1.D 01. Necessities of the Future

Necessities of the Future.

Now, the school of the future (if I am a prophet, and I am, of course, satisfied in my own mind that I am!) is what may be called a life school This style of preaching is to proceed, not so much upon the theory of the sanctity of the Church and its ordinances, or upon a pre-existing system of truth which is in the Church somewhere or somehow, as upon the necessity for all teachers, first, to study the strengths and the weaknesses of human nature minutely, and then to make use of such portions of the truth as arc required by the special needs of man, and for the development of the spiritual side of human nature over the animal or lower side the preparation of man in his higher nature for a nobler existence hereafter. It is a life school in this respect, that it deals not with the facts of the past, except in so far as they can be made food for the present, and factors of the life that now is; but rather studies to understand men, and to deal with them face to face and heart to heart; yea, even to mould them as an artist moulds his clay or carves his statue. And in regard to such a school as that, while there has been much done incidentally, the revised procedure of education yet awaits development and accomplish ment; and I think that our profession is in danger, and in great danger, of going.under, and of working effectively only among the relatively less informed and intelligent of the community; of being borne with, in a kind of contemptuous charity, or altogether neglected, by the men of culture who have been strongly developed on their moral side not their moral side as connected with revealed religion, but as connected rather with human knowledge and worldly wisdom. The question, then, comes up, Do men need this intimately practical instruction? and if so, must there be to meet it this life school of preachers?