The Story of a Great Schoolmaster

by H. G. Wells

And here Sanderson speaks again in a sermon preached upon the text of Moses' withdrawal to the mount.

'A school will grow into a book. It will take upon itself the form of a Bible. Within it will appear the stages in the life of the soul—"the coming of a kingdom"; the foundations, the building, the furniture, the complex apparatus, the organised beauty. A school—its buildings, workshops, class-rooms, and all that goes towards a great school—can take on the form of a parable. As we wander from one place to another all that speaks of life will manifest itself before us. How life begins, what is needed for its growth; what shall be its standards, its ideals; what the nature of its proof-plate; the craftsman and what he is; the craftsman in languages, in mathematics, in science, in art; the secrets of nature revealing themselves; progress, change, vision.

'And boys will go out into the factory, or mine, or business, or profession, imbued with the spirit of the active love of humanity. Some will be called to lead, as Moses was called. They, too, will plant the "Tent of Meeting," the "Temple of Vision." A return with a new view-point will be made to the temple of ages gone by. The Assyrian frescoed his walls with sculptures of the deeds of his hero-kings; the Franciscans frescoed the walls of their chapels with the life of Jesus as told in the Gospels—the life of the Divine builder, of Him who came to restore a kingdom, by whose life and death a new world was created.

'But the Temple of Vision of to-day; the new Tent of Meeting. What of it? The new home of vision will be frescoed with the thoughts of to-day, changing into the thoughts of to-morrow. Generations of workers will go up into the mount, and to them, too, will be shown the pattern. "See that thou make them after their pattern which hath been shown thee in the mount."'

§ 2

Now this is a very great and novel idea, the idea of a modern temple set like a miner's lantern in the forefront of school or college to light its task in the world. It rounds off and completes Sanderson's vision of a modern school; it is logically essential to that vision. But meanwhile what was happening to the school-chapel project?

For, after all, in the older type of school, the chapel with its matins and evensong, its Onward Christian Soldiers and suchlike stirring hymns, its confirmations and first communions, was in a rather dreamy, formless mechanical way undertaking to do precisely what the new House of Vision was also to do, that is, to give a direction to the whole subsequent life. But was it the same direction? The normal school-chapel points up—not very effectively one feels; the House of Vision was to point onward. Sanderson had a crowded, capacious mind, but sooner or later the question behind these two discrepant objectives, whether men are to live for heaven or for creation, was bound to have come to an issue.

His mental process was at first syncretic. He began to think of a school-chapel, not as a place for formal services but as a place of meditation and resolve. He began to speak of the chapel also as though it was to be 'the tent on the mount,' the place of vision. He betrayed a growing hostility to the intoned prayers, the trite responses, the tuneful empty hymns, the Anglican vacuity of the normal chapel procedure. Had he lived to guide the building of Oundle chapel I believe it would have diverged more and more from any precedent, more and more in the direction of that House of Vision, that the premature and insufficient Eric Yarrow building had so pitifully failed to realise.

Here is evidence of that divergence in a passage from a sermon preached after a gathering of parents and old boys in the Court Room at the London Grocers' Hall to discuss the chapel project. I ask any one trained in the services of the Church of England and accustomed to enter, pray into a silk hat, deposit it under the seat, sit down, stand up, bow, genuflect, kneel decorously on a hassock, sing, repeat responses, and go through the simple and wholesome Swedish exercises of the Anglican prayer book, what is to be thought of this project of a chapel with hardly a sitting in it? And what is to be thought of this suggestion of wandering round the aisles? And what is this talk of young gentlemen who have died 'for king and country,' casting down their lives for the rescue of man?