The question of nurture, therefore, is of vital importance.  What shall one generation do for those which are to come after it?  Each soul may hinder or help the growth of countless other souls.  The influence of those nearest is always most potent for good or ill.  Impediment is increased, and bias exaggerated, by evil example.  The effort to rise becomes easy when the way is seen to be full of those whom we love and honor going before us toward the heights, and it is difficult when no familiar face is seen.  Nurture is not so much a matter of teacher and text-book, of church and catechism, as of atmosphere, example, and inspiration.  It is the effect of the contact of one pure and noble soul upon another; it is something which father, mother, and friends give to the child; it is the result of the spirit in which they impart instruction and of the reverence and consecration which shine from their lives.

The best and only enduring nurture is that of a sweet, serene, optimistic, and thoroughly Christian environment.  With that, inherited tendencies toward weakness and evil will go of themselves,—­indeed will seem never to have had existence.

But all too soon the time comes in which the soul faces its own responsibility, and realizes that it must choose for itself what its course shall be.  It has learned, if it has observed, that there is ever with it an unseen leadership, and it has heard, faint and far, the call of a noble destiny.  What shall it now do for itself?  Shall it choose simply to exist?  Shall it yield to the limitations and solicitations of the body? or, shall it seek to prepare itself by discipline, and the cultivation of right choices, for the goal whose intimations it has heard?  Nurture, if it has been wise, has been the forerunner of culture.  Atmosphere and example have inspired lofty ideals, but those ideals, if they are to be realized, will require training.  Matthew Arnold, quoting Bishop Wilson, has said that culture “is a study of perfection.”  In other words, it is the means which are used for the perfection of the soul.  Shall we choose to leave ourselves to grow like trees in a forest, however they may, or shall we seek those conditions which will make progress sure and swift?  Culture is always a matter of choice; and it is vastly more than anything which can be taught in the college or university.  The cultured man is he who has learned so to use the forces and conditions of life as to make them minister to his perfection.  The one most cultured may come out of a factory, and the man of least culture may be found in a university.  Indeed colleges and universities, not infrequently, are haunts of provincialism and of dread of enthusiasm.  The object of culture is the perfection of the spirit to the end that all that hinders, or limits, may disappear and only pure power, clear vision, and full self-realization remain.  Those whose growth is most evident are ever eager to use all experiences as means of progress.