Personal Application of the Truth.
By Inglis
Why should not the teacher's mind kindle up at the thought, that in that book which he holds in his hands is contained a pardon for the very worst child in his class—a pardon bought with the blood of the Son of God; that to him it is given to plead the cause of the Almighty with a sinner; that death and life are waging cruel war in his scholars' souls for the mastery; that the issue may be to-day—that a soul may be lost or won this very day; and that the Spirit of the Most High is on his side, pleading the same cause with his wild or orderly scholar? O that we could feel that we are dealing with eternal truth, and that the "living truths of the living God" came glowing from our lips as if we had been to the world of light, and knew what our children would lose if they lost Heaven, and what they would gain if they won it. We are not to be understood as proposing to defer the application of the lesson to the conclusion. The conclusion may deal more fully in appeal than the other portions of the lesson; but suitable practical addresses ought to be intermingled throughout the whole, so as never to allow the children to forget their personal interest in everything that is taught. We attach the very highest importance to this branch of religious instruction; without it very much of our teaching will be lost. Knowledge of any sort fixes itself more readily upon the mind when it is to be reduced to immediate practice; and religious knowledge needs every auxiliary in its combats with the sinful heart. That teaching which stops short at the mere communication of facts and truths, and neglects to illustrate their practical bearing, is of no great value. The teaching that allows a boy to retire from school, full of proofs of the evil and danger of sin, in the general, but that permits him, for anything his teacher has said to the contrary, to quarrel with his brother, disobey his parents, or pilfer from his master, is radically wrong. Our teaching should be of such a kind that in every relation of life, as brother or sister, parent or child, master or servant, friend or companion, the pupil may feel the law of God, and the life and death of Christ, a governing and animating principle. It should be of such a kind that at every turn in the life of the scholar he may be able to say, "My teacher taught me from the Bible what I ought to do here." Sweet as the hymns of angels ought to be the voices that urge him along the narrow way; but whenever he is about to sin, our lessons from the Bible ought to haunt him like a conscience, and flash up in his face the terrible warning, "You are on the way to hell." This is what we mean by practical application.—Inglis.