The Education Question [pp. 504-544]

The Education Question.
to make the State education as good as possible, to provide at
least for her own members a course of instruction more thoroughly according to her own views. The correctness of this
position is fully sustained by the two following considerations.
First, that the standard of religious education fixed by the most
religious advocates of the State system, is too low. And,
secondly, that there is no rational hope of seeing our public
schools, as a general thing, elevated even to that defective
standard.
In religious education there are two things obviously distinct
and of almost equal importance. The first is, the communication of truth to the mind, so that it shall become part of the
pupil's knowledge; the other is, the impression of it on the conscience and religious feelings, so as to render it practically operative in the formation of the character and government of the
conduct. What, therefore, Christians are bound to require,
and what the Church is bound to see as far as possible effected,
is that a knowledge of Christianity as a system of divinely revealed truth, should be communicated to the minds of the
young; and that that system should be, as far as human agency
can go, suitably impressed on the heart, by sincerely religious
as well as intelligent teachers. Religious education in this sense
of the term, is of necessity a very protracted process. It requires constant and long continued effort. It is only by years
of instruction that a child or youth can be brought to such an
intelligent and comprehensive knowledge of the contents of the
Bible, of its facts, institutions, doctrines, and precepts, as is necessary for his proper moral and religious development as a
Christian man. It is not by the simple use of the New Testament as a reading book in the public schools, that this object
has ever been accomplished. The Bible must be regularly studied; its doctrines clearly drawn out and inculcated, and the
principles of duty exhibited and applied. It is by a course of
instruction which renders the pupil an intelligent Christian, so
far as knowledge is concerned, that Scotch schools have exerted
the wonderful influence universally attributed to them. It is
by a similar process of indoctrination, that the Prussian system
has availed to preserve religious knowledge among the common
people, in the midst of a general apostacy of the clergy into
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1854.]
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