contact with a wide range of the best literary productions, we limit it, for the most part, to the minute and critical examination of a few set pieces. At adolescence there is a rebirth in the language interest, which is not now, as in the child, a mere interest in the words themselves, but rather an interest in words as instruments to express the many new thoughts and emotions that cry for utterance.
In early adolescence, the nascent period of cloud-fancies and moon-psychoses, the heart opens to nature; in later adolescence, the mind. In early adolescence, therefore, the training in nature should be addressed mainly to the heart, to the imagination; in later adolescence, to the intellect. Early adolescence is the age of sentiment, later adolescence the age of reason, of philosophy. The sciences, as sciences, being highly specialized studies, should be reserved for the age of specialization, which is later adolescence. Early adolescence should be devoted to developing that interest, that enthusiasm, that love for nature, which alone can carry the youth successfully through the scientific training which should follow.
Boyhood is the age of moral habits, of the supremacy of the law, which addresses itself sternly to the will. Adolescence is the age of ideals, of the supremacy of the Gospel, which appeals persuasively to the inner voice of conscience. The boy's religion is a clan religion, the primitive religion of the tribe, the church, the family; the youth's religion is a personal religion, the self-conscious religion of the individual. Adolescence, then, is the nascent period of true spiritual religion. Conversions before and after are rare, the great majority occurring between twelve and seventeen. If this fact were more clearly realized in our Sunday-schools, nay, rather in our families, there would be less need of sporadic revival services. The state schools, also, should not so utterly neglect the religious side of the youth's nature. The whole atmosphere of our schools is bare and hard and commonplace, whereas it ought to be filled with love and sympathy, with joy and beauty. Music, art, religion, sociability, ideals, which are the natural food, the native air of youth, are banished from our schools. Is it any wonder that under such conditions teachers and pupils so often fail to get into living contact with each other and with their work? To educate and to be educated is to live, to unfold—not to give and learn lessons.
In later adolescence, from about seventeen on, religion becomes more intellectual and philosophical, and many doubts
