Blair Collection > Rhys Lewis, minister of Bethel

62 RHYS LEWIS.
directly. Do you know wliat ? One of the old preachers would
set a congregation afire, spectacled folk and all, in the time it
takes a whole waggou-load of these students to fumble for their
pocket handkerchiefs.
" You have always gone against the * Students,' and indeed,
against education generally, mother," returned Bob. "But it
is not meet for you to kick ; the best men we have are splendid
scholars, and do all they can in the interest of education, parti-
cularly the education of preachers. And what would have
become of us by this time but for our learned men, some of
whom you yourself think very highly of ? "
" I gone against learning. Bob ! No, name of goodness. But
I will say this much, that it is not necessary to give a lot of
education to poor children; and that it is not learning that
makes a gi'eat preacher; else Dick Aberdaron, the greatest
scholar the world ever saw, would have made the best preacher.
But goodness help him, with his cats and his filth. Education
is all well enough where it is wanted, and if sanctified by
grace, but a curse, otherwise, to my way of thinking."
" Paul, your great friend," observed Bob, " was a great
scholar, and he would never have done what he did unless he
had been."
*' How can you prove that?" asked my mother. "That he sat
at the feet of Gamaliel does not show he was a great scholar.
Don't you fancy, even if you do undei'stand polikits, you under-
stand your Bible better than your mother. It was the con-
version on the way to Damascus that made Baul great ; before
then he was great in nothing except as a persecutor, and you
and I would never have heard of him but for that. And I'll
tell vou another thing : it was but a poor price Paul put upon
worldly knowledge ; and had they wanted to make him a
Doctor or a Mister of Harts, he would have told them directly,
' I never took it upon me to know anything save Jesus Christ,
and him crucified.' A thousand times better to him the title
' Paul, servant of the Lord,' than ' Doctor Saul of Tarsus.' Do you
know what ? I have no patience hearing you and others talk of
education, education ever and always, just as if education could
make main and mountain, and was a good enough substitute
for the grace of God. Education, for all I know, teaches soma