to God, and stand before him with a culprit air and streaming tears. These things come from a deeper truth of nature that he has not yet reached. His circle of life is narrow, and his idea of life lies quiet within it. Sin therefore remains to him a dreadful image from some foreign world; a specter of horrid witchery, whose incantations overflow from the cursing lips of bad men, and whose fires gleam from their impure eyes. But it is a thing that is supernatural still: he looks at it outside his nature, as haunting history and the world; it is not yet a sorrowful reality within.

His religion therefore is a cheerful reverence; and with its sweet light no tinge should mix from the later solemnity and inner conflicts of faith. Let him take his vow with a glad voice: if you drive him prematurely to the confessional, you make him false. His hymn of life to God is brilliant with hope and praise: and without violence to nature, you cannot displace it for the deep, low-breathing vesper-song: the rosy air of so fresh a time was never made to vibrate to that strain." James Martineau.