study subjects by the month for
the purpose of satisfying intellectual hunger. Such questions, for
instance, as "Succession in the Presidency," or the "Nature of the
Godhead"--questions gone into by thoroughly converted Latter-day
Saints, not to bring themselves into the Church, nor to lead themselves
into any other kind of action except the satisfying of their own souls
as to the truth. In other words, it appears clear that there may be
application on a purely intellectual level. Application upon application
is made until a person builds up a structure of faith that stands upon
the rock in the face of all difficulties.

A second type of lessons appeals to the emotions. They aim to make
pupils _feel_ better. They may or may not lead to immediate action.
Ideally, of course, every worthy emotion aroused should find, if
possible, suitable channels for expression. Pent up emotions may become
positively harmful. The younger the pupils the more especially is this
true. Practically every educator recognizes this fact and gives
expression to it in language similar to the following quotation from
Professor S.H. Clark:

"Never awaken an emotion unless, at the same time, you strive to open
a channel through which the emotion may pass into the realm of
elevated action. If we are studying the ideals of literature,
religion, etc., with our class, we have failed in the highest duty of
teaching if we have not given them the ideal, if we have not given
them, by means of some suggestion, the opportunity for realizing the
ideal. If there is an emotion excited in our pupils through a talk on
ethics or sociology, it matters not, we fail in our duty, if we do
not take an occasion at once to guide that emotion so that it may
express itself in elevated action."

And yet there is a question whether this insistence upon action may not
be exaggerated. Abraham Lincoln witnessed an auction sale of slaves in
his younger days. He did not go out immediately and issue an
emancipation proclamation, and yet there are few who can doubt that that
auction sale registered an application in an ideal that persisted in the
mind of Lincoln through all those years preceding our great civil war.

Many a man has been saved in the hour of temptation, in his later life,
by the vividness of the recollection of sacred truths taught at his
mother's knee. There may be just a little danger of cheapening the
process of application if it is