If a boy is a capacity to be filled, or a machine to grind out
facts or dollars, the teacher's course of action is clear.

God's conception of life is surely greater than these, yet He never
gave a definition. Jesus said it is more than meat, that it is worth
more than all the world, that it does not consist in abundance of
things, that it is eternal, but He nowhere tells us what it is, for He
can not. It is a part of God. He can only make us understand it in any
wise by giving its characteristics and values. Perhaps these may come to
us more clearly through considering first what life is not.

1. Life is not merely "plastic clay" to be moulded, or a "block of
marble" to be hewn according to the will of the sculptor.

This poetic conception emphasizes rightly the tremendous power of
environment and personality in shaping character, but it is really a
dangerous half truth. If the child were a block of marble, he would be
no different from the dead, inert lump that lies in the studio awaiting
the will of the sculptor. They would both be things. But a child has
life, and the difference between life and thing lies in an inner power
or activity which life possesses and uses when and as it will. This
activity has to be reckoned with. Sun and rain and earth can not make a
plant grow if it does not use its own mysterious inner force upon them.
No sort of influence can affect a life, if the life does not respond to
it. This response will be either receiving or rejecting the influences
that come, working with or against them. Assuredly this is a condition
very different from "plastic clay." Two great tasks, therefore, are
included in the work of nurture: the first, to see that all that comes
to plastic life from the outside is what it ought to be; the second, to
somehow arouse the power within to vigorous effort upon the best things.

2. Life is not a "pure white page," even in its beginning.

There is here also a half truth, and an error. Life is unstained by
guilt in its early years. It comes innocent from the hand of God, but
fingers long since vanished have traced lines that mar the perfect
whiteness. There are tendencies away from God as well as toward Him, and
these are not the result of environment. Environment will cultivate
tendencies but can not implant them. Favoring conditions will make an
apple tree produce magnificent apples, but they will never implant in it
any tendency to bear roses or produce thorns. Failure