THE APOSTLE OF YOUTH
and through it he led his disciples and made them saints. And the holy Sacrifice of the Mass! Who that beheld his reverence, his absorption in God, his rapt countenance, as he offered the Divine Victim for his little waifs, all intent upon the sacred function, could ever forget it? And therefore these three golden pillars form the recurrent theme of his most ardent exhortations by the pen as by the spoken word. He inculcated these lessons by every form of literature—by graphic pictures of the love of Jesus, doing away with all fear and distrust.
"Arithmetic Made Easy" is only one of many titles that have a pleasant sound for students' ears, for his pen was ever "a scrivener that writeth swiftly" and lovingly to ease their labors. With his stories for youth, his biographies and his religious and moral fiction, our readers have already made acquaintance; and he was no less expert in the dramatic art, having published several excellent plays for public performance by his boys.
From primer class to professor's diploma, religion was the spirit that dominated every study in Don Bosco's curricula. Popular treatises on science which ignore the Creator of all things and present purely material ideas to the young, were superseded by carefully prepared works which elevated the mind and trained the heart while teaching the marvels of creation. Mythology he abhorred. "Shame on mythology!"—these are
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