together, each, in its proper sphere and with its proper means, striving after the perfecting of the race and to bring about that reign of righteousness which reason not less than revelation teaches us to look for in the latter days upon the earth.1 1 from the manward pole and go along the line honestly and thoroughly, and you land in the divine one. Start from the divine pole and carry out all that it implies, and you land in the manward pole or the perfection of humanity. Ideally considered, then, culture must culminate in religion, and religion must expand into culture."-(Prof. SHAIRP: Culture and Religion.) "Denn die Kirche ist ihrer Bestimmung nach selbst eine Schule höherer Art, eine Schule zur Nährung Fortpflanzung und Verbreitung des Heiligen im Menschen."-(KROGER.) "Religion," says M. A. Julien, “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." Religion consists "in a certain harmonious development of the powers and faculties, and in a general raising of the tone of the mind towards the principle which pervades and unites all things. It mixes itself with every topic of thought, feeling, and action; and it is to be found, not simply in a course of theological institutions, but in whatever can be communicated from mind to mind, in whatever can be received by individual intelligence from the world around us."-(W. J. Fox.) Religion is beyond comparison the most important part of education. When properly taught, it includes every moral and social duty; and among others, industry, temperance, economy."-(Dr. R. HAMILTON.) 'By all means let men's faculties be improved as much as may be, and all hands join in the furtherance and advancement of sound knowledge. True religion . hereby suffer; so far from it, it must gain exceedingly, may light propagate darkness as one kind of truth subvert any other." (Rev. J. BALGUY.) "If religion is so auspicious to the intellectual faculties, the cultivation and exercise of those faculties must be of great advantage to religion."- (FOSTER: Popular Ignorance.) can never As soon "The prospect stretched out before the friend of education is the most cheering that can be conceived. As religion is destined to banish immorality from our world, so science and natural philosophy shall drain our cities and fields, purify our atmosphere, provide us with the most appropriate good, and teach us how to use our temporal blessings so as to enjoy a very large degree of physical comfort. Society cannot be perfected until these blessings are made the common lot of every human being." (Rev. B. PARSONS.) "As yet these brilliant discoveries over the mysteries and powers of the physical universe are only just beginning, and we seem to be on the very edge of great discoveries, the ultimate influence of which on the thought and progress of mankind it is impossible to anticipate."-(Rev. R. W. DALE.) "The course of improvement when it has once begun is like the motion of a descending body, an accelerated course. One improvement produces other improvements, and these others; and for this reason there may be improvements apparently little which may lead to so many more as to be in their consequences like the opening of new senses among mankind. This observation is perhaps more applicable to the subject of education than any other."-(Dr. RICHARD PRICE.) Let us be cautious not to despair of the human race. Let us dare to 66 foresee in the ages that will succeed us a knowledge and a happiness of which we can form only a vague and undetermined idea. Let us count upon the perfectibility with which nature has endowed us; on the strength of the human genius from which long experience gives us a right to expect prodigies; and let us console ourselves for not being the living witnesses of that happy period by the pleasure of predicting and antici pating it, and perhaps by the more sweet satisfaction of having by a few moments accelerated its arrival."-(CONDORCET.) "May it not be expected that the human race will be ameliorated by new discoveries in the sciences and the arts, and as an unavoidable consequence in the means of individual and general prosperity; by farther progress in the principles of conduct and moral practice; and lastly by the real improvement of our faculties, moral, intellectual, and physical, which may result either from the improvement of the instruments which increase the power and direct the exercise of those faculties, or of the improvement from our natural organization itself? " "Will not every nation one day arrive at the state of civilization attained by those people who are the most enlightened? (Ditto.) "If I interpret aright the general current of the teaching both of the Old Testament and of the New, there is a golden age for man in this world, in which the dreams of reformers, philanthropists, and poets shali be more than fulfilled. The general impression produced both by the Jewish and Christian Scriptures seems to me to be, that in this very world which has been made desolate by the crimes of men, and by the judgments of God, truth and righteousness are to win a second and universal victory,—and we are to see how bright and blessed a thing man's life may be made before this mortal puts on immortality and this corruptible incorruption."-(R. W. DALE.) "The existing scene of things is not destined to be the last. High as it is, it is too low and too imperfect to be regarded as God's finished work; it is merely one of the progressive dynasties; and revelation and the implanted instincts of our nature alike teach us to anticipate a glorious terminal dynasty." (HUGH MILLER.) "As it takes a great many years to bring an orchard into full fruitfulness, but as at last the trees come to maturity, and begin to bear fruit, so by-and-by man will begin to be fruitful unto God, and the whole globe will be a great tree of the Lord, filled with divine fruit on every side and on every branch."-(H. W. BEECHER.) "In the representation of that glorious period usually styled the millennium, when religion shall universally prevail, it is mentioned as a conspicuous feature that men shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased. will be a period of remarkable illumination. Every useful talent will be cultivated, every art subservient to the interests of man will be improved and perfected, learning will amass her stores, and genius emit her splendour; but the former will be displayed without ostentation, and the latter shine with the softened effulgence of humility and love.”—(R. HALL.) "When the whole earth, emancipated from the usurped supremacy of the powers of darkness, shall have recovered the image of God's moral perfections, the earth shall yield her increase, man's lordship over the material universe shall be restored to him, a nobler literature, a diviner art, a loftier and more perfect form of national life, as well as a truer worship of God, and a more faithful obedience to His laws, shall crown and bless the final ages of human history."-(R. W. DALE.) Dr. Richardson recently expressed his conviction that "in ages yet to come there would be perfect physical happiness,-that pain, which was even now so much reduced, would be removed altogether; that the devastating diseases which carried away our youth would be stamped out; and that It death itself would be so encompassed that man should know nothing more of it than he did of his birth." "The time will come, and indeed is visibly coming, when the diseases which form the largest sources of mortality will be extinguished or confined within narrow limits by the enlarged resources of science. It may not be the lot of this generation or of the coming one to see this consummation, but the student of medicine gathers omens of success in the future from past victories in this field which it is impossible for a layman rightly to appreciate."-(British Quarterly Review: On Epidemics, 1866.) Happiness And science dawn though late upon the earth, Peace cheers the mind, health renovates the frame, Whilst each unfettered o'er the earth extends Whilst every shape and mode of matter lends Which from its dark mine drags the gem of truth How vigorous then the athletic form of age! When neither avarice, cunning, pride, nor care Had stamped the seal of grey deformity On the all-mingling lineaments of time. How lovely then the intrepid front of youth!"-(SHELLEY.) "The gentleness which the Spirit worketh will extend itself to the creatures, towards whom it will be humanity and mercy; the decency and order which the Spirit delighteth in will show itself towards the creatures in all good husbandry and beautiful assortment; the temperance which the spirit worketh in every sense will place bounds to our enjoyment, and prevent the creatures from being degraded and misused by excess, and will work economy in all quarters; the joy of heart and cheerful hospitality which the spirit worketh will prevent all niggardly hoardings of the creature and avaricious covetings of it: and in a word every talent which God hath given unto man for redressing, redeeming, and ruling over and blessing the inferior creatures, having yet to be called into account by God who suffers no hiding of it, but requireth it to be profitably employed, will put forth its activity and power under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, in order to accomplish that good ministry unto all things for which it was originally given, and hath since been redeemed."-(EDWARD IRVING.) Believing in right reason, and having faith in the progress of humanity towards perfection, and ever labouring for this end, we grow to have clearer sight of the ideas of right reason and of the elements and helps of perfection, and come gradually to fill the framework of the state with them, to fashion its external composition and all its laws and institutions conformably to them, and to make the state more and more the expression as we say of our best self, which is not manifold and vulgar, and unsuitable, but one, and noble, and secure, and peaceful, and the same for all mankind."-(M. ARNOLD.) 66 PART II. THE RELIGIOUS DIFFICULTY, AND THE WAY OUT OF IT. ... "Education, instead of being discussed on its own merits, has been made the battle-field of religious parties; and the adoption of a real and effective national system has been kept subordinate to the interests, or supposed interests, of Churchmen or Dissenters. The long and animated debates in Parliament upon the principles on which the public grant should be administered seem to have been inspired, not so much by zeal for education, as by the jealous fear of the preponderance of one religious party over the other, or of the State over both."(The Right Hon. H. A. BRUCE, 1866.) "We have been fighting over our religious difficulties and our political principles, and have not been able to recognize in the education of the people a subject of sufficient importance to induce us to leave off this struggle. . . Unless we now think that the battle over the religious difficulty and over our political principles has raged long enough, and its victims in the form of neglected children growing up in thousands to be men and women are so worthy of consideration that the common object in view. . . . . is of sufficient magnitude and urgency to induce us to make those concessions on the one side and the other which are essential to the compromise which is the condition of union, there will, I feel sure, be a renewal of those sometimes acrimonious discussions which have occurred as to the best mode of teaching religion to children whom we have left, and are leaving, a prey to that gross ignorance which is the greatest enemy of all religion. I believe, on my conscience, that it would have been for the benefit of the people, for their advantage, not merely in their material and secular, but also in their religious interests, if either side, no matter which, had long ago yielded absolutely and entirely to the other, for in that case we should for many years have had in operation a system of education infinitely more extended and efficient than that which we have at present. It might have been very imperfect, but it would have been improved as the people grew wiser under the influence of superior cultivation." (THE LORD ADVOCATE, 1872.) SEEING, then, the close and intimate connection that subsists between Education and Religion, and the importance of the former to the growth, strengthening, and practical carrying out of the principles of the latter, it is deeply to be regretted that the claims of education are so frequently overlooked or disregarded by those who profess a belief in the truths of Christianity: and that, of those who ought to be of the number of its best friends, so many are to be 1" To the religious there should need no inducement stronger than the good itself which education would achieve, to induce him to sink all questions of minor importance, for the one great object in view.”—(J. A. LANGFORD: Religion and Education.) 2 3 found arrayed in hostility against it. It is with ignorance, prejudice, and error as they are to be met with among professing Christians that the friend of education has now to do battle. The opinion is no longer held by the State or by any body social or political that it is a good thing to repress knowledge among the people, and to keep them in ignorance. It is only from the ranks of professed Christianity that discordant voices are to be heard exclaiming against the establishment of any system of national education in which their own particular religious views and opinions are not incorporated. They act upon the principle that it is better that children be left to grow up in ignorance and vice than that they should be educated and 4 1"How unfriendly all ecclesiastical bodies have been to the spread of education everybody knows."-(HERBERT SPENCER.) " A Parish Minister," in a recent pamphlet, speaks of the " speeches which one is accustomed to hear in the synods and assemblies of the Presbyterian churches," as being characterised by a "determination to undervalue the increase of knowledge except it has the ecclesiastical brand, and to bar the entrance of light, except it passes through the well-known coloured windows;" a" timid anxiety that the battle with ignorance and vice should be fought under certain conditions supposed to be necessary for the safety of religion," and a "distrust of the power of truth to hold its own against every form of error, and to commend itself without extraneous patronage to the hearts of men."—(The Religious Difficulty in the Education Question, 1872.) 2" Science and religion are said to be antagonists, and the most inveterate opposers of . . . liberal education are the professed defenders of faith.”—(J. A. LANGFORD.) Many estimable men, undoubtedly benevolent, but narrow in understanding and rigid in temper, will rather see millions die in starvation than help in distributing among them loaves that are not baked in their oven, and are not crossed with their mark." "To all men of ordinary intelligence and of unsectarian feeling the obstructions thrown in the way of popular education are causes at once of grief, of irritation, of amazement, and of humiliation also.”—(ISAAC TAYLOR: Ultimate Civilization) 66 3"You cannot go anywhere without hearing a buzz of more or less confused and contradictory talk on this subject (i.e., education); nor can you fail to notice that on one point, at any rate, there is a very decided advance upon like discussions in former days. Nobody outside the agricultural interest now dares to say that education is a bad thing. If any representative of the once large and powerful party which in former days proclaimed this opinion still exists in a semi-fossil state, he keeps his thoughts to himself."(Professor HUXLEY.) 4" Men let the people grow up in ignorance and almost consequent sin, because they insist that questions on which they cannot agree, and never will agree, should form a part of such education." (J. A. LANGFORD.) "We cannot have the true religion of each sectary, and at the same time avoid infringing on the rights of conscience. And were it even possible, ... it would be impolitic and unwise.”—(Dr. S. DAVIDSON.) |