events and circumstances.

A few men of picked nature, full of faith, courage, and contempt for
others, try earnestly to set forth as much as they can grasp of this
inner law; but the vast majority, when they come to advise the young,
must be content to retail certain doctrines which have been already
retailed to them in their own youth. Every generation has to educate
another which it has brought upon the stage. People who readily accept
the responsibility of parentship, having very different matters in their
eye, are apt to feel rueful when their responsibility falls due. What
are they to tell the child about life and conduct, subjects on which
they have themselves so few and such confused opinions? Indeed, I do not
know; the least said, perhaps, the soonest mended; and yet the child
keeps asking, and the parent must find some words to say in his own
defence. Where does he find them? and what are they when found?

As a matter of experience, and in nine hundred and ninety-nine cases out
of a thousand, he will instil into his wide-eyed brat three bad things;
the terror of public opinion, and, flowing from that as a fountain, the
desire of wealth and applause. Besides these, or what might be deduced
as corollaries from these, he will teach not much else of any effective
value: some dim notions of divinity, perhaps, and book-keeping, and how
to walk through a quadrille.

But, you may tell me, the young people are taught to be Christians. It
may be want of penetration, but I have not yet been able to perceive it.
As an honest man, whatever we teach, and be it good or evil, it is not
the doctrine of Christ. What He taught (and in this He is like all other
teachers worthy of the name) was not a code of rules, but a ruling
spirit; not truths, but a spirit of truth; not views, but a view. What
He showed us was an attitude of mind. Towards the many considerations on
which conduct is built, each man stands in a certain relation. He takes
life on a certain principle. He has a compass in his spirit which points
in a certain direction. It is the attitude, the relation, the point of
the compass, that is the whole body and gist of what he has to teach us;
in this, the details are comprehended; out of this the specific precepts
issue, and by this, and this only, can they be explained and applied.
And thus, to learn aright from any teacher, we must first of all, like a
historical artist, think ourselves into sympathy with his position