The Education Question [pp. 504-544]

The Education Question.
country it is incumbent on her, in many places, to exercise that
right. Wherever thorough religious instruction cannot be incorporated in the common school, the Church is bound to have
a parochial school. Wherever there is a college under control
of the State, which excludes Christianity from its course of instruction, the Church, or Christians, are bound to provide a
Christian College.
The only other position which remains to be considered is,
that the Church, in providing that religious education which
our present exigencies demand, cannot rely upon the separate
action of her members, but is bound to act in her organized capacity, and, therefore, that the principles on which our Board
of Education have acted in aiding the establishment of schools,
academies, and colleges, are sound, and ought to be approved.
If private Christians establish schools, or academies, or colleges, in which religion is adequately taught, then, in the places
where this is done, there is, as before remarked, no call for the
intervention of the Church in her organized capacity. But such
individual and separate action is altogether inadequate. In the
work of domestic and foreign missions, we can depend neither
on individual effort, nor on voluntary associations. The Church
as such in her organized form, is bound to conduct these great
enterprises. It is only by this combined action that the resources of the Church can be called out; that the strong can
be brought systematically to aid the weak; and that the
requisite security for orthodoxy and fidelity can ordinarily
be attained. All these considerations apply with as much force
to the work of education, as they do to the work of missions.
How many parochial schools, or how many Christian colleges,
in our Western States, would have been established without the
co-operation of the Board of Education? The necessity of this
organized assistance is felt and acknowledged universally. Our
New England and New-school brethren have a voluntary society
for assisting in the support of Western colleges. Are we to
have resort to such a society? Must the battle between ecclesiastical boards, and voluntary irresponsible societies, be fought
over again in our Church? The work cannot be left to individual
enterprise. There must be concentrated and organized effort.
Shall this be by the Church? or by one or more voluntary organi
1854.]
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