This was, that he rarely contradicted
anything: he would call up the opposing truth, set it face to face
with the error, and leave the two to fight it out. The human mind
and conscience were, he said, the plains of Armageddon, where the
battle of good and evil was for ever raging; and the one business
of a teacher was to rouse and urge this battle by leading fresh
forces of the truth into the field--forces composed as little
as might be of the hireling troops of the intellect, and as much
as possible of the native energies of the heart, imagination, and
conscience. In a word, he would oppose error only by teaching the
truth.
In early life he had come under the influence of the writings of
William Law, which he read as one who pondered every doctrine in
that light which only obedience to the truth can open upon it. With
a keen eye for the discovery of universal law in the individual
fact, he read even the marvels of the New Testament practically.
Hence, in training his soldiers, every lesson he gave them was a
missile; every admonishment of youth or maiden was as the mounting
of an armed champion, and the launching of him with a Godspeed into
the thick of the fight.
He now called up the Bible class, and Malcolm sat beside and
listened. That morning they had to read one of the chapters in the
history of Jacob.
"Was Jacob a good man?" he asked, as soon as the reading, each of
the scholars in turn taking a verse, was over.
An apparently universal expression of assent followed; halting its
wake, however, came the voice of a boy near the bottom of the class:
"Wasna he some dooble, sir?"
"You are right, Sheltie," said the master; "he was double.
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