set forth in 'The Prelude,' makes this great autobiographical
poem one of the most valuable productions in English Literature; and
teachers capable of bringing its informing spirit home to their students
(capable by virtue of their own assimilation of it), might do great
things in the way of a spiritual quickening of their students.

And how much capable mothers might derive from Wordsworth's poetry for
the spiritual nurture of their children! Capable mothers are, alas!
comparatively few; but forces, to be noticed further on, are now at
work, which are increasing the number of such mothers, and will continue
to increase it more and more, as the ideals of a true womanhood are more
and more exalted and realized. The kind of regeneration which the world,
at present, most needs, will have to be largely induced by woman, and
she _will_ induce it according as her true rights, which are involved in
her 'distinctive womanhood,' are recognized and granted her, by her not
over-generous brother.

Spiritual education is not a matter of abstract instruction. It must
be induced on the basis of the concrete and the personal. The
spiritual faculties have no affinities for the abstract. Christianity
was introduced into the world through the personal and concrete;
rather, it _is_ the personal and the concrete, and its arch-enemy has
ever been the abstract, in the form of dogma and stark-naked doctrine.
Dogmatism implies materialism. As one advances spiritually, dogma
declines with him, in inverse proportion. Christianity is essential
being, and not a doctrine, not a body of opinions, not 'a matter of
antiquarian pedantry or of historical perspective.' In the great words
of the 'De Imitatione Christi,' 'Cui aeternum verbum loquitur, ille a
multis opinionibus expeditur' (he to whom the eternal word speaks, is
freed from many opinions); and to fit the soul to be spoken to by the
eternal word, is the true, the ultimate object of spiritual education.
The permanent, the eternal, that which is alive for evermore, should,
indeed, be the object of all education. Phenomena, in themselves, are
not educative. A feeding on them alone, if that were possible (man
naturally, whatever his condition, seeks other pabulum), would soon
result in a general atrophy of all the faculties, intellectual and
spiritual. To use the words of St. Vincent de Lerins, which he applied
to the Catholic Church,--would that the Church had always made them
its controlling pri