Moral Teaching Latent in School-lessons. 389

possible, without which, indeed, many others are well-nigh im-
possible. For all untruth is traceable to cowardice. All idle-
ness, desultory reading, extravagance, self-indulgence-nearly
all in fact of the faults which you most desire that schoolboys
should avoid, come from lack of boldness to say "No" when
the temptation comes, and to make a resolute effort to do what
is known to be right. Trace out the consequence of a nerveless,
soft and too indulgent discipline, when it comes to bear fruit in
after-life. Consider what a man is likely to be worth who has
not resolution enough to resist the public opinion of his class,
to refuse to pronounce the Shibboleths of his party, to abstain
from display and expense which he cannot afford, to emanci-
pate himself from usages which he feels to be narrow and self-
ish, in his profession or trade. And when you think of these
things you will see that in the microcosm of a good school there
should be real training in courage and self-restraint, and that
such training is often as effective when it is connected with the
actual difficulties and temptations of school life, as when it
forms part of a formal scheme of ethical or theological teaching.
Further, it must be borne in mind that every one of the depart-
ments of secular teaching with which we deal in
schools carries with it its own special ethical les-
sons, holds them in solution, so to speak, and con-
cerns itself in its own way with some important as
pect of human character. We saw in considering the practice of
simple arts, and in all the mechanical drill which they involve,
how the scholar learned obedience, exact attention to rule, self-
subjugation, deference for others, and the habit of losing sight of
his individual claims, while working towards the attainment of
results in which others besides himself had a common interest.
The study of Language too, when rightly conducted, is essen-
tially a discipline in veracity, in careful statement, in abstinence
from exaggeration, in thinking before we speak, Chaucer's
host says:

"Eke Plato sayeth, whoso can him rede
The wordes moste ben cosin to the dede;"

The ethical

teaching embodied in School-les

sons.

and George Herbert,

"Lie not, but let thy heart be true to God,
Thy mouth to it, thy actions to them both."

And the ideal in the mind of both poets you see is the perfect correspondence in a man's character between the thing thought, the thing done, and the thing said. There is no truer test of a consistent and noble type of life than this; and there is no intellectual training better fitted to develop such a type, than wise discipline in the use and meaning of language. In like manner Mathematical science has its own special moral lessons, none the less real because they are learned by implication only and are not formulated in precepts. It is a discipline in exactness, in perfect honesty, in patience. And of natural science and of all the studies pursued by the method of induction, have we not seen that they are a check on rash and hasty conclusions, that they teach fairness, breadth of mind, reticence, suspension of our judgment while the data for forming it are insufficient; and that these qualities are very necessary in the right conduct of life? As to History; it is full of indirect but very effective moral teaching. It is not only as Bolingbroke called it "Philosophy teaching by examples," but it is Morality teaching by examples. What, for instance, can be of higher value than the training it gives in the estimation of human character? We are called on to form judgments of men in very difficult positions, and we find a flippant and confident historian dismissing them with a single sentence, giving his estimate on one or two incidents in their lives, or summing up their characters in an epigram. Well, we look into ourselves, and we think of the people by whom we are surrounded, and we know that neither their characters, nor our own, admit of being fairly summed up in an epigram or a single sentence, that he who would know us thoroughly and judge us fairly, should know something of our powers and opportunities, our surroundings and temptations, and of the circumstances in which our opinions have been formed. History may thus become to those who study it a

Indirect Ethical Teaching.

391

lesson in charity, and a training whereby we may learn how to form right estimates of each other. It is essentially the study which best helps the student to conceive large thoughts, "to look before and after," and to appreciate, as Mr. J. M. Wilson has wisely said, the forces of genius, of valor, of wisdom, and of enthusiasm by which the world is moved.

There is yet another sense in which it is impossible to overvalue the moral teaching of History. One looks back over the annals of our race, and recalls the past. The echoes of far-off contests and of ancient heroisms come down to us through the ages. "We have heard with our ears, and our fathers have declared to us the noble works which God did in their days, and in the old time before them." We hear of Philip Sidney, thirsty and dying on the field of Zutphen, refusing the cup of water and giving it to a poor soldier with the words, "Thy necessity is greater than mine." We recall the image of the saintly Bishop Ken, on the eve of the Declaration of Indulgence, as he stood with six other bishops before James in the presence-chamber at Whitehall, "We have two duties to perform, our duty to God, and our duty to our king. We honor your Majesty, but we must fear God." Or we think of Wolfe the young soldier on the heights of Quebec, spent and wounded after a hard fight, aroused by the cry, "They run." "Who run?" "The French.' “Then I die happy." And as we realize these scenes, we know that this world is a better world for us to live in because such deeds have been done in it; we see all the more clearly what human duty and true human greatness are, and we are helped by such examples to form a nobler ideal of the possibilities even of our own prosaic and laborious life.

And thus it is quite possible that in a school in which few formal lessons are given on morals and conduct, Indirect morthe sense of a higher presence, and the habitual al teaching. recognition of the highest motives of action may suffuse the whole of the teaching, or run through its entire texture like a golden thread. You have many objects in view which cannot be set down and provided for in a time-table. You

want most of all to exert a right influence over the character, and you want too to gratify the legitimate demands of a child's fancy, and to furnish food for his imagination. You want to regard him from the first as a being not only with duties to fulfil and a livelihood to win, but with a life to live, with tastes to be gratified, with leisure to be worthily filled. And hence you will never satisfy yourself by putting before him the usefulness of knowledge, the way in which it adds to the value of its possessor in the market of the world, the examinations it may help him to pass, the fortune or the credit it may help him to win; but you will rather try to help him perceive the beauty and worth of an intelligent life for its own sake. It has been profoundly said by Bacon that the light of heaven is not only precious to see by, but to see. And of knowledge too, i may be truly said that it is not only good to show us the way, and to help us to solve difficulties. It is also good, even if we solve no difficulties with it, and if we turn it to no definite commercial or other account, good if we only delight in its radiance and feel its warmth, and have our souls enriched and gladdened by it. "Truly the light is sweet, and a pleasant thing it is for a man to behold the sun." And a school is a very unsatisfactory institution, and fails to fulfil its highest function, if, however it may succeed in imparting knowledge, it does not also succeed in imparting a thirst for more, or at least a dawning sense of the inward need for mental and spiritual cultivation, whether such cultivation bears any visible relation to success in life or not.

And so the ideally perfect school is not only characterized, as we have said in former lectures, by strict order, by right methods of instruction, and by vigorous intellectual activity; it should also be pervaded through and through by high purpose, by the spirit of work, by a solemn sense of duty, and by the love of truth. Does this seem to some of you an unattainable ideal9 The first condition of its being attainable is that you shall be lieve it worthy of attainment. Look back upon your own

The Schoolmaster's Vocation.

393

school-days, recall the memories you have of them. Look forward into the life of your pupils, and ask what recollections they will have-what recollections you would like them to have, of you and of your teaching. Those recollections will not all be of the lessons you have intentionally given. They will depend much upon the spirit in which your work was done, on the motives which were seen to actuate you, and on the degree in which you were known to love that knowledge of which for the time you were in the scholars' eyes the chief representative.

Vocation.

You remember well who it was who once stood by the lake of Genesareth and beckoned Andrew and Simon away from their boats and their fishing-tackle with the words, "Follow me: I will make you fishers of men.” That is a great parable; significant of the way in which, in all ages of the world, some are called out from the meaner and more mechanical employments of life, and invited to take a share in the noblest of all work-in fashioning the intellect, the conscience, the character, the destiny of future generations of men and women. The call is not audible to all of us in quite the same way. By some it is recognized in the circumstances and what seem the accidents of life. Some hear it in the whispered intuitions which tell of personal fitness and aptitude. To others the voice comes, as a weighty and solemn conviction of the importance and usefulness of the work itself. But in some way or other the sense of the call ought to be present in the mind of every teacher. Without it the highest achievements of his art will be unattainable to him. With it, he will be in a position to make use of all the resources within his reach; he will have before him a true conception both of the road he has to traverse, and of the goal towards which he moves. And he will ever possess within him one of the strongest of all motives to action; for while he is doing his work, he will habitually recognize and will teach his scholars to recognize the unseen presence in their midst of One who is the helper of all sincere learners, and the teacher of all true teachers.