158 SELECTED ESSAYS FROM LAY SERMONS 



the Rev. Mr. Wilson — to whom much credit is due for 

 being one of the first, as I can say from my own knowledge, 

 to take up this question and work it into practical shape. 

 What Mr. Worthington says is this: — 



"It is not easy to exaggerate the importance of the information im- 

 parted by certain branches of science; it modifies the whole criticism 

 of life made in maturer years. The study has often, on a mass of boys, 

 a certain influence which, I think, was hardly anticipated, and to 

 which a good deal of value must be attached — an influence as much 

 moral as intellectual, which is shown in the increased and increasing 

 respect for precision of statement, and for that form of veracity which 

 consists in the acknowledgment of difficulties. It produces a real 

 effect to find that Nature cannot be imposed upon, and the attention 

 given to experimental lectures, at first superficial and curious only, 

 soon becomes minute, serious, and practical." 



Ladies and gentlemen, I could not have chosen better 

 words to express — in fact, I have, in other words, expressed 

 the same conviction in former days — what the influence of 

 scientific teaching, if properly carried out, must be. 



But now comes the question of properly carrying it out, 

 because, when I hear the value of school teaching in physi- 

 cal science disputed, my first impulse is to ask the disputer, 

 "What have you known about it?" and he generally tells 

 me some lamentable case of failure. Then I ask, "What 

 are the circumstances of the case, and how was the teach- 

 ing carried out?" I remember, some few years ago, hear- 

 ing of the head-master of a large school, who had expressed 

 great dissatisfaction with the adoption of the teaching of 

 physical science — and that after experiment. But the ex- 

 periment consisted in this — in asking one of the junior 

 masters in the school to get up science, in order to teach 

 it; and the young gentleman went away for a year and got 

 up science and taught it. Well, I have no doubt that the 

 result was as disappointing as the head-master said it was, 



