Parents are the natural and, we believe, ought to be the principal, God has for this purpose given them advantages which no other Failing the parents, and in addition to them, the duty clearly de- Were these to make special and adequate provision for this purpose, we believe that in a short time they would have much less reason to complain of general apathy in regard to religious matters than A duty rests with our Churches of seeing that those who have been EDUCATION AND RELIGION. PART I. THEIR MUTUAL CONNECTION. "There is a mutual and reciprocal effect upon each other produced by religion and education. And probably education, according to its quality and tendency in any particular case, produces quite as great an influence upon religion as religion, according also to its quality and tendency, does upon education."—(GEORGE HARRIS: Civilization Considered as a Science.) Humanly speaking, there is nothing in which the comfort of families, the prosperity of nations, the salvation of souls, the interest of the Redeemer and the glory of God is more apparently and intimately concerned (than in the education of children. )”—(Dr. DODDRIDGE: Sermons.) "That religion is designed to improve the nature and faculties of man, in order to the right governing of our actions, to the securing the peace and progress external and internal of individuals and communities, and, lastly, to the rendering us capable of a more perfect state, entitled the Kingdom of God, to which the present life is probationary-this is a truth which all who have truth only in view will receive on its own evidence."-(S. T. COLERIDGE.) THE object of education' is to fit and prepare the young for the right performance of the duties that are to devolve upon them in after life; that of religion3 is to render man 2 1The true idea of education is contained in the word itself, which signifies the art of drawing out or educing; and being applied in a general sense to man, must signify the drawing forth or bringing out those powers which are implanted in him by the hand of his Maker... It aims to do for man that which the agriculturist does for the fruits of the earth, and the gardener for the more choice and beautiful productions thereof: what the forester does for the trees of the forest, and the tamer and breaker-in of animals does for the several kinds of wild creatures; this same office in a higher kind, according to the higher dignity of the subject, doth education purpose to do for the offspring of man.' -(EDWARD IRVING.) 2 "Education, in the most extensive sense of the word, may comprehend every preparation that is made in our youth for the sequel of our lives." (Dr. PALEY.) "I call a complete and generous education that which fits a man to perform justly, skilfully, and magnanimously all the offices, both public and private, of peace and war."-(JOHN MILTON.) "The end of all education ought to be to prepare persons for those duties and those situations in life they are called upon to fulfil."-(Dean DAWES.) "Its object is to qualify them for entering with advantage into the greater school where the whole life is to be spent."-(JOHN FOSTER.) "Education is the preparing of man for all the relations of life, and the fulfilment of all the duties which he owes to society."-(G. A. LANGFORD.) "Religion signifies binding, and so imports duty; and all duty is 13 B 3 meet for a future and higher state of existence.1 The one is thus concerned with the things of time, the other with those of eternity; the one is based on the laws of nature, the other is founded on divine revelation;* comprised under these two generals, worship and virtue; worship comprehends all our duties towards God; virtue all those that relate to our neighbour or ourselves."(Reason and Religion.) "Religion consists in the knowledge of God and of ourselves; in virtue and obedience; in a well-grounded peace of mind; and the comfortable hopes of a blessed immortality." (Dr. ELLIS: On Divine Things.) "Religion in a general sense is founded on man's relation and accountableness to his Maker; and it consists in cherishing the sentiments and performing the duties which thence result. . . . Religion with us is the Christian religion. It is found in the teachings and example of Jesus Christ."-(H. WARD: Christian Character.) Christianity "assigns a true, proper, and complete character or notion of God (complete, I mean, not absolutely, but in respect to our condition and capacity)." It also "faithfully informs us concerning ourselves, concerning our nature, our origin, our end, all our state, past, present, and final; points about which otherwise by no reason, no history, no experience, we could be well resolved or satisfied."-(Dr. ISAAC BARROW.) 1 The great design of Christianity" is to advance our natures to such a sublime degree of purity and perfection as is requisite to capacitate us for the enjoyment of heavenly bliss." (Dr. JOHN SCOTT: Christian Life.) 2 "The beginning of life, considered as an education for mature age in the present world, appears plainly at first sight analogous to this our trial for a future one, the former being in our temporal capacity what the latter is in our spiritual capacity." (Bishop BUTLER: Analogy.) "According to the doctrine laid down in the teaching of the inspired apostles, every one's present existence may be said to consist of two lives. One belongs to the present world, and one belongs to the future world. One life is occupied with the concerns of time, the other is inseparably mixed up with the concerns of eternity. One life terminates in the grave, and closes in death, but the other is carried on and survives beyond the tomb. It is an immortal life, and cannot die."-(Dean RAMSAY: The Christian Life.) 16 The law of nature, or, as it may be termed more fitly, the law of reason, comprehendeth all those things which men, by the light of their understanding, evidently know, or at least wise men may know, to be seeming or unseeming, virtuous or vicious, good or evil, for them to do." -(HOOKER: Ecclesiastical Polity.) "Law of nature in a moral sense: any part of the universal moral rule which may be discovered by reasoning upon the data presented by observation and experience. The law of nature is a term used to denote the total amount or collection of such discoverable principles."-(Dr. PYE SMITH.) 4"Amidst the darkness and uncertainty which hangs over our future condition revelation, by bringing life and immortality to light, affords the only relief."-(Rev. ROBERT HALL.) "True religion derives its pedigree from Heaven; it descends from thence, and tends thither again.”—(Rev. J. SMITH.) "We look upon Christianity," says Neander, "not as a power which has sprung up out of the hidden depths of man's nature, but as one which descended from above when Heaven opened itself anew to man's long alienated race; a power which, as both in its origin and its the one is developed by reason, the other grows by faith.1 But while we may thus in theory separate education and religion the things of this life and those of that which is to come-it cannot be too much borne in mind that there can be no such separation in practice without infinite injury to both.2 On the contrary, the more close and intimate the essence it is exalted above all that human nature can create of its own resources, was designed to impart to that nature a new life, and to change it in its inmost principles."-(Church History.) 66 1 "Reason," says John Locke, as contradistinguished to faith, I take to be the discovery of the certainty or probability of such propositions or truths which the mind arrives at by deduction made from such ideas as it has got by the use of its natural faculties. Faith, on the other side, is the assent to any proposition not thus made out by the deductions of reason, but upon the credit of the proposer, as coming from God in some extraordinary way of communication. This we call 'revelation."" "Reason implies a progress from one degree of knowledge to another by consequences drawn from the first to the second; but faith assents to things upon the account of superior authority, that reveals them and commands us to believe them."-(Dr. BATES: Spiritual Perfection.) "As whatever we come to the knowledge of by the use of our faculties is properly matter of reason, so what is above their discovery is above reason, and, consequently, when revealed to us are matters of faith."(ELLIS: On Divine Things.) "The root of the divine life is faith."(SCOUGAL: Life of God.) 'It gives evidence and substance to things not seen, and realizes the great truths of the gospel, so as that they become abiding and living principles of support and direction while we are passing through this wilderness.' (Rev. JOHN NEWTON: Letters.) 66 66 66 2"Often it has happened that culture has taken account of all man's capacities but the highest, and so has become Godless; and, on the other hand, often has sincere religion thought it was honouring things spiritual by depreciating the cultivation of the lower, but yet essential, capacities of man, and so has narrowed itself and cut itself off from reality."(Prof. SHAIRP: Culture and Religion.) Religion and learning are so far from being inconsistent, that they mutually help to improve and advance each other. A religious course of life not only keeps the faculties clear and fit for use, but also greatly heightens and improves them; while learning helps at once to give a right direction to religion, and to temper and allay its most violent fervours." It "points out to us the true objects of worship,. teaches us the best manner of performing this worship, prevents us from applying ourselves to mistaken duties, and checks our flights in those that are real and necessary. Knowledge and godliness thus united make religion what it ought to be, a reasonable service; a work of the head and understanding as well as of the heart and the affections.—(Dr. Tíos. FOTHERGILL: Religion and Learning.) Religion and learning "look with a favourable aspect upon each other, are fitted for an intimate association together, and by their union tend to support one another. None but enemies to both can wish to have them divorced; though disjoined in fact they often are. As religion adds dignity to learning, so does this, in its turn, afford service to the cause of the other."-(Rev. ARCHD. BRUCE: Theological Lectures.) connection that is maintained between the two, the greater their mutual advantage. For though education has its attention more immediately fixed upon the duties and requirements of this life, yet it can only see these in their true light or estimate them at their proper value by viewing them in relation to the great future;2 while religion, on the "Knowledge is a necessary foundation of faith and holiness, and where ignorance reigns in the mind there is confusion in the heart and life". (BOSTON: Body of Divinity.) 66 1 "Culture, if thoroughly and consistently carried out, must lead on to religion, that is, to the cultivation of the spiritual and heavenward capacities of our nature. And religion, if truthful and wise, must expand into culture, must urge men who are under its power to make the most of all their capacities, not only for the worth of those capacities in themselves, but because they are gifts of God, and given for this purpose that we may carefully cultivate them."-(Prof. SHAIRP.) "Religion in its truest signification is education, that is, the art of forming and perfecting man; and education may be described as religion applied to human nature to develop and perfect it."-(M. A. JULIEN.) Religion is itself an education. . . . The religious man becomes of necessity a thinker and reader. He is a logician and philosopher in his way; for he becomes a theologian, and learns to follow trains of reasoning as well as to indulge the impulses of piety. He is the student of a book which is adapted to expand and elevate the mind, to fill it with great thoughts, to inspire it with noble purposes, to exercise the imagination, to strengthen the judgment, and to teach the true philosophy of life.”—(Rev. T. BINNEY: Both Worlds.) It is "strenuously asserted by Dr. Campbell," says Chalmers, "that worth and simplicitly of heart give a mighty aid even to the investigation of speculative truth-that they infuse as it were a clearer element into the region of our intellectual faculties-and that there is a power in moral candour which not only gives more of patience to our researches, but even more of penetration to our discernment." (Móral Philosophy.) "Religion and morality do more than exalt the imagination of a peasant. They elevate the whole cast of his intellect. They familiarize him to abstractions which are altogether akin with the abstractions of philosophy. The man who has become a Christian can on that very account look with a more philosophic eye than before over the amplitudes of nature; and, accustomed as he now is to a generalized survey of human life and its numerous concerns, he can the more readily be made to apprehend the reigning principle which assimilates the facts and the phenomena in any one department of investigation that has been offered to him."—(Ditto.) "Our object (in education) must be to fit him (ie. the pupil) so far as in us lies for performing all the duties of life, to give him those qualities which shall adorn his youth, strengthen his manhood, and add dignity to his age, above all to prepare him so to pass through things temporal, that he fail not finally to attain the things eternal.-(Educational Record.) "As this life is a preparation for eternity, so is education a preparation for this life; and that education alone is valuable which answers both these great primary objects." -(Bishop SHORT.) 266 If death as well as life be the destiny of humanity, for death as well as life should we be educated; and if we believe in immortality, for im |