erwise would escape his notice, or which he
might neglect as unimportant.

The practical application, then, of one-pointedness lies in the
endeavour to keep before the mind some dominant central ideal towards
which the whole of the teachers' and boys' daily routine shall be
directed, so that the small life may be vitalised by the larger, and
all may become conscious parts of one great whole. The ideal of service,
for instance, may be made so vivid that the whole of daily life shall be
lived in the effort to serve.

6. _Confidence_. First among the qualifications for the teacher has been
placed Love, and it is fitting that this little book should end with
another qualification of almost equal importance--Confidence. Unless the
teacher has confidence in his power to attain his goal, he will not be
able to inspire a similar confidence in his boys, and self-confidence is
an indispensable attribute for success in all departments of human
activity. The Master has beautifully explained why we have the right to
be confident.

"You must trust yourself. You say you know yourself too well? If you
feel so, you do _not_ know yourself; you know only the weak outer husk,
which has fallen often into the mire. But _you_--the real you--you are a
spark of God's own fire, and God, Who is almighty, is in you, and
because of that there is nothing that you cannot do if you will."

The teacher must feel that he has the power to teach his boys and to
train them for their future work in the world. This power is born of his
love for them and his desire to help them, and is drawn from the one
spiritual life of which all partake. It is because the teacher and his
boys are one in essence, make one little flame in "God's own fire," that
the teacher has the right to be confident that every effort to help,
growing out of his own share in the one life, will reach and stimulate
that same life in the boys.

He will not always be able to see at once the effect he is producing.
Indeed, the most important influence the teacher has shows itself in
the growing characters of the boys. No success in examinations, in
reports, in inspections can satisfy the real teacher as to the effect of
his work. But when he feels that his own higher nature is strengthened
and purified by his eagerness to serve his boys, when he has the joy of
watching the divine life in them shining out in answer to that in
himself, then his happiness is indeed great. Then he has the peac