ARTICLE V.

INTELLECTUAL AND MORAL CULTURE IN OUR PUBLIC SCHOOLS.

Ir is well known that a great change, in a moral and religious point of view, has come over the character of school instruction in our land since the days of our forefathers. With scarcely an exception, all our public schools and higher seminaries of learning were, at the first, professedly founded in the interests of the Christian religion and piety. Harvard College, whose seal forever consecrates it Christo et Ecclesiæ, to Christ and the Church, resembled, in its early history, much more a theological seminary than a modern university. The object of the first Latin school in Boston, in 1635, was to raise up those who, "by acquaintance with ancient tongues," should be able to obtain "a knowledge of the Scriptures," and "to discern the true sense and meaning of the Original." The Enactment of 1647, establishing substantially our present free school system, the first free school system in the world, — reads as fol

lows:

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'It being one chiefe proiect of y' ould deludor, Sathan, to keepe men from y knowledge of y° Scriptures, as in former times, by keeping ym in an unknowne tongue, so in these latter times by perswading from y use of tongues, y' so at least yo true sence and meaning of y® Originall might be clouded by false glosses of saint-seeming deceivers, y' learning may not be buried in y° grave of our fathers in y church and Commonwealth, y Lord assisting our indeavors, it is therefore ordered, y' every towneship in this jurisdiction, after ye Lord hath increased ym to y° number of fifty housholders, shall then forthwith appoint one within their towne to teach all such children as shall resort to him to write and reade, whose wages shall be paid either by y parents or masters of such children, or by y inhabitants in generall by way of supply as ye maior part of those y' order y prudentials of y towne shall appoint, provided those y' send their

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children be not oppressed by paying much more y" they can have y taught for in other townes. And it is further ordered y' where any towne shall increase to ye number of one hundred families or householders they shall set up a grammar schoole y master thereof being able to instruct youth so farr as they may be fited for y* university, provided y' if any towne neglect y° performance hereof above one yeare, y" every such towne shall pay five pounds to ye next schoole till they shall performe this order."

Our State constitution, formed in 1779, makes it "the duty of legislatures and magistrates in all future periods of this commonwealth to cherish the interests of literature and the sciences and all seminaries of them, especially the University at Cambridge, public schools, and grammar schools in the towns," to the end that "wisdom, knowledge, and virtue may be generally diffused among the body of the people." And by a law passed in 1826 and still in force, it is made "the duty of the President, Professors, and Tutors of the University at Cambridge and of the several Colleges, of all preceptors and teachers of Academies, and of all other instructors of youth, to exert their best endeavors to impress on the minds of the children and youth committed to their care and instruction, the principles of piety, justice, and a sacred regard to truth; love of their country, humanity, and universal benevolence; sobriety, industry, and frugality; chastity, moderation, and temperance; and those other virtues which are the ornament of human society and the basis upon which a republican constitution is founded; and it shall be the duty of such instructors to endeavor to lead their pupils, as their ages and capacities will admit, into a clear understanding of the tendencies of the above-mentioned virtues to preserve and perfect a republican constitution and secure the blessings of liberty, as well as to promote their future happiness, and also to point out to them the evil tendency of the opposite vices." The time was when the chief text-books in our public schools were the New England Primer, the New Testament, the Psalter, and the Catechism. But now, in our schools, not only is religious instruction entirely dispensed with, but in some of them extempore prayer and the reading of the New Testament are expressly prohibited, and even the repetition of the

Lord's Prayer and the Ten Commandments is found in some places to be unsuited to a school-room. So that, at length, our schools have come to be characterized as "godless," at least by their enemies, and, it must be confessed, are, in fact and in truth, fast becoming so. And this state of things is justified by many persons and on various grounds.

And first: Some have asserted that children should not be instructed in any religious tenets or doctrines, until they first shall have arrived to maturity of understanding and for themselves shall be able to judge between right and wrong.

But this course appears to us as nothing better than a miserable and cowardly shirking of that responsibility which God has laid on every parent to bring up his children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. To every parent and to every guardian of youth, Jehovah has said of his statutes: "Thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up." As

"The dew-drop on the infant plant
May warp the giant oak forever,"

so in early childhood the mind is most impressible not only for good but for evil. And herein is manifested both the wisdom and goodness of God, in that, by enforcing the duty of early religious instruction and nurture, he has sought to forestall the evil by preoccupying the mind with the good and the true. And a heavy responsibility must rest on that parent, guardian, or instructor whose religious faith is so weak and unsettled, or of so little worth in his own esteem, that he dares not or cares not to teach it unto the children committed to his guidance and care.

It is, moreover, wholly impossible to bring up children, guard them how you will, perfectly free from bias in moral and religious matters. And even were it possible, we should yet deem it unsafe and wrong to do so, because youth, especially, about to enter upon life's perilous journey, need beforehand some fixed and settled principles by which they may be guided securely amid the difficulties and dangers of the way.

Besides, the falseness of the principle above advanced is evi

dent from its conceded inapplicability to other and related matters. For, if children are to be taught only those things which they can understand and the correctness of which they themselves have the means of determining, then the range of their studies will be exceedingly limited, and the amount of their instruction will be almost infinitesimally small.

Stephen Girard embodied this principle of non-instruction in religious tenets in his testamentary provisions for the government of his college for orphan children, a scheme which Webster justly branded as "derogatory to Christianity," and as "mere, sheer, low, ribald, vulgar deism and infidelity.” And it was in full accordance with this infidel scheme, that the author of the "Age of Reason" wished, in his day, that the schools might be conducted apart from "priestcraft and superstition;" or, in other words and as he meant it, apart from the influence of the Christian religion and the Sacred Scriptures.

But, secondly: It is sometimes argued that the school-room is not a fit place for religious instruction; that there is no natural connection or congruency between the teaching of religion and the teaching of mathematics, geography, and grammar; that the mingling together of profane and sacred studies in school would tend to diminish one's reverence for the Bible; and that the proper place for imparting religious instruction is in the family circle, the church, and the Sabbath-school.

But to all this we might, in the first place, deem it sufficient to reply, that, on the theory proposed, a large majority of the children and youth in our land would grown up in ignorance of their relations and duties to God and to their fellow-men, since they attend neither the church nor the Sabbath-school, and their home instruction, like their "street education," is anything but ennobling and salutary.

But we remark, in the second place, that this divorce of moral and religious culture from our school education is unnatural and monstrous in itself, and would be fatally detrimental to all the best interests of the individual and of society at large.

And here we are led to inquire: What is a true and symmetrical education? It is properly a drawing out, or a full and harmonious development of our whole being, physical, intellect

ual, moral, and religious. Hence a complete education is something more than simple instruction, something more than a knowledge of the physical sciences, something more than a merely intellectual culture. "The end of learning," says John Milton, "is to repair the ruin of our first parents by regaining to know God aright, and, out of that knowledge, to love him, to imitate him, to be like him, as we may the nearest by possessing our souls of true virtue, which, being united to the heavenly grace of faith, makes up the highest perfection." "I hold," said Dr. Arnold, the late head-master of Rugby, the greatest teacher of this, or perhaps of any age, “I hold all the scholarship man ever had to be infinitely worthless in comparison with even a very humble degree of spiritual advancement." And again he says: "Mere intellectual acuteness, divested as it is, in too many cases, of all that is comprehensive and great and good, is to me more revolting than the most helpless imbecility, seeming to be almost like the spirit of Mephistopheles." What Arnold most of all desired to see in his pupils was “earnest principle" and "moral thoughtfulness." And what he especially looked for and required in his school was: First, religious and moral principles; second, gentlemanly conduct; and third, intellectual ability.

There is nothing, alas, in merely intellectual culture, which is incompatible with profligacy and vice. And hence no native strength of mind or mental attainments are a sufficient guard against dissipation, wretchedness, and ruin. On this point the "Confessions" of a De Quincey and a Charles Lamb furnish ample and most unequivocal testimony. Coleridge, also, perhaps the profoundest thinker the world has ever seen, was yet for years the miserable slave of a habit which he loathed and detested with all his soul. Often did he beg his friends to confine him within some dungeon's granite walls, that he might be preserved from temptation, and, in his vain struggles to resist such temptation, he suffered, as he averred, all the torments of hell. Through want of moral principle and virtuous character, some of the brightest intellects that ever graced the halls of learning have gone down in darkness and irretrievable ruin. Such minds as these were strong enough to suffer, but, with all their intellectual furnishing, were too weak to overcome