or Peter," which means a "rock;" and on this rocklike steadfastness of principle, this memorable adherence to truth, the Saviour intends to build his Church. God will not own a Church that totters at every zephyr which antichrist or infidelity may breathe. The Son of God would be ashamed of a race of imbecile followers, whose reading and thinking must be superintended by a government functionary. We must make every human being a "Peter," a "rock" " in religion; and this is not so difficult as some imagine. It was from the "incertum vulgus " that the Saviour chose his Peters, and doubtless it was this fact that made him exclaim, "I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and revealed them unto babes." It was a fine specimen of what truth could do for fishermen, peasants, and operatives. The boldness of Peter and John struck more terror into the chief priests and elders than even their miracles; and especially when it was seen that they 66 were unlearned and ignorant men," the consternation of their foes was complete. The men were from the common people; they belonged to the masses; and yet they could talk, and would talk, and no one could frighten or seduce them; and what was worse than all, they talked truth. It was easier to move a rock than to move them. Dungeons, stripes, racks, and bribes, had no power to shake their principles or constancy. All the apparatus of torture which political or ecclesiastical inquisitors could invent were powerless. It would have been as easy to split a rock with a feather as to move these sturdy minds from the Gospel. Truth had so embodied itself in their thoughts, and amalgamated itself with their principles, that it had imparted to their souls its own invincible and eternal attributes of stability and firmness. It may be said that these were minds formed under peculiar and favourable auspices, and that it would be folly to expect any successors to these apostles, especially from among the masses. But it should be observed, that it was truth that made them what they were; their minds had been imbued with the Gospel, and God the Spirit had written it upon their hearts. Now, we have the same truth; we have similar minds to which we can impart it; in fact, we have all the youthful population inviting us to write God's Word on their hearts, and we have the Holy Spirit waiting to deepen the impression, and render it perpetual as eternity. The question is not how the truth was imparted to the fishermen, but can it be imparted to mankind now? "God has spoken at sundry times and in divers manners:" sometimes he made use of visions and revelations; sometimes he spoke by angels; and, last of all, he spoke by his Son but the design, in each case, was to implant his word in the human soul. Having completed the canon of Scripture, miraculous means are used no longer. Human instrumentality in teaching the truth is now to accomplish what was formerly done by inspiration; and the result in each case may be the same. Truth imparted to the mind by inspiration was inoperative to salvation, unless attended with the sanctifying influences of the Holy Spirit, as was the case with Balaam. It is one thing to see and another to feel the Gospel. The Word of God made clear to children by our Sunday-school teachers, and accompanied by divine influence, may raise up men and women from the masses quite as valiant for the truth, and as proof against error, as were the apostles. To render the whole population thus fixed in right principles, "thus rooted and grounded in the truth," "thus exercised to discern both good and evil," is the perfection of education: nor is it Utopian to anticipate such a result. Already we have beheld not only the disciples of our Lord, but many thousands of operatives and peasants, who are thus firm and enlightened. It is a goodly sight to see the Puseyite priest, with his college learning and Jesuitical sophistry, confuted and floored by a fev plain arguments drawn by the peasant's wife from the Word of God. I have seen this done. It is one of the most glorious sights on earth to behold "the enemy and the avenger stilled by these babes and sucklings." The skill of the clown and the operative, when armed with truth, in demolishing the strongholds of error, impiety, and infidelity, is a consummation on which angels look down with ecstasy. Nothing is more common than for these contemptible Davids to prostrate the most gigantic foes with a sling and a stone, and decapitate them with their own sword. In such minds we have a Christian police and an evangelical bulwark, compared with which all the government functionaries in the world for the protection of orthodoxy are mere men of straw. What is thus done in one case may be effected in all; and when we have all the people thus able to detect error and defend the truth, then we shall have an educated people, but not till then. Such readers will know how to choose "the good and refuse the evil;" and, by refusing to purchase or peruse what is impure or antichristian, will put an end to all profane and irreligious publications, without the intervention of a censor of the press. Much has already been done towards the attainment of this object. Scriptural and scientific tuition has refined the taste of numbers of the people, and, as a consequence, the silly books and ballads of former years are becoming obsolete; while there is a steady and increasing demand for the works of the "Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge," for | and everlasting contempt,"― compels the "Chambers's invaluable "Educational culprit spontaneously to exclaim" Who Course," the publications of "The Religious Tract Society," and especially for Bibles. All this has been effected under very limited means of instruction, and amidst much apathy on the one hand, and opposition on the other; and therefore it is only for us to employ a more efficient mode of tuition, and bring it to bear upon the whole population, and then we shall have an educated people; a race of enlightened readers, who will, by their rejection of impiety and error, annihilate all the profanity and irreligion by which the press has been desecrated. 12. Man is to live for ever, and his eternal happiness or misery depends upon the manner in which he is educated in this world. The Scriptures very plainly intimate to us, that man is to carry with him into eternity the character he wore on earth, and is to exist in that character for ever. Death produces no moral or spiritual change in the soul; indeed, it is only the separation of the earthly from the unearthly part of our nature. It is the putting off of this clay tabernacle, for the body is the only part that is subject to death. At present, the soul is clothed in garments of flesh, and the spirit is invisible; but in death, we throw off these corporeal vestments, and become transparent spirits, and enter a world inhabited by minds as transparent as our own. But we shall carry with us into that land of souls the lineaments of earth. The body has no character of its own, all character belongs to mind. It is on the heart that truth or error, religion or impiety, writes its laws, and traces its image; and at death these features become fixed, and the soul is stamped for eternity. Nothing can be more awful than the thought of seeing the naked soul of a sinner, ulcerated with crime, blackened with guilt, and rendered disgusting by every moral deformity. Perhaps three score years and ten had been wasted in tattooing it for eternal infamy; and every obscene and disgusting feature that sin or Satan could devise has been indelibly traced on the spirit. With what horror such a soul must thrill as it first beholds its own moral deformities rendered transparent in the pure light of divine holiness and benevolence. The instinctive anticipation of what is about to take place makes the dying sinner shrink back with indescribable anguish from the thought of such an exposure. Not unfrequently in the last moments, conscience, which had seemed to slumber for years, awakes and prepares for her everlasting vocation, and, as she presents her register of the past, becomes most alarmingly prophetic of the future. The deep silence that precedes the tempest is not a thousandfold so portentous as these forebodings of the dying sinner. To be exposed, and despised for ever,-" to awake to shame among us shall dwell with devouring fire?— who among us shall dwell with everlasting burnings?" Milton represents Lucifer as horror-struck when he came to the gates of the bottomless pit and beheld Sin and Death, the two miserable disgusting forms which sat at its portals; and more so still, when they claimed him as their progenitor. The picture is finely drawn, and seems intended to impress us with the sentiment that there is something so base, so foul, so abominable in crime, that even the fallen and polluted soul of the archfiend thrilled and sickened at the thought of being branded with the infamy of being its author. Men in this world talk of human merit, and dare insinuate against the justice which dooms iniquity to everlasting banishment from heaven; but it is only on earth that such language is heard; for no sooner do the unbelieving and the unholy enter eternity, and behold themselves in the light of divine purity, than they are smitten with the keenest sense of their desert; and hell would be deemed an asylum, would it only hide them in its darkness from the torture of being exposed, even in an assembly of fellow transgressors. The Now, it should be remembered, that remorse in the world to come is nothing but the biting corroding remembrance of what was done in this life. Every moral lineament which shall adorn or disfigure the soul for eternity must be drawn on earth; and thus to stamp it with its everlasting character is the prerogative of education. real, the essential tuition of every human being, is that which gives to the mind its permanent character. When an ancient was questioned on the reason of bestowing so much pains on his work, his reply was, "I paint for eternity." Well would it be for us all if this sentiment never forsook our minds! We are all thinking, feeling, talking, and acting for eternity. It is not wonderful that our Lord said, "For every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give an account in the day of judgment." The influence of our speech and our actions on ourselves and others may be indelible. It is not merely in the school, or the sanctuary, that persons are receiving impressions which are to live for ever; but in the street, in the factory, in the harvest-field, or hop-yard; in the mine, in the alehouse, the theatre, or the racecourse, the minds of mankind are receiving those sentiments which will shed their influence over the endless duration of their being. We are always at school, and the lessons we are learning have the most important bearing on our destiny. And, as stated above, this education begins in the cradle, and therefore what a responsibility is attached to the tuition of the young, and what a scene of neglect the world at present but the labourers are few." In the days of the Redeemer, the field presented to him was very extensive; but ever since his time the prospect has been enlarging, and never was there such an open door as is set before We now want nothing but persons us. exhibits! God has given us all the means of | habitations." "The harvest truly is great, imparting to the human family the most refined and virtuous education; and yet we have allowed minds to grow up around us in ignorance and depravity! We have permitted the soul, that offspring of Jehovah, to be polluted and degraded far below the brutish part of creation, and indeed to be assimi-willing to go up and take possession of the lated to demons. Multitudes in this de- land. "Other men have laboured," and we graded state infest our country, and crowds have only to "enter into their labours." thus unsanctified are continually entering Patriarchs, prophets, apostles, and martyrs, the world of spirits, and passing to their have not lived and died in vain. The long home. The gate of death is never dearest birthrights we now enjoy, cost them shut; it never can close its portals; the their lives and their blood; and we shall stream of mortality is so great, and the tor- be unworthy to be associated with them in rent so incessantly flowing, that not a mo- heaven, if we neglect to take possession of ment elapses without numbers of our race the inheritance and cultivate the field which quitting this life, and joining those disem- they purchased at so dear a rate, and bebodied spirits who are already in happiness queathed to our fidelity. The Saviour has or misery. And all that perish have been told us that, if we reap the harvest which fitted for perdition in this world; and human they prepared for us, we shall gather "fruit agency has been chiefly employed in bring- to life eternal," and then, in that world of ing about this tremendous result. For even glory, the prophets and martyrs "who Satan works by the instrumentality of man, sowed," and we "who reaped, shall rejoice and occupies our race in destroying one together." another. These thoughts invest education with infinite importance and responsibility. If we refuse to "make disciples of all nations," then every victim of our apathy or neglect must perish for ever. We fear that our churches at present are deeply stained with the blood of souls. We hope presently to show that nothing can be carried on at so little expense as the tuition of the masses. But were the cost a hundred times more than what at present is actually requisite, yet there is no lack of wealth to meet every demand. It is not for the want of money, for the want of books, for the want of liberty, or the want of a people willing to be instructed, that the nation is in its present degraded condition, but solely for the want of will and exertion on the part of the church. No one who weighs these matters in the balances of the sanctuary can look at the rich without feeling the most awful forebodings for the future. To be greeted in another world by the lost spirits of their poor brethren and sisters, whom they allowed to "perish for lack of knowledge," will be no common doom. For there is not a town, a city, or a village in the country, but might have been raised to the highest state of mental and moral excellence, by the employment of a small portion of that wealth which was wasted on the brute creation, spent in luxury and crime, or allowed to gather that rust which will be a swift witness against its possessors. We have "the fields white unto harvest," the whole youthful population is actually waiting to be gathered to church; and as soon as we please, we can "make out of the mammon of unrighteousness friends who will be ready to receive us into everlasting There is something very inspiring in the thought of "gathering fruit to life eternal," and of sharing the reward with such persons as Moses, Isaiah, the apostle Paul, and other labourers who have preceded us in this work. We just now saw that multitudes, by an unholy education, are being fitted to be the companions of demons; but there is another view we must take of the subject: if tuition can fit the soul for perdition, it can also train man for glory; and every individual thus saved is so much "fruit gathered to life eternal." It will be no common pleasure to meet in that happy state those "friends" whom we "made out of the mammon of unrighteousness." What is the value of all those objects for which men "rise early and late take rest," for which the worldling toils, the ambitious man pants, and the soldier dies, compared with the honour of " turning a sinner from the error of his way, of saving a soul from death, and hiding a multitude of sins?" Who would not rather be Paul the apostle than Alexander the Great? Williams the martyr than Julius Cæsar? Moffat than Nelson? The meanest Sabbath-school teacher that brings a soul to Christ is greater than Wellington. There is something exquisitely beautiful in the following lines which, it is said, Moffat inscribed in a lady's album: "My album is the savage breast, Where darkness broods, and tempests rest To write the name of Jesus there, Is my supreme delight." We have millions of albums waiting to be thus inscribed with the name of Jesus, and if we do not imprint the name of the Redeemer there, Satan will write his. The population that is rising up around us, and will soon take our places and direct the affairs of the world, must be either the subjects of the Prince of Life or of the Prince of Darkness; and the course they will take, and the service they will adopt, must be decided by education. If believers do their duty, they will be the Lord's. We can consecrate all the talent of the young to the Cross, for we have God's truth to inscribe on their hearts, the promised presence of the Lord Jesus to aid us in our work, and the assurance that the Holy Spirit will crown our labours with success. God's "word shall not return unto him void, but it shall accomplish that which he pleases, and shall prosper in the thing whereunto he has sent it." Some are hardly able to reconcile this declaration with the past history of Christian exertion, and therefore give to the text a modified interpretation, and seem to speak of the promise as an exaggeration, and protest against its being literally fulfilled. But it should be remembered that we have never as yet imbued the whole population with the word of God. Churches and chapels are not schools for children; preachers are not schoolmasters, nor always teachers; and sermons are not daily lessons of instruction, and frequently not at all adapted to inform the minds of the young or illiterate. Sunday-schools, of which we will speak more hereafter, must of necessity be limited in their influence. The time allotted to tuition, the qualifications of many of the teachers, and the counteracting effects of unholy examples and associations during the week, prove great drawbacks from the good that might otherwise be anticipated from these excellent institutions. A very brief review of what we have done for the education of the people, and of what is necessary to be done, to give to the youthful mind a clear apprehension, not only of Scriptural doctrine, but of any other subject which it behoves them to know, will demonstrate that there is nothing marvellous in the ignorance that abounds. Repetition is mental engraving, and the infant mind especially must have "line upon line, line upon line, precept upon precept, precept upon precept, here a little and there a little," but we have never thus engraved the truth on the hearts of the young. Except among the Jews, there has rarely been, since the patriarchs, any attempt at the universal education of a whole population in the truths of Scripture. A great part of the tuition we have professed to give has neither been understood by teachers nor scholars. Many of our catechisms could hardly have imparted less information if they had been repeated in Arabic. The most suitable means that could have been devised have been employed, to render the people rude, vulgar, and irreligious. They have been early robbed of their natural guardians, they have been denied day-schools, or those provided have been schools of ignorance, rather than of knowledge, and even from these they have been torn at seven or eight years of age, and then have been doomed to herd with everything low, vulgar, and antichristian, and consequently they have had the very best training for demoralizing them that even Satan could desire. We have then as yet done little towards fitting the immortal nature of man either to dwell on earth or be happy in eternity. Every view we take of the human soul demonstrates that it was created and sent into this world to be educated in the truth; and almost every fact in history proves that this duty has been awfully neglected. The millions to whom this cruel indifference has proved fatal, is heart-sickening to contemplate; but surely we ought now to say to the destroying angel, “It is enough, stay now thine hand;" and, by furnishing the country, and indeed the world, with schools and proper instructors, to banish ignorance, irreligion, superstition, unbelief, and immorality from the earth. CHAPTER IV. 8. Obstacles that have hitherto impeded or prevented Education. 1. The want of knowledge. 2. Want of books. 3. Deficiency of suitable teachers. 4. Want of schoolrooms. 5. Restraints on liberty. 6. Erroneous views of man. 7. Military ambition and war. The physical condition of the people unfavourable to education. 9. Erroneous views respecting the necessity and effects of education. 10. Errors respecting conversion. 11. Want of philanthropy. 12. Counteracting influences. FROM what has been advanced in the preceding chapters, it has been seen that the mind of man was made to be educated, but that little has hitherto been done to call forth his mental powers and give them a proper direction; we will now proceed to point out a few of those obstacles which have prevented or impeded this important undertaking. 1. The want of knowledge has been an insuperable obstacle. Until Bacon arose, philosophy made very little progress. Nature can only be known by observation and experiment. The ancients had but little apparatus for the latter, and seemed quite as much disposed to theorize and speculate as to employ the former. Almost every sage had some new theory to propose, and there arose nearly as many systems as there were professors of philosophy. Hence, nothing could be fixed. Every one came to nature with a creed already formed, and thus ut The terly unprepared to be her disciple. systems of philosophy of former days were little more than the foolish or fascinating fictions of their founders, and were as various as the imaginations of their authors. The philosophy of fancy is not the philosophy of nature, and must be as fickle as the human mind, and therefore as capricious and unsettled. The knowledge of the ancients was not science, and was very limited. There may have been as many ideas then as now, for their imaginations were exuberant and their languages copious, but then there were few of their opinions that were correct. The world in which their minds expatiated was one of their own fancy, and not the real universe. Of God, of creation, providence, and redemption, of the true principles of morality and religion, of the body and soul of man, of the rights of every human being, of time and eternity, they knew little. In philosophy, divinity, and morality, in civil economy and religion, they were wrong; and therefore it was utterly impossible for them to educate the world. It would be vain to look for any correct system of national education in Egypt, in Babylon, in Greece, Rome, Arabia, China, India, or any other part of the world; the science necessary for such a work was not in existence among them. Without the knowledge which observation, history, philosophical experiment, and revelation supply, it is utterly impossible to educate mankind aright. Hence, it may perhaps be affirmed without any fear of being deemed rash, that the present is the only age tolerably qualified to lead the people into the truth. We are now fast arriving at the conclusion that in history, fact; in philosophy, nature; in religion, the Bible, must be our only guides. Creeds, which generally speaking are only the rude skeletons of truth or error, as the case may be, are growing unpopular, and men are resolved to drink of the pure stream of science furnished by facts, nature, and revelation. Here we have principles fixed and eternal as the throne of God; and imbued with these, that fickle thing, the human mind, must become "rooted and grounded in the truth;" dissension must be banished from the world, and universal harmony established. In this uniformity there will be no monotony; because the facts which history, nature, and the Bible unfold are so various, that every onward step in this study of these departments of knowledge is an introduction to a new scene of novelty and wonder. Now until the mental guides of the people have their own minds imbued with correct ideas, it is utterly impossible for them to teach their disciples the good and the right way. Being wrong themselves, they must of necessity lead others astray also. Pilate probably looked with sovereign contempt upon the Redeemer when he testified that his mission into this world was "to bear witness to the truth." "What is truth?" said the pagan; and we hardly wonder at his scepticism, for while every philosopher announced himself the sole harbinger of truth, yet such contradictory opinions were promulgated by these sages, that men began to despair of ever being instructed in anything but fiction. All the schools of antiquity were wrong, and consequently were in that state of vacillation which naturally belongs to error. Their history was polluted with fiction; their philosophy was little more than the inventions of fancy; their theology was a tissue of absurd fables; their religion was the most irrational superstition, and their morality knew nothing of universal equity and universal benevolence, and therefore it was impossible for them to educate the masses and raise them to their proper dignity as rational and accountable creatures. 2. Books were wanting. Real education cannot be conducted without books. We can none of us live in all ages, visit all places, nor prosecute every kind of philosophical experiment. In the acquisition of knowledge a division of labour is of infinite importance. The traveller can visit distant countries, and in a few pages can condense the information which would cost us a large amount of labour, time, and property to obtain by our own exertions. The philosopher can employ his apparatus and compel nature to reveal her secrets, and then in a few lines can make known to us what he may have toiled whole days and watched through many a weary night to discover. The historian of past ages enables us to converse with the men and women of former ages, and thus makes us acquainted with valuable facts, which, but for his pen, had been buried in oblivion. Then there is a large store of invisible and spiritual truth, essential to the perfection of our minds, but hidden from our senses, and would have remained for ever concealed from the world but for revelation. Nothing then is more evident than that we cannot have correct knowledge with which to imbue the minds of the masses, unless we have books. Now in ancient days there were few writers, and, for want of printing, few cheap books. At the present time there could be more volumes published in one year than could have been written in a thousand years by the scribes of antiquity. Unhappily many of them had but little truth to tell; but if all the resources of history, science, and revelation had been at their disposal, it would have been next to impossible for them to have inscribed them in their manuscripts, and have given a copy to every human being. But we can do this. We have in this country alone all the means necessary to give to every individual on the face of the earth a Bible. Supposing the population of the world to be one thousand |