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cause of the long historic and instinctive subjection of child to adult life. The danger is that precocious interest in Jesus will result in conceptions of his character and work that will dwarf more adequate ideas later, and that a premature interest in him will interfere with the great deepening and enlargement of the affectional nature which the early teens bring. Precocious training before the advent of its proper nascent period is always open to two grave objections; the first that it is a waste of time to teach by labored methods what would come of itself later; and second, it leads to a preformation and preoccupation of both heart and brain that rub the bloom, zest, and force off these subjects so that when the time is ripe they seem stale or deflowered of interest, and are met with indifference and ennui. Third, and worst of all, narrow childish childish images, conceptions, and thought-forms are already developed and made so hard and rigid by the great sense of the importance of the subject that their transformation is difficult." "Adolescence," adds Dr. Hall, is the time when Jesus' character, example, and teaching are most needed. . . This is the golden period of life, when all that is greatest and best in heart and will are at their strongest. . . . No age is capable of such hearty unreserved devotion to Jesus as adolescence. The sublimity of his teachings and his motives, the meanings of many of the fifty parables, the Messianic expectation now realized like the prophetic dreams of boy

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hood at the advent of this age, the temptation, the Sermon on the Mount, the character of John and Peter, which in the Dawson census are preferred even to that of Jesus, the heroism in the face of danger, the complete devotion that sacrifices itself for what is dearer than life, the slow development of a subjective side of life and of an inner oracle of right and wrong, the tender budding conscience newly polarized to right and wrong:-all these in their depth and inwardness appear a real psychic hunger." And let us add the hunger must be met with real food-that which is digestible, and which is transformed into the bone and sinew of the spiritual life.

Full of suggestive truth as these passages from Dr. Hall are, they are better as a deduction from a direct study of the child than as a consequent of the Recapitulation Theory. This hypothesis has doubtless become a heavy encumbrance upon many a would-be student of the child. It has warped observation and led to extreme measures in dealing with children in order to satisfy the theory.

What is this child capable of assimilating-that is the question. What kind of food can he transform into good conduct? Nurture by food concerns the direct task, the formal teaching, the curriculum of information and of work. The idea of nutrition is more evident here than in the less direct modes of influence, yet nurture is none the less the only road to growth and power, and the realization of the divine ideal. The child's

whole nature is hungry. This is his interest in the broadest and deepest sense, and to this we are to address ourselves in any direct attempt to satisfy his hunger or his nature's sense of need.

VI

NURTURE BY EXERCISE

Education by Self-expression: Choice and Will.

I

NDISPENSABLE as air, light, and food are

to physical nurture and bodily growth, their efficacy depends upon our vital energy and self-effort to use them. The oxygen of the atmosphere will not restore heat to a lifeless blood, the light-painting image will not traverse a dead optic nerve to the brain, nor will bread and meat build up tissue in a body when life is extinct.

To life belongs the privilege of initiative, the right to make advances to whatever is presented from without. This is a matter of activity, of movement, of self-effort or exercise. No one has adequately defined life, but this much we can say, it is characterized at least by the power of self-movement and this is a power that grows by its own exercise. This is simply a general statement given in particular and concrete form in the parables of the talents and the pounds; and reiterated abstractly again by our Lord in his dictum, "He that hath, to him shall be given; and he that hath not, from him shall be taken even that which he hath" (Mark 4: 25). We 278

are to strive to enter in at the strait gate, and we are to work out our own salvation. If there is anything evident in the Gospels and in the Epistles it is that Scripture stands back of the popular adage that "God helps those who help themselves." That is, man must do his part.

Here let us pause to note again the tendency of the church to thwart itself through its lack of the educative consciousness. Believing its theology it does not sufficiently see the unwisdom of pressing it as much on one stage of the individual's development as on another. The experienced Christian can sing "Oh to be nothing" without much danger of becoming nothing or of noting the fragmentary character of the prayer. But to young life it is grossly inconsistent with the sense of activity.

In his book on English Hymns, Dr. S. W. Duffield quotes the Rev. Alexander McKenzie of Cambridge, Mass., in criticism of Toplady's, "Simply to thy cross I cling," as follows: "I know the beautiful line of the hymn; I would not take a note from its divine and blessed melody. It is true, but like most single lines it is but a fragment of the truth. . What

did Christ ever say, what did the Apostles ever teach, which warrants you in saying 'All I have to do is to cling to the cross'? What did Jesus say about the cross? He said, 'Take it up and go about obeying the will of God. . . . By Christ are we saved and Christ we are to follow. Cling to the cross, but not 'simply.'" In other

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