Part 86

"But what strange art, what magic can dispose The troubled mind to change its native woes? Or lead us willing from ourselves, to see Others more wretched, more undone than we? This, Books can do;--nor this alone, they give New views to life, and teach us how to live; They soothe the grieved, the stubborn they chastise, Fools they admonish, and confirm the wise: Their aid they yield to all: they never shun The man of sorrow, nor the wretch undone: Unlike the hard, the selfish and the proud, They fly not sullen from the suppliant crowd; Nor tell to various people various things, But show to subjects, what they show to kings."

The Library, CRABBE.

Books

DECEMBER 6

"Narrowness may be met by recourse to the larger life revealed in Literature. There is no stronger plea for Biography, Drama, or Romance, or for any imaginative expansion of interests, than that founded upon the need for them as counteractives of the pitiable contractedness of outlook begotten of Division of Labour."

The Making of Character, Professor MACCUNN.

"When I consider what some books have done for the world, and what they are doing, how they keep up our hope, awaken new courage and faith, soothe pain, give an ideal life to those whose hours are cold and hard, bind together distant ages and foreign lands, create new worlds of beauty, bring down truth from heaven; I give eternal blessings for this gift, and thank God for books."

JAMES FREEMAN CLARKE.

Reading

DECEMBER 7

"Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking makes what we read ours. We are of the ruminating kind, and it is not enough to cram ourselves with a great load of collections; unless we chew them over again they will not give us strength and nourishment."

LOCKE.

"In the course of our reading we should lay up in our minds a store of goodly thoughts in well-wrought words, which should be a living treasure of knowledge always with us, and from which, at various times, and amidst all the shifting of circumstances, we might be sure of drawing some comfort, guidance, and sympathy."

HELPS.

The Object of Education

DECEMBER 8

"We shall be agreed, I assume, that the object of Education is to train for life, and not for a special occupation; to train the whole man for all life, for life seen and unseen, for the unseen through the seen and in the seen; to train men in a word and not craftsmen, to train citizens for the Kingdom of God. As we believe in God and the world to come, these must be master thoughts.

"We shall be agreed further that with this object in view, education must be so ordered as to awaken, to call into play, to develop, to direct, to strengthen powers of sense and intellect and spirit, not of one but of all: to give alertness and accuracy to observation: to supply fulness and precision to language: to arouse intelligent sympathy with every form of study and occupation: to set the many parts and aspects of the world before the growing scholar in their unity: to open the eyes of the heart to the eternal of which the temporal is the transitory sign.

"We shall be agreed again that the elements of restraint alike and of personal development which enter into education will be used to harmonise the social and individual instincts, and to inspire the young, when impressions are most easy and most enduring, with the sense of fellowship and the passion for service.

"We shall be agreed once more that the noblest fruit of education is character, and not acquirements: character which makes the simplest life rich and beneficent, character which for a Christian is determined by a true vision of God, of whom, through whom, unto whom, are all things."

Christian Social Union Addresses, Bishop WESTCOTT.

The Object of Education

DECEMBER 9

"The entire object of true education is to make people not merely do the right things, but enjoy the right things--not merely industrious, but to love industry--not merely learned, but to love knowledge--not merely pure, but to love purity--not merely just, but to hunger and thirst after justice."

The Crown of Wild Olive, JOHN RUSKIN.

"Our great mistake in education is, as it seems to me, the worship of book-learning--the confusion of instruction and education. We strain the memory instead of cultivating the mind.... The important thing is not so much that every child should be taught, as that every child should be given the wish to learn.... If we succeed in giving the love of learning, the learning itself is sure to follow."

Lord AVEBURY.

A Happy Childhood