attention. Once prepare a lesson in
this way, and it will give you such freedom in the art of teaching, and
you will experience such a pleasure in it, that you will never want to
relapse into the old indolent habit.

XXVIII.

COUNSELS.

* * * * *

1. _To a Young Teacher._

You are about to assume the charge of a class in the school under my
care. Allow me, in a spirit of frankness, to make to you a brief
statement of some of the aims of the institution, and of the principles
by which we are guided in their prosecution.

1. "Unless the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it."
I have no professional conviction more fixed and abiding than this, that
no persons more need the direct, special, continual guidance of the Holy
Spirit than those who undertake to mould and discipline the youthful
mind. No preparation for this office is complete which does not include
devout prayer for that wisdom which cometh from above. If any one
possession, more than another, is the direct gift of the Almighty, it
would seem to be that of knowledge. The teacher, therefore, of all men,
is called upon to look upwards to a source that is higher than himself.
He needs light in his own mind; he should not count it misspent labor to
ask for light to be given to the minds of his scholars. There is a
Teacher infinitely wiser and more skilful than any human teacher. The
instructor must be strangely blind to the resources of his profession,
who fails to resort habitually to that great, plenary, unbounded source
of light and knowledge. While, therefore, we aim in this school to
profit by all subsidiary and subordinate methods and improvements in the
art of teaching, we first of all seek the aid of our Heavenly Father; we
ask wisdom of Him who "giveth liberally and upbraideth not." This, then,
is the first principle that governs us in the work here assigned us. The
fear of God is the beginning of knowledge. We who are teachers endeavor
to show that we ourselves fear God, and we inculcate the fear of Him as
the first and highest duty of our scholars; and in every plan and effort
to guide the young minds committed to us, we ourselves look for guidance
to the only unerring source of light.

2. In proportion to the implicitness with which we rely upon divine aid,
should be the diligence with which we use all the human means within our
reach. It should therefore, in the second place, be the aim of th