The Incorporation of Ideas
Certain arts, such as sculpture, painting, and architecture, have been
named the fine arts by some man who had not learned to look inward,
and see what an infinitely finer art is any that attempts to fashion
the human soul. The pastor's and the teacher's arts, which are in
essence one, though the tyranny of language forbids calling them the
fine arts, may be given even a nobler title; they are the high arts.
We would sit down with bated breath and tense-drawn nerves to take to
pieces for the first time the delicate machinery of a watch for cleaning
and readjustment. If a sovereign diamond were placed in our hands for
faceting, we would study for days its cleavage plane, its natural
angles, and its matrix, and press it to the revolving wheel at last with
timidity and shrinking. But when the most marvelously delicate,
impressionable, yet abiding thing in the world is placed in our hands,
together with the mightiest yet finest tools, and under conditions
constantly varying, and we are told to fashion a human soul into truth
and nobility, we sit down with confident smiles, and whack away.
It is impossible for a Sunday-school teacher to magnify his office. He
needs a spiritual telescope, rather, to see above it and below it and
on all sides of it. We Sunday-school teachers constitute an unordained
ministry, whose functions are as sacred as those of the pulpit, though
less inclusive. If we are faithful, conversions will be as frequent
results of our lesson questions as of the pastor's sermons. "God hath
set some in the church, first apostles, secondly prophets, thirdly
teachers." Let us desire earnestly the greater gifts; but if God calls
us to be neither missionary nor pastor, but Sunday-school teacher,
even that calling is too high for us fully to attain.
It is an anomaly to which the Christian world is just awaking that
workers permit themselves to enter on this sacred art with no
apprenticeship. Indeed, if such untrained workers were not admitted,
there would soon be no Sunday-schools in the world to admit them. Long
as the seminaries for ministerial preparation have existed, it is only
recently that training-schools for lay workers have been formed. May
they grow and multiply!
But until enlarged Christian activity places one of these blessed
institutions within reach of each consecrated layman, we must do the
best we can with other means of growth. We must organize regular
Sunday-school conventions and teach one another there. We must build
one another up in enthusiastic teachers' meetings. We must use the
best lesson helps. We must read greedily every book and every article
that promises to give us new ideas and methods and inspiration.
Now some object to all this. "You are needlessly discouraging us,"
they say. "You are making a very simple matter appear complicated; an
easy one seem difficult. Christ's yoke is easy; Christ's gospel is
plain; he will give us in that Sunday-school hour what we are to say.
Your minute directions as to methods of study, as to concordance and
commentary and maps, are flying in the face of Providence. The Spirit
bloweth where he listeth."
The answer to all this is simple, and consists mainly in an appeal to
experience. Simple and plain as Christ's message is, human lives are
very complicated, and it is no simple matter or easy task to lay the
Saviour's simple healing alongside their varied ills. Christ's burden is
light; if it were heavier it would be easier to get paradoxical humanity
to accept it. Christ will instruct us what to say, provided we have so
trained our heart and brain that his words will not fall as senseless
babble from our tongues. The Spirit does breathe where he listeth, but
the experience of these centuries ought to teach us that God is never
present in power where work and prayer have not invited him.
Haphazard work is not equal to thoughtful work. Minute directions
that would be wasted on a barn-painter are a necessity of the artist.
Impromptu never yet won a race with Preparation. And I know that many
a teacher is mourning over his empty hands who might be rejoicing over
great sheaves if his sowing had been more liberal and his teaching
more painstaking.
And yet I sympathize with the weary discouragement of which all
teachers feel a twinge when high ideals of teaching are held out
before them. We are sure we are doing our best, already. It annoys us
to be shown a better best. Our work is hard enough. It troubles us to
be told that we must work harder before it can ever become easy. And
especially, we are so confused by the multiplicity of good things we
may do, of improvements we may make, that we do and make none of them.
Now the secret of success in all arts lies in this: the Incorporation
of Ideas. The reception of ideas, the appreciation and praise of them,
this is nothing, though many are satisfied to stop here; but the
incorporation, the embodiment of them, this makes the artist. The
artist is the man that is hungry for ideas,--for the ideal, that is;
the man that, like Paul, proves them all by the tests of thought and
experience, and then holds fast whatever is good, until it has become
part of himself, until it is incorporated.
The artist is a man, too, that above all men knows the importance of
trifles. The contour must be molded to nature precisely, the statue
finished to the finger-nail, the machine accurate in every line and
surface. He will not try to attain the ideal at a bound; it is made
up, he knows, of many ideas. He grasps one idea, and fixes that
forever. Then, he has power for another.
One point at a time, then, fellow-laborers in this blessed work; one
idea from an eager throng appealing to you in books, lectures, or
papers, proved and found good, and then held fast by prayerful
practice, by never-yielding effort, until it is added to the company
of your unconscious forces. And then, in this power, to add another to
it! Thus alone can we win, from Christ's university, the highest of
all degrees, Masters of his Art!