--- title: Improvement Era description: Monthly periodical of the Mormon church, 1897 onward. This library holds the issues of November 1897 to December 1930. authors: - Widtsoe, John A. collections: - periodicals tags: - magazine - improvement-era periodical: Improvement Era volume: 20 number: 10 published: 1917-08 publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations publisher_place: Salt Lake City language: en type: magazine reference: 'John A. Widtsoe, "The Teacher a Spiritual Inspiration," *Improvement Era* 20, no. 10 (August 1917): 898–904.' source: url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera20010unse transcription: Transcribed from the Internet Archive scan of each issue (the item for each issue is named in the issue's own source); unnumbered advertising leaves are omitted, printed page numbers are kept as page markers. identifier: improvementera20010unse start_page: 898 end_page: 904 rights: status: public-domain basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1917-08) source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera20010unse publication_year: 1917 note: The Internet Archive item metadata carries a blanket "© Copyright by Intellectual Reserve, Inc." notice. The library owner judged it inapplicable because this issue was published in 1917, before 1931; a scan-level notice does not restore copyright. --- # The Teacher a Spiritual Inspiration The Teacher a Spiritual Inspiration' By Dr. John A. Widtsoe My Dear Fellow Workers, Brethren and Sisters: — With you I thank God that among his many gifts to man he gave us music, and that he planted in the hearts of so many of our young peo- ple the desire to practice this divine art. When a letter came, a few days ago, notifying me of my appointment to speak to this text, I looked in vain for a supplemental letter telling me just what the committee had in mind. And I looked also twice at the name on the letter for I felt pretty sure that the commit- tee had made a mistake, that they intended not John A. Widtsoe but Dr. George H. Brimhall, a senior member of the Board, and one of the most inspirational teachers we have ever had in the Church. I told Dr. Brimhall that a mistake had been made, but he scoffed at the idea, and I could not prevail upon him to take my part this afternoon. But Dr. Brimhall himself, this afternoon, has been an illus- tration of what we mean by inspirational teacher. He has taught by word of mouth and by the printed page this after- noon, and taught in an inspirational fashion. I wish it were given to me to be able to sum up the hopes and the aspira- tions of all the world today as he has in this splendid line of the song "Old Glory," just sung in our hearing: "When the Goddess of Right and the Champion Might shall meet at the altar of Love." That is all we are hoping and hungering for in these war-ridden days. But I suppose that the committee, when it assigned this subject or text to me, recognized the fact that the Church is essentially a teaching institution; the Church and all its divisions are teaching institutions. The Church itself has a body of doctrine in its possession which it teaches to all man- kind, in so far as men will listen to the messengers who carry the message, and then the Church leaves to the free agency of man the proper use and application of the doctrines that have been taught. This conference itself is an illustration of the fact that the Church is essentially a teaching institution, for what else has been going on here these two days but the teaching of the offi- cers how to teach when they go back to their respective stakes *Delivered at the Joint Officers" meeting, M. I. A. Conference, Saturday, June 9, 1917. THE TEACHER A SPIRITUAL INSPIRATION 899 and wards? It is a very important thing to teach in this Church, for almost the first command given us through the Prophet Joseph Smith was that this body of doctrine be taught to all mankind. The missionary spirit is the great spirit of the Lat- ter-day Church. It is especially important that youth be taught and be taught well. We deal with youth. As I deal with young people all the days of the year, and as I have dealt almost all the years of my life, I feel more and more that proper teach- ing is the very key to the proper unlocking of the natures, the characters, and the futures of the young people. I am frequently reminded, in dealing with young people, of the great balancing stone that we find on almost every moun- tain side, the great mass of rock that stands just on the edge of a ledge. The wind and the weather, for generations, have undermined it, have tunneled around it, and it is ready to fall. The slightest impulse will tip it downward. It will roll down the mountain side, find its place finally in the bottom of the canyon; or, a similar impulse from the other side will roll it onto the ledge itself, there to remain for perhaps generations, until nature again works its way with the rock. Sometimes the slightest teaching, the slightest word and thing that we say, almost without thinking, sinks into the heart of a young person and changes the whole life career of that young person. So, it is tremendously important that we who are teachers in Zion teach properly and teach well, and teach effectively, in all that we do, especially in Mutual Improvement work. There is a great deal of poor teaching in the world. There is a great deal of poor teaching in our class rooms, in the public schools; there is a great deal of poor teaching in the high schools; a great deal of poor teaching in our universities and colleges; and there is a great deal of poor teaching in all these organizations. There is also a great deal of good teaching, but I fear that in the great many cases the teacher does not use his opportunity to the full in teaching as he should. To teach is something more than to merely give a phonographic representation of the words found in the manual, or in the text book, or in the Bible, or Book of Mormon, or Doctrine and Covenants. To simply repeat those words is an exasperation to one who likes good teaching. It is an abomination when a teacher stands up before the class, whether in the Mutual or in the public school room, and proceeds to read the lesson. It is a worse abomination when he comes to the class room and prepares himself, having begun to prepare himself about ten minutes before the class begins. This, however, is not the place, nor have I the time this afternoon, to discuss the whole subject of teaching. I am as- signed this text: "The Teacher, a Spiritual Inspiration." The 900 IMPROVEMENT ERA teacher is to be an inspiration to the students. He must inspire the students if he is to fulfil the order of this text. And what is the power of inspiration? The power to kindle the souls of men, the power to awaken all the faculties, all the activities of men ; the power to teach divine truth in such a way that it sinks into the hearts of men and remains there ; the power to so forget one's self that God may speak through the teacher to the students. These and other powers are those that we remember when we speak of the power of inspiration, especially in the class room. And a teacher who is to inspire others must himself be inspired; he must himself be awakened; his own soul must be touched. He must be quickened throughout his whole body, throughout his soul. He must properly feel the subject that he is to teach, must deal with it in such a way that he himself is forgotten; all his desires, all the ordinary desires of his life have been laid aside, and he simply thinks of the subject in hand; and then powers outside of him, divine powers, will speak through him and make his teaching wonderfully suc- cessful. The great teacher is for all the world like the man who goes through the darkness of the night with a torch lighted — this is an old illustration — and the men and women who sit in darkness with their torches out, not kindled, can reach out their hands, because of the lighted torch of the teacher, and may light their own torches, their own lights until finally the whole night has been changed into day. And the only teacher who should be allowed to teach, if all were right, in our Mutual Improve- ment work, is a man who has that particular faculty and gift of kindling lights in other souls, who is able to so conduct him- self, so live, so speak, so impress divine truths upon his fellow men, that as he walks about them, as he teaches them, they feel that they have been kindled and enlightened because of his presence and because of his work. But how are we, in detail, to make ourselves such kindlers, such inspirational teachers? First of all, and last of all, the private life of the teacher must be proper. He must live properly, not only in the class room, but outside, he must keep the commandments that he teaches others. He must struggle with himself, keep himself pure, clean; keep himself vigorous in the duties that belong to his calling. If he do not so live, then his teachings will not be effective; they will not sink into the souls of men; they will not be accepted; for those who do not understand better will take his teaching and compare that with his private life and say there is some- thing false about the whole matter, and they refuse to accept what the teacher has given them. Next, after having done his very best to live the right kind of a life, to make himself an example before his students, the THE TEACHER A SPIRITUAL INSPIRATION 901 teacher who is to inspire others, who is to be an inspiration to students, must know his subject. Aside from a man's own pri- vate life, the beginning and the end of inspirational teaching is that the teacher understand his subject. The teacher must be a learner, and unless he is a learner he can not possibly inspire men and women with his teaching. To teach and to learn are like the back and the front of his hat. They go together; they are inseparable. The man who teaches well learns well. The man who teaches long learns long. The man who teaches must learn much, for almost the best way to learn a subject is to teach it, teach it well, and teach it properly. Then I may just as well say that not only is it necessary for the man that he know his subject, that he may deliver facts, truths to his students, but he must have a full mind also, that God himself may speak through him. We do not believe the doctrine that God made the earth out of nothing. We believe that he found materials in space and brought those materials together, and out of them he made the earth. He is the maker of the earth, but he made it out of something, and I think the Lord finds it exceedingly dif- ficult to speak with the voice of inspiration through a man who has an empty head. God can speak best through a man who has given his time and his energy to the study of God's laws, who has himself attempted to prepare himself to be a messenger of God, to be a voice of divinity. The power of knowing is a won- derful power. You and I have very often sat in the presence of our own leaders in this Church, or in the presence of great leaders outside of our Church, men of learning, of distinction, and we have wondered at the ease with which they attacked some great doctrine, and apparently skipped easily from one great sublime height to another, touching on great thoughts that it seems difficult for us to understand, and we wonder how they arrived at such knowledge, how they learned to understand the gospel as they do. But the secret is extremely simple. The man who studies his subject long and deeply, who grows in the knowledge of it, finally reaches a condition of mind, a state of mind, by which it seems that all that he has assembled in his mind pushes him on, in spite of himself, unto new regions, un- discovered regions, and new truths burst upon him almost in spite of himself. That is the great power of knowing, and the man who desires to become a great inspirational teacher will have to remember this doctrine and fill his mind with the sub- ject that he is teaching. Then he will teach well, and God will speak through him; and to his own astonishment he will say words, he will speak truths that were not clear to him before. Then, too, the man who is to teach well, the inspirational teacher, must be transparent to the will of God. Knowledge alone does not do it. The clean life alone will not do that. The man who 902 IMPROVEMENT ERA desires to be so transparent that God can speak through him, as the sun's light niters through this glass in these windows, must be a man who approaches God frequently, who talks with God, who discusses things with God, who prays to God; in short, who is not afraid to go to his God for information, or is not afraid to go to the Maker of men and tell him the troubles that rest upon him. The prayerful teacher who is well pre- pared in his subject, who lives a good and clean and consistent life, will always inspire the students who sit under his tuition. And then, remember also that the teacher has besides an- other peculiar power. He teaches chemistry, he teaches phys- ics, or he teaches English in the class room, outside of the Church. He teaches this or that doctrine in the Mutual Im- provement classes, but he is for all the world like the dynamo that we have up in the mountains here, just a mass of stee5 and copper and brass and various elements and combinations of elements. The man, if he is strong enough, can turn that dynamo, or the power of the falling water will turn it, and to the astonishment, to the marvel of man, out of the strength of the arm comes through the dynamo the electric current, the electric light, or heat, that may be generated by proper re- sistance coils. All the wonders of the electric current come from the work of the man's arm, or from the energy of the water fall. That dynamo is a wonderful converter of one thing into another, and the teacher is just such a dynamo, if he is trained for his work and if he goes at his work in the right way. He teaches chemistry, and lo and behold out of chemistry come deep, subtle truths that pertain, perhaps, to the eternal life of man. He teaches the Word of Wisdom, and somehow, there is a transformation as these doctrines pass through the minds of the students, and the students find out of the doctrine of the Word of Wisdom some other truth to fit their needs, to supply the weak places in their natures. Now the teacher who has not felt the joy of being such a dynamo has not yet fully lived to know what the profession of teaching has to give. He has not stood before a class and told some certain subject as best he could, tried to explain it, make it clear, make it sink in the conscience of the young people, has not known until later, when some student came to him, how the word has been transformed by the marvel of God's way to meet some special need of that student — has not yet felt the keen joy that comes to the teacher. To be an inspirational teacher, a man must possess that power, that dynamic power that changes all his teachings into some subtle medium that supplies the needs of the student. Some people call it enthusiasm. It may be. They say enthusiasm is contagious. They say a teacher who is full of enthusiasm has that power. It doesn't make much differ- THE TEACHER A SPIRITUAL INSPIRATION 903 ence what we call it. The fact is that there is that wonderful possible transformation between the teacher and the student. Now, by all these means that I have mentioned hurriedly — because our time is now far gone — the teacher may become an inspiration to the students. But the committee has not only told me to speak about the teacher as an inspiration, as an in- spirer, the Committee has instructed me also to speak about the teacher as a spiritual inspiration. They have not told me just what they mean, but I suspect that they mean that all that we teach, whatever it may be, shall be somehow related to the spirit of man, to the spiritual life of man. I am not very much in doubt about it. I think the Committee must have had in mind Section 29 in the Doctrine and Covenants. When you have time look it up, verses 31 to 35. You will find that the essence of it is this: "All things unto me are spiritual, and not at any time have I given unto you a law which was temporal." To the Lord all things are spiritual. No matter what we teach, if a man is to be a spiritual inspirer, he must remember the relationship of what he teaches to the eternal life of man; and there is great joy to all of us in the thought that there is a spiritual equivalent to all that we do. Brother Heber J. Grant has been called since his early manhood to .preach the gospel to the whole Church. Loud and long he has taught the gospel truths. That has been his work in life. An- other man has been called of God — I believe — to develop a hundred-and-sixty-acre farm, somewhere in Utah, or somewhere else on the face of the earth. He has given himself in truth to that work. He has not had the opportunity to preach the gospel. He has taught it to his family; he has lived it. He has not had the same opportunity that President Grant has had in standing before great audiences to proclaim the gospel. On the last great day when we stand before the Judge to be given our place in the life hereafter, I think we shall all find in accordance to this doctrine, revealed in the Doctrine and Cove- nants, that the work done by the man on the farm has some- how been transmuted into eternal, spiritual values. The fol- lowing of the plow and of the harrow, the harvesting of po- tatoes, the feeding of the stock, which he has done honestly, and for the good of man, that the earth might be brought under the domination of man in obedience to God's command, has somehow been transmuted on the books of God into spiritual values, and this man and President Grant will stand side by side before the Master of men to be judged, not by what class of work they have done, but how they have fulfilled the missions that were given them. Now, the teacher must remember that there is a possibility always of relating whatever we teach to this eternal journey 904 IMPROVEMENT ERA we are making, this eternal journey of which the short earth journey is only a small part; and if he will do that, under- standing the meaning of the words of the Lord when he said that all his laws were spiritual, he will become, in very deed, a spiritual inspiration to his students. Everything may fit into life. That is one of the glories and joys of "Mormonism." All that we do, all that we have, all that we may become, fit into this eternal life of which we speak so often. There is no tem- poral, no spiritual. They dove-tail together, the temporal and the spiritual, one whole, moving on, from a remote past un- known to man, into a future far beyond this life, also unknown to man. But all applies to this journey, so the teacher who is to be a spiritual inspiration to his students, who is to do this Mutual Improvement work in the class room, properly, and who re- members that with all our Scout work, and all our dancing, and all our reading courses, the most important work in the Im- provement Associations is the class work. It is the core, the skeleton around which all the others are placed. The man who remembers will try to penetrate the secrets, if secrets they be, that make men spiritual inspirers. He will fill his mind with the proper information; he will live as best he can a righteous life; he will try to be transparent to the will of God, so that God may speak through him; he will try to so infuse enthusiasm into his work that all that he says may be transformed to fit the needs of his students. He will remember that all that he does is Mutual Improvement work, whatever he teaches is a part of the scheme that God has provided for the eternal ad- vancement and life of man. I hope and pray, my brethren and sisters, that we may think a little more soberly about the teaching that we do in our Mutual Improvement organizations than we do ordinarily, and make this year a year of high endeavor in the class room; that we may teach well, and acceptably to our Heavenly Father; for I am sure that by so doing we shall best meet the essential needs of the young people who are placed in our care.* Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide, In the strife of Truth with Falsehood, for the good or evil side; Some great cause, God's new Messiah, offering each the bloom or blight, Parts the goats upon the left hand, and the sheep upon the right, And the choice goes by forever, 'twixt that darkness and that light. — James Russell Lowell, "Freedom."