d in a pageant of the Nativity
will always be a little nearer to the original event than if their
imaginations had not been called upon to make real the characters and
incidents.

USING THE MEMORY

The memory should play an important part in religion. Gems from the
Bible, stories, characters, and events, inspiring thoughts and maxims,
and many other such things should become a permanent part of the
furnishing of the mind, recorded and faithfully preserved by the memory.

Laws of use of memory.--The laws by which the memory works have been
thoroughly studied and carefully described, and should be fully
understood by every teacher. Further than this, _they should be
faithfully observed in all memory work_. These laws may be stated as
follows:

1. The law of _complete registration_. The first act in the memory
process is fully and completely to register, or _learn_, the matter to
be retained. The retention can never be better than the registration of
the facts given into the memory's keeping. Half-learned matter easily
slips away, never having been completely impressed on the mind. It is
possible to lose both effort and efficiency by committing a verse of a
poem barely up to the point where it can doubtfully be repeated instead
of giving it the relatively small amount of additional study and
practice which would register it firmly and completely. Whatever is
worth committing to memory should therefore be carried past the barely
known stage and committed fully and completely.

2. The law of _multiple association_. This only means that the new facts
learned shall be related as closely as may be to matter already in the
mind. And this is equivalent to saying that the material learned shall
be _understood_, its meaning grasped and its significance comprehended.
To understand for yourself the value of association, make this
experiment: Have some one write down a list of ten unrelated words in a
column, and hold the list before you while you have time to read it over
just once slowly and carefully. Now try repeating the words in order
from memory. Next, have your friend write ten other words which this
time form a connected sentence. After reading these words over once as
you did the first list, try repeating them in order. You find that you
have much trouble to memorize the first list, while the second presents
no difficulty at all. The difference lies in the fact that the words of
the first list were unrelated, lacking