A careful observation of the ways of presenting great men of history and
great characters in literature to young people will convince one beyond
doubt that the girl may store the _facts_ in the memory for a time, but
if the living personality is presented _it_ will remain to mold and
guide and influence the life. The teacher's greatest power is never in
what she teaches but in what is revealed to the individual through her
teaching. The mind hungers for facts, searches for facts and wearies of
facts. It follows personality.

When Richard Watson Gilder tried to voice the plea of the young doubter,
puzzled, perplexed and suffering from the great array of apparently
conflicting facts and most of all from his own failure to win out over
the temptations that swept over him he said:

"Thou Christ, my soul is hurt and bruised!
With words the scholars wear me out;
My brain o'erwearied and confused,
Thee, myself and all, I doubt.
And must I back to darkness go
Because I cannot say a creed?
I know not what I think! I know
Only that _Thou_ art what I need."

The fact is not enough. John Kendrick Bangs says it forcibly--

"A mere acceptance of the fact of love of God above,
Of all the vast omnipotence of Him our Maker and Defence
Is not believing."

Slowly we are getting back to the recognition of the proper place of