Читать книгу The Choctaw Freedmen and the Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy - Robert Elliott Flickinger - Страница 38

The acceptance of the Bible as the Word of God should be regarded as essential, on the part of all teachers of children and youth.

If the Bible is the great fountain of saving truth and the highest authority on human conduct, and it is to be used as a daily text book, then, it naturally follows, the teacher should be "a workman approved unto God, apt to teach and rightly dividing the word of truth." Persons who do not believe in the Bible do not care to teach it, and when they are required to do so, they are pretty sure to vaunt their unbelief. The influence of such teachers tends to establish unbelief instead of awakening a longing desire for more truth.

Emerson in one of his essays, after pressing the fact that the soul is the receiver and revealer of truth, states an undeniable fact, when he says:

"That which we are, we shall teach, not voluntarily but involuntarily. Thoughts go out of our minds through avenues, which we never voluntarily opened. Character teaches over our head. The infallible index of true progress is found in the tone the man takes. Neither his age, nor his breeding, nor his company, nor books, nor actions, nor talents, nor all together can hinder him from being deferential to a higher spirit than his own. If he has not found his home in God, his manners, his form of speech, the turn of his sentences, the build, shall I say of all his opinions, will involuntarily confess it, let him brave it out how he will."

The longings of the human heart are unsatisfied, until the soul finds its home in God, its creator and preserver. Teachers that ignore this fact, lack one thing that is vitally important. Our Lord Jesus, the great teacher, expressed its relative importance when he said: "Seek ye first the Kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things will be added unto you."