the whole and
its ramifications; with his mind open to the truth and his eyes to the
light, and with a perpetually nourished yearning for creative activity,
able to observe while building up, and to recognise while taking apart;
such in himself and his surroundings, always active, creative, full of
thought and endeavour, does the father receive his son in his home, to
train and teach him for the wider life outside. Thus should it be with
my educational institute and the universities; as regards the growth and
development of man I only desire to take the place of the silently
working, tenderly cherishing mother.
The life, the will, the understanding, these three must form the common
chord or triad of the harmony of human life, now one tone, now another,
now two of the three, rising powerfully above the rest. But where these
tones are separate and inharmonious there they work to discord, as we
see but too clearly in daily life:--
"Wrestling with life and with death, suspended between them we
hang."
In whatever family this chord is from the first set sweetly in tune, its
pure concords uniting to form the fundamental harmony of existence,
there all the hobgoblins of ordinary life, which even yet often unite to
annoy us, will be driven far away, there will joy and peace perpetually
inhabit, there will heaven descend to earth and earth rise up to heaven;
to a heaven, moreover, as full of contentment, as responsive to every
yearning of the soul as ever the Church has painted.
But since all true and earnest life must arise from and return to the
ideal life, to life in itself, so must a school of development, which is
to lead men, by means of their ordinary life, towards that higher life,
be itself a true school of religious training in the most comprehensive
sense of the word.
Man ought not to be contented with teaching merely directed to satisfy
his needs as a child of earth, but must demand and receive from
education a true foundation, a creative, satisfying preparation for all
the grades of development of nature and the world which mankind
encounters, and for the everlasting here and beyond of each new moment
of existence, for the everlasting rest, the everlasting activity, the
everlasting life in God.
As, however, it is only as a Christian, be he consciously or
unconsciously so, baptised or unbaptised, taking the Christian name or
rejecting it, that he can think and act after this fashion, you can see
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