44 EDUCATION 



ness of thought was wedded to greatness of soul in a supreme degree, 

 who in Himself more than in the doctrines He teaches is truth and 

 goodness and beauty? 



Education is the soul's response to God's appeal to make itself 

 like unto Him, self-active, knowing, wise, strong, loving, and fair; 

 and the permanent example of the most complete hearkening to this 

 appeal is the life and teaching of Christ. He moves on the plane on 

 which the lot of the lowliest is cast, and He lives on heights to which 

 saints and philosophers can attain but at momentary intervals. 



The infinite power of the brave and the good to dare and to suffer 

 reveals God to us more than the unimaginable force and splendor of 

 millions of suns ; it manifests to us that the spirit of man is of higher 

 quality and greater worth than a universe of atoms. It is forgetful- 

 ness of this that makes us victims of schemes and devices, gliders over 

 the surfaces of things, incapable of thinking or loving or doing what 

 has everlasting value, become as traders for whom the market fixes 

 the standard of worth, for whom success is more than the soul, who 

 lack the spiritual mind which is the highest educational force and 

 influence. Teachers who fail to see all things in the light of eternity 

 and in the omnipresence of God are but servants of idols. They 

 drift toward mechanical methods, appeal chiefly to the arithmetical 

 and calculating understanding, leaving the faculty for divine thoughts 

 and infinite hopes to perish of atrophy. They form tradesmen, 

 artisans, schemers, and politicians, not men who live in the inner 

 sanctuary of conscience and draw sustenance from the eternal un- 

 seen w T orld of truth and love, where commercial standards have no 

 significance or application. 



To educate is to labor for the greatest happiness of each and of all 

 in the sense in which happiness is indistinguishable from wisdom, 

 holiness, and love. It is to accustom to think, to meditate, to give 

 heed to the voice of reason and conscience, to withdraw from the 

 noise of life and the tumult of passion, that this voice may be heard in 

 all its depth and purity. It is to store the mind with true principles 

 of conduct and to create habits of right thought and action. It is 

 first of all a work of religion and morality, of intelligence and wisdom, 

 of sympathy and love. 



The ideal of utility certainly is applicable to human life in a thou- 

 sand beneficent wa}^s, and may illumine the path of the noblest. It 

 adds a general principle to knowledge and is of advantage to the 

 whole world. But it is only an aspect of the truth. All things exist 

 for those who know how to make use of them, and their true and 

 highest use is to minister not to appetite but to reason, not to instinct 

 but to conscience, to the human, not to the animal. Right is higher 

 than might, goodness than success, love than lust. There is no 

 more doubt that falsehood, dishonesty, and impurity are wrong than 



