Services of an appropriate kind, if there be a chapel, or the opening of school with prayer and a hymn (which ought always to be followed by a short silence) provide a natural expression for corporate religious feeling: and remember that to give a feeling opportunity of voluntary expression is commonly to educe and affirm it.

As regards active work, whilst school charities are an obvious field in which unselfish energies may be spent, many other openings will be found by enthusiastic teachers, and by the pupils whom their enthusiasm has inspired.
On the other hand, the spare-time occupations of the adolescent; the independent and self-chosen work, often most arduous and always absorbing, of making, planning, learning about things--and most of us can still remember how desperately important these seemed to us, whether our taste was for making engines, writing poetry, or collecting moths--these are of the greatest importance for his development.

They give him something really his own, exercise his powers, train his attention, feed his creative instinct.

They counteract those mechanical and conventional reactions to the world, which are induced by the merely traditional type of education, either of manners or of mind.

And here, in the prudent encouragement of a personal interest in and dealing with the actual problems of conduct and even of belief--the most difficult of the educator's tasks--we guard against the merely acquiescent attitude of much adult piety, and foster from the beginning a vigorous personal interest, a first-hand contact with higher realities.
The heroic aspect of history may well form the second line in this attempt to capture education and use it in the interests of the spiritual life.