Even great inborn powers atrophy if left unused, and exceptional ability in any direction may easily remain undeveloped if the environment be sufficiently unfavourable: a result too often achieved in the domain of the spiritual life.

We must have opportunity and encouragement to try our powers and inclinations, be helped to understand their nature and the way to use them, unless we are to begin again, each one of us, in the Stone Age of the soul.

So too, even small powers may be developed to an astonishing degree by suitable surroundings and wise education--witness the results obtained by the expert training of defective children--and all this is as applicable to the spiritual as to the mental and bodily life.

That life is quick to respond to the demands made on it: to take every opportunity of expression that comes its way.

If you make the right appeal to any human faculty, that faculty will respond, and begin to grow.