The heroic aspect of history may well form the second line in this attempt to capture education and use it in the interests of the spiritual life.  By it we can best link up the actual and the ideal, and demonstrate the single character of human greatness; whether it be exhibited, in the physical or the supersensual sphere.  Such a demonstration is most important; for so long as the spiritual life is regarded as merely a departmental thing, and its full development as a matter for specialists or saints, it will never produce its full effect in human affairs.  We must exhibit it as the full flower of that Reality which inspires all human life. "All kinds of skill,” said Tauler, “are gifts of the Holy Ghost,” and he might have said, all kinds of beauty and all kinds of courage too.

The heroic makes a direct appeal to lads and girls, and is by far the safest way of approach to their emotions.  The chivalrous, the noble, the desperately brave, attract the adolescent far more than passive goodness.  That strong instinct of subjection, of homage, which he shows in his hero-worship, is a most valuable tool in the hands of the teacher who is seeking to lead him into greater fullness of life.  Yet the range over which we seek material for his admiration is often deplorably narrow.  We have behind us a great spiritual history, which shows the highest faculties of the soul in action:  the power and the happiness they bring.  Do we take enough notice of it?  What about our English saints?  I mean the real saints, not the official ones.  Not St. George and St. Alban, about whom we know practically nothing:  but, for instance, Lancelot Andrewes, John Wesley, Elizabeth Fry, about whom we know a great deal.  Children, who find difficulty in general ideas, learn best from particular instances.  Yet boys and girls who can give a coherent account of such stimulating personalities as Julius Caesar, William the Conqueror, Henry VIII. and his wives, or Napoleon—­none of whom have so very much to tell us that bears on the permanent interests of the soul—­do not as a rule possess any vivid idea, say, of Gautama, St. Benedict, Gregory the Great, St. Catherine of Siena, St. Francis Xavier, George Fox, St. Vincent de Paul and his friends:  persons at least as significant, and far better worth meeting, than the military commanders and political adventurers of their time.  The stories of the early Buddhists, the Sufi saints, St. Francis of Assisi, St. Ignatius, the early Quakers, the African missionaries, are full of things which can be made to interest even a young child.  The legends which have grown up round some of them satisfy the instinct that draws it to fairy tales.  They help it to dream well; and give to 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