2. Lack of Time.—With busy pastors, superintendents and teachers, this difficulty is a real one. Nevertheless we may hint to some pastors that their busy-ness is largely misdirected. It is certain there is time enough to do all that God wants you or needs you to do. But to elaborate the sixth topic of a thirty minute discourse upon the anvil of three weeks’ time, and to do nothing else must be pronounced at least doubtfully wise or valuable. Or, to “run in and see” the mince-pie making Martha or the floor-scrubbing Patience or the boudoir-adorning Evelyn and her æsthetic sister Elsie, and to do nothing else, may please the dear creatures and make one the most popular pastor for the village ages, but is this wise or valuable?
[Hint. They who “run in” may “run out.”] A New York Sun reporter in describing the proceedings of the last Democratic State Convention, coined a new word,—not elegant indeed, but extremely expressive. “The Hon. —— arose and proceeded to peppersauce himself all over the convention.” Certainly this is a most emphatic use of the middle form of a noun-verb, and is indefinitely suggestive of the very action and distributive energy of the Hon. ——’s speech as well as of the speecher. The number of parish calls made per year is not the only measure of a pastor’s value to his church. We must have the qualis as well as quantus of his work if we would make a fair test of values. But the quantity of this work is the very consumption of time. Probably you could both learn Greek and make better pastoral calls if you should refrain from distributing yourself so continuously over the parish. Wesley’s rule, “Be diligent. Never be unemployed. Never be triflingly employed. Neither spend more time at any place than is strictly necessary,” is one of universal wisdom. Kirke White learned Greek while walking to and from a lawyer’s office.
A nail cutter was at work cutting nails at his machine in the mill; the long stick that held his pincers was grasped in his right hand and the other end of it, running between his side and elbow, was slung in a cord pendent from the floor above. The red-hot nail plates glowed in the fire, ready to be seized one by one in the pincers, as the workman finished feeding the last one into the closing jaws of the machine. Only a minute’s time and a single nail plate—turned for every nail by the deft hand of the skilled artisan, and fed accurately, became nails. The workman was so adjusted in mental tether to his work that the jaws never closed upon the iron pincers. With a single motion the refuse bit within the pincers fell amongst its fellow scraps, and a new plate began its course. And all the while the workman was reading a book. The babel of two hundred crunching jaws around availed nothing to disturb him. He’d planned to save time. He didn’t mean to become machinery or a machine. That man could learn Greek.
[To be continued.]
[EDITOR’S OUTLOOK.]
The C. L. S. C. as a Substitute for the College.
The C. L. S. C. has been called the “People’s College.” That it is indeed a school for the thousands who pursue its course of study no one has questioned. Some, however, of the more exact of speech might doubt the propriety of applying the dignified name of college to an institution of its character. We do not set up any claims on the ground of derivation from the Latin verb colligere, to collect or bring together, for then would the C. L. S. C. outrank all other colleges in the world. Nor do we plead the right to use such a name because of the scores of institutions chartered under the name of college, which scarcely bear comparison for character and grade of instruction with our academies and best high schools. Let us be content to speak of plain, unpretentious C. L. S. C. as a substitute for the respectable college.