ssor of Divinity, has lighted a candle at
Oxford which by God's grace will never be put out. There is now a fairly
general feeling that men who enter the ministry must be educated not to
pass a test or to prove themselves capable of conducting a service or
performing as rite, but educated as educators--apostles of truth,
evangelists of the higher life.
Religion, according to Dr. Selbie, is something to be taught. It is not
a mystery to be presented, but an idea to be inculcated. The world has
got to understand religion before it can live religiously.
But all education stands in sore need of the trained teacher. Our
teachers are not good enough. They may be very able men and women, but
few of them are very able teachers. The first need in a teacher is to
inspire in his students a love of knowledge, a hunger and thirst after
wisdom. But, look at our schools, look at our great cities, look at the
pleasures and recreations which satisfy the vast masses of the
population! As a nation, we have no enthusiasm for education. This is
because we have so little understanding of the nature and province of
education. We have never been taught what education is.
With his enthusiasm for education goes a perfervid spiritual conviction
that intellect is not enough. He tells the story of an old Scots woman
who listened intently to a highly intellectual sermon by a brilliant
scholar, and at the end of it called out from her seat, "Aye, aye; but
yon rope o' yours is nae lang enough tae reach the likes o' me."
Something much more mysterious and much more powerful than intellect is
necessary to change the heart of humanity; but when love and knowledge
go hand in hand there you get both the great teacher and the good
shepherd. Knowledge without love is almost as useless to a teacher as
love without knowledge.
In his study at Mansfield, a large and friendly room book-lined from
floor to ceiling, with a pleasant hearth at one end of it, where he
smokes an occasional pipe with an interrupting fellow scholar, but where
he is most often to be found buried in a great book and oblivious of all
else besides, this little man with the darting eyes and soft voice is
now invading, with sound good sense to save him from nausea or
contamination, the region of morbid psychology.
He would perfectly agree with Dr. Inge's characteristic statement, "The
suggestion that in prayer we only hear the echo of our own voices is
ridiculous to anyone who has pr
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