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Show mere talk. The exigencies of the teacher's profession force us to one or the other of two courses: Eithertalkin loosely, and deahngwith words aswords only, the teacher becomes wordy; or, regading the spoken word as a living thing, the representative of a trueidea, and so dealing with thought, the teacherbecomes thoughtful, and maxes others thoughtful. By the very nature of your profession, yon must surely tend toward one or the other state. Which will you choose? Will you deal carelessly with words, and grow wordy; or, carefully with thoughts, and grow thoughtful? .WEAT THOUQETS WILI, YOU SET REPORB TEEM? What thoughts shall the teacher put before the young? Has he done his whole dnty when he has attempted to train their knowing powers only? Far from it.. "Education is not merely the training of the mind; it is the training of the whole mm!" The heart and sffeetion8 must be engaged for good. The will must be trained to obey the voice of duty and to lave that stern-@ goddess: Trendelenburg has finely mid, "It is conscience that preserves the m~ghotf the wlll." Without moral training, without the systematic presentation of those views of dnty and of right which are inspiring and ennoblinv, a teacher can never hope to bring his pu ils to what one of the foremost men of sclence in our time has declared to he the o%ject of an education-that is,the habit of doing "the thing I know I ought to do, at the time when I know I ought to do it, whether I feel like doing it or not." There re& on the teacher, then, the positive obligation to do a11 that she can to make aa effective as possible the moral training of her pupils. To this end, noble thoughts, high standards of action, the inspiring utterances of the f i~smt inds of all ages should be employed. There i? a refining effect in merely,utteringand listenin to such thoughts. Such is the &vine ower of truth, such is the penetrating an% abiding influence of moral truth and tze beauty of purity and holiness, that the simple presentation of these thoughts purifies and elevates the soul of her who speaks and of all who hear. Use often in your schoolroom the words of thenahlest boob, the sublime yet sim-ple uttemnces of the poets, those mighty dead ~ h doie not. Such an ins iring thought, rhen quoted, often brings with it into the crowded air of the schaoHmom the freshness of its own ever-vernal atmoshere. Lo, the world is transfiguredl The "eternal verities," that change not, are revealed, close around us, as when on a summer night among the Alps, while the darkness hangs like a all about you, a vivid flash of light from heaven throws 811 the landscape into cLrest relief, and reveals, standing like sentinels close around you, those warden mountains, forgotten in the darkness, whose towering summits lie ever in God's clear calm of upper air, above the clouds. The word is life; and most of all God's own Word. Not merely in public in your school, but in private with your pupils, one by one, then, speak of the best thmgs. Shall a false fear of seeming better than wc are lead us to let the beat things go unspoken of? SHALL THE NOBLEST TEOUQHTS BE LEm TSITPERED? There are the young lives intrusted to your care, waiting before you, day af+r day with the finest capacities for good, the mast delicatesusceptibilitiesof aspiration and achievement. But if no hand touches the hest, sweetest chords, they may lose all power of answerin The responsibility will be ours if the powem of these yobg souls are never cafied into exercise. Since by far the most important part of the teacher's work is the evoking of all the pupil's powers into conscious activity, can we call that teacher successful who does not awaken the noblest powem-the affections, the love of virtue, that conscientious devotion to the right which gives force to the mi htiest wills? &metimes silence on all these themes is really the result of a mistaken reticence, anecdless dread that the highest ideas will become commonplace and lose their power, if we speak of them often. Yet, "out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh! " and sometimes, alas! another explanation of this silence on all the best themes is the tme one. If beauty and purity, "intrinsic nobleness and contempt of trifles," really mark the thoughts of a person who must speak (and teachers must), these themes will find their way into the speech. From many a schoolroom children go away, week after week, blindly hungering for a nobility of thought that the master or the mistress there has nohta give them. "The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed." |
