If they be believers, both their religious conceptions and their prayers are found on investigation still to be of an infantile kind, totally unrelated to the interests and outlook of modern men.
Two facts emerge from the experience of all educationists.

The first is, that children are naturally receptive and responsive; the second, that adolescents are naturally idealistic.

In both stages, the young human creature is full of interests and curiosities asking to be satisfied, of energies demanding expression; and here, in their budding, thrusting life--for which we, by our choice of surroundings and influence, may provide the objective--is the raw material out of which the spiritual humanity of the future might be made.

The child has already within it the living seed wherein all human possibilities are contained; our part is to give the right soil, the shelter, and the watering-can.

Spiritual education therefore does not consist in putting into the child something which it has not; but in educing and sublimating that which it has--in establishing habits, fostering a trend of growth which shall serve it well in later years.