The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-dayUnderhill, Evelyn
Religion
The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-day
Underhill, Evelyn
Spiritual life
Wise educators find that a combined system of organized games in which
the social instinct can be expressed and developed, and of independent
constructive work, in which the creative impulse can find satisfaction,
best meets the corporate and creative needs of adolescence, favours the
right development of character, and produces a harmonized life. On the
level of the spiritual life too this principle is valid; and, guided by
it, we should seek to give young people both corporate and personal work
and experience. On the one hand, gregariousness is at its strongest in
the healthy adolescent, the force of public opinion is more intensely
felt than at any other time of life, that priceless quality the spirit
of comradeship is most easily educed. We must therefore seek to give the
spiritual life a vigorous corporate character; to make it "good form"
for the school, and to use the team-spirit in the choir and the guild as
well as in the cricket field. By an extension of this principle and
under the influence of a suitable teacher, the school-mob may be
transformed into a co-operative society animated by one joyous and
unselfish spirit: all the great powers of social suggestion being freely
used for the highest ends. Thus we may introduce the pupil, at his most
plastic age, into a spiritual-social order and let him grow within it,
developing those qualities and skills on which it makes demands. The
religious exercises, whatever they are, should be in common, in order to
develop the mass consciousness of the school and weld it into a real
group. Music, songs, processions, etc., produce a feeling of unity, and
encourage spiritual contagion. 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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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