p. 187 | My Old School-Master

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jun 10, 1875

My Old School-Master.

IN a sketch of the Rev. Cyrus Comstock, by his first teacher, occurs a fine passage upon the value of the brief religious lessons contained in the old Webster's Spelling Book.

Prof. Lewis writes:—

Let it be pardoned, then, as an old man's prejudice, when I compare the school books of the present day with the spelling book of Noah Webster, and especially the first reading lessons, so perfectly meeting the child's mind, without any loss of their innate sublimity—so child-like, I may say, yet never childish—drawing up the young soul to their own light without any lowering to a puerile standard or to that flat nonsense presented in some modern specimens that might be cited, and aiming to lead the child to think for himself. Those first reading lessons of Webster's Spelling Book are never to be forgotten.

It was sixty-six years ago that I took my first reading lesson, but the scene comes up in all its freshness—the young class just standing upon the threshold of that mysterious art, that first introduction to words seen as well as heard, to words as objective things, bringing with them something of a higher spirit, or as representatives of universal intelligence. I see them again, those slender forms, their voices are in my ears, the child's slow monotone as he points his finger along the line, pronouncing each monosyllable with equal emphasis, and now and then looking up to the grave face bending over him, solemnly intent upon the momentous work in which he is engaged: “No man may put off the law of God.” That was the first line I ever read, and the second was like unto it: “My joy is in His law all the day. Oh! may I not go in the way of ill men. He who came to save us will wash us from all sin. I will be glad in his name.”

It was the dawning of immortal truth. How much of precious meaning in these few words! How sublime they are! How self-revealing! We did understand it. Men who caricature and talk about parrot lessons and words without ideas may declaim as they will, we did understand it. The terms revealed themselves to us without the sham of object lessons or any puerile illustrations. That word law; it is probable that it had never before fallen upon my ears. I may perhaps have heard men talk of “going to law,” but it conveyed no intelligence. Surely I had never before read it in a book, or looked it up in a dictionary; but as then used in that living connection, I did understand it. It fell upon the mind with light and power. No clearer idea of it have I since received.

I had heard of God. The great name was uttered in the recital of the oral infant catechism. It was connected with that mysterious question, Who made you? but this was a new revelation of Him. In the accompanying monosyllables, clearer than in many a sermon, the ideas of power, omnipotence, obligation and necessity, revealed themselves: “No man may put it off.”

In the words that followed, “My joy is in His law all the day,” there was a rational light as well as a joy. We truly yielded the approbation indicated. We rejoiced in the law after the inward man. We consented to the law that it was good, as human nature is compelled to do, even after it feels the awakened law of sin warring and ruling in its members.

“Oh, let me not go in the way of ill men.” This third line brought up the idea, the embryo idea it may be, of the great divergency—the two roads, then beginning to part, but with their ends so immeasurably distant—the way of virtue and the way of vice, the upward toiling, and the smooth, downward path, to use the language of Hesiod's old picture, made so many centuries ago; or Solomon's way of life and way of death; or the still more vivid representation of our Saviour, the broad and the narrow way, the way of righteousness and the way of ill men. We were thus early taught to pray for deliverance from the way of danger, or the one in which our feet might so easily incline to run.

“He who came to save us.” It was not a mere sound. We did attach a precious meaning to that name; and along with it came the closely suggestive ideas of salvation, of cleansing, purity, and deliverance from sin. As I have said, it may have been in their embryo state; but they were all there present to the soul in some spiritual form, and with some degree of spiritual power, when we said, “I will be glad in his name.” These impressions may have been feeble and faint, indeed, but they were more precious, even in their dawning, than all the practical instruction of our utilitarian school-books, with all their boasted freedom from dogmas, and all their contempt for mere rote instruction.—Prof. Taylor Lewis.