ast resistance and "be like other
people."

Growing out of this power of environment comes the problem of all
philanthropic and religious work--how to overcome the influence of
harmful surroundings. The need is obvious when the surroundings are
vicious, yet the home does not need to be in the slums to injure a
growing life. It only needs to be Christless. This may seem a very
radical statement, but it is nevertheless true. Arresting the highest
development is as truly an injury as giving to life wrong direction. Has
not a plant been positively injured when its most beautiful
possibilities are unrealized because of unfavoring conditions? Is not a
body, undersized and stunted because of lack of fresh air and food, as
truly deformed as though the back were bent? Has not that soul received
the most cruel of all injuries, when its divinest possibilities can
never be attained either because of spiritual starvation or
misdirection? The Church and the Sunday School attempt to furnish a
counteracting environment, but it is infrequent and brief. The only
power which can render this temporary, religious environment mote
effective in influencing character than a harmful, permanent one, is the
Divine. A church building or a Sunday School session of itself, can
accomplish little, placed over against a home. Methods of grading and
forms of worship are impotent in themselves. It is only a living Christ,
actually vitalizing the lesson and the sermon and the plan of work Who
makes them efficacious.

If this be so, then the teacher who goes to the home itself to press the
claims of a personal Savior on the father and mother, has after all
reached the heart of the problem of environment.

(c) The third factor of unconscious nourishment is the Superhuman
Power.

This thought has been suggested in connection with personality and
environment, but it demands separate emphasis. It is not an easy thing
in the stress of the visible to remember the greater power of the
Invisible. The most earnest Christian worker is sometimes overwhelmed by
discouragement or, again, unduly confident because of the perfection of
system and method, forgetting that God knows no obstacle, and that He
alone can put life into a plan of work.

But though God uses men and methods, He does not always so approach a
life He deals directly with a soul through the influence of the Holy
Spirit, and life receives its most holy nurture in those sacred hours.
Therefore, the