1. _Lack of Early School Training._—Here is a real difficulty which
many Sunday-school teachers and others _feel_. Unquestionably, however,
they too much magnify it. An undertaking may be difficult and yet
possible. Its difficulty may be over-estimated. A lack of early or the
best school training, seriously affects one’s future success in letters
or in art. But if there be will and energy and perseverance in a man,
these will go far toward insuring his success, while he who has them
not will surely fail though blessed with every advantage of school and
teacher.
Elihu Burritt, blacksmith, learned eighteen languages and twenty-two
dialects, because he _would_ learn them, not because he had early
scholastic advantages.
Shakspere says,
“It is not in our stars
But in ourselves, that we are underlings.”
2. _Lack of Time._—With busy pastors, superintendents and teachers,
this difficulty is a _real_ one. Nevertheless we may hint to _some_
pastors that their busy-ness is largely misdirected. It is certain
there is time enough to do all that God wants you or needs you to
do. But to elaborate the sixth topic of a thirty minute discourse
upon the anvil of three weeks’ time, and to do nothing else must be
pronounced at least doubtfully wise or valuable. Or, to “run in and
see” the mince-pie making Martha or the floor-scrubbing Patience or
the boudoir-adorning Evelyn and her æsthetic sister Elsie, and to do
nothing else, may please the dear creatures and make one the most
popular pastor for the village ages, but is _this_ wise or valuable?
[Hint. _They who “run in” may “run out.”_] A New York _Sun_ reporter
in describing the proceedings of the last Democratic State Convention,
coined a new word,—not elegant indeed, but extremely expressive. “The
Hon. —— arose and proceeded to _peppersauce himself_ all over the
convention.” Certainly this is a most emphatic use of the middle form
of a noun-verb, and is indefinitely suggestive of the very action
and _distributive energy_ of the Hon. ——’s speech as well as of the
speecher. The _number_ of parish calls made per year is not the only
measure of a pastor’s value to his church. We must have the _qualis_ as
well as _quantus_ of his work if we would make a fair test of values.
But the quantity of this work is the very consumption of time. Probably
you could both learn Greek and make better pastoral calls if you should
refrain from distributing yourself so continuously over the parish.
Wesley’s rule, “Be diligent. Never be unemployed. Never be _triflingly_
employed. Neither spend more time at any place than is strictly
necessary,” is one of universal wisdom. Kirke White learned Greek while
walking to and from a lawyer’s office.
A nail cutter was at work cutting nails at his machine in the mill;
the long stick that held his pincers was grasped in his right hand and
the other end of it, running between his side and elbow, was slung in
a cord pendent from the floor above. The red-hot nail plates glowed in
the fire, ready to be seized one by one in the pincers, as the workman
finished feeding the last one into the closing jaws of the machine.
Only a minute’s time and a single nail plate—turned for every nail
by the deft hand of the skilled artisan, and fed accurately, became
nails. The workman was so adjusted in mental tether to his work that
the jaws never closed upon the iron pincers. With a single motion the
refuse bit within the pincers fell amongst its fellow scraps, and a new
plate began its course. And all the while _the workman was reading a
book_. The babel of two hundred crunching jaws around availed nothing
to disturb him. He’d planned to save time. He didn’t mean to become
machinery or a machine. _That man could learn Greek._
[To be continued.]