Little real influence is ever produced upon any human being, without creating between you and him a bond of sympathy. If we would work strongly and efficiently upon the minds of children, we must really love them, not in the abstract, not in a general way, but concretely and individually. We must love John and William and Mary and Susie, simply and purely because he or she is, in himself or herself alone, an object of true interest and affection. In looking over a school, it is not difficult to discover at a glance which teachers thus love their children. It speaks in every word from the lips. It beams in every look from the eyes. It thrills in every tone of the voice. It has a language in the very touch of the hand and the movements of the person. Some persons are naturally more fond of children than others are. But those not naturally thus inclined may cultivate the disposition. They _must_ do so if they mean to be teachers. No one is fitted to be a teacher, who has not learned to sympathize with the real wants and feelings of children. Pretence here is all wasted. Shams may do with grown persons sometimes, never with children. They have an instinctive perception of what is genuine and what is pretended, in professed love for them. In fact, the way to win the affection of a child is to love him, not to make professions of love. It is not always the easiest thing in the world to exercise this love. A teacher may have the charge of a class of children whose appearance, manners, and dispositions are exceedingly forbidding, perhaps even loathsome. Yet observation and study will ordinarily discover some good quality even in the worst and most degraded. A talent for discovering what is good in a child is much more important in the work of elevating him, than the smartness at detecting and exposing his tricks, in which some teachers take pride. It is a bad sign, though not an uncommon one, to see evidences of cunning in a teacher. Better by far to be outwitted and duped occasionally, than to forfeit that character of perfect sincerity and straightforwardness which secures the confidence of a child. The teacher who would love his children, particularly if he happens to have been entrusted with an unpromising class, must learn to wear the spectacles of charity. He must cultivate the habit of seeing things in their best light. While not blind to faults, he must be prompt and eagle-eyed to spy out every indication of good. Above all, he must remember that no human soul, however degraded, is without some elements and possibilities of good, for whom there is the possibility that Christ died. XIX. GAINING THE AFFECTIONS OF THE SCHOLARS.