Education Quote by Howard Crosby

Crosby is making a quietly radical concession: truth may be eternal, but attention isn’t. In an era when Protestant authority still leaned hard on proclamation, he admits that the “ordinary mind” does not reliably absorb abstract doctrine on command. It has to be “fastened” - a tactile verb that treats understanding less like revelation and more like carpentry. The image matters because it is the nail.

The phrasing carries a paternal Victorian confidence (“ordinary mind”) while also showing pastoral pragmatism. Crosby isn’t insulting laypeople so much as diagnosing how persuasion works outside the seminary. Illustration isn’t decoration; it’s the technology that translates the invisible into the graspable. A parable, an anecdote, a vivid scene: these are not concessions to entertainment but instruments of conviction. Subtextually, he’s defending rhetoric against the suspicion that style corrupts substance. For Crosby, the illustrative turn is not a betrayal of truth; it’s its delivery system.

Context helps. Crosby was a prominent clergyman and educator in 19th-century America, when mass literacy, urbanization, and public lecturing were reshaping how ideas circulated. The pulpit competed with newspapers, platform speakers, and a growing marketplace of persuasion. “No teacher can afford” reads like an economic warning: attention is scarce, and authority must earn its hearing.

The line also anticipates modern pedagogy and even political media: people don’t just accept facts, they accept frames. Crosby’s counsel is ultimately about humility - the teacher must prepare not only the message, but the bridge by which it can cross into someone else’s life.