rk. Shall we not try to find some method of showing
our adolescents their way into this world, lying at our doors and
offered to us without money and without price?

Again, many teachers and parents waste the religious instinct and
emotional vigour which are often so marked in adolescence, by allowing
them to fritter themselves upon symbols which cannot stand against
hostile criticism: for instance, some of, the more sentimental and
anthropomorphic aspects of Christian devotion. Did we educate those
instincts, show the growing creature their meaning, and give them an
objective which did not conflict with the objectives of the developing
intellect and the will, we should turn their passion into power, and lay
the foundations of a real spiritual life. We must remember that a good
deal of adolescent emotion is diverted by the conditions of school-life
from its obvious and natural objective. This is so much energy set free
for other uses. We know how it emerges in hero-worship or in ardent
friendships; how it reinforces the social instinct and produces the
team-spirit, the intense devotion to the interests of his own gang or
group which is rightly prominent in the life of many boys. The teacher
has to reckon with this funded energy and enthusiasm, and use it to
further the highest interests of the growing child. By this I do not
mean that he is to encourage an abnormal or emotional concentration on
spiritual things. Most of the impulses of youth are wholesome, and
subserve direct ends. Therefore, it is not by taking away love,
self-sacrifice, admiration, curiosity, from their natural objects that
we shall serve the best interests of spirituality: but, by enlarging the
range over which these impulses work--impulses, indeed, which no human
object can wholly satisfy, save in a sacramental sense. Two such natural
tendencies, specially prominent in childhood, are peculiarly at the
disposal of the religious teacher: and should be used by him to the
full. It is in the sublimation of the instinct of comradeship that the
social and corporate side of the spiritual life takes its rise, and in
closest connection with this impulse that all works of charity should be
suggested and performed. And on the individual side, all that is best,
safest and sweetest in the religious instinct of the child can be
related to a similar enlargement of the instinct of filial trust and
dependence. The educator is therefore working within the two most
fun