LIBRARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. 
 Received TLcttfrv lQ , 189 
 
 ^Accessions No. ^ Q I48 3 . Class No. 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2007 with funding from 
 
 Microsoft Corporation 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/christianeducatiOOcurrrich 
 
CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
 
 FIVE LECTURES 
 
 DELIVERED 
 
 BEFORE THE OHIO WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY 
 
 FOUNDATION OF REV. FREDERICK MERRICK 
 
 REV. DANIEL CURRY, LL.D. 
 
 FIRST SERIES. 
 
 NEW YORK: HUNT & EATON 
 
 CI NCI NN A TI; CRANSTON &> STOIVE 
 
 1889 
 
 74^ 09 THB 
 
 [UHIVEESITYj 
 
itf M^3 
 
 !^M 
 
 LC34-I 
 
 Copyright, 1889, by 
 
 HUNT& EATON, 
 
 New York. 
 
(TJKI7BESIT71 
 INT§0T3tJCTf0N. 
 
 THE lectures embraced in the present volume 
 constitute the first series of an annual course 
 provided for by the* liberality of the venerable Rev. 
 Frederick Merrick, ex-president of the Ohio Wes- 
 leyan University. After a long life spent in the 
 service of this institution, he has crowned his ben- 
 efactions by an ample endowment of a foundation 
 for a course of lectures, to be delivered annually in 
 the university, on Experimental and Practical Re- 
 ligion, The following extract from the instrument 
 by which he conveys his entire property to the 
 board of trustees for this purpose, explains the 
 character of this foundation : 
 
 Extract from the agreement of Frederick Merrick and the 
 Trustees of the Ohio Wesley an University. 
 
 " The said Frederick Merrick, believing that the 
 Christian religion tends, above all else, to the eleva- 
 tion of the human race, and that consequently the 
 usefulness of institutions of learning largely depends 
 
4 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 upon the influence of religion prevailing among 
 the teachers and pupils, requires, as tending to this 
 end, that said trustees shall appropriate at least six 
 hundred dollars per annum to secure the delivery of 
 a course of, at least, five lectures before the faculty 
 and students of said university upon Experimental 
 and Practical Religion, each collegiate year after his, 
 the said Frederick Merrick's death ; the lecturer or 
 lecturers to be selected by the faculty of said uni- 
 versity as early as the month of January preceding 
 the collegiate year in which the lectures are to be 
 delivered." 
 
 The founder of this course of lectures expressly 
 desires that the words which he has adopted to in- 
 dicate the range of these lectures shall be under- 
 stood in a broad and comprehensive sense. The 
 term u Experimental Religion" thus understood, 
 contemplates the Gospel not only as a hidden power 
 in the soul, molding the personal character of the 
 believer, but as an overt force in the world, shaping 
 and controlling the institutions of men. And the 
 term " Practical Religion" expresses the formal ap- 
 plication of the doctrines and morals of the Gospel 
 to all the vital issues of the day. Thus understood, 
 the Gospel addresses itself not only to the direction 
 of the outward life of single individuals, but to the 
 
INTRODUCTION. 5 
 
 solution and regulation of the many complicated 
 questions that spring up in the relations of men with 
 one another. Thus all questions involving the 
 evangelical work of the Church, all social move- 
 ments of modern civilization, all questions of the 
 rights and obligations of property and of labor, all 
 questions of government, citizenship, and educa- 
 tion, all questions of freedom of thought and utter- 
 ance, in short, all matters touching on the welfare of 
 men, so far as these matters stand related to the 
 Gospel of Christ, come within the proper scope of 
 these discussions. 
 
 The lecturers on this foundation have accordingly 
 a wide field before them, including whatever the 
 Christian religion, as a recognized factor, has done, 
 historically, or, by its nature and design, can prop- 
 erly be expected to do, in the world. 
 
 The lectures provided for on this foundation were 
 intended to begin only after the founders death. 
 But as it was his desire that the first course should 
 be delivered by his life-long friend, the Rev. Daniel 
 Curry, D.D., then already well advanced in years, 
 it was so arranged, at the private expense of the 
 founder of the course. The volume before us is the 
 result of this wise forethought. Doctor Curry's 
 
6 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 sudden death shortly after leaves these lectures 
 almost his last service to the Church. 
 
 It is proper to announce here that before this 
 volume has met the public eye, the second course of 
 lectures on this foundation will have been delivered, 
 under the same auspices, by the venerable ex-Pres- 
 ident McCosh, of Princeton University, and will 
 soon be published in a companion volume. 
 
 W. G. Williams. 
 
 Ohio Wesleyan University, 
 
 Delaware, O., March i, 1889. 
 
Christian Education. 
 
 i. 
 
 CHRISTIAN EDUCATION-INTRODUCTORY AND GENERAL. 
 
 THE subject of Christian Education is a very 
 broad one, and it has received the attention of 
 a very great number of learned and judicious writers. 
 We come to it, therefore, without the hope of awak- 
 ening interest and gaining attention by novel or 
 startling announcements. The importance of the 
 subject will, however, justify the reiteration of its 
 great truths ; and the relations to the subject in 
 all its practical conditions of those whom we are to 
 address may be relied upon as a pledge of an inter- 
 ested hearing. The wide extent of the subject, and 
 the abundance of its matter, render necessary a 
 rather broad and therefore general treatment of the 
 matters in hand, which, of course, must exclude any 
 fullness of details which would otherwise be desir- 
 able because of their practical utility ; even from 
 among the more general features of the subject with 
 which we must deal only a few can be selected 
 
8 CHRISTIAN EDUCATION. 
 
 for use. Some of these will be given in the succes- 
 sive lectures. But, as a pioneer, the work assigned to 
 the present lecturer is chiefly to prepare the way for 
 those that shall follow ; and while it is our high 
 privilege to enjoy a priority in time and sequence 
 in the series of annual discussions of this all-impor- 
 tant theme, we must depend on what shall be done 
 by our successors for all that shall make that priority 
 an honorable position. We doubt not, however, 
 that we shall be heard patiently and judged candidly. 
 We ask no more. 
 
 Coming to speak in this presence, as we now do 
 at your summons, on the very extensive subject of 
 Christian Education, with which large and fruitful 
 theme we are to be exercised, it may be well to 
 begin with a rapid survey of the situation and its 
 environments. We are met as an association brought 
 together for the one ruling purpose of giving and 
 receiving education. But this general design is here 
 to be ostensibly prosecuted for certain well-ascer- 
 tained purposes and by definitely-appointed meth- 
 ods. We must, therefore, take due cognizance 
 of the scope of our appointed work and the agen- 
 cies employed, together with their religious intend- 
 ments and the ecclesiastical relations in which we 
 stand. Our discussions, and the conclusions to which 
 we may come, must all be in harmony with these 
 
INTRODUCTORY AND GENERAL. 9 
 
 conditions, and they must be so ordered as to 
 answer to their requirements. 
 
 We shall be concerned with the general subject 
 of education only within the restrictions imposed 
 by these conditions. The subject-matter to be 
 handled must fall within the specific designation 
 Christian, implying that the kind of education now 
 to be considered must be of the Christian type. 
 Standing among the appointments and appliances 
 of this seat of learning, we should also be not un- 
 mindful of its paternity and its history, which have 
 determined its purposes and dictated its methods. 
 Our relations to the Church, and to society at large, 
 must enter into the account, and, to some extent, 
 give direction to our discussions. 
 
 To receive and to impart instruction is the life- 
 long occupation of every rational being, and this 
 work is quickened and intensified in proportion as 
 men rise in intellectual and moral power. But, be- 
 cause childhood and youth constitute the specially 
 receptive period of life, young people are usually 
 contemplated as eminently the proper subjects of 
 education. The ancient Greeks called the whole 
 work of education naideta, which in various com- 
 binations survives in our own language, always 
 retaining its original meaning, and so clearly imply- 
 ing that youth is pre-eminently the time of life in 
 
10 CHRISTIAN EDUCATION. 
 
 which the processes of education must be chiefly 
 effectuated. By both his mental character and his 
 conditions the child becomes a learner, and his char- 
 acter and career in after life are usually effectually 
 and finally determined by what is learned in his 
 youth. And accordingly, by the provisions of 
 nature, and also by the positive law of God, the 
 simplest and the most sacred of the social institutions 
 is founded on relations that carry with them the 
 opportunities requisite for giving, and the obliga- 
 tions to receive, instruction. The family is the 
 oldest, and always the most sacred, of human asso- 
 ciations ; it is also greater than any other in its 
 capabilities for good. This, on the human side, 
 becomes by natural stages the tribe and the nation, 
 the State; and on the Godward side it becomes the 
 Church of the living God, " of whom the whole 
 family in heaven and earth is named. " In the 
 family the child receives the primary lessons that 
 usually go with him through life, and effectually 
 determine his character and destiny; and to this the 
 work of the school is principally auxiliary and sup- 
 plementary. So, too, the organic Church springs 
 naturally from the family, in which, indeed, the 
 church life must begin in respect to both its ordi- 
 nances and its instructions in righteousness. The 
 mind of childhood and youth calls for both intel- 
 
IN TROD UCTOR Y AND GENERAL. 11 
 
 lectual and spiritual instruction, and only by the 
 harmonious blending of these can its development 
 be saved from one-sidedness and deformity; and 
 therefore any properly-ordered system of education 
 must unite these two elements. These thoughts 
 seem to be recognized and emphasized in the things 
 among which we are standing. Their implied re- 
 quirements should also be practically and effectively 
 regarded. 
 
 It is to be presumed that we properly appreciate 
 the demands which our position makes upon us, 
 and that we cheerfully accept the resultant obliga- 
 tions. We are Christians both from convictions 
 and associations ; and as educators, our work must 
 be conformed to the requirements of that fact ; and 
 if so, the instructions that we give will be positively 
 and distinctively Christian. We are also specifically 
 Methodists — a fact that should not be permitted to 
 lose its significance ; and while holding firmly, in 
 common with many others, the great catholic veri- 
 ties of the Gospel, we also emphasize our apprecia- 
 tion of a subjective religious life and experience, to 
 be demonstrated in an earnest evangelistical propa- 
 gandism. Our form of faith is that of Paul, of 
 Luther, and of Wesley ; and of this last, who com- 
 bined in his own life, and in complete harmony, 
 large intellectual acquirements and a broad and 
 
12 CHRISTIAN EDUCATION. 
 
 deep spiritual culture, our institution bears the 
 honored name. It should be our constant concern 
 that all which that name suggests shall be realized 
 and made practically effective among us. 
 
 We set out with the concession to ourselves and 
 our profession to the Christian public, that accord- 
 ing to our view secular learning constitutes only a 
 part, and that not the most considerable, of a well- 
 rounded education ; and we are also well aware that 
 without some good degree of mental training and 
 enrichment, the spiritual development is very likely 
 to be disproportioned, and the religious life neither 
 symmetrical nor wholesome. We do well, therefore, 
 to conjoin the two sides of the common whole in 
 order to raise up a generation of richly-endowed, 
 sturdy, and cultured Christian scholars ; devout 
 men of letters, scientists whose open vision will 
 not fail to find the foot-prints and the hand-marks of 
 the Creator in his works, and statesmen who shall 
 guide affairs in righteousness. The world waits to 
 see the coming of such a race, which shall combine 
 the most luxurious growth of both moral and 
 intellectual greatness with the deepest religious 
 experience and the most earnest and active conse- 
 cration in doing good. Only as they exist and be 
 carried on for the accomplishment of these ends can 
 the action of the Church in founding and maintain- 
 
INTRODUCTORY AND GENERAL. 13 
 
 ing such institutions be justified. Their reason to 
 be is bound up with their earnest purpose to 
 accomplish their specific and much-to-be-desired 
 work. 
 
 After such an appreciation of the object to be 
 reached, the next, and scarcely less important quali- 
 fication of the teacher is a just conception of the 
 needs and the possibilities of the subjects of his 
 instructions and of the character and scope of the 
 lessons to be given to them. The efforts of both 
 teachers and pupils should be steadily directed 
 toward clearly-apprehended ideals, the realization 
 of which should be kept in view and earnestly 
 striven after. These ideals must embody the best 
 style of manhood, in character and conduct ; and 
 we shall all agree in saying that such a character 
 must be definitely and thoroughly Christian. The 
 conviction must be firmly fixed in our minds and 
 hearts that the business of our Christian institutions 
 of learning, and of our Christian education, is to 
 produce, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit 
 and the direction of the word of God, well-rounded 
 and matured Christian characters, and by their 
 multiplication to reconstruct society according to 
 the principles of the Gospel. We place before our 
 thought the nascent intellect, with its vacuity of 
 knowledge, but with large potentialities ; the germ 
 
14 CHRISTIAN EDUCATION. 
 
 which, rightly cultivated, will certainly become a 
 large and productive and beautiful plant. This is 
 mind in embryo, which, by its normal unfolding and 
 growth, is to determine the value of the work of in- 
 struction. The wise teacher knows that this is to 
 be done, not by a monstrous or disproportionate 
 development of some one faculty, but by the sym- 
 metrical education of the whole, and especially with 
 a just recognition of the value of the moral and relig- 
 ious elements of the character and of its native 
 proclivities to evil. Coming thus to his calling 
 with the requisite knowledge of the subject to be 
 wrought upon, and of the means and methods for 
 doing the work, and having a just conception of the 
 end to be accomplished, the teacher, if at all com- 
 petent to his duties, can scarcely fail in his efforts 
 for the development of noble and worthy char- 
 acters. 
 
 The one and only subject upon which the processes 
 of education are to be performed is the human 
 mind, the rational man, beginning with him in his 
 infantile immaturity. We might speak of the phys- 
 ical man, with his animal life and instincts all tending 
 to completeness ; but for that department of our 
 being Nature itself has made the needful provisions, 
 and only asks to be allowed to complete its work 
 with the least possible interference. The care of 
 
IN TROD UC TOR Y AND GENERAL, 15 
 
 the body is therefore only secondarily and remotely 
 a part of the work of education. Or, we might delay 
 to consider the physical instincts which belong to 
 man in common with all other animals, and all in- 
 terference with which tends not to improve, but to 
 pervert or destroy. But of these we need say nothing, 
 since they require no teaching, but only to be let 
 alone. Mind, in the proper sense of that term, can 
 be predicated only of man, of all the denizens of our 
 world ; and in the human subject it at first appears 
 only as an unrealized potentiality. But, like every 
 other new-born living thing, it has the instincts of 
 growth, which, among possible conditions, certainly 
 reaches out to the consummation of its tendencies. 
 None of the distinctive characteristics of an intelli- 
 gent soul — neither intellect, nor taste, nor conscience 
 — can be predicated of the mind of the new-born 
 infant ; and yet all these are sure to appear in its 
 normal development, unless it shall be effectually 
 dwarfed and depressed, even to monstrosity, by un- 
 favorable environments. Among suitable conditions 
 the seed invariably becomes a plant " after its kind," 
 and the bud unfolds into foliage and fruit ; and so 
 the mind has its ideal possibilities which it instinct- 
 ively seeks to realize, and which are perfected or 
 spoiled according to its opportunities. Its sur- 
 roundings become its effective educating agencies, 
 
16 CHRISTIAN EDUCATION. 
 
 and the subject infallibly attains to knowledge and 
 taste and conscience (the last in both its discrimi- 
 nating and its impulsive qualities) according as it is 
 instructed. And precisely here are the conditions 
 that make education both possible and necessary. 
 The impelling force is the spontaneous struggling 
 of the mind after growth and form; but these tend- 
 encies may be quickened or repressed by extra- 
 neous causes, or their development may be modified 
 so as to fashion the character after the desired 
 model, for more or less and for better or worse. We 
 are speaking, of course, of tendencies which may or 
 may not be realized, but which will in most cases 
 result in accomplished facts. 
 
 To become educated, after some sort or fashion, 
 is the certain destination of every rational being. 
 Even a Casper Hauser, shut up in his dungeon from 
 his birth, and not allowed to see or hear any thing, 
 still gains some notion of the world beyond himself 
 by the senses of touch and taste and smell. But 
 whenever all the senses are permitted to operate 
 freely among suitable conditions, the mind becomes 
 thoroughly awakened to activity, and at length it is 
 stored with ideas. The external world in which he 
 exists is the child's primary school, and, with only 
 the fewest additional aids, also of the untaught sav- 
 age, with whom the principal conditions of child- 
 
IN TROD UC TOR Y AND GENERAL. 17 
 
 hood are continued through his whole life-time. In 
 her teachings Nature deals freely in object-lessons, 
 with the appliances for which her school-rooms 
 are abundantly supplied ; but without the kindly 
 instructions of the living teacher these are only very 
 partially available. The discoveries of modern 
 science demonstrate nothing else so marvelous as 
 the fact that, in the presence of all the phenomena 
 of the material world, even learned men have lived 
 and died, in long lines of successive generations, 
 without seeming to see them, and, of course,' with- 
 out any notion of their significance. To learn to 
 observe and intelligently interpret the things that 
 confront the senses is itself no inconsiderable item 
 of a practical education ; and for this work the help- 
 ful offices of the teacher are necessary. 
 
 The world is a vast museum crowded with objects 
 that potentially illustrate every part of the science 
 of nature, but until comparatively recently most of 
 the things that now so clearly teach the history and 
 philosophy of the material world were as unintelli- 
 gible as the pages of a book written in an unknown 
 tongue. The fault was not in the organs of sense, 
 for these appear to be especially keen and active 
 with the child and the savage, but in the defect of 
 instructed and disciplined aptitudes of mind to per- 
 ceive what is obvious and to interpret Nature's 
 
18 CHRISTIAN EDUCATION. 
 
 teachings. In natural researches men find what 
 they look for ; and they that do not seek will cer- 
 tainly fail to find ; and the same rule applies with 
 but slight modifications in matters of metaphysical 
 and spiritual inquiry. This, indeed, is the basis of 
 the parable of the preacher, " The wise man's eyes 
 are in his head, but the fool walketh in darkness." 
 Every one gifted with a normally-constituted physi- 
 cal system has all the apparatus needed for the ac- 
 quisition of knowledge ; is capable of becoming edu- 
 cated ; and has decided natural tendencies of mind 
 toward the realization of all these possibilities. 
 The senses themselves need no teaching, but the 
 perceptive faculties, by which the offices of the 
 senses are made available, though naturally obtuse 
 and slow of development, may become acute and 
 of wide range by the aid of instruction and disci- 
 pline. The mind, in its primary state, is both empty 
 and helpless till aroused by sensations from without, 
 from which many of its first lessons are received ; 
 and beyond these very simple things it must be led 
 forward by instruction ; and if so guided its possible 
 attainments are practically unlimited. 
 
 The wise educator must, therefore, begin with the 
 recognition of the instinctive tendencies of the mind 
 to unfold itself by virtue of its sense-perceptions 
 and of its resultant subjective conceptions. The 
 
INTRODUCTORY AND GENERAL. 19 
 
 influence of knowledge upon the mind is directly 
 good and wholesome. It increases the soul's capa- 
 bilities, affords it healthful exercise, and by supplying 
 food for thought it invigorates its thinking powers. 
 Truth in the mind, of any kind and respecting what- 
 ever subject, exercises an elevating influence, and 
 therefore it increases the soul's acquired wealth and 
 also its capabilities for both acquiring and appreciat- 
 ing its own stores. The education that is designed 
 to result in a noble and symmetrical character should 
 not fail to build for itself a broad and deep founda- 
 tion, made up of all the knowledge of the schools. 
 The alphabet and the conventional value of its 
 letters, the combination of these to form words 
 to serve as vehicles of thought, and these duly 
 freighted and their burdens borne inward and treas- 
 ured up in the understanding, not only increase its 
 knowledge but develop and enlarge its powers. 
 The intuitions of numbers and quantities, with their 
 combinations and proportions (we call them mathe- 
 matical axioms, which we can neither prove nor 
 doubt), because, unless carefully studied, they 
 cannot proceed beyond the simplest problems, 
 become means of instruction almost exclusively as 
 the kindly offices of the teacher render them avail- 
 able. Though such merely natural knowledge is not 
 of itself sufficient to fashion the character in its 
 
20 CHRISTIAN EDUCATION. 
 
 completeness, its certain tendency and the mind's 
 occupation with its processes are favorable to the 
 development of the very best spiritual aspirations. 
 The wise character-builder, whose ideal is the per- 
 fection of the soul's possibilities, will begin his 
 work at the foundation, since the lessons of primary 
 instruction precede in both the order of time and 
 of natural sequence all that is comprised in higher 
 education. The true conduct of life consists in the 
 right adjustment of the lower with the higher ele- 
 ments of man's nature, and the latter can be held 
 in its proper supremacy only as it is strengthened and 
 furnished for its work. An empty mind, an uncult- 
 ured spirit, is comparatively powerless against the 
 animal impulses, and the body can be kept under 
 only as the mind becomes occupied and employed 
 with higher intellectual and spiritual thoughts and 
 exercises. 
 
 But both our sense-perceptions and our purely 
 intellectual intuitions reach out in their influences 
 beyond simple logical reality ; they tend continually 
 to ally themselves to the aesthetical and the ethical, 
 the sense of beauty and fitness, or their opposites, 
 and of right and wrong in character and conduct. 
 In addition to the logical knowledge that comes to 
 the mind by its perceptions and resultant concep- 
 tions there appear also its likes and dislikes, and 
 
INTRODUCTORY AND GENERAL. 21 
 
 also ethical approvals and disapprovals. The prac- 
 tical instructor must therefore duly recognize these 
 original elements of mind, since any system of edu- 
 cation which fails to accord them their proper con- 
 sideration must be disastrously defective. The 
 mind is one, and in its furniture no truth stands 
 apart and alone; and in all properly-ordered educa- 
 tion there is much more than simply a collection 
 and correlation of facts; but these also extend their 
 influence to and tend to fashion the whole spiritual 
 being. The lessons taught in the schools, even the 
 most abstract and secular, naturally exert a health- 
 ful moral influence (unless perverted by other causes) 
 upon the minds of the learners ; and only in that 
 fact do we find a justification of the policy that the 
 Church shall become the promoter and patron of 
 secular as well as of sacred learning. 
 
 But, before proceeding further, we must return to 
 our former line of thought, which needs to be 
 further pursued and its details elucidated. We 
 have seen that the mind's capacity and appetencies 
 for knowledge are to be responded to by the lessons 
 of instruction. The outward organs supply the re- 
 quired sensations from which proceed the sense- 
 perceptions, and through these the subjective self 
 comes into consciously recognized relations with the 
 objective world. Then the inward thought, the 
 
22 CHRISTIAN EDUCATION. 
 
 mind acting introspectively, is turned toward its 
 own processes, dealing with what has been received 
 from without, mingled with and modified by its 
 own original suggestions. Thus the soul rises into 
 its appropriate sphere of knowledge, which is 
 broader than the farthest stretch of thought, with 
 power in itself to apprehend and appropriate truth. 
 The objective world is now seen standing over 
 against the subjective self, each another than its 
 alternate. And now Casper Hauser is brought out 
 of his dungeon to look upon the sky and the sunlit 
 earth as something quite apart from himself, and 
 with which he must become acquainted. And from 
 this point his increase of knowledge will be only in 
 degree and form, not in kind. Science is one in its 
 essential nature, though its objects, and therefore 
 its forms, are innumerable ; and the pupil that has 
 learned to recognize his own individuality has taken 
 the initial lesson upon which all further learning 
 must be built. 
 
 Consulting the mind's reports of its own active 
 states we are introduced to two other spiritual 
 systems in the soul quite distinct from and inde- 
 pendent of the domain of the merely logical under- 
 standing. In one of these we become aware of cer- 
 tain states of mind which seem to be related to ex- 
 ternal objects, somewhat in the nature of effects and 
 
INTRODUCTORY AND GENERAL. 23 
 
 causes, which give rise to a peculiar form of pleasure 
 and displeasure, of delight and disgust, quite inde- 
 pendent of their external and sensible properties. 
 This capability of the spiritual nature, which is 
 clearly original and ultimate, because it wants a 
 name we designate Taste, and describe it as the 
 aesthetical faculty. By this the conscious spirit be- 
 comes cognizant of the existence of an element in 
 its own being quite different from the logical under- 
 standing, and to which it intuitively assigns a higher 
 place. And since this is an integral element in 
 man's nature it demands appropriate cultivation, in 
 order that the character shall be symmetrically 
 developed ; and in proportion to the proficiency 
 attained in these things will the subject of instruc- 
 tion be raised into a higher plane of life and 
 thought, and his capabilities of receiving and im- 
 parting pleasure will be increased. The aesthetical 
 faculty properly developed and disciplined opens to 
 the soul's consciousness a new and richly-furnished 
 sphere of existence, without the knowledge of 
 which there cannot be completeness of character. 
 
 Of similar characteristics in many particulars, but 
 incomparably more lofty and authoritative, is the 
 ethical element, which manifests itself to the interior 
 consciousness, but which also recognizes its external 
 object ; and this it instinctively invests with all the 
 
24 CHRISTIAN EDUCATION. 
 
 sacred attributes of power and wisdom and essen- 
 tial righteousness ; the reproduction of which in the 
 human soul becomes formulated in the ideas of 
 right and wrong, of duty and responsibility. In- 
 tellectual truth, when consciously manifested, is 
 freely assented to, and no more than that is re- 
 quired. So, too, the beautiful is recognized and 
 valued, but only for itself and the pleasure that it 
 affords. But the sense of right is also a sense of 
 duty, commanding homage and devotion, and the 
 heart instinctively assents to the claim as the most 
 fitting and the duty imposed as paramount. This 
 faculty — we call it the conscience — dominates the 
 whole man, and asserts its authority over not only 
 the conduct of the life, but also and pre-eminently 
 over the inward spirit and intents of the heart. 
 And as this is among the earliest of the mind's in- 
 tuitions, and of perpetual force and obligation, it 
 should be assigned no secondary place in the educa- 
 tion of every rational soul. 
 
 These things suggest what should be the prac- 
 tical work of the educator. He must have some 
 just notion of the capabilities and the wants of the 
 subjects of his teaching, and of the required agencies 
 and methods for doing his work : the fashioning of 
 a character learned, cultivated, and thoroughly 
 conscientious. 
 
INTRODUCTORY AND GENERAL. 25 
 
 Because the beginning of the mind's develop- 
 ment is in the sense-perceptions, the quickening and 
 disciplining of the perceptive faculty is a primary 
 necessity in education. No faculty is capable of 
 a greater increase of its powers, and scarcely any 
 other is so much and so generally neglected ; for 
 most men go through life with only the scantiest 
 knowledge of the things that lie all about them. 
 The external world is a vast lyceum richly provided 
 with the appliances for instruction ; but these be- 
 come available only as they are applied and their 
 nature and action interpreted by those already 
 initiated into their mysteries. Each one sees in the 
 world the things with which he has come to feel an 
 interest, and accordingly the perceptions are affected 
 by the moods and habits of the observer no less 
 than by his purposed attention, and whatever is 
 perceived enters into the mind and becomes its 
 property and furniture. These considerations in- 
 timate to the practical educator what are his work 
 and his opportunities; for as the perceptive faculty 
 is the principal subjective agency by which the 
 mind may be enriched, and because this is especially 
 capable of increase by cultivation, as to both its 
 force and its accuracy, to this should his most care- 
 ful attention be directed. Here the teacher's own 
 ideal becomes especially effective in determining 
 
26 CHRISTIAN EDUCATION. 
 
 what shall be the special subjects of thought and 
 study of his pupils, so that his personal enthusiasm 
 may be reproduced among them. Some good 
 degree of learning — the more of it the better — is in- 
 dispensable for the instructor ; but not less so is pro- 
 fessional enthusiasm in respect to the work in hand, 
 and relative to both the matter of instruction and in 
 its appreciation by his students. The material 
 world, which seems at first to present only a vast 
 collection of isolated objects and facts, on closer ob- 
 servation is found to be pervaded and permeated 
 with a deep and far-reaching philosophy; and as at 
 first it increases our knowledge it also at length dis- 
 ciplines the intellect into a higher style of thought. 
 So, too, in respect to the more spiritual exercises 
 and attainments, our sense-perceptions are our 
 earliest instructors. The world is full of beauty, of 
 which, however, only the few whose eyes have been 
 opened have any adequate notion, while the moral 
 intuitions challenge attention as veritable phenom- 
 ena, which, however, prove effective or otherwise in 
 proportion as they become objects of earnest and 
 interested attention. The first great lesson in prac- 
 tical education is how to observe, which, of course, 
 requires the quickening and the proper direction of 
 the perceptive faculty; and the range of actual ob- 
 servation must be as broad as the mind's possibilities. 
 
INTRODUCTORY AND GENERAL. 27 
 
 The stores accumulated by the sense-percep- 
 tions constitute the raw materials of which the 
 superstructure of learning must be built up, and 
 with which the processes of all educational develop- 
 ment must be conducted. It may be conceded, as 
 we are often reminded, that learning and education 
 are not identical, and that there may be much of 
 the former where there is comparatively little of 
 the latter. But the converse of that proposition is 
 not to be conceded; for learning — a knowledge of 
 things — is a pre-requisite to a broad and liberal edu- 
 cation. Each item of knowledge that enters into 
 the mind has its educating capabilities, and usually 
 a man's culture, as well as his intelligence, holds 
 pretty close relations with his acquaintance with 
 things. Gradgrind's preference for " facts " as the 
 chief element in school instruction was not, therefore, 
 necessarily so absurd or altogether wrong as it is 
 sometimes assumed to be ; for these, stored in the 
 memory, need not be like the hoard of the miser, 
 useless and unavailable lumber, but rather they are 
 the elementary substances which, cast in the crucible 
 of the mind, are wrought out into systems of 
 thought which fashion the soul's thinkings and be- 
 lievings, its sentiments and its whole condition. 
 
 In this preliminary discussion we have purposely 
 only very incidentally and briefly referred to that 
 
28 CHRIS TIAN ED UCA TION. 
 
 which must constitute the principal feature of what 
 must be further considered by us— the religious ele- 
 ment in education. We have done this in order, 
 first of all, that the subject of education in all its 
 breadth may be clearly in mind before passing to a 
 single department, though that may be altogether 
 the most important. It is necessary, however, in 
 viewing the untaught mind upon which the proc- 
 esses of education are to be wrought, and while 
 indicating the faculties and susceptibilities to be 
 dealt with, to recognize that element in man's orig- 
 inal nature by virtue of which he may become the 
 subject of religious instruction. That man is, in the 
 depths of his nature, a religious being, is attested 
 by the entire history of the race and by the prac- 
 tices and institutions of mankind in all ages and 
 countries, and in all states and conditions of society. 
 Among the unconscious intuitions of childhood, 
 antedating the earliest logical exercises, is the sense 
 of duty, with the discrimination of right and wrong 
 in both conduct and character ; and this the riper 
 thinking of later years confirms and intensifies. 
 And although these ideas and sentiments are 
 evidently quite independent both of the senses and 
 the reasoning powers it is certain that no others are 
 accompanied by clearer convictions of their essen- 
 tial truthfulness. In philosophical language this is 
 
INTRODUCTORY AND GENERAL. 29 
 
 named the ethical element in the human character; 
 in its relations to men's activities in their social re- 
 lations it is styled the moral ; and when considered 
 in its relations to the supreme object of its devo- 
 tion, whose being it intuitively apprehends, we call 
 it the religious. By virtue of this element in human 
 nature, with its active instincts, the conscious soul 
 not only confesses the claims of duty but delights 
 to respond to them, and it feels the uplifting of its 
 aspirations in worship. And yet, although he is 
 the subject of these intuitions and spiritual suscepti- 
 bilities and aspirations, still every man comes into 
 the world without the knowledge of the only proper 
 Object of devotion, of whom indeed he can have no 
 adequate conception except as he is taught. And 
 in this fact is seen the supreme necessity and im- 
 portance of specifically religious education. 
 
 The child, at his awakening to self-consciousness, 
 detects the ethical elements in his own nature, and 
 instinctively defers to it as the supreme law of life ; 
 and over against this stands the parent, who is to 
 the child in God's stead. The " commandment with 
 promise," which enjoins reverence and obedience to 
 one's father and mother, standing in the sacred 
 decalogue between those that relate directly to God 
 alone and those which impose only social duties, 
 seems to imply that the required obedience is of 
 
30 CHRISTIAN EDUCATION. 
 
 the nature of piety. And the frequent and em- 
 phatic references to it in the Scriptures seem to 
 assume that filial obedience, or the lack of it, in- 
 dicates and hastens the tendency of the child toward 
 goodness of character and devotion of life, or 
 toward sin and impiety. By this divine order the 
 home, with its hallowed associations, is consti- 
 tuted the primary school, the infant-class, and the 
 " kindergarten," in which, according to God's ap- 
 pointment, each one receives his first lessons both in 
 science and religion ; and for this there can be no 
 adequate substitute. And when the child has out- 
 grown his childhood, and a wider field with more 
 varied lessons has become necessary, the school 
 succeeds to the parent's place, often indeed per- 
 forming some of its chief duties very inadequately, 
 but needing to maintain, as far as possible, the 
 authority and the persuasive power of the house- 
 hold. To render this service, at once so important 
 and so difficult, is the special office of our Christian 
 schools. And may we not say, without fear of con- 
 tradiction, that just here we stand among the ap- 
 pliances and conditions for the performance of these 
 duties? 
 
 We have now attempted to bring before our 
 minds the receptive subject upon which the proc- 
 esses of education are to be wrought out — mind at 
 
INTRODUCTORY AND GENERAL, 31 
 
 first without knowledge, yet gifted with large sus- 
 ceptibilities, and surely growing up to demand in- 
 struction and to receive its permanent character by 
 means of its education and discipline. We have 
 labored to show that the complete, the ideal man, 
 must excel in knowledge, in taste, and in virtue, 
 and that practically to realize this character is the 
 great end of Christian education. At another time 
 we will consider more definitely its character and 
 conditions. 
 
32 CHRISTIAN EDUCATION. 
 
 II. 
 
 CHRISTIAN EDUCATION-ITS CHARACTER AND CAPA- 
 BILITIES. 
 
 IN our former lecture, which was designed to be 
 only introductory, we endeavored to bring 
 clearly into view the rational human subject in his 
 formative state as the person upon whom the work 
 of practical education is to be performed. We de- 
 signed in it to give, though briefly and succinctly, a 
 somewhat comprehensive survey and enumeration 
 of his natural capabilities and conditions, by virtue 
 of which an ideal human character might be brought 
 into view. We are now to proceed to a more cir- 
 cumscribed field of inquiry, confining ourselves, 
 for the purpose of greater definiteness of thought 
 and expression, to the capabilities of the mind 
 upon w r hich a specifically Christian education is to be 
 wrought, together with some of the conditions and 
 agencies among which that work must be done. 
 Here we shall have occasion to devote especial 
 attention to the religious possibilities of human nat- 
 ure, of which we said only a very little in what we 
 before noticed ; and while recognizing it as the most 
 significant part of our general subject yet reserving 
 
ITS CHARACTER AND CAPABILITIES. 33 
 
 its fuller and more adequate discussion for the pres- 
 ent time. To that part of our subject we come now 
 to devote the present hour. 
 
 We have definitely recognized the religious ele- 
 ment as an original attribute of the human nature, 
 and assumed that it is distinctively the property in 
 man that renders him capable of being submitted to 
 the processes of a religious education ; we come 
 now to consider more in detail the requirements, 
 the methods, and the results of those processes in 
 their practical operations. We have seen that the 
 religious instincts of the soul make themselves felt 
 at a very early stage of the life of the subject ; they 
 are also among the strongest and most persistent. 
 They project themselves into the life unasked, and 
 they persistently refuse to be repressed. They are 
 found about equally effective among all classes and 
 conditions of men ; the savage and the sage are 
 alike subject to them. They belong about equally 
 to all the periods of the life-time. They manifest 
 their presence before the dawning of reason, and in 
 all after life they are chief factors in shaping the 
 character and actions. They impress the nascent 
 intelligence with the ideas of right and wrong ; and 
 as they reveal themselves without having been 
 learned they are clearly of the nature of intuitions. 
 And out of these arise by the simplest and most 
 3 
 
34 CHRIS TIA N ED UCA T/OJV. 
 
 direct suggestions the notions of duty and responsi- 
 bility ; and because they impel the soul to worship, 
 and to blindly reach out after a suitable object 
 to which its devotions may be rendered, and as the 
 mental vision becomes cleared, they postulate God, 
 the infinite, possessing the essential attributes of 
 personality. 
 
 As with all other intuitions, these are original and 
 ultimate, and they are not subject to the reason 
 except as their reality is recognized ; for they can 
 neither be proved nor doubted, and they are also 
 indestructible. Their teachings may indeed be tem- 
 porarily overborne and obscured by the force of the 
 natural appetites and passions ; but they will come 
 again and assert their place in the consciousness. 
 If left uncared for and uninformed they readily lead 
 to superstition, and in that form degrade the soul 
 to spiritual baseness and lead it to ruinous sub- 
 jections through debasing forms of worship. If, on 
 the other hand, they are resisted, and their resultant 
 impulses suppressed, the whole soul is dwarfed and 
 deformed, and afterward they return again as tor- 
 mentors. 
 
 The first impulse of the religious instinct in man 
 is to worship; and this impulse continues operating 
 with undiminished force in all the subsequent stages 
 of normal spiritual growth. But why it should wor- 
 
ITS CHARACTER AND CAPABILITIES. 35 
 
 ship it neither asks nor answers, for it is not the busi- 
 ness of the instincts to offer reasons for their own be- 
 ing. Nor is it, as is often the case with the instincts, 
 self-directed to its appropriate object. It therefore 
 demands instruction. But if the one supreme and 
 only fitting Object of devotion is not found, the 
 worship, which cannot be restrained, will be given 
 to some inferior Object-creature of the imagination 
 — idols, fetiches — which the fancy clothes with some 
 of the attributes of divinity; and as is the object of 
 worship so is the spiritual estate. A base object of 
 devotion debases the character that is devoted to it. 
 The connection of morality with religion is neither 
 an intuition nor is it the result of any direct instinct- 
 ive tendency of the mind. In most religious sys- 
 tems the ethical element seems indeed to be entirely 
 wanting. No worse crimes have ever been com- 
 mitted than those that have been perpetrated in the 
 name of religion ; and no lower depths of moral deg- 
 radation have ever been reached than have been 
 seen in connection with specifically religious observ- 
 ances. As flagrant illustrations may be named the 
 worship of Bacchus and of Venus among the culti- 
 vated Greeks, the murderous rites of the Thugs of 
 India, the auto-da-fes of the Romanists, and the 
 " blood atonements " of the Mormons. It is there- 
 fore the peculiar and distinguishing honor of the 
 
36 CHRIS TIAN ED UCA T/OJV. 
 
 Christian religion that it makes the purest morality, 
 an ideal exaltation of the ethically good, an impor- 
 tant and essential element of its substance. And in 
 this is seen the indispensable necessity for religious 
 education, in order both to direct the soul's aspira- 
 tions to the essentially good, and to clothe the 
 dictates of righteousness with all the solemn au- 
 thority that is intuitively ascribed to the accepted 
 object of worship. Men need to be taught whom 
 they should worship, what are the attributes that 
 distinguish him, and by what authority he demands 
 that we should be like him in character and life. 
 And in response to this want the God of the Bible 
 has revealed to us both his person and his law; the 
 one to stand forth as the embodiment of all spiritual 
 and moral excellence and the other to dictate our 
 actions, and the two acting together to constitute 
 the best possible provision for religious culture and 
 discipline. 
 
 Conceding, therefore, as we must, the need of a 
 revelation directly from God, and accepting the 
 holy Scriptures in that character, we find in them 
 our sole and all-sufficient guide and instructor in 
 respect to both devotion and duty. Of course it is 
 no part of our purpose, at this point, to set forth 
 the evidences of Christianity, nor to defend the au- 
 thority of the Bible; for although these things be 
 
ITS CHARACTER AND CAPABILITIES. 37 
 
 matters the discussion of which may not be evaded, 
 yet in our present inquiry they must be assumed, 
 for the religious education that we are now advo- 
 cating is specifically Christian, and our Christianity 
 is that of the Bible. 
 
 In the development and growth of man's nature 
 the religious element comes forward side by side 
 with the animal instincts and psychological tenden- 
 cies ; which latter, though not incompatible with 
 the largest increase of the former, are not in har- 
 mony with the requirements of Christianity, which 
 not only claims a place in the mind for the religious 
 instincts, but also demands that these, properly in- 
 structed and divinely regenerated, shall dominate 
 the will and govern the whole life. The demand 
 made by Christianity for the complete and exclus- 
 ive control of its subjects, including at once the 
 thoughts and intents of the heart and the conduct 
 of the life, arrays against it all the selfish impulses 
 and tendencies of the " natural man; " and yet in this 
 exclusiveness is its strength. To obtain and to hold 
 this supreme ascendency of the spiritual over the 
 carnal, the religious over the selfish, is the end of 
 self-discipline, to aid in which is among the best 
 offices of Christian education. 
 
 The instinct to worship makes two important 
 requirements, obedience to which calls for large 
 
88 CHRIS TIAN ED UCA TION. 
 
 subjective readjustments, amounting to a real and 
 thorough transformation of the character. It de- 
 mands that its object shall combine as personal 
 attributes all ideal excellence ; and so it indicates in 
 advance what must be the attributes of its divinity. 
 This, it is true, is often seen only very dimly, and not 
 sufficiently clearly to guide the soul to the apprehen- 
 sion of the truth, and especially so since the moral 
 intuitions are limited in their action by spiritual 
 depravity. And yet these dark feelings after the 
 truth instinctively proceed in the right direction, 
 and intuitively recognize its object when found. 
 No other object of worship than the God of the 
 Bible can answer to the instinctive cravings of the 
 soul ; and yet, although God's holiness is approved 
 by the conscience, still the dominant impulses of 
 the natural man are not in harmony with either his 
 attributes or his commandments. 
 
 And yet this instinct confesses, and indeed re- 
 quires, that its object should be in every thing su- 
 preme, and that the heart and the life should be 
 subjected to it. But over against this stands the 
 man's own will, claiming the supremacy. Thus there 
 is found a schism, a disharmony in the soul, which as 
 life progresses inevitably grows into an active hostil- 
 ity : " the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the 
 Spirit against the flesh, and these are contrary the 
 
ITS CHARACTER AND CAPABILITIES. 39 
 
 one to the other." And since the demands of the con- 
 science are imperative, and may not be compromised, 
 their preference above all others is a pre-requisite 
 to the soul's peace. This enthronement of the 
 spiritual over the sensuous and natural in man is 
 designated in Holy Scripture, "being born again;" 
 in theological terminology it is called " regenera- 
 tion ; " but we are now to speak of it as the outcome 
 of the education of the spiritual man. This work, 
 as to its outward aspects, begins with the reception 
 of spiritual truth by the understanding, when it at 
 once demonstrates its quickening power; for " the 
 entering in of God's word bringeth light," and 
 shows the conscious soul its own needs. It also dis- 
 plays its authority, and commands obedience both 
 of character and of life. Christian discipleship is a 
 pre-requisite to Christian education, which becomes 
 effectual only under the "yoke" of Christ, borne 
 and worked in, which is the divinely designated 
 method of learning of him, and of coming into that 
 state of spiritual harmony that there shall be " rest 
 to the soul." This dominance of the depraved self- 
 will is called, in the language of the schools, " de- 
 pravity ; " legally, it is "rebellion;" ethically and 
 spiritually, and as related to the divine Law-giver, 
 it is sin. 
 
 In nearly all practical education the negative proc- 
 
40 CHRIS TIAN ED UCA TION. 
 
 esses are scarcely less important than the positive; 
 and especially in religious education to unlearn is 
 no less needful than to acquire new thoughts and 
 better methods of thinking. New habitudes of 
 min J and heart, a reconstruction of the spiritual 
 self, are the conditions, both prevenient and subse- 
 quent, of effective Christian education. • 
 
 Passing now, in our inquiries, from the inward and 
 subjective side of our theme to the outward and 
 practical, we may next ask what are the methods 
 and agencies by which the contemplated work may 
 be accomplished? As to the source of the matter 
 to be taught, and also largely for the method of 
 teaching, we turn with all confidence to the Bible 
 as containing an incomparable system of truth and 
 duty. It alone reveals to the rational soul the 
 spiritual world, the supernatural cosmos, in whose 
 atmosphere the supersensuous man lives, and 
 moves, and has his being. The things there mani- 
 fested, though they belong also to the natural under- 
 standing, and largely enhance its stores, more directly 
 address themselves to the spiritual nature, both to 
 instruct and to transform ; and yet they may become 
 comparatively ineffective through neglect or misuse. 
 This fatal tendency to rob the truth of its legiti- 
 mate power, perhaps to change it to a lie, demands 
 especially the counteracting influences of Christian 
 
ITS CHARACTER AND CAPABILITIES. 41 
 
 education, and personally of Christian instructors. 
 The lessons by which the expanding mind is to be 
 edified in the truth, and the footsteps of ingenuous 
 but unwary youth are to be guided to the paths of 
 wisdom, must be drawn from the sacred treasury of 
 truth and wisdom. And here, especially, is the prac- 
 tical wisdom of the Christian educator called for, to 
 give to each his portion in due season, milk or strong 
 meat, as the subject shall be able or have need, and 
 every thing administered with the skill of one not 
 a novice. 
 
 A special excellence of the Bible as an educating 
 agency is the peculiarly human form in which its 
 lessons come to us. It is quite possible that truth, 
 however abstractly presented, would prove prac- 
 tically valuable, but much less so than when set 
 forth in concrete forms. In the Bible, however, 
 more than almost anywhere else, the highest and 
 the essentially spiritual truths appear humanized 
 and incarnated ; and it was evidently the design 
 in the bestowment of these sacred realities that 
 they should be cherished in the heart's deepest affec- 
 tions and given out from warm and earnest souls. 
 Only the smaller part of the influence of the relig- 
 ious instructor comes direct from the truths he de- 
 clares ; his highest effectiveness goes out from him 
 unpurposed, and his best lessons are those which 
 
42 CHRIS TIAN ED UCA TION. 
 
 enter unconsciously into the mind and heart of the 
 learner. An all-pervading atmosphere of truth and 
 goodness is the necessary and the surely effective 
 condition of religious instruction. It is this that so 
 often makes even the humblest Christian home 
 the most successful of Christian seminaries; and as 
 far as possible (and beyond what point is it not possi- 
 ble ?) the same atmosphere should be reproduced and 
 rendered permanently effective in all our Christian 
 schools and colleges. It is a sad thought, too often 
 realized, that our Christian youth, who have been 
 nurtured in homes of piety, when removed to our 
 nominally religious seminaries have found them- 
 selves in a widely different spiritual atmosphere, 
 and exposed to many hitherto unknown tempta- 
 tions without compensating safeguards. Our Chris- 
 tian homes, with their unworldliness, are the shelter- 
 ing frames in which the tender plants are kept secure 
 from the blasts of sin till the heart becomes strong 
 in truth and goodness. But if too soon removed, 
 and if their new environments prove uncongenial, 
 how many such must perish miserably ! These 
 are thoughts to which the most earnest considera- 
 tion should be given, with corresponding practical 
 efforts by the founders, curators, and instructors of 
 all Christian schools. It is of small account, if the 
 institution is only nominally and formally Christian, 
 
ITS CHARACTER AND CAPABILITIES. 43 
 
 that its founders were professedly Christian, and 
 that it is patronized by an ecclesiastical body, unless 
 its whole spirit and purpose shall be distinctively, 
 and somewhat intensitively, religious. 
 
 It is not an altogether uncalled-for suggestion 
 to say that a school founded and carried on by 
 an evangelical Christian denomination should be, 
 in fact as well as in name, a religious institution. 
 The conventual schools of earlier times (and of 
 the present also) embodied the important idea 
 that the Church should be a patron of learning, 
 and that the education given to the youth of the 
 Church should be Christian education. Some of 
 the features of those religious institutions may still 
 be detected in the traditions of our colleges ; but it 
 is to be feared that about all that was distinctively 
 religious in them has been eliminated or permitted 
 to perish. It may be well that all fanatical and 
 ascetic practices have ceased, with all sourness and 
 affectation of piety ; but it is not well that instead 
 of these our nominally religious schools should be 
 given up to intellectual godlessness and negative 
 impiety. True religiousness is neither ascetic nor 
 fanatical, but healthful, breezy, and robust, while, 
 also, it is earnestly devout and delighting to worship. 
 And yet even this religious state will not come about 
 of itself, and among the many adverse tendencies 
 
44 CHRISTIAN EDUCATION. 
 
 that are in the world, and from which the best 
 Christian communities are not exempt, only the 
 most earnest and the best adapted religious culture 
 ■ can effectually counteract the almost universal tend- 
 ency to backsliding. 
 
 There are also peculiar liabilities to spiritual re- 
 missness in some of the conditions of student life. 
 Any change from the home-life, with its sacred 
 associations and its conservative conditions, is neces- 
 sarily not entirely free from peril ; and these may 
 be largely increased according to external circum- 
 stances or personal characteristics. With even the 
 least perversely inclined the mind's occupation with 
 its daily studies, and its engrossment by its round 
 of duties, may crowd out other and better things, 
 and leave neither opportunity nor inclination for 
 the special exercises upon which the soul's health is 
 dependent. The rapid transition through which the 
 mind of the student is passing, with the attainment 
 of new intellectual conceptions and the increase of 
 purely secular knowledge, render necessary corre- 
 sponding increments of spiritual knowledge to 
 counteract the mind's tendency to drift away from 
 spiritual thoughts and associations, and so to lose 
 their saving power. Many a Christian student who 
 would have been horrified at the thought of back- 
 sliding, has been surprised by discovering that, while 
 
ITS CHARACTER AND CAPABILITIES, 45 
 
 engaged in his proper studies, all unawares he had 
 declined in spirituality; that the light in his soul had 
 become dim, the ground had slipped from under his 
 feet, his first love had grown cold, and that, while 
 successfully prosecuting his outward duties, he had 
 insensibly, but disastrously, fallen away spiritually. 
 These peculiar temptations and dangers of student 
 life should especially engage the thoughts of those 
 who are charged with the duties, not only of secular 
 teachers, but also of religious and spiritual guard- 
 ians and guides; and only as these spiritual wants 
 are provided for and imparted by them can the 
 action of the Church be justified in devoting its 
 means and energies to the founding and sustaining 
 of schools and colleges. 
 
 The moral and religious training of large bodies 
 of students associated in communities is to a 
 great degree mutual and co-operative. Every such 
 community has its own prevailing public opinion, 
 its peculiar ethical code, and its recognized, though 
 unformulated, laws of living. These may possibly 
 be Christian, wholesome, and salutary; but there is 
 a perilous possibility that they will be quite other- 
 wise. At no other point in the administration of 
 the affairs of such communities of young persons is 
 there so much need of godly wisdom, the very best 
 qualities of head and heart conjoined, so as at once 
 
46 CHRISTIAN ED UCA TION. 
 
 to command and persuade. And here the wise ad- 
 ministrator will practically confess that in order to 
 command he must first persuade ; and he will also 
 know that while the heart of youth may stubbornly 
 resent the blows of authority it is as plastic as clay 
 or wax in the hands of the skillful molder. Students 
 are as largely endowed as other persons with the 
 usual elements of human nature, and the ordinary 
 laws of Christian morality apply to them as fully as 
 to others; and to these the Christian instructor may 
 always safely appeal. And to such an appeal every 
 right-minded body of students will cheerfully re- 
 spond, and will fashion their ethical code and pub- 
 lic opinion accordingly. And that this may be so, 
 those who have the care of the manners and morals, 
 and of the spiritual life of masses of young persons 
 should see to it that their own personal relations to 
 those over whom they would exert a saving influ- 
 ence are both intimate and effective. To repress 
 and restrain wrong tendencies in associated bodies 
 of young people by authority may be difficult or 
 impossible ; but at the same time to lead out their 
 minds, and inspire them with better thoughts and 
 purposes, may be easily practicable. This is among 
 the high functions of the religious educator. 
 
 As a state of mental increase and enrichment is 
 the normal condition of student life, so should the 
 
ITS CHARACTER AND CAPABILITIES. 47 
 
 minds of the learners be drawn out into higher and 
 broader ranges of religious thinking. The child 
 thinks as a child ; but when grown to intellectual 
 manhood the childish thinkings, however excellent 
 for their time, must be put away. To provide for 
 this transition, which is sure to come, a correspond- 
 ingly broader range of religious discussions and 
 instructions must be brought into requisition. 
 Christian ideas must be carried into every depart- 
 ment of thought into which the minds of the learners 
 are led out, and the spirit and the truth of religion 
 must be made to permeate the whole cyclopedia of 
 learning. In those wider ranges of thought unsolved 
 questions and unresolved doubts will often arise, 
 which the habit of independent thinking to which 
 we train our young people may render all the more 
 perplexing and dangerous. Into these mazes and 
 seeming contradictions the teacher must accompany 
 his pupils, clearly recognizing them as such; solving 
 all reasonable doubts, and restraining undue specu- 
 lativeness respecting the many and great moral and 
 religious problems which lie beyond the range of 
 intellectual knowledge ; for there are bounds beyond 
 which finite intelligence may not proceed, and to 
 know these is excellent knowledge, and to practically 
 confess them a high style of wisdom. 
 
 The basis of personal faith changes with the 
 
48 CHRIS TIAN ED UCA TION. 
 
 changed conceptions of things which occur, in a 
 greater or less degree, in the history of every indi- 
 vidual ; and these are unavoidably attended with 
 peril. A man's notions respecting spiritual things 
 at threescore are not the same that he entertained 
 in childhood and youth ; and the extent of these 
 transitions is greatest with those who make the 
 largest advances in knowledge and cultured think- 
 ing. The faith of the child is pure and simple, ac- 
 cepting whatever is declared by competent authority, 
 and in the absence of other knowledge it is not 
 troubled with any apparent difficulties or contra- 
 dictions. But with riper years come also broader 
 views, which suggest many and very perplexing 
 questions; and these, if they relate to things that 
 may be known, must be satisfactorily solved, or else 
 they will become occasions of established doubtings, 
 marring the symmetry of the faith of the soul and 
 removing it from its steadfastness. Could one live 
 and die among conditions that effectually separate 
 him from the possibility of any considerable mental 
 growth the faith of childhood might be perpetuated ; 
 but not in its simplicity and purity, since the mind's 
 own activities w r ould inevitably store the imagination 
 w r ith a multitude of gross and debasing superstitions. 
 It is not, therefore, without some show of reason that 
 the Church of Rome disapproves of the unlimited 
 
ITS CHARACTER AND CAPABILITIES. 49 
 
 diffusion of religious knowledge among the un- 
 learned, holding that learning genders doubts and 
 heresies, while " ignorance is the mother of devo- 
 tion." But the faith that subsists because of igno- 
 rance is itself feeble and unsteady, and the devotion 
 that it promotes is not that " pure worship" by 
 which God is glorified and the soul of the devotee 
 enriched. The position of Protestantism in respect 
 to this matter is the extreme opposite of that of 
 Romanism ; and, because it holds that true Chris- 
 tian knowledge is both the promoter and the guard- 
 ian of saving faith, and a sure source of robust and 
 wholesome Christian character, it claims for every 
 man the privilege and the duty to know for himself 
 what are the great and essential truths of religion, 
 which every Christian should know as of the essence 
 of his creed, and which he is bound to believe to the 
 saving of his soul. And as we would have all men 
 know the truth because we believe it to be incom- 
 parably preferable to a form of faith that outrages 
 the understanding and dwarfs the spiritual being, so 
 we are also aware that the darkness of ignorance 
 which engendered the sickly devotions of the clois- 
 ter and the confessional, the worship of pictures 
 and crucifixes, and which demands the surrender of 
 one's soul with unquestioning subjection to the will 
 of a man, has, as to ourselves and among the condi- 
 
50 CHRISTIAN ED UCA TION. 
 
 tions in which we live, become forever impossible. 
 As we would not, if we could, have the common 
 people untaught in the truths of religion, so we 
 could not, if we would, remand them to ignorance of 
 the truth and a condition of intellectual and spiritual 
 slavery. We must, therefore, accept the conditions 
 imposed by the free thought of the people, with its 
 consequent labors and perils. 
 
 Education, unless it embodies a large and broad 
 religious element, tends inevitably to skepticism. 
 If the individual has in himself, by virtue of his 
 Christian life and the Spirit's testimony to the 
 reality of spiritual things, a constantly assured faith, 
 he will be able successfully to overcome such temp- 
 tations to unbelief. But such cases, though happily 
 not rare, must be considered as exceptional ; and 
 therefore every student should be considered as 
 needing to be perpetually grounded anew in the 
 faith. Any system of education, therefore, that is 
 not clearly and distinctively religious is dangerous 
 to the Christian stability and the moral characters 
 of the learners. Religion must be kept steadily in 
 view in every department of instruction ; not merely 
 a philosophical naturalism and a conventional moral- 
 ity, but the system of truth and doctrine of which 
 God is the source and center, Christ the revealer 
 and apostle, and the Bible the heaven-given depos- 
 
ITS CHARACTER AND CAPABILITIES, 51 
 
 itory. And this system must be presented, not as 
 something that must be blindly accepted in defer- 
 ence to its authority, but with accompanying proofs 
 and evidences which shall effectually counterwork 
 the mind's natural tendency to unbelief. Glorious 
 and venerable as are the truths of Christianity, and 
 powerful as it is to demonstrate its divinity to the 
 spiritual consciousness of all who have received its 
 truth in the love of it, it is still needful to demon- 
 strate its credibility by reasons addressed to the 
 natural understanding. The teacher having re- 
 moved, as certainly he will, the pupil's traditional 
 form and foundation of religious beliefs, is now 
 bound to build him up on other and better evidences. 
 
 That we may impress these thoughts the more 
 deeply, we reiterate them, even at the risk of seem- 
 ing to repeat ourselves. 
 
 The Christian educator should be profoundly im- 
 pressed with the conviction and consciousness that 
 he is leading his pupils through a stage of mental 
 development that is peculiarly full of perils. In 
 childhood we believe what we are taught, and the 
 religious intuitions respond approvingly to the 
 lessons of spiritual instruction, and we believe, not 
 because we have been convinced by arguments, but 
 on the authority of our teachers. And this unques- 
 tioning faith continues through life, wherever there 
 
52 CHRIS TIAN ED UCA TION. 
 
 is real teachableness, and where also the wider 
 excursions of thought do not come in to demand 
 the reasons for the things that are to be believed. 
 The undeveloped understanding, if accompanied by 
 a devout heart, may be satisfied with the heart \s 
 assurance of the truths of religion ; but in the 
 absence of such a religious experience there usually 
 occurs with the unlearned a blind and stupid nega- 
 tion of faith, while the better educated find their 
 natural unbelief formulating its objections into sys- 
 tems of positive doubts. Educated minds demand, 
 as they have the right to do, a rational basis for 
 whatever is to be believed. Here, however, is the 
 point of danger in the mental and spiritual history 
 of all who make the transition state from infantile 
 dependence to individual freedom of thought ; and 
 here, too, not a few disastrous shipwrecks of faith 
 and a good conscience have taken place, and this 
 especially among the abler students in our colleges. 
 This significant and momentous truth must, 
 therefore, be confronted and provided for. Educa- 
 tion, it should be known, except it has a decided 
 infusion of specifically Christian elements, tends 
 directly and with fatal certainty toward skepticism, 
 and to beget a spirit of destructive questionings 
 respecting all that pertains to supernatural religion; 
 and therefore any system of education is of danger- 
 
ITS CHARACTER AND CAPABILITIES. 53 
 
 ous tendency that does not so present the basis of 
 the Christian evidences as to answer to the natural 
 and not unreasonable questionings of cultivated 
 minds which have been removed away from the 
 implicit faith of their childhood. 
 
 The natural relations of instructors and learners 
 imply, on the side of the former, a thorough and 
 comprehensive acquaintance with the subjects to be 
 handled, with their conditions and relations, and 
 with these is conjoined the authority that is legiti- 
 mately derived from mental superiority and from 
 the official positions of accepted teachers. And on 
 the side of the learners are confidence in the supe- 
 rior wisdom of those who teach and deference 
 toward their opinions ; but also, and beyond these, 
 personal independence of thought must be recog- 
 nized, and the just demand that for every utterance 
 of doctrine or opinion a reason shall be given. 
 We may confidingly trust that not a few of those 
 who sit at these fountains of learning have other 
 and better forms of Christian evidences than can be 
 given by man to man ; but that may not be pre- 
 sumed in respect to all ; and even where it is found 
 it needs to be continually supplemented and re- 
 enforced by external evidences, especially with those 
 whose habits of thinking are logical as well as 
 intuitional, whose subjective faiths require the con- 
 
54 CHRIS TIAN ED UCA TION. 
 
 currence of objective reasonableness in the things 
 propounded. 
 
 Remitting any consideration of the evidences of 
 Christianity, which, however, should be formally 
 presented and elaborated in the curriculum of col- 
 legiate education, we may glance for a moment 
 at certain incidental forms of proofs that are sug- 
 gested by the 'religious intuitions themselves. The 
 soul's impulse to worship requires for its legiti- 
 mate use an object upon which it may be exer- 
 cised ; and therefore — agreeably to the obvious and 
 apparently universal law, that an original want im- 
 plies the existence of that which may answer to its 
 demands — that impulse authorizes the presumption 
 of the existence of some one possessing in his 
 own person all the natural and moral perfections 
 which the soul instinctively requires in the object 
 of its devotions. And to this demand no other one, 
 real or ideal, except the God of the Bible, the 
 Christian's God, makes even an approximation to a 
 satisfactory response. There are " gods many and 
 lords many ; " but no one of these measures up to 
 the soul's intuitive ideal of the object of its admiring 
 devotion, and therefore the thoughtful w r orshiper 
 turns away from these abortive begettings of the 
 imagination, darkly feeling after the Unsearchable, 
 and asks for something better, and perhaps in his 
 
ITS CHARACTER AND CAPABILITIES. 55 
 
 blindness he sets up his altar, " To the Unknown 
 God," assuming that God is, but is to him unknown. 
 The Apostle's announcement on Mars' Hill is of 
 universal acceptation ; that which the heart instinct- 
 ively demands, the unknown object of its untaught 
 worship, is clearly revealed in the Scriptures. The 
 whole world — the universe of thought, say the wise 
 ones — is made up of correspondences, of pairs, each 
 one of whose members implies the existence of the 
 other. There is light for the eye, and sounds for 
 the ear, and hardness for the touch ; there are 
 order, beauty, and sublimity that answer to the 
 aesthetical requirements of man's nature ; and so 
 there are infinite power, wisdom, and goodness em- 
 bodied as essential attributes of the God of the 
 Bible ; and in him the soul's instincts to worship find 
 all their requirements met with absolute fullness. 
 This form of Christian evidence, while it may be 
 appreciated by the least cultivated, loses none of its 
 power in the clearest light and the furthest reach 
 of cultured thought, and to its impressiveness even 
 the least spiritually-minded cannot be entirely 
 insensible. This " coigne of vantage " should be 
 occupied and turned to account by the Christian 
 educator; the heart wants its God — will worship 
 him if found. It is his duty to guide the inquiring 
 spirit to that which it seeks. 
 
56 CHRISTIAN ED UCA TION. 
 
 These natural wants of the soul reproduce them- 
 selves in forms modified according to their changed 
 conditions in human society, that more compre- 
 hensive individual sometimes called humanity. It 
 craves to be organized, is miserable till that is af- 
 fected, and yet its constituent elements, left to their 
 own perverseness, seem to be incapable of coming 
 into a harmonious unity. The individual cannot 
 attain to any thing at all worthy of his own possi- 
 bilities except in co-operation with others ; and yet 
 as seen in his natural estate every man's hand seems 
 to be against his fellow. War appears to be the 
 normal condition of the race, and accordingly the 
 same word may designate with equal fitness a 
 stranger and an enemy. But Christianity, by molli- 
 fying the natural savagery of the individual and 
 by infusing into the soul an all-comprehending 
 spirit of divine charity — so changes the spiritual 
 polarity of the social elements that man tends in- 
 stinctively to his fellow-man; and the mass, hitherto 
 disintegrated and inharmonious, now, by the im- 
 pulses of each heart, readily crystallizes into a 
 beautiful and harmonious unity. For this the social 
 philosopher has no alternate or substitute ; and be- 
 cause man is by his natural instincts, and by all the 
 requirements of his nature, a social being, Chris- 
 tianity is the first necessity for his temporal wel- 
 
ITS CHARACTER AND CAPABILITIES. 57 
 
 fare. A state of facts so obvious and so sug- 
 gestive ought not to be neglected by the Christian 
 educator, both on account of their relations to the 
 Christian evidences and their practicable availability 
 in adapting men to the high duties and relations 
 of the Commonwealth. In every department of the 
 social and political sciences, as well as in the more 
 abstract philosophy of the intellect and the heart, 
 there is need of the specifically Christian element. 
 It is, indeed, present both as a fact in the world's 
 history and as an effective factor among the working 
 forces of society. Its recognition, and the illustration 
 of its methods and its effectiveness, and the inculca- 
 tion of its spirit, should therefore constitute a 
 primary element in the lessons announced from 
 these professional chairs. As the great end of edu- 
 cation is to render its subjects capable at once 
 of the highest personal excellence and to make 
 them the best possibly adapted to promote the 
 social welfare, and as these qualifications result the 
 most surely and effectively from the Christian ele- 
 ment in education, it is plain that any system of in- 
 struction is excellent or defective in proportion to 
 the presence or absence of the Christian element. 
 The injunction of the Master, " Learn of me," has 
 a much wider application than to personal religious 
 life. 
 
58 CHRIS TIAN ED UCA TION. 
 
 III. 
 
 CHRISTIAN EDUCATION-ITS PURPOSE-THE WHAT-FOR 
 OF EDUCATION. 
 
 CONCEDING the desirableness of education — 
 which, indeed, all our conditions take for 
 granted — it is pertinent that we should ask, What 
 is its purpose and in what consists its value? To 
 this question we may answer in the words of a liv- 
 ing writer of high renown — Mr. Herbert Spencer — 
 though we would give to his words a much broader 
 application than he does. He tells us, M To prepare 
 us for complete living is the function which educa- 
 tion has to discharge." We accept this statement 
 as both comprehensive and felicitous, and also as well 
 adapted to suggest both the object to be pursued 
 in practical education and the methods of doing the 
 work. But we should riot confine our considera- 
 tions to merely secular affairs, as Mr. Spencer's 
 unspiritual philosophy compelled him to do ; but 
 seeing in our broader outlook other than merely 
 secular relations, which qualify and vastly elevate 
 our conception of " complete living," we must com- 
 prehend in the measure and scope of the things to 
 be cared for in education all that relates to the spir- 
 
ITS PURPOSE, 59 
 
 itual life ; and as we claim that these are incompa- 
 rably the greatest of our interests, and that M com- 
 plete living " is especially concerned in them, we 
 must also contend that the spiritual character of its 
 subject is the chief concern in practical education. 
 
 Our notions as to what education is for and what 
 it is designed to accomplish for its subjects, will 
 largely determine both its substance and its methods. 
 These we have already indicated as consisting in 
 the proper development and discipline of all that 
 belongs to man's real nature ; and manifestly, 
 therefore, the neglect of any part of his essential 
 manhood must result in an unsymmetrical and un- 
 wholesome condition of the mind and character. 
 Education is neither designed to extirpate nor to 
 suppress any of the elements of human nature origi- 
 nally given by the Creator, but to afford to each due 
 opportunities and helps for their full and propor- 
 tionate increase. And yet, while all these should 
 be duly cared for, still, since some are more excel- 
 lent than others, more immediately vital and prac- 
 tically valuable, these should have the preference, 
 and the others in their proper order should be sub- 
 ordinated. This is according to the infallible 
 teachings of holy Scripture, which recognizes all 
 our wants and provides for their supply, but for 
 each in the order of their excellence. The inhibi- 
 
60 CHRIS TIAN ED UCA T/OJV. 
 
 tions of some things, while others are enjoined, 
 must be understood in many cases as relative rather 
 than absolute, as when we are taught to " take no 
 thought for the body/' or "for the morrow," but 
 instead, to seek first "the kingdom of heaven." 
 
 It is especially needful that in our conceptions of 
 the subject we should be guarded against the perils 
 of a merely sensuous worldliness, caring only for 
 the material and secular, to which there is so often 
 an undue tendency; and nowhere else is this cau- 
 tion more needful than in practical education. 
 
 Men are not often better than their own ideals in 
 either life or character. In that fact, and the causes 
 which lie back of it, is seen the great value of noble 
 and worthy conceptions of one's possibilities and 
 the desirableness of lofty aspirations. The original 
 purpose of every creature is indicated by his con- 
 stitution and capabilities, and even his felt wants 
 and instinctive hungerings and thirstings are proph- 
 ecies of what may be realized. Each one, also, who 
 rises above the lowest sensuousness in his wants 
 has his ruling purposes, toward the achievement of 
 which he directs his efforts, and in the success of 
 which he rejoices. But it often happens that this 
 success most clearly demonstrates the emptiness 
 and insufficiency of the things that are earnestly 
 coveted ; and accordingly the lament of " the 
 
ITS PURPOSE. 61 
 
 Preacher/* who spoke also as the wisest of men 
 and the wealthiest of monarchs, " Vanity of van- 
 ities, all is vanity," has been the common refrain of 
 those who have reviewed a career of merely worldly 
 success, while spiritual things were disregarded. 
 
 But in order to give a practical direction to our 
 thoughts we will now consider some of the pur- 
 poses of education as they are viewed among men. 
 The lowest, and also the most prevalent, is that of 
 a merely personal secularism, in the estimation of 
 which education seems valuable chiefly as the means 
 of gaining a livelihood. This, in the language of 
 its own school, is the u bread-and-butter" argument. 
 Nor are we disposed to altogether despise even this. 
 It may be conceded that if education only helps its 
 subject the better to provide for his physical wants 
 it does a good work, though surely not its best. 
 The irrational brutes have their natural wants, and in 
 the order of nature and by means of their untaught 
 instincts God cares for them. But for man, who is 
 a rational soul, made in the image of God, to be 
 shut up within these conditions surely cannot be 
 accounted " complete living." And still it may be 
 granted that the skilled mechanic is better than the 
 unskilled laborer, who is also better than the un- 
 taught savage ; the engineer is more than the fire- 
 man or coal-heaver ; the artisan whose deft hand is 
 
62 CHRIS TIAN ED UCA TION. 
 
 the instrument of a disciplined mind is of more 
 account than he whose life is only a manifestation 
 of brute force directed by his untaught will. The 
 learned professional — the counselor and orator — 
 are better paid, and worthily so, than the multitude 
 of the unlearned about them; but even in their 
 cases their superiority is chiefly in the incidental 
 results of their better mental training. It is quite 
 evident that in the struggle for existence, which is 
 so fiercely contested in civilized society, the edu- 
 cated have very considerable advantages over the 
 uneducated ; and, therefore, were there no higher 
 motives, that fact would suffice in favor of giving 
 the advantages of education to as many as possible. 
 There is cause to fear, however, that this, the low- 
 est and the least worthy purpose of education, may 
 be made the ruling one, and so the character and 
 kind of the education desired may be unfavorably 
 affected by it. All this, indeed, is much more than 
 an indistinct apprehension of a possible evil ; it is 
 already upon us, and its presence is felt in all our 
 schools, from the lowest to the highest. The care- 
 ful parent, provident of the secular welfare of his 
 children, sees in their education the best assurance 
 of their success in life ; and young persons looking 
 out into the future think they see in that direction 
 the most promising prospects ; and so education is 
 
ITS PURPOSE. 63 
 
 chosen as the best assurance of simply material suc- 
 cess. This, perhaps, should not be denounced as 
 positively bad ; it is, indeed, relatively better than 
 brutish unculture and savage improvidence ; but the 
 motive is unelevated, and the results in those who 
 are swayed by it must be comparatively disastrous. 
 Our whole system of public education is just now 
 assailed with a loud and imperious demand in favor 
 of such changes in the course of instruction that (in 
 the language of the complainants) education shall 
 be more " practical ; " and by this is meant, that 
 education shall be so ordered that it shall become 
 more surely and immediately available for making 
 money or securing pecuniary interests. And accord- 
 ingly our highest institutions of learning, the old- 
 est and the most renowned colleges and universities 
 in the country, are modifying their course of study 
 in favor of " technical " education, with necessarily 
 corresponding disfavor toward those that tend, first 
 of all, toward culture — that which shall educate the 
 whole man, and especially the higher and more spir- 
 itual elements of his character, instead of those that 
 remove him in the least degree from merely me- 
 chanical forces and the operations of dumb animals 
 and inanimate machines. We ask, on the contrary, 
 that the instruction to be given in our schools shall 
 aim to develop and fashion lofty intellectual and 
 
64 CHRISTIAN ED UCA TION. 
 
 spiritual character, with knowledge and appreciation 
 of things that lie beyond the range of the senses — 
 that is, the true, the beautiful, and the good — rather 
 than the most complete machines the more effect- 
 ually to minister to the grosser wants of men's nat- 
 ures. Our objection to thus secularizing education, 
 and compelling it, like blind Samson, to grind in the 
 mill, is not only that it is a diversion from a higher 
 to a lower purpose, but, still more, that it is a pros- 
 titution of the noblest capabilities to gross and cor- 
 rupting uses. Productive industry is a necessity, 
 and, properly managed, tends to public and pri- 
 vate welfare ; but unless subordinated by a strong 
 will to other and higher interests it readily becomes 
 an evil of no ordinary proportions. Its ideal is 
 an unelevated one, and it necessarily leads to cor- 
 respondingly unelevated pursuits and associations. 
 The cultured mind craves a better portion than any 
 thing that can be entered in the merchant's ledger 
 or disposed of by devise; a treasure even for pres- 
 ent use that moth and rust cannot corrupt, nor 
 thieves take away. There is indeed a " wisdom " 
 whose " merchandise is better than that of silver, 
 and the gain thereof than fine gold," to obtain and 
 retain which is the purpose of education ; and of that 
 design it is capable if it shall be faithfully directed 
 to it. And shall an agency of such noble capabil- 
 
ITS PURPOSE. . 65 
 
 ities be desecrated to the grosser forms of material 
 acquisitions ? To live only in order to devote one's 
 energies to money-making certainly is not " com- 
 plete living." Men's better natural sentiments unite 
 their protests with those of religion against the 
 desecration. 
 
 A less gross and materialistic purpose for which 
 education may be sought, if not higher in the scale 
 of morality, is to increase its possessor's ability to 
 serve himself; for men have learned the practical 
 wisdom of the maxim, " If thou doest well by thy- 
 self all men will speak well of thee." Because of 
 its power to elevate the character and to increase 
 the mental resources of its subjects, and to give 
 men influence among their fellows, the ambitious 
 and self-seeking may very naturally desire to avail 
 themselves of the benefits of education. Of the 
 greatness of the advantages, in respect to these 
 things, of thorough mental training there can be no 
 question. In nearly every possible position in life 
 the educated man has the advantage over the un- 
 educated, and in many places — and these the most 
 influential and remunerative — only the educated can 
 enter, or, having gained a place, can either respond 
 to its claims or utilize its opportunities. The shrewd 
 and wisely-calculating parent, seeing these things, 
 
 chooses that his son shall be educated, that he may 
 5 
 
66 CHRISTIAN ED UCA TION. 
 
 thus be the better prepared to engage in life's bat- 
 tles and the more certainly assured of success. And 
 the young man, inflamed with a high ambition for 
 public honors in any of the great walks of life 
 where honors may be won, wisely seeks the aids of 
 education for the furtherance of his purposes. And 
 perhaps we are justified in presuming that this con- 
 sideration, more than any other, serves to replenish 
 our institutions with their annual recruits of stu- 
 dents, and those, too, of the better class. The pru- 
 dent parent or guardian, knowing how readily 
 " riches make to themselves wings and fly away," 
 and that education is inalienable and enduring, and 
 always available, seeks it as the best and surest pro- 
 vision for those whose w r elfare he would promote. 
 And the thoughtful young man looking forward to 
 active life, and inspired with a laudable ambition 
 to turns its opportunities to account, wisely judges 
 that his surest way to success is to fit himself for 
 life's conflicts by this most promising preparation. 
 Nor are these considerations to be condemned in- 
 discriminately, but rather are they, in themselves, 
 to be applauded, though the final estimate of them 
 must depend upon the uses to which the advantages 
 of education shall be devoted. If the chief purpose 
 is fame — to gain the praise of men — if the attain- 
 ment and the maintenance of one's social position 
 
ITS PURPOSE. 67 
 
 is the ruling motive, the purpose, though not the 
 lowest, is still much below the proper elevation ; and 
 while its pursuit is attended with peculiar difficulties, 
 its highest possible success is sure to bring disap- 
 pointments. This, too, may be inspired by a nar- 
 row selfishness ; for the advantages of education 
 may be desired not for generous and philanthropic 
 uses, but for self-aggrandizement. How far these 
 defective sentiments may have operated toward 
 crowding these halls with expectant multitudes of 
 generous youths we need not inquire too closely. 
 If any have so come, it is the business of their in- 
 structors to show them a more excellent way. The 
 ruling idea in that case is success in the conflicts of 
 life, with the possible awards of wealth and honor 
 and power among men — a prize altogether unspir- 
 itual, and appreciated chiefly by men's lower nature 
 — while it lacks adaptation to the soul's higher and 
 better aspirations. It is also a preparation for a con- 
 flict in which only a very few can succeed ; and with 
 them it does not pay. 
 
 Still another not inconsiderable, though still an al- 
 together inadequate claim, why education should be 
 valued and pursued, and one, too, of which much ac- 
 count is often made, is its power to minister to some 
 of the higher wants of its subjects. Education, com- 
 bining intelligence and culture, adds to one's powers 
 
68 CHRIS TIAN ED UCA TION. 
 
 to enjoy, and so increases his internal resources, and 
 also provides for their gratification. There is some- 
 times a kind of indolent contentment which subsists 
 with only the least help from either knowledge or 
 culture, but the plane of such a life is a humble 
 one, and its pleasures are low and unsatisfactory. 
 The poets and idealists tell us of the delights of 
 Arcadian simplicity, the guileless pleasures of peas- 
 ants and shepherds, whom they transform into 
 nymphs and swains ; but all these are simply ideal 
 pictures whose models are not found in the real 
 world. Wordsworth's " Simple Peter," a man, indeed, 
 but the least possible removed from the brute, is a 
 much more real and truthful image. " That the 
 soul be without knowledge is not good," is not only 
 a divine revelation but equally a lesson of human 
 experience. The mind instinctively craves instruc- 
 tion, just as the physical system craves food ; and 
 if in either case the needed supply is withheld, dis- 
 ease and dwarfings and malformations will be the 
 result. Education brings to its subjects larger 
 capabilities for elevated enjoyments, and so diverts 
 the heart's interests from whatever is merely sen- 
 suous, and therefore degrading. As weeds spring 
 up spontaneously and grow without cultivation, but 
 bear no valuable fruit, so the grosser elements of 
 human nature develop themselves without being 
 
ITS PURPOSE. 69 
 
 cultivated, but can give but little real pleasure ; 
 while whatever is truly excellent must be planted by 
 instruction and cultivated by discipline. The facts 
 of society abundantly confirm these things. The 
 notion that uneducated peoples, nations, or individ- 
 uals are exceptionally pure and innocent is well 
 known to be quite the opposite of the real state of 
 the case, as may be abundantly proved by obser- 
 vation. 
 
 In the absence of culture the lower elements 
 vitiate the whole nature. Depravity of character 
 and viciousness of life, which necessarily result from 
 the lack of education, entail innumerable discom- 
 forts ; and these, in the case of the uneducated, are 
 rendered the less tolerable by the absence of the spir- 
 itual resources which invariably accompany mental 
 culture. Popular ignorance is never separated from 
 social and domestic wretchedness ; and had it no 
 higher functions, the promotion of education would 
 be sufficiently justified by its beneficent social in- 
 fluences. And what is true of communities is still 
 more so in respect to individuals, to whom educa- 
 tion becomes a constant resource for pleasurable 
 living. 
 
 Among the notable advantages of education to 
 the individual is the ability that it gives him to 
 derive pleasure from all his surroundings. From his 
 
YO CHRIS TIAN ED UCA TION. 
 
 cottage on the hill-side the man of cultured sensi- 
 bilities derives larger values from Cleon's broad acres 
 than are all the stores that they yield to their own- 
 er's garners. Leaving out of the account for the 
 moment all properly religious considerations, but 
 remembering, meanwhile, that they must finally 
 determine the case in its completed results, it will 
 still appear very clearly that the man of the world, 
 the genuine epicurean, must crave for himself the 
 benefits of education, in order that he may revel in 
 his mental resources and hold high converse with 
 his own thoughts, and with other minds, living or 
 departed, with whom he may associate. 
 
 To such a one nature becomes a vast gymnasium, 
 well stored with the means of giving pleasure, 
 while art brings her ministries of painting and 
 sculpture, of architecture and landscape gardening, 
 and of the melodies and harmonies of song or the 
 moving voice of oratory. To him every sense, 
 and also the stores of a cultivated memory and 
 the beautiful creations of a vivid imagination 
 minister the loftiest thoughts upon the noblest 
 themes, and all his spiritual resources contribute 
 to his pleasure. Evidently, therefore, even in 
 respect to only the present world and the things 
 that pertain to it, education may claim no incon- 
 siderable place, appealing to men's self-love in view 
 
ITS PURPOSE. 71 
 
 of its ability to contribute to their temporal happi- 
 ness. 
 
 But from the higher, the specifically Christian 
 point of view, all such estimates of life are not only 
 44 incomplete," but positively and fatally defective 
 in respect to all that is noblest and best in "living," 
 and that, too, as to the things that belong to the 
 present world. Only as men live for others do 
 they attain to " complete living," while the man of 
 the world lives only for himself, or, if he seeks com- 
 panionships, his ruling motives are still his own 
 pleasures. His highest thoughts stop short of the 
 realm of the spiritual and ethical, and find their 
 sphere, at the very best, in the sesthetical in taste, 
 and not the conscience, making pleasure, and not 
 duty, supreme. 
 
 Nor need it be denied that in all this there is a 
 real joy, and that the character so brought into 
 view may possess many admirable qualities ; but its 
 defects and positive faults are also very great and 
 manifest. Intellect and taste are worthy to be 
 praised, but the conscience — the moral element in 
 the soul — transcends all else, both in its intrinsic 
 worth and in its relation to men's happiness. And 
 yet it may occur that while the former two may be 
 liberally educated and broadly cultured this latter 
 may remain uncared for and inadequately developed. 
 
72 CHRIS TIAN ED UCA TION. 
 
 And where tin's is the case there can be neither 
 symmetry of character nor u complete living." 
 Every man owes back to society all that he has re- 
 ceived from it, according to his ability, and his 
 selfish devotion of all that he has to his own pleas- 
 ing is a fraud against humanity that will inevitably 
 return to vex him. 
 
 These considerations have led some whose souls 
 were raised above such cultured epicureanism, but 
 not quite up to the Christian standard of entire 
 consecration, to include in their inventory of right 
 living an ideal and practical philanthropy; the serv- 
 ice of the State and humanity. The religious ele- 
 ment in man's nature, separated from its supreme 
 object, often expresses itself in admirable forms of 
 philanthropy and patriotism and in acts of heroic 
 and unselfish devotion, which the world is ever ready 
 to applaud. An illustration of this is seen in the 
 legend of Curtius's throwing himself into the chasm 
 in the forum, that so it might be closed, and also in the 
 more authentic story of Regulus. We see this in 
 the philanthropy of a Girard or Peter Cooper and the 
 noble deeds of our " good Samaritans ; " for, though 
 godliness is never developed from man's nature, a 
 kind of natural goodness is still possible, and educa- 
 tion may evoke this. It displayed itself in the lofty 
 ethical system of the Stoics, and it is seen equally 
 
ITS PURPOSE. 73 
 
 clearly in the delicate and sturdy sense of honor 
 sometimes manifested even by savages. But as 
 these things result from instincts rather than from 
 culture — perhaps often from direct divine inspira- 
 tions — and they appear alike in the learned and the 
 unlearned, though no doubt culture favors their de- 
 velopment, they lie outside of the definite limits 
 of our present discussions. 
 
 The glory of man is, that he is not like other 
 denizens of our world. In strength, in agility, and 
 in beauty, these are his rivals, and often his supe- 
 riors ; while over against his reason lie their in- 
 stincts, which, if less various in their adaptations, are 
 much surer in both their coming and their uses. In 
 contrast with his irrational competitors, and in 
 respect to simply mundane affairs, there is certainly 
 not much reason why the wise man should glory in 
 his wisdom, or the strongman in his strength, or the 
 rich man in his riches. Man's superiority must be 
 recognized as consisting in that by which he is 
 contra-distinguished from all other creatures : his 
 spiritual nature in its purely religious and its ethical 
 intuitions and capabilities. And because of its 
 transcendent excellence this element of his charac- 
 ter should be especially cared for in his education, 
 in respect to both right being and " complete liv- 
 ing." As, therefore, " the Christian is the highest 
 
74 CHRIS TIAN ED UCA TION. 
 
 style of man," not the religious sentimentalist 
 merely, nor the trained theologian, who believes, 
 but not " with a heart unto righteousness," so should 
 education in its purposes and methods be directed 
 especially to those things through which Christian 
 character and Christian living may be infallibly 
 secured. How this may be done must be clearly 
 apprehended before the work can be entered upon 
 with any promise of success, and for that purpose 
 right notions of the character to be acted upon 
 must be entertained. And here it is found that 
 before instruction can do its best work there is need 
 of a radical and thorough rectification of the spirit. 
 That " man is very far gone from original (essential) 
 righteousness, and in his own (proper) nature in- 
 clined to evil," is not primarily a theological dogma, 
 nor wholly a truth of revelation. It is a matter of 
 fact patent to all observers and confessed by all real 
 philosophers of the mind, who concede that in order 
 to its needed elevation a regenerating process must 
 take place in the character. But by what agency 
 this radical transformation of the character is to be 
 effected the philosophers do not inform us. The 
 ablest of them confess that it is (and from the 
 nature of the case must be) a mystery. The ulti- 
 mate processes by which character is transformed 
 lie deeper to the soul than the farthest reaches of the 
 
ITS PURPOSE. 75 
 
 consciousness. We know the results, but neither 
 the effectuating cause nor the manner of its pro- 
 ceeding. It is also philosophically manifest that 
 the power that shall fundamentally transform the 
 interior nature must originate and operate from a 
 source beyond the subject acted upon. To change 
 the course of nature requires a force outside of and 
 superior to nature. This idea is one with which the 
 readers of the New Testament are familiar. The 
 divine Teacher spoke of it as a " being born from 
 above/' and an apostle amplifies this thought by 
 predicating of saved souls a spiritual renewal ; a 
 " being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of 
 incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and 
 abideth forever." From the side of philosophy 
 comes the response — it is in Coleridge's words — %i I 
 utterly disclaim the notion that any human intelli- 
 gence, with whatever power it might manifest itself, 
 is alone adequate to the office of restoring health to 
 the will ;" but he continues to say, in substance, in a 
 dependent alliance with the All-perfect and Supreme 
 Reason, of course, changing the original basis of 
 action, the human will may be effectually harmonized 
 with the divine. And here, again even our philosoph- 
 ical guides bring us back to lessons of sacred wis- 
 dom. " The fear of the Lord " — a devout subjection 
 of the human to the divine will — " is the beginning," 
 
76 CHRIS TIAN ED UCA TION. 
 
 the formative element and condition, "of wisdom." 
 With this, which by nature we have not and cannot 
 obtain, all correct education of the spiritual man 
 must begin. 
 
 In the presence of a body of Christian educators 
 and students these things may seem to be only 
 truisms, which all .recognize and accept. Be it so ; 
 but their value, and the possibility that they may 
 be lost sight of, much more than justifies this refer- 
 ence to them. It is not that specifically Christian 
 instruction is out of place or entirely unavailing 
 before the regeneration of the spiritual nature is 
 completed, but that its success in fashioning the 
 character requires that process as an attending con- 
 dition; and to it also all real Christian teaching tends. 
 And only by virtue of the new spirit received in that 
 process can the proper ideal of moral excellence of 
 character be even approximately realized or the 
 conduct be raised to the standard of " complete 
 living." But this spiritual regeneration, because of 
 its subjective nature and its influence upon the moral 
 elements of the soul rather than the intellectual, 
 is neither education itself nor the direct agency for 
 that work, though it greatly facilitates it as a pre- 
 disposing cause. But every thing is still to be 
 learned, and the renewed habitudes of the spiritual 
 man are to be confirmed and hardened into endur- 
 
ITS PURPOSE. 77 
 
 ing consistency. Intellectual and spiritual growth 
 proceed most symmetrically and successfully, and 
 each ministers to the increase of the other while 
 proceeding side by side; the head and the heart in 
 harmony. 
 
 The notion that has so widely prevailed, that 
 there is a necessary antagonism between secular and 
 sacred learning, and that there is an incompatibility 
 between the scholarly and the Christian characters, 
 results from viewing the subject from a wrong stand- 
 point. The same God is the maker of both the 
 head and heart, and he is " not the author of con- 
 fusion, but of peace;" of harmony not less among 
 the powers of the mind than in the Church. The 
 healthy development of the mind requires that with 
 the increase of secular knowledge there shall be a like 
 growth in the knowledge of things spiritual ; that the 
 quickened conscience and enlarged moral susceptibil- 
 ities shall be illuminated by the light of the under- 
 standing and directed in their outgoings by knowl- 
 edge and a sound judgment. God has joined them 
 together in order that each may minister to the 
 other; and that, growing up together, both may 
 realize their highest possibilities. The mind that 
 goes forth in the domains of nature searching for the 
 truth, if accompanied and possessed by the spirit 
 of faith, finds in every thing the demonstration of 
 
 4 
 
78 CHRISTIAN EDUCATION, 
 
 God, in his person and his works, his creatorship 
 and his providence. If the intellect is educated and 
 the moral nature dwarfed there will result un- 
 belief, and the negation of faith, pride of opinion, 
 and inordinate self-consciousness ; and if, on the 
 other hand, the religious sentiments are dispropor- 
 tionately developed alongside of a barren waste of 
 thought, there is always a liability to superstition and 
 dangerous fanaticism, to instability and the possibil- 
 ity of being led into hurtful and destructive errors. 
 " Complete living " is, therefore, the result of com- 
 plete education, both of the head and heart, the 
 intellect and the emotions, the understanding, the 
 sensibilities and the will, the logical, the aesthetical, 
 and the ethical elements of the man, the judg- 
 ment, the taste, and the conscience. Let all these 
 be equally educated, and each enlarged according to 
 its capabilities, and the concordant principles of 
 truth, beauty, and goodness wrought into the sub- 
 stance and fiber of the character ; then " complete 
 living " will cease to be a shadowy ideal— to be seen 
 dimly in the unapproachable distance— but it will 
 have become a realized fact in the soul's spontaneous 
 action. And since the correct ordering of the life 
 and character is to be effected in opposition to the 
 strong impulses of the lower elements of men's nat- 
 ures, with their inborn depravity, the stronger force 
 
ITS PURPOSE. 79 
 
 of objective authority is needful to overcome these 
 and to enthrone the conscience over the renewed will. 
 Perception of the right is not alone sufficient to 
 insure its observance; beyond and above this must 
 be the sense of duty to deter from the wrong and 
 to impel to the right the disciplinary force of Chris- 
 tian instruction. 
 
 We have yet two subsidiary thoughts to be con- 
 sidered before passing from this part of our general 
 subject: 
 
 First, That the adaptation of Christianity to 
 man's nature emphasizes the utility of specifically 
 Christian education. We have attempted to show, 
 from the natural constitution of man, that in orde 
 his highest culture a prominent place must be given 
 to moral and religious instruction and discipline. If 
 now we reverse the process, and approach the sub- 
 ject from the side of practice and experience, the 
 same conclusions are reached and still more directly 
 enforced. The domination of the appetites and pas- 
 sions is a painful and degrading slavery, and their 
 service is both a weariness and a dwarfing of the soul. 
 And if, rising above these merely animal desires, 
 the dominion is given to " the lusts of the eye and 
 the pride of life," there will still remain unsatisfied 
 longings, and the noblest aspirations of the soul will 
 be held in check. Even with the widest learning 
 
 low, 
 *rto 1 
 
80 CHRISTIAN EDUCATION. 
 
 and the most appreciated culture " the eye is not 
 satisfied with seeing nor the ear filled with hearing;" 
 the starved and defrauded spiritual nature still reveals 
 its presence, and the soul's unrest demands its vin- 
 dication. Only as the moral nature is developed by 
 education, side by side with the other and less 
 spiritual elements of the character, can its better 
 possibilities be realized and the harmonious action 
 of the powers of the soul secured. 
 
 Our second thought, with which we will close, is 
 that since education very greatly enhances the capa- 
 bilities of its subjects, there is a corresponding 
 need that these increased powers should be tem- 
 pered and directed by correct moral influences. 
 The voice of warning against the perils of " godless 
 schools " is not a false alarm ; the danger is real and 
 may be very great. And accordingly the Church 
 has, at all times, wisely concerned itself with the 
 work of education, not only in respect to specifically 
 Christian doctrines and duties, but also in all that 
 tends to mental growth and the fashioning of men's 
 characters. And it should not be forgotten that men- 
 tal growth without a corresponding development of 
 the moral nature tends fatally toward spiritual de- 
 pravation and enmity against God. It is, then, 
 quite possible that our schools, our whole system of 
 secular education, shall become seminaries of spec- 
 
ITS PURPOSE. 81 
 
 ulative and practical ungodliness. The Church, 
 therefore, acts only in response to an imperative 
 requirement in founding and maintaining institu- 
 tions for the promotion of sound learning, for the 
 needful education of its youth among the salutary 
 and hallowing influences of religion, and to give due 
 effect to that purpose it devolves upon those who 
 are charged with these sacred interests the high duty 
 of making the teaching specifically and emphatically 
 Christian. Surely a Methodist school should be, 
 first of all, religious. 
 6 
 
82 CHRIS TIAN ED UCA TION. 
 
 IV. 
 
 LIONS IN THE WAY-SPECIAL PERILS AND HOW TO 
 TREAT THEM. 
 
 THE author of the Book of Proverbs presents in 
 the form of a parable the cowardly and self- 
 excusing plea with which " the slothful man" seeks 
 to excuse his remissness, " There is a lion without, I 
 shall be slain in the streets." The fact declared might 
 be true enough ; but the fault was, that it was used as 
 an excuse for cowardly indolence, and not as an in- 
 centive to earnest duty. The lesson of the proverb 
 is, that though there be difficulties and dangers in 
 the path of duty, only " the slothful" will for that 
 reason hesitate to walk in that way, with the addi- 
 tional intimation that only to such are the diffi- 
 culties insurmountable or the dangers especially 
 formidable. The author of the Pilgrim s Progress 
 weaves both the imagery and the lesson of this 
 proverb into his narrative, with suitable amplifica- 
 tions and embellishments. There were lions, he 
 tells us, one on either side of the narrow way ; so 
 that in attempting to avoid either there was a 
 liability to come too near to the other, and each 
 seemed to be waiting for his prey. But in fact they 
 
LIONS IN THE WA Y. 83 
 
 were chained, and at so short a tether that the pil- 
 grim could pass safely between them. So, though 
 they were real lions, and therefore dangerous, they 
 could not harm him so long as he used courage and 
 discretion. 
 
 Almost every enterprise has its difficulties, which 
 the " slothful " may readily magnify into lions; and 
 in all human affairs failure is a contingent possi- 
 bility which must be avoided by wise and brave 
 action. In the things connected with Christian 
 education there is a full share of these contingencies, 
 which the wise and conscientious instructor will 
 recognize and duly appreciate. Such is human 
 nature, and such are the influences among which 
 personal character must be fashioned, that its moral 
 elevation requires conflict in the process, so giving 
 to its successful accomplishment the character of a 
 victory. The natural difficulties of the case, also, 
 are greatly intensified in the conditions of young 
 persons actively and rapidly increasing in knowledge. 
 Some of these, which are inseparable from the con- 
 ditions of mental growth and development, we have 
 already sufficiently indicated. We have now to 
 consider some which belong more specifically to the 
 present times and the prevailing conditions of 
 thought. The thinking of the age is steadily 
 changing its points of observation, and so obtaining 
 
84 CHRISTIAN ED UCA TION. 
 
 new and broader and more correct views of things ; 
 and these changed views necessitate new adjust- 
 ments of thought respecting some things closely 
 related to the truths of religion. These changes 
 cannot be avoided ; we think, too, that they are 
 desirable ; but they impose upon the Christian edu- 
 cators of our times a sacred and somewhat difficult 
 duty. 
 
 During the present century very great advances 
 have been made in nearly all departments of human 
 learning, of which progress the broader and better 
 methods of thinking that have come into use were 
 at first a procuring cause, and it was afterward in- 
 tensified by them. These advances of learning have 
 been made especially in the domains of the natural 
 sciences and of biblical criticism ; and in both parts 
 they have impinged upon some traditional and 
 time-honored opinions concerning religion. Until 
 comparatively lately, on account of the lack of sec- 
 ular learning among the common people, religious 
 teaching, based upon the English Bible, had the 
 undisputed right of way, and the methods of using 
 the Bible were also, in many things, sadly defective 
 in style and form. But all this is now changed ; 
 another authority has come into the council, de- 
 manding to be heard in the arbitrament of learned 
 questions, and accordingly the whole system of 
 
LIONS IN THE WAY. 85 
 
 religious beliefs must now be adjusted to these 
 changed conditions. The Bible is no less an au- 
 thority than before ; but another authority has come 
 into the court, and the claims of both parties must 
 be heard, and harmonized by the needed modifica- 
 tions and the just partition and distribution of the 
 domains of each. To the Bible must be conceded 
 the supreme authority in all things spiritual, and 
 those directly relating to men's relations to God and 
 to the kingdom of God in the earth and to the 
 future state. But in whatever relates to material 
 things nature must be allowed to speak through its 
 facts, and men must hear. The first principles, the 
 elements of physical science, are found in the ma- 
 terial world, and its conclusions are to be derived 
 from these and not from the Bible, which surely is 
 not a text-book of natural philosophy ; nor should 
 it be compelled to stand as an authority in geology, 
 or physics, or psychology. The processes by which 
 natural and spiritual knowledge in their severalty 
 are attained are essentially diverse, and each kind 
 is independent of the other, and, therefore, each 
 should be shut up to its own specialties. The two 
 books — nature and revelation — are both of God, and 
 they are, therefore, alike infallibly true, and each is 
 supreme in its own domain, and because they pro- 
 ceed from the one eternal fountain of truth they 
 
86 CHRIS TIAN ED UCA TION. 
 
 cannot contradict each other, though to men's lim- 
 ited observations their teaching may sometimes 
 seem to be irreconcilable. 
 
 It is also becoming more and more manifest to 
 our wisest and most devout Christian thinkers that 
 the Bible is largely an undeveloped mine of spiritual 
 treasures ; that hitherto the Church and Christian 
 thinkers have navigated only the shallows and the 
 narrow friths of its boundless ocean of spiritual 
 mysteries, which the divine Spirit is appointed to 
 make manifest in due time — and this thought 
 should teach all men to hesitate before announcing 
 as a finality their own partial conceptions as the 
 complement of what the Bible teaches. And as to 
 men's knowledge of the material world, it is in 
 respect to phenomena scarcely more than infinites- 
 imal in comparison with what is still unknown ; 
 and as to an all-comprehending and combining 
 rationale of the material universe, the most learned 
 scientists have not yet mastered its alphabet. It is 
 therefore quite too soon for the contestants re- 
 specting the teachings of revelation and the findings 
 of science to make out a definite inventory of their 
 distinctive claims. Whatever the Bible clearly de- 
 clares, and of that there is very much that is both 
 indubitably manifest and unspeakably valuable, we 
 gladly accept and appropriate. But just what may 
 
LIONS IN THE WAY. 87 
 
 be the relations of these spiritual realities to the 
 world of matter and of the natural laws among 
 which we live may not be entirely manifest. So, 
 too, natural phenomena, which fall within the 
 range of the sense-perceptions, must be accepted as 
 reliable data of knowledge ; and still further, care- 
 fully drawn inferences and rigidly scrutinized gen- 
 eralizations must also be accepted for the time 
 being, and until further knowledge shall require 
 their modification or re-adjustment. But it is the 
 temerity of ignorance to set up these half-under- 
 stood phenomena and their still more shadowy 
 suggestions against the truths of revelation, and, 
 also, because our knowledge of the Bible is quite 
 the opposite of infallible, they who attempt to in- 
 terpret its lessons should not be too dogmatical. 
 Some things have certainly been learned from both 
 nature and revelation, but very much more remains 
 to be learned ; and in these unexplored regions there 
 may still lie concealed some of the great factors 
 that make up the problem of being. 
 
 For its own purpose — namely, our religious in- 
 struction — the Bible must be accepted as a divinely- 
 given embodiment of truth and doctrine, and even 
 its references to natural things are subordinate and 
 auxiliary to the same purpose. In respect to these 
 things its point of view commands the apparent and 
 
88 CHRIS TIA AT ED UCA TION. 
 
 phenomenal rather than the occult and unknowable 
 reality. As a record designed for ail ages and con- 
 ditions of mental growth no other form would have 
 been suitable ; for a revelation, that it may come 
 within the sphere of men's knowledge and so 
 become a manifestation of the truth, must appear 
 in the setting of their conceptions. And yet those 
 materialistic conceptions are not an integral part of 
 the truth which they invest. To those to whom the 
 words of revelation were first given, the earth ap- 
 peared to be a flat surface, walled in by the horizon 
 and canopied by the sky ; and the truths of God 
 delivered to men with such conceptions necessarily 
 entered into the same conditions. And when the 
 ideas of other worlds came to men's minds these 
 were assigned positions indicated by their character, 
 above and beneath. All this was manifestly the 
 result of the mental preconceptions of those to 
 whom the revelation was made, and they indicate 
 not the real but the phenomenal world. 
 
 The practical problems thus propounded are not 
 peculiar to this age, and the best minds of Christen- 
 dom have all along so understood the language and 
 imagery of the Bible ; and as required to do so, by 
 the growth of physical science, they have made 
 haste to modify their conceptions of the sense of 
 the text agreeably to the better knowledge of the 
 
LIONS IN THE WA Y. 89 
 
 material things of which it incidentally treats. But 
 the rulers of the Church have not always been 
 equally wise, as was seen in the case of Galileo; and 
 our own time has produced its full share of the 
 same kind of folly. It was certainly wise to inter- 
 pret the language and imagery of the Bible just as 
 they appear till it became manifest that such a 
 course must involve absurdities ; for old and pre- 
 scriptive notions should not be lightly abandoned. 
 A plea in mitigation may therefore be offered in 
 favor of those who opposed the Copernican system 
 as a dangerous heresy ; and the same consideration 
 should be extended to the many good people who 
 in our day are alarmed at the teachings of the 
 natural sciences. So while we respect their cautious- 
 ness, and excuse their ignorance, we cannot be 
 expected out of respect for them to deny manifest 
 truth. This unreadiness of those who are not ex- 
 perts in science to accept the vaticinations of the 
 professed prophets of nature, is also somewhat 
 justified by the overweening pretentiousness of not 
 a few smatterers in science, who have attempted to 
 build up great theories on very narrow bases and 
 with scant materials, and also doing this in a spirit 
 of intense and unreasonable opposition to the truth 
 of the Bible. 
 
 If we are really believers in the truths of Chris- 
 
90 CHRISTIAN ED UCA TION. 
 
 tianity, assuredly for us there is nothing to fear in 
 respect to the stability and perpetuity of the great 
 system of spiritual truth of which the Bible is the 
 embodiment and depository ; and they do but little 
 honor to the faith which they would cherish and 
 protect, who are alarmed at every threat against it 
 and dread to see it submitted to the severest tests. 
 The aphorism uttered by Macaulay respecting the 
 using of the Baconian philosophy, that it calls for 
 much hope and very little faith, is especially needed 
 to guide our modern scientists : the former to 
 quicken their researches, and the latter to save them 
 from the characteristic folly of their class, of shout- 
 ing Eureka before any demonstration has been 
 reached. The great truths of religion are much 
 more than merely traditions ; for they have demon- 
 strated their vitality and power through the ages ; 
 and they are therefore not to be lightly set aside, 
 and especially not in obedience to the requirements 
 of systems that seem to be as unsteady and evan- 
 escent as the shifting lights of the aurora borealis. 
 And yet it would indicate a combination of fanati- 
 cism and stupidity to refuse to accept the well- 
 established results of science for fear that the faith 
 would suffer loss. Christianity is not a house built 
 on the sand, and needing to be guarded by ecclesias- 
 tical canons and fortified by ignorance ; but it is 
 
LIONS IN THE WA Y. 91 
 
 built upon the Rock, and stands secure. No truth 
 has any thing to fear as to the outcome of any fairly- 
 conducted examination of its evidences ; and the 
 mistaking friends of the Gospel who deprecate such 
 discussions do it a disservice. And yet, because 
 the unlearned and unskillful are liable to be moved 
 from their steadfastness by superficial and specious 
 arguments, it is needful that they shall be protected 
 by their teachers with better instructions. This is 
 the sacred and the delicate duty of the Christian 
 instructor — to lead his pupils to better conceptions 
 of the truths as they rise out of their childhood's 
 unreasoning faith into broader and clearer percep- 
 tions. And just along this path are the " lions " at 
 which the faint-hearted are alarmed, and which 
 without proper guidance may prove fatally de- 
 structive. But, like those of the Pilgrim s Progress, 
 these lions are harmless if dealt with boldly and 
 circumspectly. To deny or ignore all these occa- 
 sions of harm would be to act like the proverbial os- 
 trich, that when pursued hides her head in the sand 
 and fancies there is no danger because none is seen. 
 There are indeed dangers that may not be dis- 
 regarded in the things of which we have spoken ; 
 dangers that should be recognized and confronted 
 boldly and wisely ; and if so dealt with they will 
 prove to be as harmless as the chained lions. But 
 
92 CHRIS TIAN ED UCA TION. 
 
 to attempt to evade the conflict is to insure 
 defeat. 
 
 The questions arising out of the learning of the 
 times and affecting the evidences of Christianity 
 are of two kinds : those that relate to the natural 
 sciences, especially geology and biology, and those 
 that are developed by biblical criticism. And these 
 are practically the more formidable on account of 
 the spirit of skepticism that pervades and animates 
 much of the learned criticism of the age, and the 
 illogical audacity with which conclusions are pro- 
 claimed before the conflict of arguments has been 
 fairly joined. It may be conceded that the results 
 of scientific investigation and of critical inquiry have 
 very considerably changed the external aspects of 
 the conflict for and against the Christian faith. 
 New questions have been raised, which, unanswered, 
 would soon become fatal objections ; and these are 
 known not only to every scholar, but effectively to 
 every one, old and young, learned and unlearned. 
 Our church schools teach the sciences that are being 
 used as engines for the overthrow of the faith ; and 
 whoever studies the Bible in our Sunday-schools is 
 reminded that the genuineness and the integrity of 
 nearly all the sacred book have been called in ques- 
 tion. These are the issues that are forced upon all 
 Christian teachers, whether in the pulpit or in the 
 
LIONS IN THE WA Y. 93 
 
 professor's chair ; and to the latter pre-eminently 
 belongs the duty of engaging in the strife, which is 
 perilous only as it is neglected. Let us then, as we 
 proceed, consider these several subjects as they seem 
 to relate to the things that are taught us out of the 
 Bible. 
 
 Geology, the science of the earth viewed as dead 
 matter, is, as a science, scarcely a hundred years old, 
 though both the sacred and the profane literature 
 of all ages contain geological facts and references. 
 As a science it is also still in its infancy, with but 
 few of its problems fully resolved, and of the thou- 
 sands of questions suggested by its ascertained 
 facts only the smallest part have been satisfactorily 
 answered. Still some things have been clearly made 
 out, and some important principles have been de- 
 termined, which only the folly of ignorance will 
 attempt to belittle. And some of these have pretty 
 close and effective relations to certain things found 
 in the Bible, which have also been wrought into 
 theology and become integral parts of the popular 
 faith ; and to adjust these things satisfactorily, and 
 to harmonize the two sets of truth, demands close 
 and intelligent consideration. And it may also be 
 said they have compelled the adoption of modified 
 views of some things in the Old Testament history 
 and of biblical interpretation generally. 
 
94 CHRIS TIAN ED UCA TION. 
 
 One of the early battles of geological science 
 against the traditional interpretation of the Bible 
 was over the six days of creation as found in the 
 beginning of Genesis; and this has resulted, it must 
 be confessed, in the thorough defeat of the tradi- 
 tional method. We have ceased to hold and teach 
 on this subject as we did fifty years ago, when our 
 best biblical scholars insisted that the only possi- 
 ble meaning of the " six days M was six periods 
 of twenty-four hours each, with their dawns and 
 twilights ; while to-day no scholar will so declare. 
 And yet this wide change has not harmed our con- 
 fidence in the Bible. That patent fact is assuring 
 in respect to some other things not yet so clearly 
 concluded, involving, among other subjects, impor- 
 tant questions relative to the Old Testament Chris- 
 tology, and to the place of man in the creation ; all 
 of which questions will no doubt find satisfactory 
 solutions as they arise and are duly examined. The 
 now generally accepted notion of the indefinite 
 extent of the period designated " six days/' during 
 which our earth was passing from chaos into a state 
 adapted to human habitation, sweeps away a multi- 
 tude of otherwise very formidable difficulties, and 
 especially so some of those connected with the 
 scientifically-attested fact that man is evidently the 
 latest found of the earth's denizens. While allow- 
 
LIONS IN THE WA Y. 95 
 
 ing any required length of time for the pre-Adamite 
 earth, the testimony of the rocks and of the gravel- 
 beds, the caves and the estuaries, calls for no greater 
 age for the human race than is easily reconcilable 
 with the allowably rectified chronology of the 
 Bible. The whole difficulty that has seemed to 
 arise from the evident antiquity of the earth is thus 
 at once and effectually disposed of, for in the 
 chronicles of the ages of the Almighty millions 
 of millenniums cost no more than single years. 
 Through these apparent mazes and over these 
 necessary transitions of views and opinions our 
 Christian instructors are called to conduct their 
 pupils, and to demonstrate to them the essential 
 harmony of all that is really known of science and 
 revelation. 
 
 The study of biology, with its related matters, 
 opens a wide field for inquiry, which is as yet only 
 very partially explored, though here too some highly 
 important facts and principles have been definitely 
 settled. We are here also brought into contact with 
 not a few important questions that are more or less 
 closely related to biblical and theological subjects ; 
 and they, therefore, call for intelligent and judicious 
 treatment by our Christian educators. In this ex- 
 amination Nature appears as an independent witness 
 to give her testimony upon subjects in resnect to 
 
96 CHRIS TIAN ED UCA TION. 
 
 which the Bible has also spoken. These witnesses are 
 independent, each of the other, and both are alike 
 credible, for neither of them can be untrue ; nor is it 
 allowable to suspect that they can contradict each 
 the other. In considering these things it is, first of 
 all, necessary to ascertain just what the Bible declares 
 about them, and also to carefully consider what has 
 been clearly proved respecting the phenomena of 
 living things. The first result of this process would 
 be a not inconsiderable abatement of pretensions on 
 both sides in respect to the extent of our knowledge 
 and the infallible correctness of the conclusions that 
 have seemed to be reached ; and the next result 
 would be, that since these things are viewed from 
 diverse points of observation by these two witnesses, 
 it may be reasonably inferred that what may seem 
 to be contradictory is so only in appearance, and 
 that fuller knowledge would disclose the most com- 
 plete harmony. 
 
 It is quite possible — may we not say it is very 
 certain ? — that in matters relating to natural science 
 more has been inferred from the language of the Bible 
 than can be legitimately justified ; and it is unques- 
 tionable that many things announced by the scien- 
 tists with all the apparent authority of oracles, are 
 often simply hypotheses, or at best only theories, in 
 the construction of which a very large part of the 
 
LIONS IN THE WA Y. 97 
 
 materials have been contributed by the imagination 
 rather than gathered from well-ascertained facts. To 
 place these things in their true relations is a delicate 
 and a needed work, demanding alike spiritual illum- 
 ination, large acquaintance with the phenomena of 
 nature, and thoroughly rational modes of thinking. 
 But until this whole subject has been subjected to 
 the treatment which can only thus be given to it, it 
 is too soon to assume that there is, or can be, any 
 conflict between science and revelation. 
 
 A hasty reference to some of the undisputed facts 
 of the physical world may help to a better under- 
 standing of this subject. The things of the whole 
 world appear under four different forms : 
 
 i. Inorganic matter. 
 
 2. Vegetable life. 
 
 3. Animal life. 
 
 4. Rational life. 
 
 All these the materialistic scientists tell us are 
 only different conditions and aspects of matter, and 
 that they shade into each other without any ascer- 
 tained or probable lines of demarkation between 
 them. It is assumed that what is sometimes called 
 dead matter has in itself the elementary principles of 
 all life, the " potency and prophecy of all phenom- 
 ena," which are sure to be developed in organic 
 forms, wherever the conditions are favorable. This 
 
98 CHRIS TIAN ED UCA TION. 
 
 is the much-talked-of theory of evolution, respect- 
 ing which very much has been said and written, and 
 with about equal unwisdom on both sides. But 
 the thoughtful scholar, whether a Christian or a 
 skeptic, while he confesses on the one hand that 
 there are facts in nature that may be readily built 
 into such a theory, yet, on the other hand, he must 
 concede that the phenomena of nature are not, as 
 a whole, in harmony with its requirements. The 
 real philosopher will, therefore, suspend his judg- 
 ment and ask for more light, and the Christian 
 believer, with his " more sure word of prophecy," 
 will abide in his faith and await, without fear or 
 misgivings, all that science may disclose. 
 
 The several forms of existence which are seen to 
 stand distinct in their phenomenal aspects, have 
 never been proved to be otherwise than essentially di- 
 verse, and incapable of transmutation, under the last 
 analysis to which they have been submitted. Theo- 
 rists may talk about the unity of nature and the 
 upward gradation of being, without a break or 
 chasm from the lowest to the highest, from the dull 
 clod to the ethereal spirit, but the empiricist has no 
 testimony by which to sustain such a fancy. The 
 chasm between inorganicmatter and living organisms 
 has never been bridged, although learned and expert 
 physicists have examined nature " with tortures," in 
 
LIONS IN THE WA Y. 99 
 
 order, if possible, to extort that secret ; but in no 
 case has life been evolved by any of the processes of 
 chemistry, and while there is absolutely no direct 
 proof that life has been evolved from what seems 
 to be dead matter, the negative proof is complete 
 and overwhelming that it cannot be done, since as 
 to the facts of nature, organic life, in every known 
 case and among all conditions of being, is seen to be 
 the result and offspring of pre-existing living organ- 
 isms. So, too, the two forms of living things — 
 vegetables and animals — though apparently scarcely 
 distinct in some of their lowest forms are found on 
 closer inspection, to differ essentially in their char- 
 acters, and therefore to be incapable of transition 
 the one into the other. Vegetation, in its merest 
 approach toward its ideal perfection, is apparently 
 further removed from animal life than in its lower 
 and less developed forms; and at every point nature 
 seems to declare that the chasm between its two 
 forms of life is absolutely impassable. 
 
 In man is seen still another form of life — the 
 spiritual — which cannot be identified with his ani- 
 mal and physical nature ; for there is an absolute 
 w r ant of proof that the rational soul is the product of 
 man's physical being, or that the physical instincts 
 lie in the same plane with the reason. And so we 
 find these several forms of existence, each with its 
 
100 CHRIS TIA N ED UCA TION. 
 
 proper differentia, and with its metes and bounds 
 clearly established, and which cannot be over-passed. 
 And while we may not accept the Bible as a 
 competent authority in the science of biology, we 
 cannot but recognize the remarkable agreement of 
 the story of the creation of the earth, and the 
 herb, and the living thing, and finally of man, with 
 the arrangement and distribution of things in the 
 world. 
 
 The theory of evolution, much talked of and but 
 little understood, is, so far as it has any scientific 
 basis, shut up to the various forms of vegetable and 
 animal life. It certainly cannot be applied to in- 
 organic matter, which is without growth, and it 
 has never been shown to apply to spiritual beings. 
 Growth is a universal fact throughout the domains 
 of vegetable and animal life, not only as each indi- 
 vidual thing advances from its earliest infantile 
 status to its completion, but also that among favor- 
 able conditions the offspring rises to a higher stage 
 of perfection than was reached by the parent. There 
 seems to be for each class and kind of living things, 
 an ideal perfection toward which the whole species 
 is tending by the force of its vital instincts, and to- 
 ward which each individual advances through its 
 proper stage unless restrained by unpropitious en- 
 vironments. And because of the modifying power 
 
LIONS IN THE WA Y. 101 
 
 of conditions and environments, acting unequally in 
 different directions, two individuals of the same 
 kind may grow out into widely different forms and 
 types ; and if to these different types shall be given 
 the name of species, then we have before us the 
 process by which specific differences are originated, 
 which may at length become fixed and transmis- 
 sible by inheritance. 
 
 The question of the evolution of species is, by 
 its conditions, incapable of either proof or disproof. 
 All living forms are propagated and perpetuated 
 agreeably to the original law of like producing like ; 
 and yet even that law is found to be somewhat 
 variable, and the lines of descent are often seen to be 
 divergent ; but whether or not such divergencies are 
 shut up within definite limitations, with ever active 
 tendencies to return to the original types, cannot 
 be determined, for two sufficient reasons: (i) We 
 have no sufficient knowledge as to the original con- 
 stitution of species, if such there are, and (2) human 
 life, and that of the race, is too short and human 
 observations too narrow to allow any adequate tests 
 by experiments. On the one hand, nature frequently 
 manifests a tendency toward the production of 
 variations, which at length become fixed and sub- 
 ject to the laws of heredity ; but, on the other hand, 
 there is no fairly attested case of the production of 
 
102 CHRISTIAN ED UCA TION. 
 
 a well-defined and clearly differentiated species of 
 either plants or animals. Evolutionists account for 
 this lack of proof by claiming that the time required 
 for effectuating such changes exceeds all human 
 calculations, and that during such unmeasured cycles 
 the earth has existed as a seat of life. But the his- 
 tory of those remote ages is written, though very 
 imperfectly, in the form of organic remains in the 
 earth's frame-work of rocks ; and that record fails to 
 sustain the theory that the course of life has been 
 steadily and uniformly upward. At the utmost the 
 question is still an open one. 
 
 This question of evolution has been discussed with 
 an earnestness that seemed to claim, on the one 
 hand, and to concede, on the other, that its triumph 
 would be fatal to the Christian faith. But just why 
 any Christian theist should be afraid of it is not 
 altogether obvious. The fact that there is method 
 in the processes of nature, and that the tendency 
 is upward, ought not to disprove its divine origin nor 
 exclude the Creator from his own handiwork. We 
 know life simply as a mode of existence and a well- 
 directed potency of nature ; and yet assuredly it is 
 not itself a property of matter. And since it is 
 not known what life is, nor whence it is derived, its 
 existence suggests that it comes from an unknown 
 and incomprehensible Power, which, because of the 
 
LIONS IN THE WA Y. 103 
 
 attributes revealed in his works, must possess the 
 nature of a person. The created universe has been 
 recognized as revealing its great Original, and the 
 skill manifested in its ordering has been accepted as 
 proof of the divine wisdom ; and surely the laws of 
 life are no less wonderful and theistical than are 
 those of the mechanical forces. To detect God in 
 his works, and to demonstrate from them his attri- 
 butes of power and wisdom and fatherly goodness, 
 has been the recognized business of natural theol- 
 ogy ; and surely God is not excluded from his works 
 because they are perpetually in action, moving in 
 changeless order toward the perfection of their pos- 
 sibilities. As his providence is seen in the develop- 
 ment of God's purposes in society, so are his wis- 
 dom and power displayed in the forces of life in the 
 wo lid. 
 
 We have purposely assumed the truth and the 
 authority of the Bible in all that has been said, and 
 such will be the casein all that shall follow ; for this 
 is not the place to open that question. But certain 
 questions respecting the Bible itself, what it is and 
 how it is to be used, are coming to the front and 
 demanding to be answered. Our young people and 
 the unlearned are aware that modern scholarship 
 has brought into question certain traditional notions 
 respecting the Scriptures — questions that sometimes 
 
104 CHRIS TIAN ED UCA TION. 
 
 seem to involve the first principles of the faith ; and 
 to these our Christian educators must render satis- 
 factory solutions. We have thought of the Bible 
 as one — a unified embodiment of divine truth — and 
 such no doubt it is ; and yet it is a compilation of 
 documents, and that fact involves the question of 
 the canon. The Bible was originally written in lan- 
 guages now dead, and even the copies that are now 
 in existence are not the originals, but transcripts 
 made in later times. It is called the " word of 
 God," and yet it is mournfully human in its compo- 
 sition and as to its external character. It is claimed 
 and conceded to be inspired ; but just what is the 
 substance and purport of that claim is itself a sub- 
 ject to be considered. The task imposed by these 
 things upon our Christian educators is all-impor- 
 tant, and is in itself beset with not inconsiderable 
 difficulties; and these are just now not a little 
 heightened by the recent and current discussions of 
 these subjects. A lion of rather formidable propor- 
 tions is here to be confronted. 
 
 We claim for every man the free use of the Bible 
 with the right of private interpretation, and that 
 concession carries with it to the receiver the obli- 
 gation to read and understand the written word, 
 with the resultant responsibilities. If, in the past, 
 these claims have been only partially asserted, and 
 
LIONS IN THE WA Y. 105 
 
 the people have accepted their theology with un- 
 questioning confidence from their teachers, it is 
 quite evident that we are entering upon a new order 
 of things, and that the intelligent but non-profes- 
 sional Christians of the future will demand intelligi- 
 ble answers to all the questions respecting the Bible. 
 A very heavy duty is thus devolved upon the Chris- 
 tian educators of these times. More intelligent 
 conceptions respecting the authority of the Chris- 
 tian Scriptures as sacred writings, and of the 
 quality of their contents, have become a necessary 
 condition for the maintenance of the faith among 
 us ; and while the duty resulting from this require- 
 ment comes to all who teach, from the nursery to 
 the pulpit and the professor's chair, to the last, 
 beyond all others, is given the needed facilities for 
 dealing with these questions. The unbelief of the 
 age is concentrating its forces against the citadel of 
 the faith, God's written word ; and they to whom 
 belongs the duty of defending the faith must meet 
 their antagonists at that point. Many of the older 
 methods of defense are no longer available, the 
 the enemy having carried some of the outposts that 
 lay beyond the walls of the citadel. Some things 
 that have been supposed to belong to the integ- 
 rity of the faith must probably be abandoned as 
 untenable. The " hay, wood, and stubble " which 
 
106 CHRISTIAN ED UCA TION. 
 
 human infirmity has wrought into the structure of 
 the traditional theology will perish in the fire of 
 the conflict, but the u gold and silver M of spiritual 
 religion, and the " prepared stones " of Christian 
 evidences, will abide in more clearly manifested 
 beauty and strength. Here is a call for heroic 
 treatment ; here, perhaps, is some heavy work to be 
 done, which requires large measures of both force 
 and skill. And to whom is this call more directly 
 and authoritatively addressed than to those whom 
 the authorities of the Church have placed at the 
 fountain-heads of instruction — whose business is 
 "to give subtilty to the simple, to the young man 
 knowledge and discretion ? M No doubt, in view of 
 these things, " the slothful man M will say, M There is 
 a lion without, I shall be slain in the streets ;" but 
 because of the greatness of the peril the demand 
 for courage and fortitude in those charged with the 
 defense of the truth is correspondingly imperative. 
 The final result is not at all doubtful ; about that we 
 have no misgivings ; our concern is, that it may be 
 achieved the most speedily and effectively, and with 
 the least possible loss of souls ; and that it may be 
 so done our Christian instructors must take hold of 
 this matter boldly, ably, wisely, and in the fear of 
 God, assured of the sufficiency of the Gospel against 
 all its adversaries. 
 
CHARACTER-MAKING. 107 
 
 V. 
 
 CHARACTER-MAKING. 
 
 IN another lecture we accepted the statement that 
 " the function of education " is to prepare its 
 subjects for u complete living." We shall not now 
 either withdraw or modify that concession, but we 
 would lay alongside of it another thought which 
 will help to the better understanding of the things 
 to be considered. The phrase " complete living " 
 is evidently intended to be understood in an active 
 sense, relative to doing rather than simply being; 
 to conduct rather than character. And yet it is 
 evident that the former is dependent upon the latter 
 for its stability and effectiveness, and therefore to 
 insure " complete living," attention must be given 
 to the formation of " right character." Every man's 
 life, as a whole, corresponds to his character; for 
 though special resolves and temporary impulses may 
 have their uses and may, indeed, be necessary, be 
 requisites to the reformation of one's manner of life 
 or the improvement of his character, yet in order 
 that these shall be permanently effective of good 
 results they must pass from the nature of simple 
 
108 CHRISTIAN ED UCA TION. 
 
 impulses and voluntary purposes and become fixed 
 and abiding habits. 
 
 The scriptural maxim, " Of the abundance of the 
 heart the mouth speaketh," applies equally to all 
 the forms of men's activities, and that fact justifies 
 the further rule of judgment that M the tree is known 
 by its fruit," and, therefore, that in order that the 
 fruit shall be good the tree itself must be good. 
 " Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of this- 
 tles?" Everyman's active life is a truthful index 
 of the ruling qualities of his mind and heart, the 
 things that constitute his character. The purpose 
 of education is, therefore, to awaken and confirm 
 in the soul, so as to constitute its habits, correct 
 and noble thoughts and principles ; and wherever 
 these are found, and not elsewhere, there will surely 
 result u complete living." The purpose of the pres- 
 ent lecture shall, therefore, be to indicate some of 
 the conditions and characteristics that are found in 
 all those in whom the good work of education has 
 been perfected. 
 
 But before proceeding to consider the furniture 
 and endowments of such minds it may be useful 
 to notice certain needful mental habitudes and 
 modes of thought. Intellectual and moral sincerity 
 is at once a very rare quality of mind, and also a con- 
 dition essential to either right conduct or a correct 
 
' CHARACTER-MAKING. 109 
 
 character. Prejudices are proverbially unjust, and 
 from them their subject himself is usually the 
 greatest sufferer, since they render him incapable 
 of being just in his opinions and sentiments, and, of 
 course, in his conduct also. The effect of such a 
 distortion and disarrangement of the mind is to 
 disturb the processes of reasoning, to obscure the 
 intellectual perceptions, and to darken and pervert 
 the conscience, which almost necessarily involves 
 personal demoralization, and habitually evil ways of 
 thinking and feeling. And because this perverted 
 condition of the soul is very deeply inwrought in 
 human nature as well as very evil in its effects, it 
 calls for the most earnest and also the most delicate 
 and judicious efforts for its complete correction — a 
 task that is second in interest to scarcely any other. 
 Nearly related to men's prejudices, though essen- 
 tially not the same, is the peculiar disposition of the 
 mind— both the intellect and the moral nature — 
 called skepticism. It is the fashion of the times to 
 speak very tolerantly, and indeed deferentially, of 
 what men choose to designate " honest doubt," with 
 the implication that usually doubts, especially in re- 
 spect to matters of religious faith, are honest. Noth- 
 ing, however, is more certain than that men's dis- 
 beliefs, even more than their beliefs, are formed and 
 entertained quite irrespective of any rational proofs. 
 
110 CHRIS TIAN ED UCA TION. 
 
 To believe without due evidence is to accept a con- 
 dition of mental slavery, which leads to superstition 
 and the debasement of the character; and on the other 
 hand, to refuse to believe when the proof is at hand 
 is not only logically unjust but unphilosophical, and 
 opposed to correct and symmetrical mental develop- 
 ment ; and when inspired by dislike of the truth it 
 is morally corrupting. Superstition is a misdirec- 
 tion, and often an abuse of the religious element in 
 the human character, but it still continues its sub- 
 ject in his character and relations as a religious 
 being, so perpetuating in him, even if somewhat 
 dwarfed, the noblest attributes of his humanity. 
 Skepticism, on the other hand, in addition to its 
 utter unreasonableness, is thoroughly destructive of 
 all by which the soul becomes allied to moral excel- 
 lence. It hides God and the spirit-world from the 
 soul, takes away all faith in the future life, with its 
 awards and compensations, and effectually extin- 
 guishes hope, except in blind chances and among 
 the happenings of the present life. It reduces vir- 
 tue to a childish sentiment or else a romantic ideal, 
 without any corresponding reality, and renders mo- 
 rality only a conventionalism without authority, the 
 sport of every one's passions, with only the faintest 
 security for any real excellence of life or character. 
 Men's actions are, in most cases, determined by 
 
CHA RA C TER-MAKING. 1 1 1 
 
 their characters, and not by the direct influences of 
 either their sense of duty or of interest. They act 
 as they feel themselves impelled by their tastes, in- 
 clinations, and habits, and each day's conduct is the 
 result of the present ruling element of their char- 
 acters. But when a spirit of doubt, of unpurposed 
 but effective unbelief which excludes God and his 
 providence, dominates and fashions all these, the 
 character becomes depleted of moral sensibilities, 
 and the conscience is deprived of its ability to dis- 
 criminate among moral qualities, and of course it 
 is without authority ; passion usurps the place of 
 the sense of right and the present pleasure, and lust 
 or ambition becomes the rule of life. Perhaps the 
 man did not deliberately choose his evil ways, but 
 by becoming separated from the needful aids that 
 come only through the religious instincts, which 
 skepticism discredits and destroys, he was left to 
 become the sport and subject of the lower elements 
 of his nature. Here, then, is work for the Christian 
 educators : to see to it that the subjects of their in- 
 structions may be saved from the pernicious power 
 of a soul-destroying skepticism by the shaping of 
 their characters to better modes of thinking and 
 believing. The curse denounced upon those that 
 " remove the ancient landmarks," w r ho " call good 
 evil and evil good," who " put light for darkness 
 
112 CHRIS TIAN ED UCA TION. 
 
 and darkness for light," subverting the eternal dis- 
 tinctions of right and wrong, and poisoning the 
 streams of virtue at their fountains, falls, not only 
 upon the purposing seducers from virtue, but also 
 upon all whose unconscious spiritual influences lead 
 away from the truth. Here should the Christian 
 educator stand, like Phineas with his censor, to 
 stay the plague. 
 
 After these preliminary suggestions in regard to 
 certain evils to be carefully avoided we pass to the 
 more definite consideration of some things that 
 belong to the character of the properly-educated 
 Christian. Here we assign the first place, the con- 
 victions that possess the mind, because they lie at 
 the foundation of character; for it is evidently true, 
 both as to the result of the past and the sure pre- 
 sage of the future, that "as a man thinketh in his 
 heart so is he." Though in our speculations we 
 discriminate between the intellectual and the moral 
 faculties, they nevertheless belong to the same un- 
 divided mind, and mutually and very largely affect 
 each the other. A man's beliefs enter into his moral 
 and spiritual conditions, and these in turn react 
 effectively upon his convictions. He that would 
 diligently " keep his heart," because u out of it are 
 the issues of life," must also guard against evil 
 thoughts lest the whole mind be led astray by 
 
CHARACTER-MAKING. 113 
 
 them. Here may be seen both the large possibil- 
 ities and the great importance of education, the 
 11 instruction " of the wise man whose " reproofs 
 are the way of life," the wisdom which is " an 
 ornament of grace " and u a crown of glory/' In 
 considering the purposes for which education is to 
 be sought for it is well, therefore, to fix our minds 
 and thoughts upon the convictions, the habitual 
 modes of viewing things, that should be originated 
 and entertained, since they necessarily become the 
 law of the life. 
 
 We are, of course, speaking especially, though 
 not exclusively, of convictions that relate to moral 
 and religious truth ; for these are especially and yet 
 not exclusively concerned in Christian education. 
 It is, then, first of all and in the highest degree im- 
 portant that clear and definite notions of right and 
 wrong shall be wrought into the understanding and 
 made to possess the whole soul ; since the authority 
 of the conscience is conditioned by the clearness of 
 its discriminations, and its perceptive powers are 
 also enlarged by its activities. These things are suf- 
 ficiently obvious to all who will observe them ; but 
 by being disregarded they become obscured so as to 
 escape attention, just as every-where the senses and 
 the mind's perceptions detect only the things to 
 which they are especially directed, and objects are 
 
114 CHRISTIAN EDUCA TION. 
 
 seen or not seen according to the dispositions and 
 purposes of those present with them. 
 
 It is not our purpose to speak of the practical 
 processes of education, by which the soul's faculties 
 are to be. adapted to their appropriate functions, 
 but rather to consider accomplished results: the fix- 
 ing in the mind and heart the convictions that these 
 things are abiding realities, that the discriminations 
 made by the quickened conscience are just and 
 true, sacred and all-important entities, never to be 
 left out of the account, but always to be accepted 
 as constant factors in all the problems of life. There 
 is an infinity of properties and relations in and 
 among the things with which we have to do, 
 some of which seem to elude our observation, and 
 others are of not enough value to compensate our 
 inquiries. But it is not so with things now under 
 notice, for the one thing that is valuable and im- 
 portant beyond all else in our mental furniture is 
 the power to discriminate between the right and the 
 wrong; to recognize the authority of the conscience 
 and to realize the obligation to do right ; and that 
 the highest possible advantages of these things 
 may be at once fruitful and abiding they must be 
 wrought into the substance and fiber of the soul's 
 being. 
 
 The mind's conception of moral qualities and 
 
CHARACTER-MAKING, 115 
 
 their distinctions implies a sphere of thought and 
 life other than that of the senses and the natural 
 perceptions. The subjective consciousness of moral 
 entities implies an objective sphere of being in 
 which those things subsist as substantive realities. 
 The properties of which the conscience approves as 
 excellent are not always identical with those that 
 command the approval of the taste. Their rec- 
 titude is different in kind from the correctness of 
 material measurements, and besides and afrove all 
 merely natural notions of rightness or beauty is 
 its mandatory power, which enjoins duty and will 
 not be denied, and to which the conscience assents 
 and confesses the righteousness of the indicated 
 demand. The moral philosophy that fails to recog- 
 nize any thing beyond the realm of nature is essen- 
 tially defective, because it leaves out of the account 
 a present and supreme element of the matter in 
 hand. The form of goodness with which man's 
 spiritual nature is chiefly concerned is not a spon- 
 taneous production of the mind, but it supposes a 
 higher source, and a transcendent authority, oppo- 
 sition to which is more than an error ; it is sin, whose 
 turpitude is proportioned to the sacredness of the 
 Person against whom it offends. These conceptions 
 of essential righteousness, of duty, and of the au- 
 thority that gives force to the dictates of conscience, 
 
116 CHRIS TIAN ED UCA TION. 
 
 must be so wrought into the mind and embedded 
 in the spiritual consciousness so deeply that they 
 shall become abiding and ruling elements of charac- 
 ter. And where these things so abide and dominate 
 the active powers of the soul the conduct of the 
 life will correspond with their excellence, and not 
 otherwise. 
 
 With these conceptions is also and inseparably 
 associated that of retribution, of compensations, in 
 the form of honors and well-being to the good and 
 of shame and sorrow to the bad. The natural con- 
 science, even when only partially instructed, appears 
 to have an intuitive sense of something of this sort 
 in the ordering of the world's affairs — the idea of a 
 Nemesis pursuing the evil-doer, which, though ap- 
 parently eluded for a while, is sure at length to 
 overtake the guilty one. We see this in the case 
 when the barbarians, seeing the viper fastening him- 
 self on Paul's hand, concluded that evidently he 
 was a murderer, " whom, though he hath escaped 
 the sea, vengeance suffereth not to live." The illus- 
 trations of this intuition, though most commonly 
 recognized in the form of vengeance, because the 
 sense of guilt is nearly always present to the natural 
 conscience, include also many and strongly-marked 
 cases of the opposite character. The heart's in- 
 tuitions and the experience of mankind unite to 
 
CHAR A C TER-MAKING. 117 
 
 respond to the teaching of divine truth, that, 
 " Though a sinner do evil a hundred times and 
 his days be prolonged, yet surely it shall be well 
 with them that fear God, which fear before him. 
 But it shall not be well with the wicked, neither 
 shall he prolong his days which are as a shadow; 
 because he feareth not before God/' But there is 
 a broad difference between the heathen and the 
 Christian conception of this subject. The Greek 
 tragedy left its Prometheus to suffer the inflictions 
 of the tyrant's power without compensation or 
 redress ; but the Hebrew drama, though it sets 
 forth the sufferings of its hero, tells also of his 
 release and his abundant compensations, illustrating 
 " the end of the Lord," and proving that he is " very 
 pitiful and of tender mercy." Upon the undefined 
 and instinctive utterances of the great heart of hu- 
 manity oppressed with the sense of sin the Script- 
 ures pour a strong and steady light, clearly detecting 
 and distinguishing the right from the w T rong, and 
 assuring to each its appropriate recompense, the 
 whole combining in the unchangeable declaration, 
 " There is judgment with the Most High." This all- 
 pervading and fearfully sacred element of the divine 
 government, which is the manifestation of God's 
 essential nature, is much more than a fact or an 
 established order ; it is rather the outcome of eter- 
 
118 CHRISTIAN EDUCATION. 
 
 nal righteousness abiding in the Godhead, an essen- 
 tial attribute of his divinity manifested in human 
 character and impressing itself on all that pertains 
 to man's destiny. And because it is of God it 
 not only is and must be, but, which is much more, 
 the natural conscience feels that it ought so to be. 
 
 There are also the elements of imperishability in 
 all the ethical and spiritual exercises and conditions 
 of man's nature, by virtue of which the whole char- 
 acter is fashioned and the unchanging destiny deter- 
 mined. This tremendous truth, so incomparably 
 important, so divinely sacred, and so far-reaching 
 and abiding in its results, should be deeply embed- 
 ded in the convictions and ruling sentiments of the 
 mind and heart. The education which fails at this 
 point, whatever else it may accomplish, and by 
 whomsoever it may be given, is not in the true and 
 best sense Christian education. 
 
 Christianity, if not an empty and pretentious 
 system of fables, is specifically and eminently a 
 supernatural religion, and, in order to its practical 
 effectiveness, its supernaturalism must be always 
 and every-where recognized. The reality of that 
 other and greater realm lying beyond that of sense 
 and reason must not only be accepted as a fact 
 (conceded, but not much used in our learned in- 
 quiries and discussions), but it must also stand 
 
CHARACTER-MAKING. 119 
 
 forth as the one controlling factor in all of them. 
 The sphere of nature, to which science is shut up, 
 is vastly less than is that of the soul's activities ; 
 and when science can proceed no further faith may 
 properly supplement its shortcomings by supply- 
 ing, as trustworthy data, what science hopelessly 
 calls for and yet confesses to be a felt want. Science 
 finds the world ready-made to its hand, but can 
 give no account of its genesis; while, on the other 
 hand, " by faith we understand that the worlds 
 were framed by the word of God." The very first 
 sentence of the Bible reveals what science could 
 never have demonstrated, and against which it has 
 nothing to offer. The conception of the super- 
 natural standing over and above nature, embracing 
 and permeating it, brings all the phenomena of the 
 natural world out of the chaotic darkness and con- 
 fusion of atheism and places them in the light and 
 harmony of a divine order. The one great truth of 
 science, infinitely greater than any other because it 
 is the foundation of all, is God ; and this belongs to 
 science only as a postulate, which can neither be 
 proved nor rationally called in question. Philosophy 
 demands God in all the infinitude and almightiness 
 of his attributes; the deepest intuitions of the soul 
 recognize his being and the instincts feel after him 
 as u an infant crying in the dark." Created nature 
 
120 CHRISTIAN ED UCA TION. 
 
 bears his faintly expressed lineaments, " the labor 
 of his hands and the impress of his feet." But all 
 these are but the hidings of his power, and God is 
 really known to men only by virtue of the revela- 
 tions that he has made of himself by supernatural 
 ways, speaking at first " at sundry times and in 
 divers manners by the prophets," and afterward 
 by his Son — " God manifested in the flesh.'* And 
 as so revealed God is seen in all his works, the up- 
 holder and director no less than the Creator of all 
 things, the Father of the spirits of all flesh, the life 
 and the light of men. He is that sole potency of 
 nature in which all things subsist. He directs the 
 planets in their orbits and listens to the cry of the 
 young ravens. He upholds all worlds, and also 
 beautifies the lilies and cares for the dying sparrows, 
 and he says to men, " Ye are much better than 
 many sparrows. " The difficulties that beset the 
 doctrine of the divine providence are not found in 
 the things propounded to our rational thinking, but 
 in that subjective spirit of unbelief which is blind 
 to the truth. To be able to see God by an abiding 
 perception of the soul, though in a high and peculiar 
 sense a divine gift, is also the legitimate outcome of 
 well-directed religious culture, rendered with godly 
 fidelity and accepted and treasured up with faith. 
 The scriptural idea of God, which is the only 
 
CHARACTER-MAKING. 121 
 
 proper theism, brings to humanity the boon of im- 
 mortality and the future life. As the conception 
 of the supernatural delivers the world of sense from 
 its isolated and infinitesimal individuality and pre- 
 sents it as a portion of the unbounded universe, so 
 the notion of God, the Father of eternity, carries 
 with it that of the imperishability of spiritual 
 creatures made in the image of God. Existence, 
 so contemplated, assumes new and inestimably 
 more glorious aspects, and man, as a spiritual being, 
 is raised above the mutations of material things. 
 The misgivings of the psalmist respecting God's 
 care for man, because of his almost immeasurable 
 littleness as compared with the vastness of the 
 heavens, resulted from the temporary earthiness 
 of his estimate of man's character and of his place 
 among God's works ; and all these were speedily 
 dispersed by a better and more truthful view of 
 what man is and as known and appreciated by the 
 Creator. The dark shadows that seem to our un- 
 spiritual minds to separate life and death, time and 
 eternity, earth and heaven, melt away and vanish 
 in the presence of a steady conception and habitual 
 conviction of spiritual realities, disclosing in its un- 
 changeableness the broader realm of the divine 
 ruler. It is the false science of superficial pretenders 
 that seeks to separate itself from all beyond the 
 
122 CHRIS TIAN ED UCA TION. 
 
 range of the senses, and so to find no place for the 
 Creator in the world that he made and now upholds. 
 But, interpreted by the word and the Spirit, " the 
 heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament 
 showeth his handiwork ;" and after these come les- 
 sons which reveal the divine fatherhood, the grace 
 of Christ, the comforts of the Spirit, and our im- 
 mortal hopes. And these are the lessons that should 
 be wrought into the minds and hearts of docile 
 and ingenuous young persons, not merely as abstract 
 truisms perfunctorily enunciated, but as vital, spir- 
 itual verities, to be grounded in the heart's convic- 
 tions and fashioned into abiding characteristics. 
 
 Christian instruction, if successfully carried for- 
 ward to its completed purpose, must extend beyond 
 all merely external influences resulting from the 
 contact of mind with mind. The recipient soul 
 must itself come into new and better habits and 
 spiritual consistencies. The virtues which exercise 
 the moral nature must be more than objects of 
 thoughts, of right choices and duties to be done. 
 They must rather become the attributes of the 
 soul ; an inwrought and abiding conscientiousness 
 which moves and acts spontaneously, and almost 
 unconsciously, by its own impulses. It is eminently 
 wise to keep our hearts with all diligence, and 
 happy is he who so watches and prays ; but more 
 
CHARACTER-MAKING. 123 
 
 supremely blest are those whose well-instructed 
 souls rest in God always, having overcome the evil 
 one, and now find God's word abiding in them. 
 
 On the human side the corrected moral character 
 appears in the form of conscientiousness, a clear 
 perception, and delicate appreciation of social 
 obligations, with a steady purpose to obey all their 
 requirements ; on the obverse, the Godward side, it 
 is a habitual religiousness, the sentiment of the soul 
 toward God, with the resultant emotions and exer- 
 cises. Though these are called by different names, 
 and spoken and thought of as different things, their 
 diversity is only apparent, not real. Some have 
 vainly attempted to construct systems of morality 
 with the religious element eliminated, and others a 
 system of religion made up of ceremonials and emo- 
 tions without respect to right conduct. The fault 
 of both of these is something worse than separating 
 what God has joined together ; it is the tearing 
 asunder and consequent destruction of the essential 
 nature of which both morality and piety are the 
 necessary outgrowths. The right adjustment of 
 man's spiritual being is, no doubt, as to its efficient 
 causation, the work of the Holy Spirit; and yet for 
 its growth and complete development it is largely 
 dependent on human agencies. The plants and 
 trees that cover our fields and adorn our landscapes 
 
124 CHRISTIAN ED UCA TION. 
 
 are indeed the product of the soil, warmed by the 
 sunshine and watered by the dews and rains of 
 heaven ; and yet they attain to their completeness 
 only as they are properly cultivated. And in like 
 manner does the soul, though taught and fashioned 
 by the divine spirit, grow into habits of right-doing 
 and of godliness of thoughts and affections, chiefly 
 as it is moved by the words of instruction and by 
 godly examples and by all the appropriate agencies 
 of Christian nurture. Authority may effectually 
 command obedience, and purposed self-discipline 
 may impel to the performance of duty ; and as these 
 proceed the whole spiritual nature will be fashioned 
 into conformity with these active and outgoing im- 
 pulses, so changing these external influences and 
 purposed impulses into the settled habitudes of the 
 spiritual nature. This is Christian character, sub- 
 jective rectitude of spirit, the ripe fruit of Christian 
 •education. Without this fruitage our best efforts, 
 with the best appointed methods and appliances 
 and the most notable results in other things, are 
 still disastrous failures. 
 
 The motives that, in the beginning of right liv- 
 ing, usually govern men's conduct, are, no doubt, in 
 most cases mixed and imperfect, not wholly un- 
 selfish, and often coming short of ideal complete- 
 ness. But as the instructed spirit rises into clearer 
 
CHARACTER-MAKING. 125 
 
 light and becomes more affected by purer and sim- 
 pler spiritual forces the love of the right (simply as 
 such), the approval of the morally excellent, and 
 the admiration of the " beauty of holiness, " become 
 the all-engrossing and dominating affections and 
 impulses. And when this is become a completed 
 work right living will become the assured result. 
 
 Before leaving the general subject of these dis- 
 cussions, and along the same line of thought, it may 
 be pertinent to consider some of the specifically 
 personal characteristics of the mind in which Chris- 
 tian education has done its work. One's self is, 
 after all, his own nearest and greatest interest — a 
 truth recognized and emphasized both in Scripture 
 and by the soul's highest and purest instincts ; and 
 a proper care for one's self is not at all in conflict 
 with any part of moral or religious duty. It is a 
 false asceticism, quite alien to correct thinking, and 
 entirely other than the consecration of ourselves to 
 God and Christ, taught us in the Scriptures, that 
 asks for such a kind and degree of self-abnegation 
 as would disregard those personal qualities and 
 actions which command the approval of the best 
 men and even compel the respect of the ungodly. 
 Vanity may be a foible and pride a fault, and both 
 of these are doubtless among the things from which 
 the perfect man has cleansed himself; but self- 
 
126 CHRIS TIAN ED UCA TION. 
 
 respect is very nearly related to all the chief forms 
 of essential right-mindedness; is itself a virtue and 
 the parent or foster-mother of many virtues. The 
 maintenance of a chastened and justly moderated 
 self-appreciation is especially the duty of scholarly 
 and cultured Christians, whose characters and con- 
 sequent relations in life devolve on them high du- 
 ties and assign them an excellent mission. 
 
 God himself looks with infinite complacency upon 
 the soul that bears his image, inwrought by spiritual 
 culture ; and any man that is renewed and beautified 
 by grace may appropriately glory in what has been 
 accomplished in himself and in what he has become. 
 The wise man may not glory in his own wisdom as 
 if it were the highest, nor the mighty man in his 
 strength, nor the rich man in his riches ; for all these 
 are unworthy of an immortal, god-like soul; but he 
 may glory that he knows his God, the author of "lov- 
 ing-kindness, judgment, and righteousness in the 
 earth;" and if he duly appreciates the relations into 
 which he is brought and the honor that God has laid 
 upon him he will not fail also to respect himself, and 
 that sentiment will prove to him at once a talisman 
 and a recompense. That a man should feel that he 
 would be dishonored and his better nature affronted 
 by low or unworthy practices is wholesome and ele- 
 vating in its tendencies. 
 
CHARACTER-MAKING. 127 
 
 The condition of character indicated by the word 
 manliness, though not easy to be analyzed or de- 
 fined, although it is very readily recognized, is in- 
 separable from any right conception of what belongs 
 to the properly-educated Christian ; and to develop 
 and fix that quality in the soul should be the special 
 purpose of all Christian education. It implies a 
 just appreciation of the individual simply as a man, 
 irrespective of all accidental conditions, and also 
 good-will toward all men ; and beyond all else it 
 sees human character ennobled by the divine favor. 
 It is not simply tender-hearted kindness and charity, 
 (in its lower sense) but a conscientious appreciation 
 of whatever is really or potentially excellent, where- 
 ever it may be found, and a corresponding disfavor 
 toward all opposing qualities of narrow selfishness, 
 of unprincipled self-seeking, and pretentious worth- 
 lessness. Its complete development and rounded 
 fullness of proportions implies the presence and 
 effective working of a good conscience, thorough 
 devotion to the right, and a consciousness of fellow- 
 feeling with God himself. This condition of charac- 
 ter never fails to make itself conspicuous, but without 
 ostentation, in the whole life and conduct of its 
 subjects ; and men take knowledge of them and 
 render to them sincere homage as embodiments of 
 true virtue. 
 
128 CHRIS TIA N ED UCA TION. 
 
 This disposition of mind is also the surest and 
 most excellent safeguard against temptations ; not 
 only those of the grosser forms, but also the more 
 subtle and, therefore, the more deceptive ; not only 
 against " the lusts of the flesh,'* but equally so 
 against the " lusts of the eye," the aesthetics that 
 outrage ethical purity, and " the pride of life/' 
 which exalts itself and disregards all else. The 
 Christian who, according to his well-instructed un- 
 derstanding and rectified conscientiousness, has 
 learned to respect himself in his true character, is 
 doubly protected against the allurements and im- 
 pulses that would lead him astray, since his quick- 
 ened and well-instructed moral sense caused him 
 to feel that only the one right way is at all compat- 
 ible with his position or worthy of his character. 
 To such a one, because of the clearness of his 
 spiritual perceptions, the steadiness of his convic- 
 tions of right and his conscientious fidelity of pur- 
 pose, the call of duty, whether to labor or sacri- 
 fice, is as the voice of God, to be responded to 
 only by instant and cheerful obedience. Aware 
 that men recognize him in his true character that 
 fact becomes to the true man of honor a perpetual 
 and effective stimulus to a becoming course of life 
 and conduct and to a devout purpose to live for 
 higher than temporal ends. 
 
CHARACTER-MAKING. 129 
 
 The sentiment of honor, though sometimes 
 thought of and considered as belonging exclusively 
 to men of the world, is found in its completeness 
 only as the fruit of Christian culture. The honest 
 man of the stoic age, as sketched by Cicero, is in- 
 deed an admirable character ; but even he is found 
 in the last analysis to lack the essential element of 
 unselfish goodness, as taught in the Sermon on the 
 Mount, and as seen in the ideal Christian. True 
 honor comprises delicacy of sentiment, a manly 
 spirit, a sensitive regard for the rights of others, 
 which is the only genuine ultraism and supreme 
 moral courage. The slightest touch of any thing 
 base, or mean, or false, or unjust is essentially ab- 
 horrent to it, since purity, sincerity, integrity, and 
 truth are its chief ingredients. Nor is it without re- 
 spect to the good opinions of men, but because of its 
 supreme regard for the right. All such opinions 
 become worthless in proportion to their departure 
 from the standard of true moral excellence. It may 
 cause its subject to be pleased with his influence 
 over other minds and to desire to be regarded with 
 respect and consulted with deference ; but it is 
 sensitively jealous of the rights of the lowly and 
 of those who cannot care for themselves. It fully 
 recognizes the appropriate distinctions of social 
 
 ranks and conditions, giving honor to whom honor 
 9 
 
130 CHRISTIAN EDUCATION. 
 
 is due ; but it never forgets that even the most lowly 
 have their rights, and since, because of their own 
 helplessness, such persons cannot protect themselves, 
 the true man of honpr, if he has the power, feels 
 himself called to become their champion. This was 
 the chief redeeming element of the so-called chiv- 
 alry of the Middle Ages, which also appeared in a 
 much better form in the character of Washington. 
 It was seen operating sublimely but madly in the 
 conduct of John Brown, and it was the controlling 
 element of character, of which its subject himself 
 was apparently unaware, that led our martyred 
 President Lincoln always to say or do the right 
 thing at the right time. But all these were but 
 very imperfect approximations to the true ideal, the 
 essentially honorable character, which is seen in 
 fragmentary features in the principles and precepts 
 of the Scriptures, and still more gloriously in the 
 manifestations of the divine attributes, which we 
 contemplate completed in human kind in Him who 
 alone was, in the absolute sense, a perfect man. No 
 better model for an object-lesson, in all that is noble 
 and lofty and honorable in human character, united 
 with all gentleness, brotherly kindness, and purity, 
 can be found or called for than is presented in the 
 character of Jesus Christ. 
 
 The Christian educator, therefore, needs this 
 
CHAR A C TER-MA KING. 1 3 1 
 
 model, displayed in its simple but sublime truth and 
 beauty, in all his instructions, that its features may 
 be reproduced in the susceptible souls and per- 
 manently wrought into the characters of those to 
 whom he ministers. Education becomes Christian 
 just in proportion as the personal Christ is found in 
 it in his truth, his Spirit, and his person. 
 
 I have now filled up the time and exhausted the 
 opportunities given me to speak to you upon the 
 deeply interesting theme proposed for our consid- 
 eration. Only a few of its many points have come 
 under notice, and the discussion of these has been 
 only very general, fragmentary, and incomplete. 
 And yet it may be hoped that even these exercises 
 will not prove altogether fruitless. You will believe 
 me when I say, I place a very high estimate on edu- 
 cation and have a profound appreciation of the 
 office and work of the educator ; but these should 
 be definitely Christian in character and spirit. After 
 all, we must come back to God's estimation of these 
 things, " Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wis- 
 dom, and to depart from evil is understanding." 
 
 
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