162 SELECTED ESS A YS FROM LA Y SERMONS 



teach the elements of any subject, requires most careful 

 consideration, if you are a master of the subject; and, if 

 you are not a master of it, it is needful you should familiar- 

 ise yourself with so much as you are called .upon to teach — 

 soali yourself in it, so to speak — until you know it as part 

 of your daily life and daily knowledge, and then you will 

 be able to teach anybody. That is w^hat I mean by practi- 

 cal teachers, and, although the deficiency of such teachers 

 is being remedied to a large extent, I think it is one which 

 has long existed, and which has existed from no fault of 

 those who undertook to teach, but because, until the last 

 score of years, it absolutely was not possible for any one in 

 a great many branches of science, whatever his desire might 

 be, to get instruction which would enable him to be a good 

 teacher of elementary things. All that is being rapidly al- 

 tered, and I hope it will soon become a thing of the past. 



The last point I have referred to is the question of the 

 sufficiency of time. And here comes the rub. The teach- 

 ing of science needs time, as any other subject; but it needs 

 more time proportionally than other subjects, for the 

 amount of work obviously done, if the teaching is to be, as 

 I have said, practical. Work done in a laboratory involves 

 a good deal of expenditure of time without always an obvi- 

 ous result, because we do not see anything of that quiet 

 ■'process of soaking the facts into the mind, which takes place 

 through the organs of the senses. On this ground there 

 must be ample time given to science teaching. What that 

 amount of time should be is a point which I need not dis- 

 cuss now; in fact, it is a point which cannot be settled until 

 one has made up one's mind about various other questions. 



All, then, that I have to ask for, on behalf of the scientific 

 people, if I may venture to speak for more than myself, is 

 that you should put scientific teaching into what statesmen 



