thee in the mount." When Elisha would restore the confidence of his servant he prayed, "Lord, I pray thee open his eyes that he may see. And the Lord opened the eyes of the young man and he saw; and behold the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha." Commenting on this, H. Clay Trumbull says:1 "In the light of that remembered vision, this world and its dangers seemed very different to Elisha's servant from that hour onward. The memory of what he had seen forbade his having anxiety over what was to come."

Are we praying that the Lord would open the eyes of the young? If so, what kind of pictures of life are we setting before them? Or are we expecting them to gaze into the blank abstractions of our dullness-if not upon meretricious attractions ?

There is an awful responsibility in a visible attitude, a deed, a metaphor. The "power of a remembered vision" is eternal.

"A remembered vision of good is a precious possession," adds Trumbull. "He who can recall a scene of beauty, of grandeur, of holiness, of peace, or who has before his mind's eye a character of rare attractiveness and worth, which was known by him, in the recent or the earlier past, has an ideal reality to look forward to, and to strive after, as no one without such a memory can have. The best that we have seen

1" Seeing and Being."

of happiness or of character gives shape to our ideals of happiness and character. . . . It is not, as we are accustomed to say, that our ideals are visionary, but rather that our visions of the real form our ideals, and that the best that we have seen and known is the lowest line of our conceptions of desirable and attainable good."

There was a child went forth every day,

And the first object that he looked upon, that object he be

came,

And that object became part of him for the day or a certain

part of the day,

Or for many years or stretching cycles of years,

The early lilacs became part of this child,

And grass, and white and red morning glories, and white and red clover, and the song of the phobe bird,

The mother at home quietly placing the dishes on the supper

table,

The mother with mild words, clean her cap and gown, a wholesome odor falling off her person and clothes as she walks by,

The father strong, self-sufficient, manly, mean, angered, un

just,

The blow, the quick loud word, the tight bargain, the crafty

lure,

The family usages, the language, the company, the furniture, the yearning and swelling heart,

Affection that will not be gainsaid.

-WHITMAN.

It is true that we walk by faith, not by sight. But it is no less Scriptural that "Moses endured as seeing him who is invisible" (Heb. 11: 27);

that the Son is "the image of the invisible God", (Col. 1: 15); that "the invisible things of him since the creation of the world are clearly seen, being perceived through the things that are made" (Rom. 1: 20); and that "if he shall appear we shall be like him for we shall see him even as he is" (1 John 3: 2).

Sight of some sort there must be before there can be a following. It is the Natural Way.

V

NURTURE BY FOOD

Education by Direct Means or Prescription: Interest and the Teaching Material.

S

PEAKING of the baby, Dr. Oppenheim

says, "An excess of starch in his food may upturn a household." It would be difficult to show in fewer words, how dependent our soul life is on our bodily nourishment. Indeed the quantity of starch in a shirt collar may determine an exhibit of temper. Poor bodily nourishment is responsible for more of the ills of life than we generally suspect. Vicious and "incorrigible" characters have been practically reformed and overcome through the administration of good food.

Similarly, with regard to vision. Increasing nearsightedness has much to do with a man's habits, attitudes, estimates, powers, and temper. And as to atmosphere, Dr. Oppenheim thus puts it: "A decrease of oxygen and an increase of carbonic dioxide in the air which the child breathes makes a decided difference in the elimination of waste materials; such matter when stored up, may produce varying degrees of in

1 The Development of the Child," p. 90.

263

toxication, of poisoning. And as a result, his ordinary characteristics are for the time changed. With sufficient repetition, the temporary condition may become more permanent."

In his epoch-making work, "Christian Nurture," Horace Bushnell sums the situation which we are considering in admonishing parents that a very considerable part of their charge consists in giving their children "such a nurture in the body as makes them superior to the body."

As in the two previous chapters we have seen that atmosphere and light are true symbols of soul nurture as well as essential factors in bodily nurture, so now we pass to the consideration of the third factor in bodily nourishment, namely Food, in its symbolic aspect as a mode of soul

nurture.

The atmosphere is the medium in which we exist. It so surrounds us that we are most of the time hardly conscious of it. It is intangible and continuous in its effects. The very heat of the body is produced by the oxygen in the air, hidden as the process is. Symbolically, therefore, it stands for indirect educational influence or method. Over against this is the direct method, which we symbolize by Food. We select and take it consciously. The operation is visible, tangible, direct. Feeding the baby is a different sort of process from giving the baby an airing or a sunning. Hunger for food is a much more material demand upon us than is hunger for oxygen or the actinic rays of light. Tell any one