p. 353 | GETTING HOLD OF THEM

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Aug 12, 1880

GETTING HOLD OF THEM.

A LOCOMOTIVE is a magnificent thing, but is of utterly no account unless it draws something. A very absurd thing it would be to see an engine go thundering up an inclined grade and leaving the train of cars behind, and then snorting away at the top, as if to say, See what a feat I have accomplished! And yet, if we consider a great man as a locomotive, it is just this sort of performance on which sometimes he plumes himself.

He may be a powerful preacher, after a fashion, but his power is worthless, unless he moves the people and carries them with him. To move them, and carry them, he must be careful to get hold of them. To get hold of them, he must know them, and enter into sympathy with them.

And it is just here that we find the secret of the failure of many very able and scholarly men. They know books, but they don't know men. They dwell apart and aloft like the stars. They are like the pastor of that dear old woman, who said: “A great man we have got for a minister! He is a prodigious scholar. You just ought to see the books he's got! Stacks of books—cartloads of books, and he just lives among them! But you ought to hear him when he comes out on Sunday! He's invisible six days in the week, and incomprehensible on the seventh!” You see that learned locomotive went galloping off up the mountain-side, and left all the train at the mountain's base; but the people all gazed after him with gaping wonder, and said, admiringly: “Did you ever see such a locomotive?” And yet this is not the kind of man that the world needs.

A patient, plodding, pains taking pastor, that goes around from house to house; that knows the men and women and children; their joys and sorrows, hopes and fears, doubts and disquietudes; their business and domestic troubles; their life-history, is worth a whole regiment of your so-called great men that are only crammed with lumbery learning.

Of many things the preacher can afford to be ignorant—every man must be content to be ignorant of many things, if he would know and do a few things well; but there are two things that the preacher must know, if he would properly fulfill his ministry; one is the word of God, and the other is human nature—God's nature, and man's nature—these are the great themes that are to occupy our thoughts; for between God and man our ministry lies, whether we stand in the pulpit, or sit among the children.

If we are Sabbath-school teachers, our business is not merely to get hold of the truth, but to get hold of our scholars, for the one is profitless without the other.

It is not sufficient, as many suppose, to “prepare the lesson,” we must be able to adapt the lesson, and so to grapple on to the scholars as to be able successfully to apply the lesson.

It is not enough when you go a-fishing to have a basket full of good substantial bait, just such as fish ought to take to, if their tastes are at all like yours; but you must know about the haunts and habits of fish, and to these you must accommodate yourself if you would go home richly laden with spoils. Many a time you will find a teacher, with very little learning and very little brains, and yet, singularly enough, his scholars cluster about him with closest attention, even as a brood of chickens about their mother when she is scratching away to find them food. They are interested and expectant, and you wonder, seeing how little there is in the teacher, that he should hold his class with so firm a grip.

He does not know much about books, perhaps, but he does know a good deal about boys, and he enters into sympathy with them, and they instinctively feel it. He believes in them and understands them, and they believe in him, and understand him, and that is the secret of the whole matter.

It is not sufficient to have been a child in order to understand children, for we are apt to forget how it was with ourselves; we need to mingle with them—talk with them on the road, and in their homes—talk down to their level; at whatever strain of crotchety knees and personal dignity to put ourselves in their place, and see how things look from their stand-point; talk with their parents about them, and find out their individual peculiarities; let them see that whatever little thing concerns them concerns us; even as our heavenly Father gets hold of our heart's tendrils by assuring us that he numbers even the hairs of our head; let a teacher patiently and persistently pursue this policy, and as sure as there is a soul in the child's body he will presently get hold of it.—Baptist Teacher.