are those
steeped in meaning--the unfathomable meaning of life ... such stories
teach--even though no lesson was intended--the wisdom of the Book of
Job: wisdom that by this time surely should have made religious teaching
saner, and therefore more acceptable."[26]

[Footnote 26: "The Fairy-Tale in Education," by Greville Macdonald, M.D.,
_Child Life_, Dec. 1918.]

Fairies, like angels, may be God's messengers. A child who had heard of
St. Cuthbert as a shepherd boy being carried home from the hillside when
hurt, by a man on a white horse, repeated the story in her own words,
"and he thought it was a fairy of God's sent to help him."

There is, however, nothing the children love more than the Bible story,
the story which shows, so simply, humanity struggling as the children
struggle, failing as the children fail, and believing and trusting as
the children believe, and as we at least strive to do, in the ultimate
victory of Right over Wrong, of Good over Evil. But just because the
stories are often so beautiful and so inspiring, the teacher should have
freedom to deal with them as the spirit moves her.

What experience has taught me in this way has already been passed on to
younger teachers in _Education by Life_, and there seems little more to
add.

Wonders chiefly at himself
Who can tell him what he is.

It is for us to tell the child what he is, that he, too, like all the
things he loves, is a manifestation of God. "I am a being alive and
conscious upon this earth; a descendant of ancestors who rose by gradual
processes from lower forms of animal life, and with struggle and
suffering became man."[27]

[Footnote 27: _The Substance of Faith Allied with Science_, Sir Oliver
Lodge (Methuen).]

"The colossal remains of shattered mountain chains speak of the greatness
of God; and man is encouraged and lifts himself up by them, feeling
within himself the same spirit and power."[28]

[Footnote 28: _The Education of Man_.]

CHAPTER XI

RHYTHM

Lo with the ancient roots of Man's nature
Twines the eternal passion of song.

The very existence of lullabies, not to mention their abundance in all
countries, the very rockers on the cradles testify to the rhythmic
nature of man in infancy.

In his _Mother Songs_, Froebel couples rhythm with harmony of all kinds,
not only musical harmony but harmony of proportion and colour, and in
urging the very early training of "the germs of all this," he g