As a student, searching for the hidden meanings and thrilling at the unfolding beauties of some field of truth which we are investigating, we may love the thing we study for its own sake; and who of us does not feel in that way toward sections of our Bible, a poem, the record of noble lives, or the perfection of some bit of scientific truth?  But when we face about and become the teacher, when our purpose is not our own learning but the teaching of another, then our attitude must change.  We will then love our cherished body of material not less, but differently.  We will now care for the thing we teach as an artisan cares for his familiar instruments or the artist cares for his brush—­we will prize it as the means through which we shall attain a desired end.

Subject matter always subordinate to life.—­It will help us to understand the significance of this fundamental principle if we pause to realize that all the matter we teach our children had its origin in human experience; it was first a part of human life.  Our scientific discoveries have come out of the pressure of necessities that nature has put upon us, and what we now put into our textbooks first was lived by men and women in the midst of the day’s activities.  The deep thoughts, the beautiful sentiments, and the high aspirations expressed in our literature first existed and found expression in the lives of people.  The cherished truths of our Bible and its laws for our spiritual development appeal to our hearts just because they have arisen from the lives of countless thousands, and so have the reality of living experience.

There is, therefore, no abstract truth for truth’s sake.  Just as all our culture material—­our science, our literature, our body of religious truth—­had its rise out of the experience of men engaged in the great business of living, so all this material must go back to life for its meaning and significance.  The science we teach in our schools attains its end, not when it is learned as a group of facts, but when it has been set at work by those who learn it to the end that they live better, happier, and more fruitful lives.  The literature we offer our children has fulfilled its purpose, not when they have studied the mechanism of its structure, read its pages, or committed to memory its lines, but when its glowing ideals and high aspirations have been realized in the lives of those who learn it.

And so this also holds for the Bible and its religious truth.  Its rich lessons full of beautiful meaning may be recited and its choicest verses stored in the memory and still be barren of results, except as they are put to the test and find expression in living experience.  The only true test of learning a thing is whether the learner lives it.  The only true test of the value of what one learns is the extent to which it affects his daily life.  The value of our teaching is therefore always to be measured by the degree to which it finds expression in the lives of our pupils. John, not grammar (nor even the Bible), is the true objective of our teaching.