forces with which he may come into a conscious and fascinatingly exciting relationship. It is a revelation of supreme importance, and with it comes not only the complexly emotional and intellectual realization of personality, but the aptitude to enter into and assimilate the traditions of the race.
It cannot be too strongly emphasized that this is the moment, and the earliest moment, when it becomes desirable to initiate the boy or girl into the mysteries of religion. That it is the best moment is indicated by the well-recognized fact that the immediately post-pubertal period of adolescence is the period during which, even spontaneously, the most marked religious phenomena tend to occur.
11 Stanley Hall seems to think that twelve is the age at which the cultivation of the religious consciousness may begin; "the age, signalized by the ancient Greeks as that at which the study of what was comprehensively called music should begin, the age at which Roman guardianship ended, at which boys are confirmed in the modern Greek, Catholic, Lutheran and Episcopal Churches, and at which the Child Jesus entered the Temple, is as early as any child ought consciously to go about his Heavenly Father's business."
12 But I doubt whether we can fix the age definitely by years, nor is it indeed quite accurate to assert that so early an age as twelve is generally accepted as the age of initiation; the Anglican Church, for example, usually confirms at the age of fifteen.
It is not age with which we ought to be concerned, but a biological epoch of psychic evolution. It is unwise to insist on any particular age, because development takes place within a considerably wide limit of years.
I have spoken of the introduction to religion at puberty as the initiation into a mystery. The phrase was deliberately chosen, for it seems to me to