nd has enabled the School, I
believe, to keep it to this day? I say fearlessly,--Arnold's teaching
and example--above all, that part of it which has been, I will not say
sneered at, but certainly not approved--his unwearied zeal in creating
"moral thoughtfulness" in every boy with whom he came into personal
contact.
He certainly _did_ teach us--thank God for it!--that we could not cut
our life into slices and say, "In this slice your actions are
indifferent, and you needn't trouble your heads about them one way or
another; but in this slice mind what you are about, for they are
important"--a pretty muddle we should have been in had he done so. He
taught us that in this wonderful world, no boy or man can tell which of
his actions is indifferent and which not; that by a thoughtless word or
look we may lead astray a brother for whom Christ died. He taught us
that life is a whole, made up of actions and thoughts and longings,
great and small, noble and ignoble; therefore the only true wisdom for
boy or man is to bring the whole life into obedience to Him whose world
we live in, and who has purchased us with His blood; and that whether we
eat or drink, or whatsoever we do, we are to do all in His name and to
His glory; in such teaching, faithfully, as it seems to me, following
that of Paul of Tarsus, who was in the habit of meaning what he said,
and who laid down this standard for every man and boy in his time. I
think it lies with those who say that such teaching will not do for us
now, to show why a teacher in the nineteenth century is to preach a
lower standard than one in the first.
However, I won't say that the Reviewers have not a certain plausible
ground for their dicta. For a short time after a boy has taken up such a
life as Arnold would have urged upon him, he has a hard time of it. He
finds his judgment often at fault, his body and intellect running away
with him into all sorts of pitfalls, and himself coming down with a
crash. The more seriously he buckles to his work the oftener these
mischances seem to happen; and in the dust of his tumbles and struggles,
unless he is a very extraordinary boy, he may often be too severe on his
comrades, may think he sees evil in things innocent, may give offence
when he never meant it. At this stage of his career, I take it, our
Reviewer comes across him, and, not looking below the surface (as a
Reviewer ought to do), at once sets the poor boy down for a prig and a
Pharisee
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