disposition patient, equable, resigned, and peaceable."

From the ninety degraded children whom he mothered at Stanz the gentle Pestalozzi learned that not in force and not in appeals to reason, but in quickening faith must be sought the point of contact between the nurturing and the nurtured life. His experience is a classic one in the history of educational reform, and from its theoretical outcome, as given in his most important book, How Gertrude Teaches her Children, I have often thought Froebel may have received the impulse which flowered into the Mother-Play. But be this as it may, the Falling Game condenses into one revealing example the whole range of experience described by Pestalozzi, and defining to the mother her own elemental impulse enables her to discover consciously the true point of departure for the nurture of childhood.

Faith presupposes experience. Baby is frightened when he begins to play the Falling Game; he learns to trust the mother's arm because he finds it strong. In like manner he must learn to trust her wisdom and her love. He can not believe in them if they do not exist; he can only half believe them

if they are inconsistent and vacillating. Hence Froebel's insistence upon the need of a mother's being all she would have her children believe her to be, and the solemn warnings which he introduces into his commentaries on Beckoning the Pigeons, and the Knights and the Bad Child. We fail to inspire faith because we fail to deserve it, and a regenerate motherhood is the one indispensable condition of a regenerate childhood.

If you can win and hold Harold's faith, you will find that you have practically solved the problem of nurture. For if he trusts you he will obey you; he will hide nothing from you; he will not resent your punishments, and when he asks you questions whose true answers are beyond his comprehension he will humbly accept your simple statement that they can not be explained to him until he is older. The conversation between mother and child in Froebel's commentary on the Weathervane is conceived in this spirit, and presupposes a firmly tethered cord of faith.

While the Falling Song accentuates trust in the mother, the motto and commentary expressly state that the object of the game is the nurture and development of force. Is there then a contradiction be

tween the song and the commentary, and if not, what is the tie which binds together the seemingly contradictory statements? Look again into your own heart, and observe if it be not always faith which inspires the effort through which strength is won. If the answer is not conclusive, seek the verdict of that larger experience of which your own is but a fragment. Recall those heart-inspired words, "Frederick, is God dead?" with which old Sojourner Truth revived the dying courage of Fred Douglass. Remind yourself of the noblest motto which has sprung from our national system of universal suffrage: "One with God is a majority." Send your imagination backward through the centuries and call forth the image of the great defender of Christian truth defying triumphant heresy with the words "Athanasius against the world!" Remember how hordes of faithless Christians fled before Saracen armies inspired by the words of the Koran: "O true believers, if ye assist God in fighting for his religion he will assist you against your enemies." Picture Luther summoned to the Diet of Worms, warned by anxious friends to disobey the summons, declaring stoutly, “Were there as many devils in Worms as there are roof

tiles I would on," and revealing the secret of his courage in his paraphrase of the 46th Psalm. Listen to the Huguenots singing as they march into battle, “The truth of the Lord endureth forever," and hear the same words shouted by Cromwell and his soldiers at Dunbar. Ask yourself why the ancient Israelites and the English Puritans are the most resolute and unyielding personalities known to history, and read the answer written in their every word and deed that it was because they believed themselves to be fighting with and for the eternal and unconquerable Power "which makes for righteousness." The secret of strength is always the same, and the very words of our Falling Song,

"Baby well may laugh at harm

While beneath is mother's arm,"

are but one feeble echo of the faith which has nerved the heroes of all ages: "The eternal God is thy refuge, and underneath are the everlasting

arms."

Froebel had insight into the "fine secret that little explains large and large little." Hence he discerned how the child out of weakness is made. strong. The Falling, Jumping, Tossing Games

are baby's first acts of faith. Waxing faith nerves him to totter toward his mother's outstretched arms. Later it is again faith which inspires him to attempt the task she believes he can do, and attack the problem she believes he can solve. Trusting her trust in him he puts forth all his strength, and through faith-inspired effort wins strength and self-reliance.

It is one of the happy paradoxes of spirit that without dependence there can be no independence, and that precisely in proportion to our faith will be our intellectual and moral activity. All individual relationships and all corporate life rest upon pillars of faith. Children must trust parents, the husband must trust his wife, friend must trust friend, we must all trust the tradesman with whom we deal, the corporations and officials upon whose care depends our safety in travel, the physician to whose integrity, skill, and devotion we appeal in illness, the lawyer to whom we submit vexed questions of justice; the economic system upon which depends the fair participation of each man in the labor of all men; the government which orders and protects other institutions; the church, which discerns, declares, and develops in individual consciousness the ideals which have created our special