XIV. ON THE SCHOOL OF LIFE. O GOD, THOU HAST TAUGHT ME FROM MY YOUTH.-Psalm lxxi. 17. LIFE is a school. This world is a house of instruction. It is not a prison nor a penitentiary, nor a palace of ease, nor an amphitheatre for games and spectacles; it is a school. And this view of life is the only one that goes to the depths of the philosophy of life; the only one that answers the great question, solves the great problem of life. For what is life given? If for enjoyment alone, if for suffering merely, it is a chaos of contradictions. But if for moral and spiritual learning, then everything is full of significance, full of wisdom. And this view too, is of the utmost practical importance. It immediately presents to us and presses upon us the question: what are we learning? And is not this, truly, the great question? When your son comes home to you at the annual vacation, it is the first question in your thoughts concerning him; and you ask him, or you ask for the certificates and testimonials of his teachers, to give you some evidence of his learning. At every passing term in the great school of life, also, this is the all-important question. What has a man got, from the experience, discipline, opportunity of any past period? Not, what has he gathered together in the shape of any tangible good; but what has he got-in that other and eternal treasure house, his mind! Not, what of outward accomodation the literal scholar has had, should we think it much worth our while to inquire; not whether his text books had been in splendid bindings; not whether his study-table had been of rich cabinet-work, and his chair softly cushioned; not whether the school-house in which he had studied, were of majestic size, or adorned with columns and porticoes; let him have got a good education, and it would be comparatively of little moment, how or where he got it. We should not ask what honours he had obtained, but as proofs of his progress. Let him have graduated at the most illustrious university, or have gained, through some mistake, its highest distinctions, and still be essentially deficient in mind or in accomplishment; and that fatal defect would sink into every parent's heart, as a heavy and unalleviated disappointment. And are such questions and considerations any less appropriate to the great school of life; whose entire course is an education for virtue, happiness, and heaven? "O God!" exclaims the Psalmist, "thou hast taught me from my youth." Life, I repeat, is a school. The periods of life, are its terms; all human conditions are but its forms; all human employments, its lessons. Families are the primary departments of this moral education; the various circles of society, its advanced stages; kingdoms are its universities; the world is but the material structure, built for the administration of its teachings; and it is lifted up in the heavens and borne through its annual circuits, for no end but this. Life, I say again, is a school: and all its periods, infancy, youth, manhood and age, have their appropriate tasks in this school. With what an early care and wonderful apparatus, does Providence begin the work of human education! An infant being is cast upon the lap of nature, not to be supported or nourished only, but to be instructed. The world is its school. All elements around, are its teachers. Long ere it is placed on the first form before the human master, it has been at school; insomuch that a distinguished statesman has said with equal truth and originality, that he had probably obtained more ideas by the age of five or six years, than he has acquired ever since. And what a wonderful ministration is it! What mighty masters are there for the training of infancy, in the powers of surrounding nature! With a finer influence than any human dictation, they penetrate the secret places of that embryo soul, and bring it into life and light. From the soft breathings of Spring to the rough blasts of Winter, each one pours a blessing upon its favourite child, expanding its frame for action, or fortifying it for endurance. You seek for celebrated schools and distinguished teachers for your children; and it is well. Or you cannot afford to give them these advantages, and you regret it. But consider what you have. Talk we of far-sought and expensive processes of education? That infant eye hath its master in the sun; that infant ear is attuned by the melodies and harmonies of the wide, the boundless creation. The goings on of the heavens and the earth, are the courses of childhood's lessons. The shows that are painted on the dome of the sky and on the uplifted mountains, and on the spreading plains and seas, are its pictured diagrams. Immensity, infinity, eternity, are its teachers. The great universe is the shrine, from which oracles, oracles by day and by night, are forever uttered. Well may it be said that “of such ;" of beings so cared for," is the kingdom of heaven." Well and fitly is it written of him, who comprehended the wondrous birth of humanity and the gracious and sublime providence of heaven over it, that "he took little children in his arms and blessed them." So begins the education of man in the school of life. It were easy, did the time permit, to pursue it into its successive stages; into the period of youth, when the senses not yet vitiated, are to be refined into grace and beauty, and the soul is to be developed into reason and virtue; of manhood, when the strength of the ripened passions is to be held under the control of wisdom, and the matured energies of the higher nature, are to be directed to the accomplishment of worthy and noble ends; of age, which is to finish with dignity, the work begun with ardour; which is to learn patience in weakness, to gather up the fruits of experience into maxims of wisdom, to cause virtuous activity to subside into pious contemplation, and to gaze upon the visions of heaven, through the parting veils of earth. But in the next place, life presents lessons in its various pursuits and conditions, in its ordinances and events. Riches and poverty, gayeties and sorrows, marriages and funerals, the ties of life bound or broken, fit and fortunate or untoward and painful, are all lessons. They are not only appointments, but they are lessons. They are not things which must be, but things which are meant. Events are not blindly and carelessly flung together, in a strange chance-medley: providence is not schooling one man, and another screening from the fiery trial of its lessons; it has no rich favourites nor poor victims; one event happeneth to all; one end, one design, concerneth, urgeth all men. Hast thou been prosperous? Thou hast been at school; that is all; thou hast been at school. Thou thoughtest perhaps, that it was a great thing, and that thou wert some great one; but thou art only just a pupil. Thou thoughtest that thou wast master and hadst nothing to do but to direct and command; but I tell thee that there is a Master above thee; the Master of life; and that He looks not at thy splendid state nor thy many pretensions; not at the aids and appliances of thy learning; but simply at thy learning. As an earthly teacher puts the poor boy and the rich, upon the same form, and knows no difference between them but their progress; so it is with thee and thy poor neighbour. thy prosperity? What then hast thou learnt from This is the question that I am asking, that all men are asking, when any one has suddenly grown prosperous, or has been a long time so. And I have heard men say in a grave tone, "he cannot bear it! he has become passionate, proud, self-sufficient, and disagreeable." Ah! fallen, disgraced man! even in the world's account. But what, I say again, hast thou learnt from prosperity? Moderation, temperance, candour, modesty, gratitude to God, generosity to man? Well done, good and faithful! thou hast honour with heaven and with men. But what, again I say, hast thou learnt from thy prosperity? Selfishness, self-indulgence and sin; to forget or overlook thy less fortunate fellow; to forget thy God? Then wert thou an unworthy and dishonoured being, though thou hadst been nursed in the bosom of the proudest affluence, or hadst taken thy degrees from the lineage of an hundred noble descents; yes, as truly dishonoured, before the eye of heaven, though dwelling in splendour and luxury, as if thou wert lying, the victim of beggary and vice by the hedge or upon the dung-hill. It is the scholar, not the school, at H |