the developing mind food which
it could assimilate in no other way. Older boys and girls, could they be
given some idea of the spiritual heroes of Christendom as real men and
women, without the nauseous note of piety which generally infects their
biographies, would find much to delight them: romance of the best sort,
because concerned with the highest values, and stories of endurance and
courage such as always appeal to them. These people were not
objectionable pietists. They were persons of fullest vitality and
immense natural attraction; the pick of the race. We know that, by the
numbers who left all to follow them. Ought we not to introduce our
pupils to them; not as stuffed specimens, but as vivid human beings?
Something might be done to create the right atmosphere for this, on the
lines suggested by Dr. Hayward in that splendid little book "The Lesson
in Appreciation." All that he says there about aesthetics, is applicable
to any lesson dealing with the higher values of life. In this way, young
people would be made to realize the spiritual life; not as something
abnormal and more or less conventionalized, but as a golden thread
running right through human history, and making demands on just those
dynamic qualities which they feel themselves to possess. The adolescent
is naturally vigorous and combative, and wants, above all else,
something worth fighting for. This, too often, his teachers forget to
provide.

The study of nature, and of aesthetics--including poetry--gives us yet
another way of approach. The child should be introduced to these great
worlds of life and of beauty, and encouraged but never forced to feed on
the best they contain. By implication, but never by any method savouring
of "uplift," these subjects should be related with that sense of the
spiritual and of its immanence in creation, which ought to inspire the
teacher; and with which it is his duty to infect his pupils if he can.
Children may, very early, be taught or rather induced to look at natural
things with that quietness, attention, and delight which are the
beginnings of contemplation, and the conditions, under which nature
reveals her real secrets to us. The child is a natural pagan, and often
the first appeal to its nascent spiritual faculty is best made through
its instinctive joy in the life of animals and flowers, the clouds and
the winds. Here it may learn very easily that wonder and adoration,
which are the gateways to the presence