(b) The second factor of unconscious nourishment is environment with its subtle atmosphere.

The importance of environment is found in this great law, that life tends to become like that which is around it.  So strong is the tendency that the only escape from conformity lies in real struggle.  This a little child rarely puts forth, and an adult not always, for it is far easier to follow the line of least 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 highest service permitted a Sunday School teacher is to pray effectually for the brooding Spirit to rest upon the pupils in his class.  The mother can do nothing which shall mean so much for the precious life in her arms as learning, herself, the secret of prevailing prayer, for, “If we ask anything according to His Will, He heareth us; and if we know that He heareth us, whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions which we have asked of Him.”  Therefore, O Lord, “Teach us to pray.”