11 December: Boreham on Breaking Up

The Silent SchoolBell
The breaking-up of the schools is a reflection, as in a cameo, of a fund-amental item in the broad programme of human adventure. In his "Pickwick Papers," Charles Dickens describes the famous Christmas party at Dingley Dell. The whole chapter is a romp; but it comes to an end. "The jovial party broke up next morning," Dickens tells us with evident sadness. "A breaking-up is a capital thing in our school days, but in after-life it is painful enough. Death, self-interest and fortune's charges are every day breaking up many a happy group and scattering them far and wide, never to meet again." It is, as the birds know, a law of life and a necessary one. The nest is a lovely place; but it is a dangerous place. However skilfully constructed, it is a conspicuous affair. The nest advertises the whereabouts of the fledglings. Hawks see it from above. Rats, otters, weasels, stoats, and snakes see it from the ground beneath. Boys espy it as they go whistling along the road nearby. And so it comes to pass that the vast majority of birds—four out of five at least—are destroyed before they have learned to fly. The young birds learn at length to use their wings. One by one they vanish and return no more to the old familiar bough. The parent birds forsake the nest in which they have known such felicity and such terror. The breaking-up is complete and the birds are safe at last.

It is only by the scattering of the children to all the continents and islands of the world that the fragrant atmosphere of the old home is carried far and wide. The schoolmaster is conscious of a touch of sadness as he sees his most promising pupils pass from the familiar precincts for the last time; but he solaces himself with the reflection that it is by means of such partings that his own influence grows in volume and gradually becomes world-wide.

How Small Island Attains Imperial Splendour
Nations are saved as the birds are saved—by breaking-up. England is a charming country with a story more thrilling than the most exciting romance. Yet it is not her idyllic landscapes nor her encrusted traditions that have lifted her from her ancient obscurity and insignificance to her status as a far-flung and mighty Empire. There came into the life of the English people an experience exactly akin to the experience of the parent birds when their fledglings fly. Sometimes all the young birds take their departure on the same day; there is seldom more than a matter of hours between the going of the first and the flight of the last. So was it with England. All at once, before anybody suspected what was happening, the sons of the nation went out to the four quarters of the globe, and, as if by magic, the nation became an Empire.

It was all a matter of months. In 1757 Wolfe sailed west, gained after a while his memorable victory at Quebec and gave us Canada. In that self-same year, 1757, Clive, having sailed east, won the battle of Plassey and gave us India. Could anything have been more sensational or dramatic? And, as though this were not enough, Capt. Cook was, at the same moment, busily preparing his little ships to sail south on those adventurous voyages that were destined to add these Austral lands to the geography alike of the Empire and of the world. Out they went, one by one, Wolfe, Clive, Cook, and half a dozen others, like sturdy fledglings quitting the parent nest. What a breaking-up? And that breaking-up was followed by a still greater one. For in the wake of the pioneers and empire-builders came the emigrant ships. The English population drifted overseas. We became a nation afloat, and thus the British Empire came into being. We were saved from littleness and insularity by the process of breaking-up.

The Sadness Of Farewell Has Its Compensations
So for that matter, was the Church; and at the very selfsame time and in the very selfsame way. For, strangely enough, before the heroes of Plassey and Quebec were back in England, and whilst Capt. Cook was still preparing for those amazing voyages that changed the face of the world, William Carey was born. The one unforgettable lesson that William Carey taught the Church was that she could only be saved from stultification and stagnation by breaking-up. When her sons and daughters left the old sanctuaries behind them, and crossed with the Gospel every continent and island, then, he declared, the day of the Church's triumph would have dawned. Within a few years all our great modern missionary societies, Bible societies, and evangelistic agencies sprang into being. Faith assumed an entirely fresh aspect and all the nations of the world became conscious that a new and vitalising spirit was abroad.

The Church has since learned the same lesson in other ways. She knows that there is no brotherhood on earth comparable to the hallowed fellowship of her communion. But it is marred by a perpetual restlessness. A prominent member of the congregation moves, with his family, to an up-country town; a young fellow, whose assistance to the minister has been invaluable, is transferred by the bank, in which he serves, to a distant branch; a young lady who has proved herself a most capable teacher and chorister marries a farmer's son and leaves for her home outback. It is all very disturbing and distressing. Yet there is no real cause for discouragement or dismay. The law still holds. It is by the breaking-up of the nest that such nests are multiplied. It is by the faring forth of the children that the choicest elements in the old home are reproduced on distant continents and islands. It is by the dispersal of the members of a congregation that the most gracious influences of that congregation are scattered and transplanted. And—to return to our starting point—it is by the departure of the scholars when their school days are done that the teacher asserts his fine authority over an immeasurable area. Breakings-up are painful things; but so are births. Without births the race would become extinct in a single generation, and without breakings-up we should fall into uttermost stagnation and decay.

F W Boreham

Image: School bells.