the power of feeling. To capture the feelings is to control the soul's citadel. Study carefully the Bible references to the heart, the figurative fountain of feeling. You will then begin to understand why the Psalmist writes, "Thy word have I hid in my heart." You will know with new meaning the value of the wise man's injunction: "Keep thy heart with all diligence." You will also begin to comprehend the great beatitude: "Blessed are the pure in heart." If this power of feeling is so potent, let us ask ourselves prayerfully, "How may the feeling-life be trained?" QUESTIONS AND SUGGESTIONS. For testing one's grasp of the subject, and How do you distinguish between a product of the memory and a product of the imagination? What do the following words suggest to you: Carrara, Miniver, Rococo, Vedas? If you cannot answer the question "What is it?" in each case, what do you do? What does this suggest to you as a teacher? Recall any related group of ideas, as the Presidents of the United States in order, the kings of Israel in order, the cities Paul visited on his way to Rome. If you fail to recall all of the series, what do you do? Do you see any reason for calling imagination a dangerous power? Ponder this thoughtfully. In what way is our ideal related to the real? Which is the more potential? Discuss the way we know an imagination product from a memory product. What is meant by the imagination's power to create ideals being an intentional power? Fut your idea of goodness, of kindness, of helpfulness, and of faith, into a concrete image. Study what you did in each case. Are you trying Sunday by Sunday to give your pupils the materials of thought with which they may through imagination build a beautiful life? VIII FEELING AND IMAGINATION IN THE preceding chapter the question is raised, How may the feeling-life be utilized in the education of a soul? The answer to this inquiry is as difficult as it is important. We all agree that education must influence the whole life of the soul. It must not be addressed to the thought-life alone, but must also touch the feeling-life and the will-life. Our educational literature is filled with elaborate discussions of the thought-life, and some discussions of the willlife, but really no clear discussion of the feeling-life. When we considered interest in its relation to attention, the feelings thrust themselves into the discussion. Here, again, in a discussion of the imagination these feeling elements claim our thought. In fact, every time we drop the plummet to the inner depths of our discussion we shall invariably touch some aspect of feeling. Feeling and Dr. Holland characterizes the atmosphere in the Garden of Eden as "uneasy with its burden of vitality." I have been in a tropical forest, deep in a valley of Porto Rico, where the atmosphere seemed surcharged with the plastic elements of life. Light and warmth and moisture were so beautifully blended that it seemed only necessary to disturb, by a wave of the hand, the delicate poise of elements, and there would burst forth a wealth of bloom, a profusion of life, to thrill the beholder. One felt instinctively Feeling and that life, nascent but real, was in the very elements about him. So, it seems to me, it is in the soul. Everywhere, brooding like an over-soul upon the thought-life, is this marvelous mystery of feeling. One can feel the tension, one can almost vision the sweep of its power, as it surges like a fragrant tide of life over the ranges of our thoughts. There is a strangely solemn pause. We await the issue. This feeling is gathering strength. At last it breaks over all barriers, and sweeps upward into thought. The tension is relieved. The vague sweep of our feeling is crystallized into thought, and rests in consciousness as an element of knowledge. "All thought begins in feeling,—wide In the great mass its base is hid, And, narrowing up to thought, stands glorified, Thought that is born of feeling, and is "un Feeling and easy with its burden of vitality," is thought energized for the will. It issues in action. We feel keenly, know clearly, and act promptly. The act is conditioned more by our feeling than it is by our thinking. We act because we feel, and as we feel. Hence to capture the citadel of action, the cohorts of conduct, we must regard the feelings. When our feelings are crystallized into thought elements they naturally seek the imagination as their channel of expression. The imagination lies midway between feeling and thinking. On the one side it shades into the indefinable elements of feeling; on the other side, into the definable limits of thought. The imagination may be figured as the bridge that spans the valley between the ranges of feeling and of thought. Over this bridge our feelings sweep to be organized into thoughts. Their passing is most interesting. The result is most perplexing. In the vistas of thought we arrange our ideas deliberately for some selected service. Over the bridge swarm our feelings, and lo! the ordered array of ideas is broken, the unexpected has happened. The issue is action wholly unlike what we planned, and frequently wholly beyond our control. We say we are carried away by our feelings, swept from our thought moorings by the The Bridge of |