ABSTRACT
In the last chapter I discussed the important business of telling stories to children, with particular reference to the problem presented to the story-teller by the children’s inability to understand generalised words. I am convinced, myself, that very nearly all the actual religious teaching in the family gang should be done through the medium of stories. You cannot, of course, present the whole of religion in that particular way, but we are not concerned with the whole, we are dealing with foundations—the foundations which can be laid in the family and nowhere else. The superstructure—the completed edifice—will not be the work of the family gang only, it will be the result of a combined operation by family, Church, and individual, with all the social and intellectual influences of Heaven-on-Thames taking their part. But the family gang is the best place in the world for story-telling, and since it is our purpose to help the children to learn the art of generalisation from numbers of particular instances our main vehicle of teaching will be the story.
