With the Children on Sundays: Through Eye-Gate and Ear-Gate into the City of Child-Soul
With the Children on Sundays: Through Eye-Gate and Ear-Gate into the City of Child-Soul
A charming relic of early 20th-century parenting, this guidebook tackles one eternal question: how do you make Sundays feel sacred rather than suffocating for little ones? Sylvanus Stall believed the answer lay not in droning lectures but in what he called "object lessons" - using oysters and crabs, bread and candles, the stuff of everyday life, to crack open spiritual truths for young minds. The title alone reveals his romantic sensibility: children enter the "City of Child-Soul" through "Eye-Gate and Ear-Gate," their senses the portals to faith. Stall's method was revolutionary for his era - replacing dread with wonder, replacing boredom with the particular magic of a day set apart. He offers parents scripts, anecdotes, and concrete strategies for transforming Sunday from a dreary obligation into something children actually anticipate. Reading this now feels like peering into a vanished world of domestic faith, where families gathered around and wrestled with the same challenge modern parents still face: how to pass something lasting to the next generation without losing them to indifference.
