The Education Question [pp. 504-544]

The Education Question.
and colleges, is acting on sound principles, whatever mistakes
may have been made in the application of those principles in
particular cases.
There may be, as before remarked, individual dissentients
from one or another of the above positions, but the almost
unanimous decision of one Assembly after another, and the
concessions of those, who under misapprehension of the ground
intended to be assumed, had taken the part of objectors, prove
beyond doubt the substantial and cordial unanimity of our
Church as to all these points.
The first of these positions need not be argued. The necessity of general popular education is universally conceded.
If such education is necessary to other nations for their prosperity, to us it is necessary for our existence. Universal
suffrage and universal education condition each other. The
former without the latter is a suicidal absurdity. Everything
connected with our political well-being, with the elevation and
personal improvement of the people, and with the extension
and establishment of the Redeemer's kingdom, is more or
less directly involved in this great question. The work
which as a people we have to do; which, next to the preaching
of the gospel, is most immediate and most pressing, is to
provide and apply the means for the education of all classes of
our varied and rapidly increasing population. This education
should be such as to meet the exigencies of the people; giving
not merely to all the opportunity of acquiring the rudiments
of knowledge, but furnishing the means of higher cultivation,
for those who are disposed to avail themselves of them. This
may be taken to be the public sentiment of the country and of
the Church. In almost all our States provision is made more
or less effectively, not only for the establishment of common
schools, but also of academies and colleges endowed and sustained by public funds. The free High Schools of Boston,
New York and Philadelphia are among the most elevated of
our educational establishments.
The second position, viz., that education in all its stages
ought to be religous, is one of the great dividing points in
relation to this subject. On one - hand, it is contended that
religion, the Christian religion, including its facts, doctrines and
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