thought and action, if we would not thwart our own best purposes or cut the ground from beneath our feet. This is the proposition. The essential problem, then, is to make better educators of us all by presenting the great principles that underlie the formation of character so that they may seem to have come of themselves in nature's own way; to conduct the pastor, parent, teacher, or any one uninterested in formal pedagogy, through the avenues of his own experience to the easy possession of the laws of character-growth; to help him to interpret his own life and all life about him in terms of influence and power. If this be possible there ought to be an increase of efficiency in the church, out of which should grow a like efficiency in the home, the school, and the state. With very practical purpose this book is an essay towards such an end. The distinctive thing about it is its point of view and the method which grows out of it by analogy. There is nothing novel in its facts even though there be novelty in their handling. The plan is to put familiar phenomena into usable relations; to marshal them, group them, focus them about familiar natural centres. It therefore takes no point of departure in the terminologies common to ethical, theological or other philosophical disciplines, nor even in child-study as such. The point of view is nutrition, which is the natural response to hunger, in the larger sense of need. When we move into the realm of the soul we call it Nurture. Only living things can be the subject of nutrition and therefore ministry to life becomes the central fact of Nurture. We commonly think of food as the only mode of nutrition but in reality nutrition includes every agency and process that contributes towards health and growth. Now the fundamental factors in nutrition, or modes of ministry to physical life are four: Atmosphere, Light, Food, Exercise. These constitute our categories. Every one knows what these terms mean. But as this book does not treat of physiology or hygiene in the physical sense, its function is to show the analogy and symbolic significance of those terms in the Nurture or education of the soul. It might be called a spiritual hygiene. All the concrete facts and feelings, all the illustrations from life, group themselves about these four agencies or modes of Nurture. Every leading pedagogical principle is seen to emerge naturally from them. Pedagogy thus becomes an art of satisfying hunger, a response to need, a mode of life, rather than a philosophical system or code of science. Yet the book takes no exception to formal pedagogy. Its debt to educational authorities is great-as is evident from the freedom with which I have quoted them. It does not even aim to be complete in detail on its own plan. It hopes to be suggestive to all and perhaps, to many, informing. In its most practical intent it is a manual on the education of the feelings by atmospheric or indirect means; on the mental image as the great instrument of instruction; on direct prescription for acquirement of knowledge, and on the principle of self-expression, or the exercise of choice and freedom of the will. These are the four aspects of soul-nurture, symbolized in Atmosphere, Light, Food and Exercise. As modes, they cover the essentials of practice, in the education of emotions, intellect, and will. They are a familiar touchstone by which all our contact with children and with men may be tested and directed. They do not solve all educational problems but no educational question can arise without their entering into it. The chapter on the education of the feelings is an effort to be practical in a field which has hitherto been little trodden. The importance of the feelings is acknowledged by psychologists and educationists but the literature of practice on the subject is very scant. In the chapter on the mental image, the instructional use of Bible stories is discussed in the light of certain investigations not heretofore fully published. To the exact pedagogue the plan may seem too free and unconventional, if not uncalled for. Opinions may differ as to some definitions and analogies. The occasional repetition of fact, idea, or illustration, needs no apology. Each mode is organically related to the other three, and their interlinking necessitates recurrence of mention. But it is as a mode of the practical |