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 THE MISSION OF THE SCHOOLMASTER. 
 
 A SERMON 
 
 ^Buacljcb in tijc dTIjapcl of ^t 0[ax\Cs drolkgc, (iTfjcIsca, 
 
 OJV ST MARK'S DAY, 1885, 
 
 BY 
 
 B. F. WESTCOTT, D.D., D.C.L., 
 
 CANON OF WESTMINSTER AND REGIUS PROFESSOR OF DIVIMTV, CAM liRI I»(.K ; 
 SOMETIME ASSISTANT MASTER AT HARROW. 
 
 PRINTED BY REQUEST. 
 
 llontion : 
 MACMILLAN AND CO. 
 
 1885 
 
 \All R lights rcsn'7'cd.\
 
 He gave some to be apostles ; and some, propJiets ; and 
 some, n'ange/ists ; and some, pastors and teachers ; for the 
 perfecting of the saints, nnto the ivork of ministering, tinto 
 the building up of the body of Christ. — EPH. IV. 1 1, 12.
 
 THE MISSION OF THE 
 SCHOOLMASTER. 
 
 The familiar words from the Epistle for the day which 
 I have just read present to us a view of Christian work on 
 which we must all look with devout thankfulness on such 
 an occasion as this. They shew us how the effort of 
 every labourer finds its source in a mission from Christ, 
 and its end in the advancement of Christ's Body. In the 
 vision of that sovereign charge all sense of personal weak- 
 ness disappears : in the fulfilment of that absorbing service 
 all comparison of different offices is lost in the unity of life. 
 
 The apostle is describing, as you will remember, the 
 manifold endowment of the one Church consequent upon 
 the Ascension of the one Lord. The one Lord had gone 
 down to the lowest depths and risen to the loftiest heights 
 of finite being. He had explored creation that He might 
 fill all things; and in the consummation of His triumph He 
 provided for the continuous and progressive accomplish- 
 ment of His counsel of love: He gave gifts unto men. He 
 gave gifts unto men, and the gifts which He gave were men, 
 not primarily forms, or rites, or institutions, though these 
 have their place, their neccssaiy place, in a human society, 
 but living men. He gave some to be apostles^ and somepropJiets, 
 and some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers, for the 
 perfecting of the saints, unto the work of ministering, tinto 
 the building up of the Body of Christ.
 
 There is, you will obsen-e, one end set before the noble 
 hierarchy of Christian workers, tJie perfecting of the saints. 
 To this one end we must all bring- every power which the 
 Master has entrusted to us : but there is a twofold office 
 to be discharged as we strive towards it, a work of minister- 
 iiiir, while we watch with tender care the least member of 
 Christ as if he were the single object of our solicitude, and 
 a building np of the Body of Christ, while we raise our 
 eyes to that magnificent whole in which each believer is a 
 contributor}' fragment. 
 
 So it is that Christ prepares His Church for conflict and 
 for victory. He gives it men, living men, to offer them- 
 selves for each and for all, with personal devotion and 
 catholic faith, some, as at this very hour, to vindicate a 
 divine authority and to unfold a divine purpose and to de- 
 clare a divine message, apostles, prophets, evangelists : some 
 to provide, as occasion arises, fresh lessons of truth for 
 the guidance and support of those who have to do their 
 part in the one life under new circumstances : pastors and 
 teachers. 
 
 Such a view of Christian work must, as I said, fill us 
 with devout thankfulness to-day. Our thoughts turn from 
 the great Cathedral to the College Chapel, from the heavy 
 charge of ruling to the happier duty of serving, and we 
 feel the grandeur of Christ's ministry, the vastness of 
 Christ's love. From age to age the relative importance of 
 different forms of work changes, as we imperfectly estimate 
 their worth. We do not indeed care to dwell on such con- 
 trasts, when all service is simple obedience to Christ's 
 call. But at least no one can doubt the supreme import- 
 ance for England at the present time of that peculiar office 
 of teaching to which our thoughts are most naturally 

 
 5 
 
 turned here. And the difficulties of the office are commen- 
 surate with its importance. 
 
 It would indeed be hard to find, my student friends, an 
 opportunity more rich in promise than that which is opened 
 before you, more rich in promise or more weighted with 
 responsibility. The masses of our countrymen, by a most 
 significant coincidence, are committed to you and to your 
 fellow-labourers for education at the very time when they 
 receive the political power which will before long place the 
 government of the nation in their hands. The sovereign 
 masses will hereafter use their privilege according to the 
 moral impulses which you first communicate, either as a 
 trust for the common good, or as an occasion for selfish 
 aggrandisement. With the schoolmasters therefore, I 
 believe, more than with the clergy, rests the shaping of that 
 generation which will decide in a large degree what the 
 England of the future will be, turbulent, divided, self- 
 indulgent, materialised, or quickened with a power of 
 spiritual sympathy, striving towards the realisation of a 
 national ideal, touched already with that spirit of sacrifice 
 which regards every gift of fortune and place and character 
 as held for the common good. 
 
 It is a momentous, an inevitable, alternative which I 
 have indicated; and I confess that my heart would fail me 
 in the prospect of the issues which seem to hang upon the 
 labours of a single life-time, if I did not believe that Christ 
 still gives men to His Church, teachers unto the building 
 iLp of His Body : if I did not believe that you who have 
 entered into the spirit of this College approach your office 
 in the conviction of that faith. 
 
 In this confidence then let me ask you to consider with 
 me some points in the circumstances, the principle, the em- 
 bodiment of your work.
 
 I. The circumstances of your work. I do not wish to 
 dissemble or to underrate the difficulties which at present 
 beset elementary teaching. I know how heavily the neces- 
 sity of producini^ certain mechanical results presses upon 
 those who feel that no examination test can measure the 
 best results of their toil. I know what is meant by the 
 ' rigidity of a code'. I know how hard it is to quicken and 
 keep in healthy activity a spirit of energetic effort which is 
 stunted and checked by the surroundings of home. I know 
 how hopeless it seems to strive to do away with the inherit- 
 ance of evil tendencies and traditions to which the children 
 of the poor too often succeed, and to set them free from 
 the vicious tyranny of the past. I know all this, and I 
 sympathise with the unceasing struggle which such adverse 
 forces entail upon you. I know too, and this is the most 
 serious drawback of all, how early your pupils are withdrawn 
 from your guidance, and how little provision is as yet sys- 
 tematically made for the encouragement and discipline of 
 their after work. But our nature being what it is, we can 
 never forget that difficulties make labour invigorating. 
 Every image which describes the Christian life tells of the 
 strain of the pilgrim, the athlete, the soldier; and in our 
 hearts we should not wish it to be otherwise. 
 
 You have, indeed, an arduous task; but on the other 
 hand you meet your pupils with singular advantages of 
 sympathetic knowledge, of natural influence, of practical 
 power. 
 
 You know by actual experience what are their tempta- 
 tions and difficulties : how their confidence can be won 
 most surely: how their generous instincts can best be called 
 into activity. You can interpret, by the help of associa- 
 tions not too remote, feelings which find at best awkward
 
 expression. The lessons of your own school life — trials, 
 disappointments, encouragements, failures, successes — the 
 chequered discipline through which you found and gained 
 your end, will come back to you when you face the old 
 problem from a new position. You will move in a region 
 which you have yourselves traversed, a region already 
 marked, as I trust, by many memorials of blessing. 
 
 You have the knowledge which makes labour directly 
 effective ; and you deal with those who are most susceptible 
 of impression. The freshest, fullest hope lies with the 
 young. And if your influence is rudely interrupted in 
 many cases by adverse influences at home, yet it is con- 
 sistent and calculated, while the forces which act against 
 you are negative and desultory. The promise of patience 
 is on your side ; the quiet persistency which never for one 
 moment loses hold of that which has been gained, or loses 
 sight of that towards which effort is turned. 
 
 And in this watchful, loving work, which often seems to 
 linger, you will gain as much as you give. Living contact 
 with the young is a spring of youth. As you enter into 
 their thoughts you receive something of their freshness. 
 The true teacher can never grow old. He always hears 
 the children's voices and can understand them. Thus to 
 him the benediction of entrance into heaven is presented 
 as a perpetual reality. If, as some have most strangely 
 said, elementary teaching becomes * narrowing,' it is when 
 all human interest has died out of it, when faith supports 
 no enthusiasm, and hope sees no visions, and love rejoices 
 in no sacrifices. 
 
 2. Meanwhile, as long as you have the happiness of 
 becoming as little children, you can carry your inspiring 
 principle into every detail of routine duty ; and that principle
 
 is shortly the endeavour to offer to every pupil a view of 
 the whole of life which corresponds to the Christian Faith : 
 to make the thought of heaven about us a distinct and 
 abiding reality : to introduce, if I may so express it, a 
 potential man, a child of God, to himself : to make him 
 know himself: to help the feeblest and weakest to look 
 forward to a divine destiny, and to acknowledge an im- 
 mediate social duty. 
 
 While therefore you will loyally accept the conditions 
 by which your work is at present directed — for they are, I 
 think, a necessary, a transitional, expedient for ascertaining 
 a fair average standard of attainments which may hereafter 
 be used with responsible freedom — you will not allow 
 measurable, technical results to modify your own ideal, 
 still less to shape it. You will not admit to yourselves 
 that you have simply to produce certain definite powers. 
 You will resolutely maintain that you have to educate, and 
 not to furnish: to call out effort, self-control, observation, 
 reflection : to prepare your scholars for the great school of 
 after-life : to fit them to be not faultless fragments in a 
 perfect machine, but thoughtful, struggling citizens in a 
 present kingdom of God. 
 
 It is obvious that as things are we all stand in sore 
 need of this teaching. TJiat zuhich is of the zuorld — that 
 which can be gained or represented by perishable, material 
 wealth — is assuming among us an almost unquestioned 
 supremacy. We need to learn again that the life is more 
 tJiaii the food, atid the body tJian the raiment. We need to 
 learn again the blessedness of the poor. We need to learn, 
 as it has not yet been learnt, that it is the prerogative of 
 man as man to think, and not of any particular class of 
 men : to learn that right doing involves in its completeness
 
 right reasoning : to learn that elevation of soul is for all : 
 to learn that it is the prerogative of the spirit to trans- 
 figure its environment by the grace of God. 
 
 We have at least learned in theory the foundation truth. 
 We have learnt the nobility of labour. Toil is not, as 
 it was to Greek ears, synonymous with wretchedness or 
 vice. But we have still to realise it in its moral beauty. 
 There can be, as far as I see, no stable peace till it can 
 be openly shewn on a large scale that the toiler with slender 
 means may be rich in all that makes life worth living, 
 filled with the joy of devotion to the good, and the true, 
 and the beautiful and the holy. 
 
 3. I have myself good hope that this end will be 
 reached : good hope that when all wealth is felt to be a 
 trust, the blessing which lies in poverty will be recognised. 
 I believe, whatever may be the power of selfishness, in the 
 more effective power of great ideas. I believe that Christi- 
 anity is a Gospel, a message which gives in the record of 
 facts the greatest ideas to which the soul of man can 
 attain, so that they are open to all men. And, I venture 
 to claim that you who have been called to take part in 
 educating the masses of the English nation, as you have 
 caught the inspiration of this place, should set that mes- 
 sage as the foundation and the stay of your labours. You 
 will have numberless opportunities for making your faith 
 felt; but above all you will be yourselves its most powerful 
 commendation. 
 
 I have touched upon the circumstances and the principle 
 of your work. Let me still say a few words on the embodi- 
 ment of it. In the deepest and truest sense, in respect of 
 all that gives a living power to education, the teacher's 
 work is concentrated in himself. He is, as we have seen,
 
 lO 
 
 the spiritual gift. What he is his work will be. More 
 powerful than any subject, or any words, is that force of 
 conviction by which the true teacher insensibly conveys his 
 own estimate of the worth of things. As we listen to him 
 we feel that we are in contact with that which is real ; and 
 his faith stirs ours. 
 
 This fact assures you of your inalienable religious 
 freedom, of your inexhaustible religious opportunity. 
 
 It may be that you will not be allowed to give techni- 
 cally religious lessons. Exactly in proportion as you are 
 reliijious men this restriction will leave your religious 
 influence unimpaired, if not in some aspects positively in- 
 creased. Your faith will shew itself spontaneously as a 
 moving power. It will be seen translated into action. By 
 your estimate of right and wrong, by your patience with the 
 dull, by your delicate reverence, by the clear signs that 
 you live as seeing the invisible, you will help others to 
 acknowledge that which sways you. 
 
 The memory of my own school days keeps this truth 
 ineffaceably vivid in my mind. It was through the Greek 
 historian or the Latin poet that I was taught most impres- 
 sively what our Christian Faith means : taught that there is 
 a divine counsel being wrought out about us in daily duties: 
 taught that words and deeds are true if partial revelations 
 of an abiding character : taught that the least difference of 
 form or expression has a meaning which we can often inter- 
 pret and may never disregard : taught that there is a truth 
 in the world to which we owe the service of complete de- 
 votion : taught that there are effects, correspondences, of 
 human action reaching beyond all thought: taught that 
 we can find rest only in GOD for whom we were made. 
 
 Such teaching in due measure lies within the scope of
 
 II 
 
 all of you wherever you may be placed. To be enabled to 
 give it is as high a privilege as man can receive. 
 
 If then you have followed me so far, I need not ask you 
 to think highly of your call as true ministers of Christ : to 
 thank GoD for the charge with which He has entrusted 
 you at an epoch of change : to hold it as a life-work than 
 which you could find none worthier. 
 
 It does not indeed offer any great material prizes. But 
 it does offer something better : the prospect of taking no 
 inconspicuous part in guiding the thoughts of the England 
 that shall be. 
 
 And in this respect the absence of disturbing objects of 
 ambition becomes an opportunity. What we need for the 
 purification of society is, as was said long since, plain living 
 and high thinking. You will have a position which en- 
 courages you to fulfil the type. Your work gives occasion 
 for the exercise of the highest thought and the most disci- 
 plined judgment. Your moderate competence excludes the 
 temptations of luxury. You can realise without affectation 
 the social lessons which you will seek to enforce. 
 
 The ideal which I have endeavoured to suggest may 
 appear to be exaggerated. It does not at least rise beyond 
 my convictions. To strive towards it calls, I admit, for 
 study, for devotion, for faith. But then without these the 
 teacher's work must indeed be a weary round of drudgery ; 
 and the teacher w4iom I contemplate, the teacher whom 
 this College moulds, is one who acknowledges and rests on 
 his divine mission : who feels, even in the sight of failures, 
 that he is stnt for the perfecting of the saints, that he may 
 make the harmonious development of consecrated powers a 
 little more complete, who accepts as his duty a work of 
 ministering, a responsibility of service which will cost him
 
 12 
 
 pain, a building up of tJie body of Christ, in which his labour 
 may be hidden in the slow progress of the mighty future. 
 
 Let nothing, my fellow-teachers, rob you of the spirit of 
 this sure belief Cherish it as your divine endowment. 
 
 Yet even so times of depression, of isolation, of dis- 
 couragement will come to you as they come to all of us 
 when we pause to measure what GoD has achieved through 
 us with what He had prepared. 
 
 In such seasons of temptation call up again the noblest 
 thoughts which GOD has ever given you : bring vividly 
 before your minds the vast army in which you are enrolled: 
 think of the nineteen hundred with whom you are bound by 
 ties of brotherhood : deepen the sense of fellowship : strive 
 to use the forces of a corporate life. 
 
 Therefore it is that days like these, days of refreshment, 
 are given to us that in the strength of present sympathy we 
 may recall our first hopes. Welcome them therefore grate- 
 fully and use them. We must commemorate our benefactors 
 if we would enter on their inheritance. The very name of 
 St Mark, as you know, calls before us the first Christian 
 School, of which the influence after 1700 years is growing 
 day by day. Turn then again >'ear by year, when St Mark's 
 Day brings back in its Services — in Collect, Epistle and 
 Gospel — the familiar thoughts of resolute opinion, of conse- 
 crated service, of animating life — in presence, if it may be, 
 and if not in spirit — to these walls within which you have 
 dwelt upon your life's work in the preparatory discipline of 
 meditation and prayer, and you shall know again, know 
 with an assurance which no disappointment can shake, that 
 your mission was Christ's gift; that He has given you to His 
 Church, and that He will supply strength for the fulfilment 
 of your office in union with Himself. 
 
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