tibvavy of Che trheolcvgical gcminary 
 
 PRINCETON • NEW JERSEY 
 
 BX 5133 .W47 T54 1892 
 Westcott, Brooke Foss, 182 5^ 
 
 1901. 
 Theou Synergoi 
 
0EOY CYNEPTOI 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2015 
 
 https://archive.org/details/theousynergoiharOOwest 
 
0EOY 2YNEP 
 
 DEC 13 1954 
 
 LSEWj! 
 
 HARROW SCHOOL CHAPEL, 
 January 16, 17, 1892. 
 
 "Brooke Foii NA/e-stcoTf- 
 
 PRIVATELY PRINTED. 
 
 CAMBRIDGE: 
 PRINTED AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS. 
 1892. 
 
rrao-ep £pe, 
 
 (ip&CON AYTOYC €N TH &AH6ef<V 
 
 6 Aoroc 6 coc aAhGeia ecnN. 
 
 St John xvii. 
 
 cyNeprOYNTec Ae K&i tt&p&k&Aoymgn, 
 mh eic K6NON TH N X*P IN TOy 0£Oy Aei«.c6Ai y«ac- 
 
 2 Cor. vi. 
 
TO MY FELLOW- WORKERS 
 IN GRATITUDE AND HOPE. 
 
 B. F. D. 
 
 Auckland Castle, 
 Feb. 1892. 
 
enec()ANH h x^P |C t0 Y ©eoy ccothpioc tt£cin anOpcottoic 
 TTAiAeYoyc* hmac. 
 
 Tit. ii. 
 
I. 
 
 The Aim. 
 
 It would be difficult to imagine a position more 
 touching than that which I am now called to occupy. 
 After an interval of more than one and twenty years 
 it is my privilege to speak once again in this Chapel 
 and to speak of the work of my early life to which 
 its services brought open consecration and continual 
 support. Familiar places awaken old memories ; 
 memories of hopes and efforts and neglects and errors 
 and failures all alike eloquent in lessons which I can- 
 not myself any longer strive to embody. For my 
 own immediate work they avail no longer ; but at 
 least they help me to feel with fresh intensity the 
 grandeur of the Teacher's office, the richness of the 
 field of School in opportunity and encouragement. 
 Here I must speak from my own experience ; and 
 though the methods, the instruments, the conditions 
 of teaching change, the vital relation of master and 
 scholar cannot change; and looking back I can per- 
 haps see now the promise and the power of this 
 
8 
 
 The Aim 
 
 relation more clearly than those for whom it is partly 
 obscured and partly disturbed by the details of daily 
 routine. So then I shall try to speak not of what I did 
 in those days of unimpaired vigour and enthusiasm, or 
 even of what I tried to do, but of what, as I at length 
 perceive, I might have done, of what others may do, 
 for whom the ways of work are still open. 
 
 In choosing the special subjects for our meditation 
 I naturally turned for guidance to the passages of 
 the New Testament which are appointed for the 
 Services of these two days. They have a marked 
 common character. They appeal to us with the 
 inspiring records of new beginnings. The mission 
 of the Twelve, the first preaching of St Paul, the 
 foundation of the Church of the Gentiles, the Lord's 
 first sign, all combine to stir us with a sense of the 
 power of the Gospel to win ever wider victories, and 
 to bring a noble transfiguration to life. Trusting 
 then to this divine assurance of help for fresh 
 endeavours which so meets us, I wish to ask you to 
 consider with me in view of the circumstances of 
 today, first the aim of our work — of our work, for 
 here at Harrow I must still claim to be your colleague 
 — and then afterwards the message which we have to 
 bear, and the Speaker Whose words we try to shape, 
 and the fruit for which we look. A keen and 
 
in Teaching. 
 
 9 
 
 humbling sense of my own irresolution in the past, 
 of petty ambitions, of self-assertion, of impatience, 
 lead me to think that we may do well to linger over 
 these ground-thoughts of our work — the aim, the 
 message, the Speaker, the fruit — in this brief space 
 of rest when objects can be seen in their due propor- 
 tion, so as to be recognised as beacons in after time. 
 
 The aim of our work. Discipline, education, 
 teaching, these three words sum up whole theories 
 of human nature and human life. We all know how 
 some, dwelling on the temptations by which man is 
 beset within and without, on his wilfulness and pre- 
 sumption, on his pride and passion, have regarded 
 the true preparation for life as a stern repression 
 through which he might be taught to submit to the 
 strict requirements of a sovereign law. We know how 
 others again recognising his generous instincts, his 
 lofty aspirations, his manifold and complementary 
 powers, have looked for the realisation of the highest 
 type of human life through the unrestrained develop- 
 ment of his different faculties, calling each into play, 
 and trusting to some feeling of fitness for their due 
 combination. We know too, how the method of 
 repression and the method of development, when tried 
 on a large scale, have alike failed separately to form, 
 
10 
 
 The Aim 
 
 citizens of a stable commonwealth 1 . For we need 
 not one but both, and we need besides that conviction 
 of a continuity in the life of mankind which makes 
 the experiences of the past permanent as lessons but 
 not as examples, and gives to each single life its 
 highest value as ministering to the whole. 
 
 The Gospel of the Incarnation recognises this 
 threefold need of discipline, education, teaching, for 
 men ; and it enables us to satisfy it. The perfect sacri- 
 fice through which the destiny of mankind was ful- 
 filled brings home to us the necessity that each child 
 of man should in his own measure be made perfect 
 through suffering. The assumption of complete huma- 
 nity by the Son of God assures us of the divine capa- 
 city which lies in every part of our being for contri- 
 buting to the fulness of man's service. The revelation 
 of the One Head of the whole race from Whom each 
 member draws his vital force shews us that in Him 
 we are all one (el?), and justifies the noble saying that 
 ' humanity is a man who lives and learns for ever,' 
 transmitting from generation to generation his ga- 
 thered wealth. In the light then of this central fact, 
 this central truth, of our Faith, we can see what the 
 aim of our work as teachers must be. It is not simply 
 to mould to ready obedience those who are committed 
 to our care : not simply to cultivate natural gifts as 
 
 1 See Maurice's Lectures on Education. Lect. I. 
 
in Teaching. 
 
 means for personal distinction : not simply to convey 
 knowledge which may be used with grace or power 
 in common intercourse. It is to employ discipline, 
 education, instruction, in their measure that he who 
 is born to take his place in a divine society may be 
 fitted to discharge his part with sovereign mastery 
 over himself and his endowments. It is, in a word, 
 to fashion character for service — for service and not 
 for action only. We may quicken intelligence, and 
 widen interests, and stimulate ambition, and confirm 
 energy, and yet fail utterly. For our aim is finally 
 social and not personal. We seek to give the fullest 
 completeness to the individual, not that he may 
 stand alone, supreme among his fellows, but that he 
 may see more surely that every possession which he 
 holds corresponds with some claim made upon him 
 by the body to which he belongs. 
 
 Such thoughts reach, I think, to the very heart of 
 our work and they need to be recalled and pondered. 
 The material and intellectual aspects of education 
 tend more and more to occupy us. Our minds are 
 fixed almost unconsciously on measurable results. We 
 have been all pledged in familiar words to fight under 
 Christ's banner and to continue His faithful soldiers 
 unto our life's end. The image remains still in com- 
 mon use. We speak one to another of men ' able to 
 
I 2 
 
 The Aim 
 
 fight their way in the battle of life.' And we accept 
 as teachers the duty of arming them for the conflict. 
 But if we pause to ask what we mean by the phrases 
 we shall perhaps be startled to find how far the 
 popular conception of the warfare of a Christian 
 which we tacitly adopt differs from that of St Paul. 
 He thought only of spiritual foes. We think, so far as 
 we have any clear thought, only of earthly competi- 
 tors. But our own conscience, if we appeal to it, con- 
 firms his judgment on our position. Our true ad- 
 versaries are not the weak whom we may crush by 
 our superior strength or the strong whom we may 
 overcome by our superior weapons, but the powers of 
 selfishness which set man against man and tempt us 
 to think that another's loss can be our gain. Our 
 true victories are won not when we stand alone in 
 unquestioned supremacy disposing of the vanquished 
 at our will, but when we have descended from our 
 vantage ground to lift up one who has fallen, and 
 have at last planted him firmly by our side. 
 
 Do I seem, my friends, to have wandered from our 
 subject? Not if such an illustration serves in anyway 
 to move us to self-questioning, to enforce the belief 
 that our main work as teachers is to convey to those 
 about us the knowledge whereby they may maintain 
 their spiritual conflict for Christ's sake and for the sake 
 
in Teaching. 
 
 13 
 
 of their fello w-men in Him : the knowledge whereby 
 they may truly live not for a few short years in 
 wealth and honour and authority, but with that life 
 which is truly life, that life which time does not 
 measure and individual earthly experience does not 
 exhaust. 
 
 For the Teacher's work is, in a word, prophetic. 
 The Teacher, be he clergyman or layman, be the 
 members of his class young or old, be his subject 
 thought or deed, is a prophet. He has, that is, a 
 message to give through his direct teaching and be- 
 yond it. What the special message is which is en- 
 trusted to us I hope to consider tomorrow. For the 
 present I desire only to indicate the general spirit in 
 which it will be conceived. 
 
 This can be characterised very shortly in familiar 
 language. Whatever our subject may be we shall 
 resolutely bear in mind — pausing from time to time 
 to regard the fact in the sight of God — that it has a 
 divine and eternal meaning. We shall therefore en- 
 deavour, quite naturally and in the ordinary course of 
 our duty, to enable our scholars to feel what the world 
 is : a battle-field and not an arena of exciting specta- 
 cles ; what man is : a fellow labourer with us for the 
 accomplishment of our common destiny, and not a 
 rival in the struggle for limited advantages ; what life 
 is : a seed-time and not a harvest. We shall by the 
 
TJie Aim 
 
 steadiness of our own gaze towards the unseen quicken 
 in those who watch us the power of spiritual sight, 
 not enforcing our opinions but awakening their facul- 
 ties. We shall by resting ourselves upon the sup- 
 port of Him Who is invisible, open their eyes to the 
 vision of a glorious Presence in, about, beneath, all 
 things which fall under our senses. This vision is the 
 very life of man — vita hominis visio Dei — and the 
 Gospel enables us to give distinctness to it. Looking to 
 the Lord, Crucified, Risen, Ascended, we who have had 
 some experience of life behold the triumph of Faith : 
 we behold infinite righteousness and grace and glory 
 brought near to us in the tender and attractive form 
 of human fellowship : we behold earth as it is in 
 the divine will, and learn to walk ' in the world as in 
 a holy temple of God.' What we behold we cannot 
 but reflect and show. So to make God seen is our 
 highest privilege, our last desire. For if God is once 
 seen aright, the world and life also are seen aright. 
 He who has gained a living belief in one God, Father, 
 Son and Spirit, has gained a living assurance that the 
 world is one in spite of its multitudinous stages and 
 elements, that humanity is one in spite of the animo- 
 sities of race and class, that life is one in spite of all 
 its superficial divisions and separate duties. He has 
 recognised a law of duty prevailing over all selfishness ; 
 and a true sense of his universal relations becomes the 
 
in Teacliing. 
 
 15 
 
 sure foundation on which the fabric of his individual 
 life can be reared \ 
 
 And, oh my friends, if it is our aim to disclose to 
 those who listen to us this ennobling view of what the 
 world, and man, and life are as God has made them, 
 as they may be to each believer if seen in Him, what 
 opportunities, what instruments we have for gaining 
 it, what an audience for interpreting our most imper- 
 fect lessons. 
 
 What opportunities ! We touch the whole life of 
 our scholars by authority, by sympathy, by counsel. 
 No part is withdrawn from our influence. Personal 
 interests, pursuits, amusements are all open. We can 
 naturally enter into their trials, difficulties, failures, 
 successes. We have our place in the playing-field 
 and the study, in the schoolroom and the chapel. At 
 a later time what is now one work, springing out of 
 one life, is broken into many parts, disconnected and 
 perhaps discordant. 
 
 What instruments ! The records, the forces of all 
 life : language in "which we can trace the manifold 
 workings of the soul : history in which we can study 
 
 1 Compare Milton, On Education (Prose Works, III. 464, ed. Bohn) : 
 The end then of learning is to repair the ruins of our first parents by 
 regaining to know God aright, and out of that knowledge to love Him, 
 to imitate Him, to be like Him, as we may the nearest, by possessing 
 our souls of true virtue, which being united to the heavenly grace of faith 
 makes up the highest perfection. 
 
i6 
 
 The Aim 
 
 chapters in the biography of the race : the conditions 
 of succession, of number and space, which determine 
 our apprehension of things without us : the large 
 generalisations of physical science which give to phe- 
 nomena the beauty of order. And all these point to 
 something beyond : all these are for us partial reve- 
 lations of the ways and will of God. 
 
 Above all, what an audience is gathered round us! 
 At school the scholars are more than the subjects. 
 For them ideals answer to the natural prospect of life. 
 They still retain something of what Bp. Butler calls 
 the 'ingenuous docility of childhood,' and they are 
 beginning to feel something of the fire of enthusiasm. 
 I know how that docility is veiled by waywardness, and 
 how that enthusiasm is disguised by irony ; but I know 
 too that the materials of character are offered for our 
 moulding with a fulness, a freshness, a balance which 
 they can never have again. 
 
 There is a West African (Accra) proverb : ' No 
 man shews Heaven [God] to a child.' He sees it. 
 Our aim then — to gather up all that I have sought to 
 indicate — is to watch that first upward look and to 
 make it the rule of after life : to introduce young 
 Christians to themselves ': to prepare a new genera- 
 
 1 Law, Serious Call, c. xviii. Our education should imitate our 
 Guardian Angels; suggest nothing to our minds but what is wise and 
 
in Teaching. 1 7 
 
 tion for their appointed work : to present life with alt 
 it brings of circumstance and means, of strength and 
 weakness, as a service to be rendered to man in fellow- 
 ship with God, an office to be fulfilled in the Body of 
 Christ. 
 
 holy; help us to discover and subdue every vain passion of our hearts 
 and every false judgment of our minds. 
 
 2 
 
II. 
 
 THE MESSAGE. 
 
 2—2 
 
to ef&rreAioN thc BACiAeiAc. 
 
 Matt. ix. 
 
II. 
 
 The Message. 
 
 The main aim of a Teacher is, we have seen, to 
 form character for service; to use the special subjects 
 with which he deals as means for disclosing those 
 largest views of the world, of man, of life, which 
 inspire and sustain the energy of self-devotion ; to 
 train, as far as lies within his reach, the next gene- 
 ration for the fulfilment of its social office through 
 the completest offering of the manifold resources and 
 powers of each several member. The work will be 
 done most effectively now in one way and now in 
 another. Different times, no less than different races, 
 respond to different voices of the one Truth. Our 
 duty in England now is, I cannot doubt, to proclaim 
 once again plainly, resolutely, lovingly, the original 
 message of the Baptist and the Christ, the Gospel of 
 the Kingdom of God, of the Kingdom of our Father 
 in heaven, the good news of a divinely ordered 
 fellowship of man with man, and of class with class, 
 
22 
 
 The Message 
 
 and of nation with nation. The thought and the 
 promise of this fellowship filled the apostolic age. 
 They have been before the world ever since. They 
 have been prematurely embodied in imperfect or- 
 ganisations. At length the time seems to be come 
 when all things are ready for their acceptance as an 
 inward quickening force. The failures of eighteen 
 centuries bring no sentence of condemnation to new- 
 endeavours. The past is no final measure of the 
 future. New spiritual conditions provide new oppor- 
 tunities. Such opportunities challenge our efforts on 
 every side. Never before has there been so wide and 
 varied a striving after unity among men as in the 
 present day ; never has there been so vivid a con- 
 viction of the necessary dependence of man upon 
 man and of man upon nature ; never has there been 
 so keen a sense of our inability to isolate ourselves 
 in our joys or in our sorrows; never has there been so 
 restless a desire to give some practical expression to 
 the fact of brotherhood which is confessed in word ; 
 never, to rise to the spring of our hope and strength, 
 not even in the fifth century, has the doctrine of the 
 Incarnation occupied so dominant a place in shaping 
 popular Theology. And if, and so far as, a living 
 apprehension of the Incarnation prevails among us, 
 the victory over individual selfishness will be gained, 
 and the Church will expand into a kingdom of God. 
 
in Teaching: 
 
 -5 
 
 I. For the Kingdom of God is indeed implied 
 in the fact of the Incarnation. That fact defines and 
 deepens the conception of the unity of life, of 
 humanity, of the world, which as we have already 
 seen, corresponds with the conception of the unity of 
 God. And it is our privilege as teachers to shew 
 how the Gospel of the Kingdom, illuminated by this 
 supreme event in human history, which we are begin- 
 ning to understand in its full meaning, covers the 
 inherent requirements of our condition, and claims 
 the fulfilment of each separate human life, and brings 
 dignity to each humblest service, and so provides 
 through common devotion for the satisfaction of that 
 memorable formula which otherwise must be a vain 
 dream ' from each according to his power, to each 
 according to his needs ', where ' power ' and ' needs ' 
 are understood of the office which each can render 
 to the society and of the conditions which secure its 
 most complete relative fulfilment. 
 
 The Gospel of the Kingdom which is committed 
 to us meets, I say, the wants, — the abiding, the in- 
 evitable wants — of our condition. It lifts us above 
 the scene of our differences and our falls. It deals 
 with sin and poverty in all their forms. It deals 
 with death. It confirms to us the assurance that the 
 course of the world obeys the rule of love matched 
 by wisdom and by power. That love so attested, 
 
24 
 
 The Message 
 
 stern and inexorable, because it must prevail through 
 righteousness, throws light over the darkest places of 
 the earth, and we come to learn that as there 'can 
 never be one lost good ', so there can never be one 
 fruitless pang. 
 
 The Gospel of the Kingdom claims also the offer- 
 ing of every life. No citizen can be without his 
 work. No endowment can be a private possession. 
 Where the end is social and not personal there can 
 be no ungenerous rivalry. The one supreme desire 
 of all must be that each may fulfil his proper office 
 towards the attainment of the common welfare 
 which in the end each will alike enjoy. 
 
 The Gospel of the Kingdom gives dignity to every 
 service. It cannot be that anything which man must 
 do should be unworthy of man, and unworthy of the 
 honour of his fellow men. The truth forces itself upon 
 us and claims anxious ponderings when we think of 
 the conditions of the great industries of England, of 
 our cotton-mills, our coal-mines, our iron-works. Still 
 we have not yet learnt the truth which ought to be a 
 truism to Christians. We contrast the estimates of 
 labour in Christian and pre-Christian times. But the 
 contrast is more in word than in deed. We continue 
 to judge commonly by material standards. But the 
 spirit gives its character to the occupation. The son 
 asserts his freedom and ennobles his labour whatever 
 
in Teaching. 
 
 25 
 
 it is by accepting it as his Father's appointment. And 
 when once we can see with the eyes of the heart what 
 we owe to the humblest toilers, we shall know how to 
 reverence their toils; and then their toils will be re- 
 garded by them as by others according to the estimate 
 of grateful love. 
 
 2. The Gospel of the Kingdom carries with it these 
 lessons as the application of the fact of the Incarna- 
 tion to social life. The lessons will not be learnt at 
 once : they will not perhaps ever be learnt perfectly. 
 But we can at least do much to secure that those who 
 come to us shall recognise what our Faith means in 
 regard to daily duties : shall find that there is one end 
 for every member of Christ's Body, for every citizen in 
 the Kingdom of God : shall realise with a faith which 
 gives a spiritual equality to every position that we 
 are ' one man in Christ Jesus '. We can present a great 
 ideal— the greatest of all ideals — as the earthly em- 
 bodiment of God's purpose for His creatures ; and our 
 scholars will not be slow through His grace to reach 
 out to it. We can cherish with watchful sympathy 
 the enthusiasm which shrinks from critical eyes, and 
 bring to bear, or rather we can prepare the way for, a 
 divine impulse towards the offering of self in a ministry 
 of love ; and our scholars will not be slow by God's 
 grace to obey His calling. 
 
26 
 
 The Message 
 
 And in all this there will be nothing strained or 
 unnatural. Our work lies among the elements of life. 
 Religion is the perfect harmony of them all. And 
 whether we will or no, our faith, or our want of faith, 
 must reveal itself. The heart must speak of its ful- 
 ness. A word let fall here and there will suggest to 
 those who are ready to receive it the quickening 
 thought. Young minds are quick to discern and 
 quick to interpret. 
 
 3. This keenness of intelligence in the young has 
 for us a very solemn significance. We have a message 
 to give, and we are ourselves our message. If service, 
 devotion, sympathy are the laws of the kingdom, we 
 must be seen to give ourselves to our own work, to 
 give ourselves to those who need us. We are beset 
 by sore temptations to give less. The position of 
 authority which we occupy secures acceptance for that 
 which falls short of our best. Readiness of resource, 
 and accumulated knowledge, seem to excuse us from 
 preparation. But we know — I know — that we must 
 pay the penalty of every neglect. Our work is the 
 staple of our own life, of our own Christian life : we 
 cannot find our life outside our work. 
 
 And here we come to the great paradox : Whoso- 
 ever would save his life shall lose it; and whosoever 
 shall lose his life for my sake and the GospeVs shall 
 
in Teaching. 
 
 27 
 
 find it. The true Teacher must lose his life for his 
 scholars if he would indeed find it. He must set 
 aside his own special interests and look at things from 
 their point of view. He must enter into their difficul- 
 ties, realise, as he can, their impressions. And then all 
 his own thoughts will come back to him charged with a 
 new power. He will indeed find again that which he 
 had surrendered. He will himself, with all the fulness 
 of his powers and his acquisitions, be the chief part of 
 his teaching. 
 
 In the preparation of this offering of ourselves 
 there is room for infinite devotion. If it be true that 
 a great book can only be read so far as the reader 
 sympathises with the mind of the writer, what shall 
 we say of this message of the Kingdom which we have 
 to make the soul of our work ? What care and re- 
 flection and reverence shall we bring to the mastering 
 of it lest we should fail to use the opportunities of 
 our time or even through our neglect disparage the 
 Gospel for which the world is waiting. As our pre- 
 paration is so for the most part our influence will be. 
 
 The thought offers itself to us in another form. 
 We must — do we not know it by sad experience ? — 
 strenuously fix our own thoughts on the highest 
 things — and the highest is that which in truth is the 
 commonest — if we are to raise the thoughts of those 
 who depend upon us. Perhaps through superficial 
 
28 
 
 The Message 
 
 custom, perhaps through false distrust, perhaps through 
 thinking of ourselves only, we for the most part habitu- 
 ally acquiesce in a low standard of endeavour. ' We 
 ' have ' as William Law said ' no perfection, because we 
 ' do not even intend to have.' We keep back our own 
 loftiest desires and we chill the fervour of others. We 
 are tempted to make half a virtue of that which is 
 indeed spiritual treachery. For the dissimulation of 
 generous impulses which we really feel brings as fatal 
 falseness into conduct as the affectation of them. It 
 is indeed more perilous to grow content with that 
 which falls below our conception of our duty than to 
 have a low conception of it. 
 
 Do I seem to have assigned to the Teacher a 
 message which it is not his to proclaim ? to have 
 formed an exaggerated estimate of the scope of his 
 efforts ? I can only answer that I seem to see clearly 
 what are the problems with which the next genera- 
 tion of Englishmen must deal, and that the next 
 generation will be mainly what their Teachers make 
 them. Your scholars, my friends, are the born 
 leaders of their countrymen. And what will be the 
 sorrow and the loss to Christendom if through any 
 fault of yours — through any reticence or faithless- 
 ness — they fail to hear their call and stand helpless 
 spectators of a social revolution which they will be 
 
in Teaching. 
 
 29 
 
 unable to understand and unable to direct to benefi- 
 cent issues. What will be the joy and the blessing 
 to Christendom if through your training they prove 
 worthy of their splendid birthright, and enter on it 
 as citizens of the Kingdom of God, men of large 
 thoughts and large souls, spontaneously, I had almost 
 said, unconsciously, moved by the passion of brotherly 
 devotion to their fellows, naturally eager to interpret 
 to all the truths which they have learnt through 
 literature and art and nature and theology. 
 
 It may be more truly said that I seek to shew 
 that your charge is heavier than men can bear. 
 Without question ars est artium regimen animamm, 
 and to us this government has been given. But He 
 who has given it will not withhold the help which we 
 require. Only if we think lightly of our task shall 
 we be left to our weakness, strong as we may fancy 
 we are in mechanical details, alike uninspired and 
 uninspiring. 
 
 For the rest, when we look out on the distrac- 
 tions, the disorders, the conflicts of the world, we 
 cannot wonder if the vision of the heart can only be 
 made clear by effort, by exercise, by discipline, by 
 divine enlightenment. It would have been so even if 
 self-assertion had not brought sin into the world. 
 As it is, we need and our scholars need not strength- 
 
30 The Message in Teaching. 
 
 ening only but restoration. For us and for them the 
 law of the Divine working holds good. Creation was 
 by a word : Redemption — and we can dare to say 
 that this became the Father in bringing many sons to 
 glory — was through toil and sufferings. 
 
 Age tends to deaden hope. There is a true sense 
 in which the young feel heaven nearer to earth than 
 we do. So our scholars become our teachers. Life 
 springs from life. The temper of youth spreads far 
 and wide streams of invigorating energy. From these 
 we catch freshness. The true Teacher can never 
 grow old. Living again in his pupils he knows that 
 by God's grace all things are still possible. Looking 
 to them he proclaims his message, the message of the 
 Kingdom of God, and he knows that for them the 
 message may become a fact. 
 
III. 
 
 THE SPEAKER. 
 
°Y r*P Y M£ Tc ecTe o! AaAoyntec, aAAa to TTn€yma toy 
 TT*rp6c f^UN to A&Aoyn en ymTn. 
 
III. 
 
 The Speaker. 
 
 I have spoken of the Message — the Message of 
 the Kingdom — to which finally the work of the 
 Teacher in the present day must be directed : of its 
 wide range, as it includes the many relations of life in 
 an all-embracing fellowship: of its urgency, as it is 
 pressed upon us by the gathering forces of social and 
 intellectual movement : of its difficulty, as it demands 
 for its effective proclamation perfect self-devotion in 
 him who speaks and in him who hears. Being what 
 it is, we confess that for man by himself to bring it 
 home to men would be not only arduous but im- 
 possible. 
 
 But the message though it is delivered through us 
 is not ours. As we heard this morning : // is not ye 
 that speak, but the Spirit of your Father which speaketh 
 in you. Distrust and pride alike disappear when we 
 recognise the terms and the power of our Mission. 
 
 For these words of the Lord, spoken to His first 
 apostles, are spoken through them to His disciples 
 
 3 
 
34 
 
 The Speaker 
 
 charged with His gospel to the end of time. They 
 try us by a sovereign test. They stir us with the 
 enthusiasm of a great duty. They confirm us with 
 the confidence of unfailing hope. We listen to them 
 in our perplexity, and they tell us that we also hold 
 communion with a living Spirit. We listen to them 
 in our discouragement, and they tell us that by our 
 ministry new truths are to be made known. We 
 listen to them in our disappointment, and they tell us 
 that through all checks and failures the course of 
 God goes forward. 
 
 I. Yes : we with our poor aims and dull vision and 
 faltering purpose, are called to hold communion by 
 the loving will of God, with a Spirit not living only 
 but speaking. The question which our own experi- 
 ence, which the current of popular opinion, which the 
 methods of controversy force upon us is, Do we be- 
 lieve in the Holy Ghost ? Is the timidity, the rest- 
 lessness, the anxio'us questioning among us con- 
 sistent with the belief? It is vain to say that we 
 believe that He taught the Apostles, that He led 
 the early Christians through persecution to victory, 
 that He guided the Church in the controversies of 
 the fourth and fifth centuries, that He stirred Christ- 
 endom with the energy of reawakened life in the 
 sixteenth. That is not believing in the Holy Ghost. 
 We cannot live by the memory of a life. If we 
 
in Teaching. 
 
 35 
 
 believe in the Holy Ghost, we shall trust in Him now 
 as a present Advocate against the assaults of the 
 world. We shall seek intervals of silence in which 
 we may hear His voice, clear for our guidance in the 
 Christian congregation and in the Christian soul. 
 But do we hear, do we listen for, the Spirit of our 
 Father ? Oh, my friends, if our hearts condemn us, 
 may we meditate again on the Lord's twofold pro- 
 mise : The Spirit of Truth He said to His disciples 
 abideth by you, and is in you. He dwells in the 
 Society : He finds a place in the believer. There 
 is an inspired Body on the earth. The Christian 
 has now, no less than in old time, an unction from 
 the Holy One. 
 
 And can we not all see how the circumstances of 
 the time constrain us to look for this double Presence 
 of the Spirit, sovereign and life-giving ? The conviction - 
 that He is indeed by us and in us guards us alike 
 from the crushing tyranny of materialism, and from 
 the enervating paralysis of traditionalism. It enables 
 us to reach out without fear towards the whole of 
 life, towards the seen and the unseen: it enables us 
 to trust ourselves to the present which uses the pre- 
 cedents of the past with the confidence of spiritual 
 growth. 
 
 2. For to each age new thoughts are brought 
 from the treasury of God. The Spirit of our Father 
 
 3—2 
 
36 
 
 The Speaker 
 
 is, while the world lasts, a Spirit of wisdom and reve- 
 lation. He employs the labours of men to provide the 
 materials which He interprets. Thus, for example, 
 many lines of contemporary thought and research 
 converge towards the acknowledgment of a real unity 
 in created things. The result gives us power to see 
 better than before depths of meaning and of hope 
 which are included in the Incarnation. It illuminates 
 many dark places in fragmentary views of life. It 
 teaches us patience answering to that which we per- 
 ceive as the patience of God. So it is, I say, that 
 our time is a time of revelation. Little by little 
 truths find expression, imperfect and tentative. For- 
 mulas are tested and modified. At last when they 
 have been accepted by the Christian consciousness, 
 and by individual souls, they pass into our common 
 inheritance ; and even those are enriched by them 
 who fail for the present to recognise directly what 
 they have gained and whence. 
 
 I have spoken of such truths as new. But in 
 another sense they are old. No truth of life can go 
 beyond or lie outside the Incarnation. And in the 
 Holy Scriptures we have the sure plan of the Divine 
 method, the sure test of each successive development 
 of the human apprehension of the facts which they 
 record. For whatever conclusion we may form as 
 to the history and collection of the constituent Books 
 
in Teaching. 
 
 37 
 
 of the Bible — and these questions can only be decided, 
 if indeed they can be decided, by criticism reverent 
 at once and candid — the spiritual value of the Bible 
 for us is untouched. The Old Testament comes to 
 us with the authority of the Jewish Church, as the 
 recognised summary of the general discipline and 
 teaching by which God trained His people for the 
 Christ ; the Old and New Testaments come to us 
 with the authority of the Christian Church, as the 
 apostolic foundation by which the structure of the 
 Divine Society was determined, — an authority in each 
 case exhibited by practice and not by formal defini- 
 tion, an authority of usage confirmed by the experience 
 of believers. And this confirmation remains to us. 
 Test the books of the New Testament like other 
 books, interpret them like other books, and they will 
 be found unlike other books. The words still prove 
 themselves to be living words if they are read in the 
 same spirit in which they were written. And I know 
 no surer proof of the silent action of the Holy Ghost 
 in the Christian Body than the circumstances under 
 which the New Testament grew — I can use no other 
 word — grew, like the Baptismal Creed, to completeness. 
 
 We too, I repeat, live in a time of revelation. We 
 are as near to God as prophets and apostles. He 
 gives His Spirit to us according to our needs, and 
 grace for grace, out of His infinite fulness, according 
 
38 
 
 The Speaker 
 
 as we use the resources which He has entrusted to 
 our keeping. 
 
 3. Grace for grace : this law of spiritual growth 
 is to us the pledge of progress, even as the Incarna- 
 tion defines the idea of progress by disclosing the 
 true condition of man and men. This for the in- 
 dividual is characterised by dependence, and for the 
 race by solidarity. Not by his own effort, not by 
 himself but in fellowship with unnumbered helpers 
 in the past and in the present and even in the future, 
 man reaches out to the good which he sees, as a 
 child of God. And so dependence joyfully acknow- 
 ledged leads on to the recognition of that solidarity 
 of men, in which faintly and far off we see what I 
 may venture to call the natural preparation for the 
 reconciliation, the summing up, of all things in Christ, 
 in which creation attains its end. 
 
 Such far-reaching thoughts of the present action 
 of the Spirit through every part of the Body of 
 Christ are not merely splendid speculations. They 
 have a direct bearing on our work. The spiritual is 
 indeed always the practical. Here it takes us to the 
 foundation of our strength. Our scholars and our- 
 selves are united by that power of life which is the 
 spring of all life. We can acknowledge and use the 
 connexion. They and we — may we not do well to pause 
 over the thought? — are in the language of the New 
 
in Teaching. 
 
 39 
 
 Testament ' saints ', dedicated to God. The Spirit 
 who speaks to us speaks also to them. He speaks to 
 us, if only we still the tumult of our souls, through 
 them. He speaks to them, if only we welcome His 
 voice, through us. They give us the inspiration of 
 hope ; we give them the lessons of experience — of 
 spiritual experience. And they are ready to receive 
 them if only we give them through life. 
 
 ' Through life '. That is the secret of our success. 
 And to this end we must remember, with whatever 
 sad sense of failure it may be, that we are ourselves, 
 as I have said, our teaching. We must embody, at 
 least we must strive to embody, the highest which we 
 desire to make known. It will be seen, and the sight 
 will be the most impressive of precepts, whether we 
 ourselves do indeed lose our life for Christ's sake and 
 the Gospel's ; whether we think more of our duties 
 than of our claims ; whether we set service before 
 enjoyment; whether we act as believing in that larger 
 life which must be for him who believes in the In- 
 carnation the motive and the reward of labour, as 
 the expression of the will of God. 
 
 And such teaching so addressed to our scholars, 
 as I have tried to shew, is not premature. Those 
 who can feel the power of personal ambition, who 
 can feel the obligations of family and class and 
 country, can feel also those wider duties if they are 
 
4 o 
 
 The Speaker 
 
 put before them for which these are in some degree 
 a preparation and a discipline, salutary and bene- 
 ficent only if they are not final. We at least, and on 
 this I venture to insist, are bound to interpret as we 
 can the voices of the Spirit which are articulate about 
 us on every side. 
 
 It may be that our country will not hear the mes- 
 sage which comes to her, and fail to know the day of 
 her visitation. The message has not indeed, as I 
 think, been proclaimed as yet with adequate distinct- 
 ness. Those who are set to lead have not had the 
 courage of their Faith. They have allowed others to 
 appeal to the enthusiasm of self-devotion. But even 
 so if England misses her great opportunity we have 
 no anxiety as to the end. We can win our souls in 
 patience. We can wait and look forward. The most 
 universal message gives strength to the most personal 
 consolation. There is not only a Divine Voice about 
 us and in us, but a Divine Presence with us. He Who 
 said : It is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of your 
 Father that speaketh in you ; said also Lo ! I am with 
 you all the days, I the Son of Man, who know the ex- 
 tremity of human weakness and the depths of human 
 sorrow, / am with you. The greatest thoughts are 
 concentrated in a true human companionship, com- 
 mon to us and to those whom we strive to prepare 
 for their life's work. 
 
tn Teaching. 
 
 4< 
 
 To feel this companionship in discouragement 
 and failure and to use it, is to have the foretaste 
 of victory. 
 
 There is a very early Jewish saying that 'two who 
 ' sit together and are occupied with words of the Law 
 ' have the Shekinah among them.' The Lord has 
 interpreted and confirmed the truth for us: Where 
 two or three are gathered together in My Name (els to 
 ifj,6v ovofia to realise the revelation which I bring and 
 which I am) there am I in the midst of them. The 
 words tell us what a school-lesson may be, what in 
 the will of God it is. For the Name of Christ can be 
 read in all that shews us something of the workings of 
 the human mind or of the course of life, something of 
 the phenomena of nature, something of the aspirations 
 of the soul. So the promise is written, especially, we 
 may truly say, for our encouragement. As we ponder 
 these manifold forms of teaching with patient rever- 
 ence Christ is with us. As we seek to interpret them 
 as in His Presence the Spirit of our Father speaketh 
 through us. 
 
IV. 
 
 THE FRUIT. 
 
6(J)A.Nepcoc€N thn ^oI&n AyTOY' K&i eniCTeycAN eic AYTON 
 
 St John ii. 
 
IV. 
 
 The Fruit. 
 
 We can, I have said, in the fulfilment of our work 
 wait and look forward. At the same time faithful 
 discipleship gives an eye for seeing the Divine work- 
 ing which is hidden from others. The lesson of Christ's 
 first sign — the lesson of the Gospel for the day — is 
 a lesson for all ages. When the unexpected want 
 had been satisfied in the Lord's own time ; when 
 judgment had been given that in His ordering the 
 last is better than the first ; when He had manifested 
 His glory, — when He had shewn, that is, something 
 of His true nature and purpose — then, we read, His 
 disciples believed on Him. His disciples who already 
 had the beginnings of belief believed on Him, and 
 not strangers. Others could enjoy the transitory 
 effects of His bounty, but they only who followed 
 Him with the devotion of self-surrender could read 
 the meaning of His action. Faith was able to look 
 beneath the surface and to interpret by reverence and 
 love both His delay and His deed. So it is still. We 
 
4 6 
 
 The Fruit 
 
 too as we labour in faith can see in our common work 
 signs of Christ's Presence, and strengthened by the 
 vision, yield ourselves more completely to His service. 
 
 The fruit of our work is indeed, if we regard it 
 rightly, well nigh overwhelming both in its swiftness 
 and in its fulness. The trust, the gratitude, the ten- 
 derness, the affection, which have met the most ordi- 
 nary, the most unconsidered attention on my part, 
 have in old days often filled me with shame. And 
 yet, great as the returns are which we receive, we may 
 often misunderstand them. They are of many kinds ; 
 they are half-concealed ; they are in their completest 
 form in the future. 
 
 I. He is, I think, only an indifferent Teacher 
 whose pupils are all like him. Such a one must have 
 destroyed as much as he has implanted. There is, as 
 we have heard this afternoon in the words of Isaiah, 
 a twofold fertility of which account must be taken. 
 The earth bringcth forth her bud : the garden causeth 
 the things that are sozvn in it to spring forth. There 
 is a spontaneous growth, and there is also a growth of 
 cultivation. Both must be cherished in due measure. 
 We shall fail in our highest duty if we suppress that 
 which does not answer to our own temper or taste. 
 We must watch for and guard and develop every 
 germ of originality. We must provide that a variety 
 of gifts shall be prepared for a variety of works. We 
 
in Teaching. 
 
 47 
 
 must indeed point to the one end : we must seek to 
 give the one impulse : we must claim the consecration 
 of every treasure : we must shew that life is not a 
 work only but a mission. But when we have done 
 this we must lay upon each one of our hearers the 
 solution of his own problem of service. He must not 
 accept our dictation but hear, as he may, the voice 
 of the Spirit in his own heart. He must render the 
 account of his talent not to us, but to the society and 
 to God. 
 
 2. So it is that the results of our work even when 
 they are open are not unfrequently hard to recognise. 
 They are also in many cases half concealed. There 
 is a natural irony in the young. They are afraid to 
 expose their deepest feelings. They are even disposed 
 to distrust them. In such cases where we can see what 
 lies beneath there is an opportunity for speaking soul 
 to soul. We shrink — I have often shrunk — from this 
 most solemn pleading, and yet it is thus that our best 
 work is done, that the surest influence is gained over 
 a life as yet undetermined, that the power of our 
 Faith is most unmistakeably felt and proved, that we 
 ourselves are allowed to see what blessings lie within 
 our reach both to dispense and to receive. 
 
 Such experience — if by God's gift it is ours — may 
 well encourage us to go further. We are obliged in a 
 large degree to work through others. One has to be 
 
4 8 
 
 The Fruit 
 
 prepared and used to reach many. It was so even 
 with the Apostles, and the Lord has revealed to us 
 the method of His preparation. Satan, He said to 
 Simon Peter on the eve of the Passion, begged you — 
 the eleven — to sift you as zv/ieat; but I made stipplica- 
 tion for thee, that thy faith fail not ; and do thou, when 
 once thou hast turned again, stablish thy brethren. ' I 
 made supplication for thee.' So may we also by 
 making supplication secure for those whom God has 
 provided to help us the wisdom, the courage, the de- 
 votion, through which their service for their fellows 
 may in its time be duly accomplished. 
 
 3. ' In its time ', for the chief fruit of our work lies 
 in the future. Others — and this is, if we reflect, a 
 cause for the deepest gratitude — will enter into our 
 labours. In this way it is permitted us to make some 
 requital to our fathers through our children. These 
 are our heirs and we continue to live and to work 
 through them. For good or for evil, what we have 
 done and what we have left undone must, as the years 
 go on, bear an ever increasing harvest. We look back 
 and I fancy that we marvel to see how the character 
 and the scale of circumstances are changed : how 
 little things are seen as seeds and great things as bar- 
 ren flowers. There was the opportunity, and the word 
 was not spoken : there was the impulse, and the 
 prayer was not offered : there was the pleading look, 
 
in Teaching. 
 
 49 
 
 and it was not answered : there was the troublesome 
 fault, and it was dissembled or made light of ; and 
 from all these neglects, trivial as they may have 
 seemed, consequences have flowed and will flow for 
 ever equally beyond our measurement and our control. 
 And, there are also, let us thank God, counsels, 
 intercessions, tokens of sympathy, services of patience, 
 compassionate reproofs, of which we thought little, 
 which were indeed voices of the Spirit to and through 
 us, and which will continue to speak while the world 
 lasts. The men of the next generation are our heirs ; 
 and they are also joint-heirs with us of the grace of 
 life. It may be that through them God will be pleased 
 to ' shew mercy towards our fathers.' 
 
 The prospect of the issues of our work, as we look 
 forward, is one on which we do not dare to linger. 
 We and our works are in the hands of God. And it 
 is enough if we commit all our endeavours, our failures 
 and faults and weaknesses, no less than what seems to 
 be our strength, to our Lord and Saviour. That we 
 can do. Then let us rejoice if He allows us to see 
 any fruit of our labour ; and if not, let us rejoice that 
 He has given us our Mission. 
 
 ' Our Mission ' : and let us also remember — for it 
 is a point which is often forgotten — that we share this 
 Mission with a great army of fellow-labourers to 
 
50 
 
 The Fruit 
 
 whom the primary education of England is en- 
 trusted. The whole work of education is one : the 
 responsibility is one : the aim is one. With us, 
 speaking broadly, the training of leaders rests : with 
 them the training of men. Leaders without men will 
 see the failure of great ideas: men without leaders 
 will waste the resources of great strength. True 
 leaders and true men, both taught alike from their 
 earliest years to acknowledge gladly their debt to 
 the past and to the future : filled with the spirit of 
 duty, with the devotion of service, with the en- 
 thusiasm of brotherhood in Christ, will, as we pray, 
 enable our country in the coming time to fulfil the 
 work for mankind which God has prepared for her. 
 
 What shall I say more ? It has been a privilege 
 to have been allowed to speak here of a work to 
 which, when I was able to make the choice, I offered 
 my life as a minister of Christ. I naturally wish that 
 I could have expressed more effectively what I hold 
 with deep conviction. At least I have spoken from 
 my life, and I have spoken from my heart. I have 
 spoken too with the knowledge which I have gained 
 elsewhere of the movements of thought which are 
 pregnant with great and inevitable changes. I may 
 seem to some, as I said before, to have unduly ex- 
 
in Teaching. 
 
 5i 
 
 tended the scope of the Teacher's work, and the 
 breadth of his influence. My own experience of 
 forty years assures me that I have not. The Teacher's 
 office is to make men. The question of to-day, it has 
 been truly said by one who was not of us, is a question 
 of education, a religious question. The Teacher's 
 work is thus necessarily a pastorate. It is a pastorate 
 for laymen and for clergymen. It is, I repeat, a 
 true pastorate for clergymen. I know no position in 
 which every gift of the Christian priest can find a 
 more direct use and every obligation of Holy Orders 
 a more direct fulfilment. If then, as I believe, the 
 Christian Faith alone possesses the power of satisfying 
 the social aspirations of men which are finding year 
 by year a clearer and more urgent expression, and if 
 the National Church is the spiritual organ of the 
 nation, I cannot but be anxious that its ministers 
 should keep their place in the education of England 
 — a place which they have held continuously from the 
 earliest times. They have a sustaining power which 
 is precious, I believe, beyond all things. The gift 
 of Ordination has often been to me in my Teacher's 
 work, as it must have been to very many, strength 
 in weakness and assurance in despondency, a loving 
 reproof when my zeal grew slack, and a strong en- 
 couragement when my heart failed me. 
 
52 
 
 The Fruit in Teaching. 
 
 There is indeed only one Teacher even Christ. 
 There is only one valid rule of teaching, even that 
 which He gave as the law of His own work : For their 
 sakes — for the sake of the disciples to whom He de- 
 livered His word — / sanctify myself, that they tliem- 
 selves also may be sanctified in truth. 
 
 For their sakes I sanctify myself So may each 
 one of us look on those whom God has committed 
 to him — look on them as God's children, look on 
 them as capable not only of immeasurable personal 
 joy or sorrow, but also as capable of doing or 
 neglecting service of incalculable influence on their 
 fellow-men — and say : For their sakes I sanctify my- 
 self, I offer myself wholly to God, body, soul and 
 spirit, that by His grace through my ministry they 
 also may be sanctified in truth. 
 
 CAMBRIDGE : PRINTED BY C. J. CLAY, M.A. AND SONS, AT THE I UNIVERSITY PRESS. 
 
Date Due