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 of God.  In simple forms of verse, music, and rhythmical movement it can be encouraged—­as the Salvation Army has discovered—­to give this happy adoration a natural, dramatic, and rhythmic expression:  for the young child, as we know, reproduces the mental condition of the primitive, and primitive forms of worship will suit it best.

It need hardly be said that education of the type we have been considering demands great gifts in the teacher:  simplicity, enthusiasm, sympathy, and also a vigorous sense of humour, keeping him sharply aware of the narrow line that divides the priggish from the ideal.  This education ought to inspire, but it ought not to replace, the fullest and most expert training of the body and mind; for the spirit needs a perfectly balanced machine, through which