Evil ■ A mm/?* 1 ^— - ^ 1 1 o ^Hl 1 6 - ^ 7 6 — ^/j^ a^^C^u** /cya&asL^ Southern Branch of the University of California Los Angeles Form L I LB 41 B21 **■ JMAY 1 3 W MAR * i9lt v 25 w: ARROWS OR TEACHING A FIXE ART BY ADDISON BALLARD, D.D. I ■»!■■■< I ■ Of I.OOIC, NBW TOBK 1 N1VLK8.TY 11131. Second Edition A S BARNES & COMPANY \v YO] Oct e O 2. Copyright, 1890 and 1898, by A. S. BARNES & COMPANY The substance of three Addresses is here given, with the thought that others besides those to whom they were first delivered may find in them also something in the way of both recable and profitable suggestion. A. B. CONTENTS. TAGK The Arrow, i I. The Outfit, n II. Teaching, a Fine Art, .... 29 III. The Lordship of Love, .... 63 TO MY PUPILS OF EARLIER AND LATER YEARS THE ARROW. THE ARROW. / 1-732. In his "Song of Ascents" the wis- est ruler of his own or of any time gives us what may be taken as an apt symbol of an ideally-perfect edu- cation : "As Arrows in the hand of a mighty man, so are children of I ■ nth." The rude club is no mean weapon, •when Van Amburgh with one in his hand Compels a tiger's lil) , 4 THE OUTFIT. [1. ing ages so quickly as bewildered inferiority of equipment. No such capacious limbo, outside of Milton's, as that into which outdone machines and methods are unpityingly cast. Set thrones, if you will, for the great discoverers, naval and military com- manders, projectors of vast lines of transportation and travel, and archi- tects of noble buildings. But beside them set other thrones for the instru- ment-makers, the handicraftsmen, the mechanics, without whose exact and patient toil the former had not been able to achieve either their success or their renown. When Solomon, so runs the Jewish legend, had completed the great Temple, he prepared a luxurious ban- I.] THE OUTFIT. 15 quet to which he invited the artificers who had been employed in its con- struction. But upon unveiling the throne, it was seen that a stalwart smith with his huge sledge had usurped the place of honor at the right of the King's seat ; whereupon the people made an outcry, and the guards rushed in to cut the intruder down. " Hold, let him speak," com- manded Solomon, "and explain to us, if he can, his great presumption." "O King," answered the smith, " thou hast invited to the banquet all the craftsmen but me. Yet how could these builders have reared the Temple without the tools which I fashioned ? " M True," exclaimed the King, "the 16 THE OUTFIT. [i. seat is his by right. Let all pay- honor to the iron-worker." What is true of the trades and of the arts is equally true of the profes- sions. The best professional work is done, other things being equal, by those who have the best professional outfit. The intellect is but an instru- ment. And as the best mechanical and artistic results come by use of best tools, so the best law-making and law-administering, the best med- ical practicing, the best journalizing, preaching, and teaching, is done by those whose mental capabilities are best fitted by the best training for these high and honorable tasks. How may such an intellectual equipment be secured ? I.] THE OUTFIT. I? If you wish for a set of drawing or surgical instruments, you have but to order them of the manufacturer, and he sends them to you ready made. You have no hand in the making of them. The instruments have no hand in shaping themselves, nor choice as to the place where they shall be made. The ore has nothing to do with getting itself dug out of the mine, nor the steel in getting itself fashioned into the blade, nor the blade in getting itself tempered and ground to a cutting edge. The quality of the instrument depends not at all on the will or skill of the purchaser, but wholly on the skill, patience, and fidelity of the instru- ment-maker. r S THE OUTFIT. [l Mind can get itself shaped and sharpened after no such ready-made fashion. No mental power is trained to purpose by mere receptivity. A sun-glass has a certain heating quality dependent on the quality of the glass and the convexity of its sides. It is powerless to increase its own heating capability. One fair and full test, and you have tested your lens once for all. Hold it steadily under a clear sun. If it fuse the metal or ignite the wood, well and good. If not, that is the end. Repetition of trial imparts no new igniting or fus- ing energy. Direct your mind to a subject, its effectiveness grows with each exer- tion. Fix your thought steadily on i.l THE OUTFIT. 19 the algebraic problem, or theorem in Calculus, or hard passage in Latin or Greek, or abstruse point in mental or moral philosophy, or on the theme which you have selected for your next essay, treatise, or oration, but which utterly refuses as yet to get itself into any orderly arrangement of ideas. You fix your thought, but nothing comes ; nothing gives away. The chip does not even smoke. The bit of lead gives no sign of surren- der. But you by no means give up as you gave up with your once tested and insufficient lens. You focus your thought again on pre- cisely the same problem, theorem, or theme; possibly with no better ;il>|)arrnt success. Yd at each trial 20 THE OUTFIT. [i. your mental burning-glass has grown a little stronger, until when perhaps you were least expecting so delight- ful a surprise, the bright focal spot bursts all at once into a flame, or the hitherto stubborn ingot melts. Then you are ready, and only in this way can you be ready, for a harder problem, for a more intricate theorem, for a more profound speculation, for the analysis of a more involved theme ; until nothing, at length, can resist the concentrated heat, unfused and unresolved. There is this advantage in having done our best, that if the matter be still obscure, a mere hint from another suffices to make it clear. When Judge Story was a member I.] THE OUTFIT. 2 I of the Massachusetts Legislature, one point in a pending bill he was unable, after having given to it his best thought, to elucidate. " It occurred to me," he says, "to call on my friend, Mr. Webster, and ask him to help me. I stated my difficulty. After pacing the floor for a few minutes he said, ' It is this way, is it not ? ' A sentence or two was enough. " Story had already made his own thought-solution so strong that a touch only of the master's hand was enough to make the reluctant crystals shoot. This will serve to illustrate the true idea in teaching. The truest teaching consists in getting the learner to do his best on the assigned 22 THE OUTFIT. \i task, and if he then fails, but only then, in helping him out. It is by faithfully performing the tasks assigned him in the studies of his Course that the student trains himself thus to penetrate, resolve, combine, and develop. In a mind so disciplined its possessor has an instrument of almost universal potency. This is the general outfit, to be supplemented by such special preparation as may be suited to each one's special work in life. The lib- eral training has already given fitness to master the problems in any one of the many waiting spheres ; in bus- iness, finance, statesmanship, law, medicine, theology, sociology, or science. You have by your broad i.j THE OUTFIT. 23 and free culture developed a strong brace into the grip of whose stout jaws you can fix any one of a score of bits, and by the sweep of whose powerful arm you can drive, or ream, or bore, as you will. The leverage of your freely-revolving brace is the liberal education lying back of the technical or professional bit, and giving to that its greatest efficiency and proudest triumph. Your merely technical man is a bit without tin; brace. The pugilist whose aim is to deliver the most telling blow with his clenched fist would deliver but a com- paratively feeble blow, were he to develop only the muscles of lii^ arm. Instead of that, he puts into training his whole physique from (op to toe. 24 THE OUTFIT. [i. Then into his clenched hand goes the accumulated might of his entire and symmetrically developed body. But in order to this ripe and well-rounded mental development is not the time spent in the Preparatory School and in the College unnecessa- rily long ? May not the Classics be dropped, and with them philosophy and a good part of the mathematics, and studies having a more direct bearing on the life-work of the student be put in their place ? Why take still the same old tedious route to the Indies, now that the Suez Canal is bracketed in the newer cata- logues of commerce as an easy-going ;< elective " with the Cape ? That will do certainly, provided you I.] THE OUTFIT. 25 can carry a man through college as a bale of cotton is carried half around the world in the hold, or as a passen- ger is carried in the cabin. Given a finished ship, and the pilot may find, if he can, a short and easy course. But how is your finished ship to be had ? It is made to order throughout, from stem to stern. It is not only begun on the stocks, but it stands stock-still till it is finished — made wholly what it is by forge and foundry, by adze, plane, saw, and sledge. But if only the miniature model of a ship, it be pushed out into the water, and if it can grow to be a strong and perfect ship only by sail- ing, then it must sail longer, and must longer feel the buffet of wind and wave. 26 THE OUTFIT. [i. The question of the multiplication of " electives," especially in the earlier part of the college course, re- solves itself, then, into the question of a fuller or more slender outfit. If the student and his friends are not particular about that, they need not be about the studies of the course. My own conviction is that what is most needed in our schools and colleges is not a larger proportion of " elective studies," but a larger pro- portion of students who shall elect to study / II. TEACHING, A FINE ART. II. TEACHING, A FINE ART. I. Four things arc necessary to con- stitute any occupation an art. i. Art implies some want, physical or mental, real or imaginary, to be met ; some demand of necessity, com- fort, or luxury, to be supplied. As springing from desire, it is opposed to indifference. As striving to gratify ire, it is opposed to indolence. As working toward a clearly-defined object, it is opposed to mere business 29 30 TEACHING, A FINE ART. [11. or occupation. It is not effort in the dark or at random. If teaching be an art, it has a definite end 2. But aiming at, or even securing, a desired result does not of itself con- stitute art. You may get what you want by one trial, but not by another. A dairy-woman put ice in her cream in July, and the butter, she said, " came beautifully." She tried the same thing in August, and the butter did not come at all. Plainly she had not mastered the art of butter-making. Art is uniform method reaching uni- form result. It implies that what has been done once can be done again in the same way. And this implies that it can be taught and learned. You can not merely do the thing, you ii. J TEACHING, A FINE ART. 3l can tell others how it is done. Every art has, therefore, or may have its manuals, institutes, teachers, and models. Exalting experiment to the rank of art is quackery. The quack imagines that because one thing has followed another once or twice, it must always so follow. If he fails, he introduces the idea of luck. But his success is, in truth, as much a matter of luck as his failure. Now, art is opposed to both empiricism and luck. It is reliable. It does not break down unaccountably in its calculations. If teaching be an art, the teacher is no quack. It is not a matter of chance whether he teaches well or not. 3. It is charactertisic of art that it 32 TEACHING, A FINE ART. [il. is founded on and embodies science. There is a reason for its processes, a philosophy in its results. Its methods are not blind, arbitrary, mysterious. There is in them a nice adaptation of means to the end ; the means being in exact accordance with the nature of the materials and forces employed. It is true that a thing may be done well and yet done by men who can give no reason for their methods. " Explain to me the principle of the water-wheel you make here," I once said to the foreman of a large factory. He replied : " I employ eighty men, and not one of them can tell any thing about the principle on which the wheel is constructed. I can not tell, nor could the inventor II.] TEACHING, A FINE ART. 33 himself tell." It was of another excellent wheel, invented by an un- scientific man, that a learned scientist said : " It goes, but it oughtn't to!" Farmers of olden times did many things as well as we, although they knew nothing of the philosophy of their farming. The " Georgics " of Virgil's unscientific time may be studied to advantage by the farmers of to-day. For thousands of years art made progress through experiment alone. All her maxims and formulas were the steady accretions of patient but unintelligent trial. If a certain way of doing a thing was found to work well, that was enough. But it is not enough for us. We wisli to know 34 TEACHING, A FINE ART. [n. not only how a thing is done, but why it is so done. And we are not satisfied until we do know. Now, the farmer wants to know why lime is good for wheat, and the intelligent housewife wants to know why it is that yeast makes her bread to rise. What but the science of chemistry can tell whether the butter came in July on account of the ice or in spite of it ? 4. But on what does science itself depend ? This brings us to that which is fundamental in art ; and that is, uniformity in the nature of the materials with which she works, and uniformity in the operation of natural forces and agents. It is because collodion is always collodion, and ii. J TEACHING, A FINE ART. 35 because light is always light, that photography is an art. Art, then, is uniform method securing uniform result ; and this uniformity of method and result de- pends on the invariable qualities of those substances and forces with which art has to do. Let us apply these tests to teaching. And, first, has the teacher in view any clearly-ascertained, distinctly-com- prehended, well-defined end ? Here are two infants that give scarcely any sign beyond the signs of mere animal existence ; their mental powers undiscoverable by even the keenest observation ; in such deli- cate miniature are they traced and infolded But fifty years pass, and 36 TEACHING, A FINE ART. [n. we see Millon pluming his mighty wing, To fly at infinite, and reach it there, Where seraphs gather immortality. We see Newton standing like a colos- sal angel with his head among the stars, taking in at a glance the illimit- able sweep of worlds with all their variety and intricacy of movement, striking the balance of perturbations of cycles in duration and reading the laws of change and permanence as though they were but the alphabet of the heavens. All this is but an ex- pansion of what was at first small and weak. This is the province and proof of wise educational training. Not that all can by the wisest and best training be made Miltons or II.] TEACHING, A FINE ART. 37 Newtons. It was a mistaken and misleading modesty which led New- ton to say that " patient thought " was all that made the difference between him and other men. It was not "patient thinking" alone that made Newton what he was. It was New- ton thinking patiently. We need not, however, be Miltons and Newtons in order that \v T e may be very happy and very useful. We are simply to use faithfully the talents God has en- trusted to us. And this right and full development is the primary object of education. I know that this view is objected to by some who call it the selfish theory, making all a man's edorts ((•liter in himself, to see how wise 3 S TEACHING, A FINE ART. [h. and strong and superior he can be- come. With these objectors educa- tion means, not the " drawing out " of the mind's powers, but the " lead- ing of them forth " to the practical duties and utilities of life. I say so too, only I would combine the ety- mologies. The powers must first be " drawn out " that you may have powers to "lead forth." It may be " more blessed to give than to re- ceive," but we must receive before we can give. We are incredulous of the wonders of precocity. The story of the infant Hercules strand-line- the snake in his cradle is not history, but mythology. The teacher who does not see clearly whither his teaching is tending II.] TEACHING, A FINE ART. 3g is not an artist. If any thing good or great comes from his teaching, it is no thanks to him. He is innocent of intending any thing great, and will be as much surprised as anybody should such a result follow. As a boy will whittle away with nothing in his head he wishes to make or thinks of making, but comes to you, by and by, to admire the very ambig- uous horse he has, as he thinks, in- geniously carved, so many a toiling teacher hopes that some good will, in some way or other, come from his wearisome daily routine of dutv. But what that good is, precisely, he- does not know. With him teaching is simply occupation ; a going through the formalities of the elass-room. For 4 o TEACHING, A FINE ART. [n. doing which with a tolerable degree of regularity he gets so much pay. But does teaching meet the second requisite of art ? Is there any fixed, reliable, uniform way of calling out by exercise and discipline, so as to strengthen and mature harmoniously, the faculties of the pupil's mind ? Many are inclined to think not. Their impression is that the success- ful management of a school or college is rather a haphazard affair ; that a good teacher is a rare and fortunate, but inexplicable, phenomenon ; that success comes more from knack than any thing else. What we often hear is that he or she "has a wonderful knack at interesting his or her scholars, and getting them to learn." ii.] TEACHING, A FIXE ART. 41 Now, if this be the true state of the case, then teaching is not an art. We who claim that it is one, must be able to tell how the thing j s done. There must be uniform method. And I affirm that we can tell, and that there is such method. And we maintain this by referring, as in the physical arts, to the science of teaching ; by examining the materials on which we are to work, and the agents, forces, and influences to be employed. If we find these to be uniform, the point is gained. In this inquiry we shall be assisted by noticing, at the outset, an obvious distinction in the methods of- the different departments of ' mechanical and professional skill. 4 2 TEACHING, A FINE ART. [n. i. Some deal only with inert, pas- sive materials. The materials lie in your hand or on your bench, and you can do any thing you choose with them. You can cut and carve at your pleasure. They oppose nothing to your operations; they contribute nothing. They neither help nor hinder. This is the lowest form of art, and these branches of it we call trades. They give exercise, however, to much taste and skill. 2. Another class depends largely on mechanical or chemical forces. They deal not only with substances, but with powers. Such are the tel- egraphic and photographic arts, and the manufacture and use of steam and electric engines. Here subtle and II.] TEACHING, A FINE ART. 43 powerful agents are employed; agents working aceording to fixed condi- tions, which must be ascertained and complied with, or there is no success. These branches of mechanism require, in general, a finer eye, greater judg- ment, and more careful manipulation and adjustment. The distinguishing mark of effectiveness in this class is the subsidizing of mechanical power. 3. A third class depends for its existence on vital power ; in which is concerned the agency of life and growth. Under this head comes agriculture, floriculture, and horticult- ure, where vegetable life is involved ; and teaching, where mental life is involved. Now, the method of teaching will 44 TEACHING, A FINE ART. \\\. be most clearly illustrated by the methods employed in those arts most analogous to it ; that is, in those at the foundation of which lie the princi- ples of life and growth. By attend- ing to these analogies we can not fail to get a clear understanding of the true mode of mental culture. The first and most important thing to be considered is that the mind of the pupil is a living agent, and that its proper growth is the primary object of education. Now, if a tree is dead, there is the end of it. You may put it in the finest orchard, and give it the best attention; you may enrich, prune, and protect it till doomsday ; it will do no good. You give the tree nourish- ii. j TEACHING, A FINE ART. 45 ment, but there is no life to take it up, digest, and assimilate it. You can not go behind the bark and create life. You may bruise, scarify, and peel ; it is of no avail. So in the class-room. Once in a while you come across a pupil who seems to have no intellectual life. He has no idea of study, and no sort of relish for it. If he does any thing at all, it is not because he has the slightest interest in his task. Here is need of wisdom and patience. You must know when and how to simplify or vary the task so as to make it attract- ive. By gentle methods, by holding over such a mind the glass of kind- ness, and concentrating on it the warm rays of an enlightened, affec- 46 TEACHING, A FINE ART. \\\. lionate, and patient interest, you will call the slow-sprouting germ forth ; and when you sec signs of spontane- ous activity, your work is well begun. But from the very first the faculties, so soon as born, must begin to grow. And things grow only by eating. Now, there is no eating that amounts to much without an appetite. There is no hearty devouring of knowledge without an appetite for knowledge. But this appetite is, normally, a part of our constitution, and in it the Creator has laid the foundation for the teacher's success. But the appe- tite is sometimes feeble, and then what is to be done ? You must not force food upon it. That is the way to destroy what little appetite there ik] TEACHING, A FIXE ART. 47 is. Many a lad has been nauseated by forcing food down his throat for which he had not the slightest relish. We tempt a feeble appetite by serv- ing up some delicate morsel. So will the skillful teacher tempt the appetite of the slow pupil by pleasant anec- dote and easy explanation ; by time- ly and patient assistance. Depend upon it, the great thing is to get up an appetite. Get the mind's diges- tion fairly at work. Yotir work will be easy and delightful after that. You have then only to set the table and put on the dishes. I remember going once into a planing mill. There was a mighty power at work there. The machine had a tremen- dous appetite for lumber. All the 48 TEACHING, A FIXE ART. [n. man had to do was to feed it ; or, rather, he had merely to place the boards before it and guide them. The machine fed itself. It had a mighty bite. This bite is what the true scholar has. He will seize and de- vour knowledge if it be placed rightly in his way. See what an appetite a vigorous tree has. Consider the astonishing force with which it draws up to the topmost leaf of the topmost bough nourishment from the root. This is the first, the indispensable thing in successful teaching ; to get the student interested in his studies. And the only way to do this is to get him to use his faculties. The mind finds pleasure in its own activity. The teacher, therefore, will be careful ii.] TEACH I XG, A FINE ART. 4 g never to overtask that faculty whose growth he would foster. Here comes in the principle of correct classifica- tion. Pupils whose faculties are in about the same stage of development should be classed together ; so that there is sound philosophy in our graded system in this respect. The meaning of this system is that the teacher is to exercise his skill in introducing a pupil to a new study at the proper time, or so soon as he is ready for it, and not before. Differ- ent faculties arc awakened at differ- ent times ; perception, memory, and imagination early, the reason later, and the reflective faculty last of all. \ wait until the faculty is born before you set it to work. It is 5 o TEACHING^ A FIXE ART. [n. worse than lost time ambitiously to attempt grammar or geometry, the Calculus or metaphysics too soon. From lack of discernment here, great harm is often done. Nature incu- bates her own capabilities. Study the period of incubation, and then nurse the offspring. I must dwell a moment on the im- portance of this second direction, to make the newly-awakened faculty work. Take the logical or reasoning faculty. What is food for that ? Mathematics, arithmetic, algebra, ge- ometry. Now, that faculty must be led to do its own proper work, and not allowed, as is often done, to shirk it off upon the memory. The reason must be made to reason. The pupil II.] TEACHING, A FIXE ART. ^ should never be taught, encouraged, or allowed to work by mere rule, without understanding the principle. In arithmetic the prime point is not how many examples the scholar can work ; nor in geometry how many theorems he can repeat, but does he understand the methods of solution and proof? The question here is not merely what can you do, but what are you? The verb "to be" comes first in practical importance, as it comes first in our grammars, and is auxiliary to all verbs of action. Arc you a good arithmetician or alge- braist ? You may work a mulitude of examples and not be either. If all your capital is invested in exam- ples, carefully recorded in a blank- 5 2 TEACHING, A FINK ART. [11. book, or simply in a memorizing of the rules, it will yield you a meager interest. But invest in principles, and they will afford you a magnificent income. Rules, then, become your servants ; otherwise they are your imperious masters. The man of rules must remember and scrupulously fol- low the directions of the guide who has kindly volunteered them. He must remember and take the first left-hand road till he comes to the creek ; then take up the hill to the right, and on to the cross-roads ; then to the left again ; the second frame house on the corner is the answer. The man of principles has a compass. He knows the general direction. He has a map of the country, and can go ii.] TEACH IXG, A FIXE ART. 53 where he chooses. He can thread the forest ; he can follow the brook up the ravine ; he can follow a bee to her hive in a hollow tree ; he can double the largest clearing, and yet come out right at last. He keeps his bearings and distances all along. Of all that comes within the survey of that principle he is complete mas- ter. The man of rules dare not set foot out of the prescribed path. He is blind, must be led by a string, and dare not let go lest he be lost. SCHOOL GOVERNMENT. The analogy I have used of mental appetite and digestion serves very well to illustrate further the art and measure of school government A 54 TEACHING, A FINE ART. [n. man ought not to be disturbed at his meals. But the mind's mouth is attention. All knowledge enters by that. To keep the attention of the scholar from hindering distractions is the object aimed at in school or col- lege arrangements and regulations. Attention must not be unfixed nor made difficult by any thing without, as by the ill-location of the building; nor by a surplus of holiday interrup- tions ; nor by any thing within, as by bodily discomfort, uncomfortable seats, bad ventilation, insufficient warmth or light ; or by disturbance of the feelings, the indulgence of anger, resentment, hatred, or other evil or malign disposition. The teacher must not put himself into ii.] TEACHING, A FIXE ART. 55 antagonism with his pupils, but must secure their love ; nor must there be mischievous interference of the pupils one with another. Nor must the teacher allow his own mind to be distracted during the hours of instruction. And here I would say that if things go wrong, let them not chafe and fret you, nor imagine that wrong things must be rectified always on the spot. Take time out of school hours to gauge the difficulty and contrive a suitable remedy. II. But teaching is one of the fine or liberal, as well as one of the most useful of the arts. In a strictly use- ful art all the products arc alike; or. at least, the more nearly alike they 56 TEACHING, A FINE ART. [it are, the more perfect the art is reckoned to be. One pin of the row is like all the rest. Waltham and Elgin watches are recommended on the ground that exact duplicates of each part are " kept constantly on hand," so that if you break or lose a part you can easily replace it. Not so with the productions of the poet, painter, or sculptor. The painter makes each face and each scene a separate study. He studies differ- ences rather than resemblances. Not less does the true teacher make a separate study of the disposition, capabilities, and possibilities of each one of his pupils, and for each one has a somewhat different treatment adapted to his peculiar need. II.] TEACHING, A FIXE ANT. 57 In the mechanical or useful arts, the exact amount of labor is specified as well as the compensation. It is so much work for so much money ; the plastering so much by the square yard, the paper-hanging so much by the piece, the masonry so much by the perch, and the measurement all to the fraction. But how absurd to order and pay for a painting by the square yard or for a statue by the solid foot ! No more can the amount of earnestness and enthusiasm and in- genuity which a teacher shall put in- to his work, be contracted and paid for. Yet it is often attempted, and by a multitude of rigid and hamper- ing restrictions, school com mil Ices often do all in their power to degrade 5 8 TEACHING, A FINE ART. [n. teaching to the level of a trade. Such committees would do well to recall how the penurious nobleman fared at the hands of the celebrated Hogarth, whom he persuaded, after much miserly chaffering, to paint for him a picture of the passage of the Red Sea by the Israelites. Called in due time to inspect the painting, the nobleman saw to his amazement only a plain water surface. " What have you here ! " he exclaimed in anger. "Just what you ordered," replied Hogarth. " Yes, but where are the Israelites?" "They are all gone over." " But where are the Egyp- tians ? " " They are all drowned, my lord." The artist has a marked advantage u.] TEACHING, A FIXE ART 59 in this, that no one can mar his work but himself. The unfinished model remains in the studio until he recom- mences his toil. When the teacher intermits his task, his model may be subjected to the strokes of rude and careless hands. What painter but would give up in despair were his canvas to be touched and dashed by a hundred pencils besides his own ! Yet nobler, by far, is the teacher's work than that of the artist. The material on which the artist's skill is employed is lifeless matter; the teacher fashions a living, spiritual being. The end of the former is attained by mechanical subtraction or accretion; of the latter by the development of a vital germ. The 6o TEACHING, .1 FINE ART. [h. artist strives to embody his own con- ception ; the teacher to unfold the involved purpose of the Creator. The artist's work stays as he leaves it at the completion of his task ; or, rather, under Time's effacing touch it undergoes from that moment a slow but sure decay. The importance of each effort, therefore, is measured by its relation to his achievement at the moment of its completion. That im- portance is circumscribed by the limited duration of his work. The labor of the teacher ceases in its in- fluence, never. The mind which he helps to fashion in both its being and its progress, is eternal. III. THE LORDSHIP OF LOVE. III. THE LORDSHIP OF LOVE. We are born radicals. We like to go to the root of things ; to get, if we can, at the one central germ from which all grows and is built up. Only the most immature minds are satisfied with mere results. It is enough for the little Budges to sec the " wheels go wound," but your grown boy or girl wants to sec the watch taken apart, and to be shown separately each jewel, pinion, wheel, 63 64 THE LORDSHIP OF LOVE. [ill. and screw. We have a painfully con- fused feeling at seeing a cotton mill or a power printing-press in opera- tion, until we understand how the machinery goes together, and the principle on which it works. And the shortest and surest way of under- standing what at first seems only a tangle is to see the machine in its simplest form. Ungear your steam- engine ; look at it uncombined with other machinery ; keep only what is indispensable ; you then have an in- strument of few parts, whose make and manner of working even a child can understand. A great literary institution is, at first sight, a complicated affair. On visiting such an institution you are in.] THE LORDSHIP OF LOVE. 65 shown through a multitude of places — halis, dormitories, chapels, cabinets, museums, libraries, laboratories, gym- nasiums, recitation and lecture rooms. You are taken to see great old books in dead old tongues and parchment covers, meteorites and fossils, skel- etons and manikins, magnetic coils and electric wheels, transits and the- odolites, microscopes and telescopes, gasometers and blow-pipes. The vast and complex array confounds you ; you are overwhelmed by the magnitude and variety of the things to be learned; it is a mystery to you how any man can spool so many threads of knowledge and weave them all into a consistent web ; you have a suffering sense of your igno- 66 THE LORDSHIP OF LOVE. [in. ranee, and a colossal idea of the learn- ing which must he represented by a university diploma. But pierce to the middle, strip the institution of these material helps which it has taken centuries, perhaps, to bring together, go back to the rude begin- nings, and you find what is almost too simple for merely external description. The Emperor Charle- magne, on being told that two men, meanly clad, were crying at a street corner, "We have learning to sell," is said to have ordered the two men into his presence, and to have asked what he could do for them, and on their replying, " Sii, give us food, clothing, and scholars," to have taken under his patronage the two in.] THE LORDSHIP OF LOVE. 67 teachers, one of whom afterward became the founder of the Univer- sity of Pavia. Scholars and teachers are the two essentials of every educational institu- tion. Study and helps to study em- brace it all. Two of the most famous schools of their own or of any time, the Academy and the Lyceum, had this embryo simplicity. Plato and Aristotle walked with their pupils in gTovcs and gardens, or sat with them in the porches of villas. This one living- germ draws to itself in due time buildings, libraries, appara- tus, every needful appurtenance-. A mind in love with and earnestly seeking knowledge is at once an < pitome and a prophecy of the aead- 68 THE LORDSHIP OF LOVE. \\w. envy, the college, the seminary, the university. The possession of a power is itself a pledge that a field will be given for its exercise ; capacity for growth, a pledge that the means of growth will be supplied. Else, the power and the capacity would be but incon- clusive and mocking fragments ; the foundation of a tower which could not be finished. God does not do things after that fashion. Steam- power proves the existence of fuel without which the steam could not be generated. The tinkling lid of the boiling tea-kettle finds its echo in the click of the coal-miner's pick. God does nothing by halves. The fourth day's work of creation was m.J THE LORDSHIP OF LOVE. 69 the logical sequence to that of the third. The making of grass, herbs, and trees made it sure that the sun would follow. The nobler end shall not fail for lack of the less noble means. The life is more than meat. The sunflower is more than the sun. The solar system might be studied in the violet. The acorn is a vest- pocket edition of Copernicus in brown binding and tucked cover. The coming spring finds all grow- ing things in attitude of eager expec- tation. Under the sward of meadows wakened lilies are impatient to lay off the night-dress of their homely bulbs, and to put on thai unwoven beauty in the like of which even Solomon in all his glory was no! jo THE LORDSHIP OF LOVE. [ill. arrayed. The peach has set its germs, and the apple is in blossom. The smiling procession of the flowers, with the arbutus at its head, has begun to move. The ivy, now scarce able in the breeze to hold with its tiny ringers to the base of the tower, hides an ambitious secret in its breast, and trusts yet to pin a streamer on the very point of the pinnacle. The hillside laurel has planned to cover, with a denser foliage, the rim and sides of its granite vase. The beech is resolved to widen his green shelves, the oak to stretch a cubit farther his wide-spread arms, and the cedar to mount upward to the full stature of the forest king. Here on the one hand are manifold in.] THE LORDSHIP OF LOVE. ji life, and capacity for growth. On the other is the sun, God's great pro- vision for the quickening of this life, and the perfecting of this growth. And these two are but corresponding parts of one great scheme, joined to- gether in divine, indissoluble wed- lock. Nor is this scheme of divine be- neficence to be trifled or interfered with. What God has joined together let no disgusts or jealousies of the upper air put asunder. Let the life- giving ravs be unimpeded in their descent. Let them be free to all the vegetable tribes ; to the lowly as well ;is to the lofty ; to the plain as well as to the- beautiful ; to the frail as well as to the stalwart. Let each 7 2 THE LORDSHIP OF LOVE. [in. take from sun, soil, rain, and dew what is needful to its fullest growth, its highest life. Let cloud and fog monopolies be broken up. Let up- start vapors be dispelled. Let the sovereignty be maintained, established by God in the beginning, when He appointed the "greater light" to " rule " as well as irradiate the day, and the " lesser light " to " rule " as well as illuminate the night. With greater emphasis is each de- sire and capability in man a prevision and pledge of provision and oppor- tunity. The universe is but a store-house for his needs. And the universe should be open so that God's ca- pacities in all men and in all women III.] THE LORDSHIP OF LOVE. 73 may have freest access to God's op- portunities. The attempt to crush or to starve any of the mind's native capabilities or desires argues either fraud, mis- guidance, imbecility, or oppression. The monastery and the convent, in the most charitable view, are monu- ments of weakness. The St. Anto- nies, St. Simons, and St. Benedicts, Abbots and Lady Superiors, monks and nuns, are princes self-discrowned. They make an " open, unconditional rupture" with desires and capabilities, in themselves innocent, and sacrifice freedom and dominion to an " ener- getic, but mistaken, idea of self-con- trol." Let clean riddance be made of thai 74 THE LORDSHIP OF LOVE. fin. tyranny, whether of ecclesiasticism, custom, prejudice, or law, which cuts off any power of any man or of any woman on its way to provision ; any capacity of man or woman on its way to opportunity ; which inter- cepts the poor on their way to wealth, the ignorant on their way to knowl- edge, the erring on their way to truth. It is a great point already gained, the taking away of so many barriers, and the opening to all of so many avenues to growth, culture, discipline, and usefulness, and especially for woman. Mrs. Montague, as quoted by Mrs. Fawcett in Good Words, wrote in 1773 about the education of her eldest niece : " I am glad you are going to send my eldest niece to in.] THE LORDSHIP OF LOVE. 75 a boarding-school. I believe all boarding-schools are much on the same plan, so that you may place the young lady wherever there is a good air and a good dancing-master." An- other favorite theory was that a woman was good mainly to work button - holes and slipper - patterns. " Between those old ideas of feeble- ness, prettiness, and dependence, and the perfect woman of this era, endowed with endurance, foresight, strength, and skill, there is a tremen- dous chasm." But what the real capacity of woman is, can be known, as Mrs. Fawcett says, only after long experience. " The notions that all men are logical and all women emo- tional ; that women arc much quicker 7 6 THE LORDSHIP OF LOVE. [ill. at coming at a conclusion, but can not tell how they arrived at it, are in process of giving way, and have com- pletely given way in those who at Girton College and Newnham Hall (the woman's colleges in Cambridge, England) have had opportunity of comparing the powers of the young women who are students there, with the powers of the graduates of the university. These gentlemen have found that the young women differ intellectually from the young men less than had been supposed, and in a different direction. The logical faculty of the young women is much greater, their power of so- called intuitive perception is much iess than had been anticipated. Some in.] THE LORDSHIP OF LOVE. j-j years, however, must elapse before a really fair comparison can be made between the intellectual capacity of men and women." I have myself the conviction that women can be trusted as safely as men to decide for themselves what spheres they can fill and what voca- tions it is suitable for them to follow. I do not think they are likely to make any worse mistakes than men, many of whom choose spheres and follow callings not altogether credit- able to their instincts nor honorable to their manhood. The safe way for a true woman, as for a true man, is, if she finds any thing she herself thinks it proper to do, and thinks her- self qualified to do, to do it. 7 8 THE LORDSHIP OF LOVE. [in. A woman may seem to he out of her sphere for a time, simply because it is a time of transition in public sentiment. But this may be only to find her element at a higher stage ; just as the boats on one of the great water-ways of New Jersey are seen for a brief interval riding on inclined planes through the air, only to take the water again at a higher level. II. But what shall we do with our education now that we have gotten it ? or rather, what shall we do with our educated selves ? If the King sends you seeds of beautiful and rare flowers, you know what he expects you to do with the seeds. He expects you to grow the flowers. But he also expects that you will dp something in.] THE LORDSHIP OF LOVE. -g with the flowers after thev are grown ; that you will place them where their beauty and fragrance can be enjoyed. A ship-owner does not leave a strong and beautiful ship to rot upon the stocks, nor does he tow it into a dry- dock, content to hang on its side a certificate that the ship is built after the most scientific pattern, and has been examined and approved by a competent inspector. He builds it for sailing. He launches it and sails it on waters where it can sail best and be of most service ; whether it be lake, river, sound, or ocean ; whether to coast along our own shores, or whether it be a Morning Star to bear glad messages to far-off islands of the sea. The vital question reaching far be- 80 THE LORDSHIP OF LOVE. [ill. yond mere details and incidents of spheres and occupations is, what prin- ciple shall actuate us, whatever the sphere or employment may be ? The incidents of an ocean voyage may be indefinitely varied. The question is, Is the ship headed to the right port, and are we keeping her steadily to her course ? Newman Hall says that in his return voyage to England, a bevy of birds accompanied the ship ; that they made frequent and some- times wide excursions to one side and the other of the ship's course, but that they always returned and alighted on the vessel's masts or yards, and so completed the voyage with the ship. What is the one high, controlling purpose which we may continually in.] THE LORDSHIP OF LOVE. 81 come back to from our daily bread- winning; from our aesthetic, scientific or literary excursions ? The purpose which shall give us dominion and a certain independence over all these busy nights, and which survives them all; an aim and a purpose which find their glad and glorious accomplish- ment when the port is gained, and the wings are peacefully folded with the folded sails. Such purpose is possible by virtue of our being endowed with moral affections ; and by this I mean, genet- ically, the power we have of devot- ing our whole selves in whatever direction we wish, to whatsoever pursuit or person. The fundamental idea in the affections is choice, and 82 THE LORDSHIP OF LOVE. [m. choice in its very nature is free. This power belongs to man only. Man only, in other words, has the power, as Hickok says, to "behave" himself ; to have or hold himself to a course of his own choosing. Brutes are held to their respective courses. Man holds himself. " Thou hast put all things under his feet. Thou hast given him dominion." Where shall this dominion be found ? Not in the realm of mere growth or culture. The scepter we seek must be a scepter that can neither be broken nor snatched away from us. But that may seem to be free and to have dominion which is free, and has dominion only for a certain time and place. Make your in.] THE LORDSHIP OF LOT/:. 83 prison limits as wide as you please, it is a prison still. Sisyphus domi- nates the stone to the top of the hill, then the stone in its turn dominates him ; it breaks away and rolls to the bottom. A ship caught in the outer circles of the maelstrom has the free- dom of that water, but is for all thai a captive. The helm may seem to control, but the mightier eddy con- trols the helm and swings the ship round and round irresistibly toward the devouring center. So all material growth reaches its maturity and then declines. It finds itself, ere long, in the grip of a remorseless vortex. The violet is free to bloom and the pine to soar. Hut both yield their dominion at length to overmastering 84 THE LORDSHIP OF LOVE. [ill. decay. No plant or tree is perennial ; none lives through all years. Our bodies grow freely, but soon find themselves in fetters. Plato and Garzo (the father of Petrarch) die on their respective birthdays, each in the same bed in which he was born. In four single-line pictures, Holmes gives us the entire career of America's greatest orator and statesman : A home amid the mountain pines ; A cloister by the hill-girt plain ; The front of life's embattled lines ; A mound beside the heaving main. The circle is complete. We end as we begin — with dust. Nor can science give us the lord- ship we seek. For vast as are the realms she traverses, even science her- self is a slave to a like inexorable hi.] THE LORDSHIP OF LOVE. 85 monotony. What arc all her paths but circuits ? Mercury revolves about the sun in eighty-seven days; Her- schel in eighty-four years. Their orbits arc but inner and outer walls of the same prison. But between the moral affections and all that we find in science there is this immense difference, that where- as in science we know just what to count upon beforehand, in the realm of the affections wc have no such lim- itation. Let a man give himself freely to any pursuit or to any person, and there is no telling at all before- hand what and how much that man, and especially that woman, will do. There is no telling what Jonathan will do now that he has given him- 86 THE LORDSHIP OE LOVE. [in. self to David so that he loves him " as his own soul." David can count with almost scientific accuracy on the flight of a projectile, and on the re- sult when that projectile impinges on the forehead of a boastful Philis- tine. To his practiced eye and arm there is nothing surprising, nothing " wonderful " in that. But the love of Jonathan, that love which, over- mastering envy and ambition, helps David to the throne of which Jona- than is himself the rightful heir ; the love which makes Jonathan happy to say, " Thou shalt be King and I shall be next unto thee " — that is to David an unceasing marvel : " Thy love to me is wonderful, passing the love of women." in.] THE LORDSHIP OF LOVE. 87 Souls do not blend according to any law of equivalents or multiple proportions. We have in chemistry not only prot-oxides and deut-oxides, but /^r-oxides, compounds contain- ing oxygen in its largest measure of combination. But who has yet found the limit beyond which the love of a wife will not go for her husband, or of a mother for her child, or of a father for even his erring boy ? The prodigal, on his way home, can rely perfectly on the old routine of seed- time and harvest bringing bread in its season to even the "servants" of his father's house. But could he have counted beforehand on that father running out to meet him while yet a great way off; the embrace, the 88 THE LORDSJIIP OF LOVE. [in. kiss, the robe and the ring, the shoes, and the fatted calf? A man gives himself to his coun- try. You can not calculate on him after that. Neither drillmaster nor paymaster can help you in your calcu- lations. The cleverest scientist could not have written up Thermopylae, Sempach, Bunker Hill, or Valley Forge, in advance. A young midshipman once felt im- pressed that he should never rise in his profession. " My mind," he said, " was staggered with a view of the difficulties which I had to surmount, and the little interest I possessed. If at a moment I felt the emulation of ambition, I shrunk back as having no means in my power of reaching in.] THE LORDSHIP OF LOVE. 89 the object of my wishes. After a long and gloomy reverie, in which I almost wished myself overboard, a sudden glow of patriotism was kindled within my breast and presented my king and my country as my patrons. ' Well, then,' I exclaimed, ' I will be a hero, and confiding in Providence I will brave every danger.' " From that hour his despondency was changed to hope, and a radiant orb was sus- pended before his mind's eye, which urged him on to renown, and which lias made the name of Nelson im- mortal. We talk of the "liberal" profes- sions. But thorough self-devotion makes any vocation liberal It is nol the profession that is liberal, but the go THE LORDSHIP OF LOVE. [ill. man. The physician, lawyer, minis- ter, or teacher, may be the veriest drudge, going through the round of his professional tasks as mechanically as the mule in any other mill. And, on the other hand, the farmer at his plow, the mechanic at his bench, the merchant at his counter, the banker at his desk, may be raised high above the busy monotonies of their respect- ive callings, for their thoughts may be all the while on those for whom they thus freely toil and plan — home and school and church and town and state and country — to help on, if by ever so little, whatever in the world is good and pure and true. It is a high and grand prerogative we use when we thus give ourselves in.] THE LORDSHIP OF LOVE. 91 to any person or pursuit with all the fervor and energy of our nature. But we must go one step higher. It is true we are to choose our own way. As every man has a memory of his own, an imagination and a reason of his own, so every man (as well as every "woman") is to have a will of his own, a mind of his own, and a way of his own. But then it makes all the differ- ence in this world and the next, what kind of a will, what kind of a mind, and what kind of a way, it is. It has been said that " God does not give us brains and then condemn us for using them." Not for using them, certainly, but for using them wrongly. Is freedom to think, talk, feel, and act. freedom to think, feel, talk, and ad g 2 THE LORD SI IIP OF LOVE. [in. only wrongly and wickedly ? God does not punish us for using the eyes which He has given us. But shall we therefore stare at the blazing mid-day sun ? There arc false ways of think- ing, feeling, and doing, and there are right ways. And of those which are right and good, there is a highest and best. And if we would have a true and lasting, an unrestrained and an immovable dominion, we must see to it that the crown be upon the right head. We shall be subject to its annoying and ceaseless protests, if wc discrown what God has made re- gal. And the true, lasting, unrestricted lordship is the Lordship of Love. This gives us the true philosophy of life ; a philosophy which found its m.] THE LORDSHIP OF LOVE. 93 perfect embodiment in Him who " went about doing good," who said, " It is more blessed to give than to receive," and whose death was an act of loving sacrifice in behalf of others. It is for this He has superlative honor, " a name which is above every name." It is for this He is to have superlative dominion, that " to him every knee shall bow." For this each recorded incident of His life and of His death is, and ever will be, most sacredly cher- ished. We celebrate His nativity, al- though we know not the date of His birth. We ransack history, sift tradi- tions, hunt for manuscripts, interro- gate coins and medals, decipher hieio glyphics, study the significance of types, pry into the meaning of proph- 94 THE LORDSHIP OF LOVE. [in. ecy, inquire into the structure of parables, unfold the history and laws of language, discuss the true princi- ples of interpretation ; we set our feet on every rood of the holy and adja- cent lands — all, that we may find what may throw some light on the life and mission of Jesus. Never lived there the man concerning whose whole life and person the world feels so deep and abiding an interest ; the man touching whose dress, manner, voice, and face the world would so eagerly welcome any authentic addition to its present knowledge. The like felicity of fond, unyielding recollection belongs in its measure to all those who drink deeply of this same actively-benevolent spirit. The in.] THE LORDSHIP OF LOVE. 95 names of Paul, Oberlin, Gordon Hall, Samuel J. Mills, Henry Martyn, Harriet Newell, and Mary Lyon the world will not let die. The story of their lives will enkindle love, stir compassion for the ignorant and err- ing, and animate holy resolve to bless and save men, until the Millennium. Not their great powers of mind ; not their learning, scholarship, nor culture, but what they did in loving self-denial for the good of others, will make their names precious, and their dominion sure through all time. And as in individual lives, so this lordship of love is the unifying, organ- izing power, also, in history. Looked at from the outside, history is a tale of revolutions only ; the birth, growth, 9 6 THE LORDSHIP OF LOVE. [ill. and death of governments, institu- tions, nationalities, and civilizations ; arts lost and recovered, knowledge flourishing and declining — Layard and Schleimann exhuming monu- ments of skill, now gazed at in stupid wonder by the descendants of those who wrought them — one religion displaced by another, to be itself sup- planted in turn ; the site of Solomon's temple crowned anon by the Mosque of Omar ; the once Christian Church of St. Sophia surmounted for centuries by the Moslem crescent, but likely itself at no distant day to be replaced by the once more victorious cross — and so night chasing day, and day chasing night around the world, and yet the entire globe never irradiated ill.] THE LORDSHIP OF LOVE. 97 at once ; and yet out of all these revolutions is the gradual but sure evolution of that kingdom of love which can not be moved, and which is without end. This is a supremacy that was be- yond the wisdom of the old civiliza- tions. " The Roman world," says Pressense, " was sick, not only from the shocks it had received, but from a profound disgust of all things. Their malady was weariness of ordinary life. Satiated with all they had seen or possessed, they asked with scorn, ' Is it always to be the same?' In search of novelty they tortured nature, but could not escape monotony, and ended by plunging into the mire. Seeking the infinite in the finite, it q8 THE LORDSHIP OF LOVE. [hi. grasped after the impossible in real things ; or extravagant refinement and false grandeur, blended with eccentricity in pleasure as in pomp." Our own civilization is higher and more enduring only because of its deeper and more enduring basis, the revealed Word of God, the noblest regenerator of character, the true and only hope of the world. What more utterly senseless can be con- ceived than the clamor of those " self- sufficient, all-sufficient, insufficient " men who prate about the Bible as an antiquated book, entirely " behind the times " ? Will these jeering praters tell us where we shall look for " the times " that are, as yet, quite up to the Bible ; up to its III. J THE LORDSHIP OF LOVE. 99 exalted standard of individual, do- mestic, and social virtue ; of unseen and unpraised purity of feeling and desire, as well as of purity of act and speech ; of strictest fidelity in the dis- charge of every private and public trust; of open-hearted honesty in all transactions of trade ; of equal regard for another's good name and good success as for one's own ; of hatred of the cowardliness of deceiving and courageous telling of the truth ; of prompt and manly acknowledging of benefits which have been gladly ac- cepted and enjoyed; of that ready compassion which neighbors even a stranger's distress; of answering sor- row for another's sorrowing, and of unenvious joy for another's rejoicing; ioo THE LORDSHIP OF LOVE. [m. of outreaching good-will for the dark- ened and distressed of even most dis- tant lands ; of love to enemies, and forgiveness of wrongs that are con- fessed, repented of, and forsaken. No. What is needed, rather, is that we go from these lofty heights of inspiration down into the greeds and dishonesties, the ambitions and resentments, the envies and cruelties, the sorrow and unrest of the "times," and bring the " times " up to the love, purity, peace, and joy of the Bible. SV: AA 000 635 027 6