THE RELIGIOUS ELEMENT IN EDUCATION.
The theory of development, which is now widely received and applied to
all things, from star dust to the latest fashion, is at once a sign and
a cause of the almost unlimited confidence which we put in the remedial
and transforming power of education. We no longer think of God as
standing aloof from nature and the course of history. He it is who
works in the play of atoms and in the throbbings of the human heart;
and as we perceive his action in the evolution both of matter and of
mind, we know and feel that, when with conscious purpose we strive to
call forth and make living the latent powers of man's being, we are
working with him in the direction in which he impels the universe.
Education, therefore, we look upon as necessary, not merely because it
is indispensable to any high and human kind of life, but also because
God has made development the law both of conscious and unconscious
nature. He is in act all that the finite may become, and the effort to
grow in strength, knowledge, and virtue springs from a divine impulse.
Although we know that the earth is not the centre of the universe, that
it is but a minor satellite, a globule lost in space, our deepest
thought still finds that the end of nature is the production of
rational beings, of man; for the final reason for which all things
exist is that the infinite good may be communicated; and since the
highest good is truth and holiness, it can be communicated only to
beings who think and love. Hence all things are man's, and he exists
that he may make himself like God; in other words, that he may educate
himself; for the end of education is to fit him for completeness of
life, to train all his faculties, to call all his endowments into play,
to make him symmetrical and whole in body and soul. This, of course,
is the ideal, and consequently the unattainable; but in the light of
ideals alone do we see rightly and judge truly; and to take a lower
view of the aim and end of education is to take a partial view. To
hold that God is, and that man truly lives only in so far as he is made
partaker of the divine life, is, by implication, to hold that his
education should be primarily and essentially religious. Our opinions
and beliefs, however, are never the result of purely rational
processes, and hence a mere syllogism has small persuasive force, or
even no influence at all, upon our way of looking at things, or the
motives which determine action.
As it is useless to argue against the nature of things, so we generally
plead in vain when our world-view is other than that of those whom we
seek to convince; for those who observe from different points either do
not see the same objects or do not see them in the same light. Life is
complex, and the springs of thought and action are controlled in
mysterious ways by forces and impulses which we neither clearly
understand nor accurately measure. What is called the spirit of the
age, the spirit which, as the Poet says, sits at the roaring loom of
time and weaves for God the garment whereby He is made visible to us,
exercises a potent influence upon all our thinking and doing. We live
in an era of progress, and progress means differentiation of structure
and specialization of function. The more perfect the organism, the
more are its separate functions assigned to separate parts. As social
aggregates develop, a similar differentiation takes place. Offices
which were in the hands of one are distributed among several. Agencies
are evolved by which processes of production, distribution, and
exchange are carried on. Trades and professions are called into
existence. As enlightenment and skill increase, men become more
difficult to please. They demand the best work, and the best work can
be done, as a rule, only by specialists. Specialization thus becomes a
characteristic of civilization. The patriarch is both king and priest.
In Greece and Rome, religion is a function of the State. In the Middle
Age, the Church and the State coalesce, and form such an intimate union
that the special domain of either is invaded by both. But
differentiation finally takes place, and we all learn to distinguish
between the things of Caesar and the things of God. This separation has
far-reaching results. In asserting its independence, the State was
driven to use argument as well as force. Thus learning, which in the
confusion that succeeded the incursions of the Barbarians was
cultivated almost exclusively by ecclesiastics, grew to be of interest
and importance to laymen. They began to study, and the subjects which
most engaged their thoughts were not religious, in the accepted sense
of the word. The Protestant rebellion is but a phase of this
revolution. It began with the introduction of the literature of Greece
into Western Europe. The spirit of inquiry and mental curiosity was
thereby awakened in wider circles; enthusiasm for the truth and beauty
to which Greek genius has given the most perfect expression, was
aroused; and interest in intellectual and artistic culture was called
forth. New ideals were upheld to fresh and wondering minds. The
contagion spread, and the thirst for knowledge was carried to
ever-widening spheres. It thus came to pass that the cleric and the
scholar ceased to be identical. The boundaries of knowledge were
enlarged when the inductive method was applied to the study of nature,
and it soon became impossible for one man to pretend to a mastery of
all science. And so the principle of the division of labor was
introduced into things of the intellect. Of old, the prophet or the
philosopher was supposed to possess all wisdom; but now it had become
plain that proficiency could be hoped for only by lifelong devotion to
some special branch of knowledge. This led to other developments. The
business of teaching, which had been almost exclusively in the hands of
ecclesiastics, was now necessarily taken up by laymen also. As
feudalism fell to decay, and the assertion of popular rights began to
point to the advent of democracy, the movement in opposition to
privilege logically led to the claim that learning should no longer be
held to be the appanage of special classes, but that the gates of the
temple of knowledge should be thrown open to the whole people. To make
education universal, the most ready and the simplest means was to levy
a school tax; and as this could be done only by the State, the State
established systems of education and assumed the office of teacher.
The result of all this has been that the school, which throughout
Christendom is the creation of the church, has in most countries very
largely passed into the control of the civil government.
This transference of control need not, however, involve the exclusion
of religious influence and instruction; though once the State has
gained the ascendency, the natural tendency is to take a partial and
secular view of the whole question of education, and to limit the
functions of the school to the training of the mental faculties. And,
as a matter of fact, this tendency is found in men of widely differing
and even conflicting opinions and convictions concerning religion
itself. It is most pronounced, however, in the educational theories
and systems of positivists and agnostics. As they hold that there is
no God, or that we cannot know that there is a God, they necessarily
conclude that it is absurd to attempt to teach children anything about
God. This view is forcibly expressed by Issaurat, a French writer on
education, in a recently published volume, which he calls "The
Evolution and History of Pedagogy."
"All religion," he affirms, in the concluding chapter of his book,
"impedes, thwarts, misdirects, and troubles the natural education of
man, the normal and harmonious development of his physical, moral, and
intellectual faculties; and since educational reform is not possible
without reformation in the government, it is the duty of the State, not
merely to separate itself from the church, but to suppress the church
and to found the science of education upon biological philosophy, upon
transformism--let us say the word, upon materialism." This view is
manifestly the inevitable result of Issaurat's general system of
thought and belief. In his opinion, matter alone really exists, and
what is called spirit is but a phase of its evolution. The world of
spirit, therefore, is illusory; and to bring up the young to believe
that it is the infinite, essential reality, is to teach them what is
false, and to give a wrong direction to the whole course of life. For
practical purposes this is the view not only of materialists and
positivists, but of agnostics as well, who, though they do not deny the
existence of spirit, assert that only the phenomenal can be known, or
become the subject-matter of teaching. They all agree in holding that
the theological world-view was the primitive one, which, yielding to
the metaphysical, has been finally superseded by the scientific, the
sole basis of a rational philosophy. The ideas of God, substance,
cause, and end, are metaphysical ideas, which, if we wish to understand
nature, must be ignored; for the study of nature is the study simply of
facts and their relations with one another. There is, so they think,
no such thing as substance, any more than there is such a thing as a
principle of gravity, heat, light, electricity, or chemical affinity.
The vital principle too, which has played so great a part in
physiological inquiries, must be given up; and therefore, while nearly
all the philosophers, from Kant to our own day, have made psychology
the foundation of the science of education, there is at present a
marked tendency to have it rest solely on biology. Whether and to what
extent these theories are true or false, is beyond the purpose of this
argument. True or false, they fairly describe the views of a large
number of thinkers in our day, and enable us to form a conception of
their philosophy of education. "Why trouble ourselves," asks Professor
Huxley, "about matters of which, however important they may be, we do
know nothing and can know nothing? With a view to our duty in this
life, it is necessary to be possessed of only two beliefs: The first,
that the order of nature is ascertainable by our faculties to an extent
that is practically unlimited; the second, that our volition counts for
something as a condition of the course of events." Our volition counts
as a condition, but it is after all only a part of the course of
events, and, consequently, the only belief it is necessary to hold is,
that the course of events is ascertainable by our faculties to a
practically unlimited extent. Such is the brief creed of materialists
and agnostics. The order of nature is the only known god, and man's
sole end and duty is to make himself acquainted with it, that through
obedience he may attain the highest perfection and happiness of which
he is capable. This is the one true religion, and an enlightened
people should forbid that any other be taught in their schools. Here
we have an intelligible and well-defined position, and the one which,
from the point of view of such men as Issaurat and Huxley, is alone
tenable.
Every one now, who thinks at all, has some theory of the world, and
hence the shades of unbelief as of belief are many; and since views of
education are part of a more general system of philosophy, it is
inevitable that those who disagree upon the fundamental questions of
thought, disagree also in their notions as to what is the school's
proper office.
Materialists, pantheists, positivists, secularists, and pessimists
unite in denying that there is a God above and distinct from nature,
while agnostics and cosmists affirm that such a being, if he exist,
must necessarily lie outside the domain of knowledge. Positive
religious doctrines, therefore, are superstition. As these views are
reflected in a more or less vague way in the writings of the multitude
of those who make the current literature, public opinion becomes averse
to religious dogmas. A large number of cultivated minds turn from all
definite systems, whether of thought or belief. Everything may be
tolerated, if only the spirit of dogmatism is away. They recognize how
great a thing religion is, how profoundly it touches life, how
powerfully it shapes conduct. Without it, civilization is hard and
mechanical, art is formal and feeble, and man himself but a shrewd
animal. But, from their points of view, doctrines about God and Christ
and the church have nothing to do with religion. To think of God as
substance is to convert him into nature, to think of him as a person is
to limit him. The only absolute is the moral order of the world. The
religion of Christ is not a theory or a system of thought; it is a view
of life, and its essence is found in belief in the reality of moral
ideas. The supernatural may fall away,--even the notion of a
Providence which rules the world in the interest of the good may be
given up,--and we still have the method and the secret of Jesus, all
that is of value in his life and teaching. All theology is an
illusion, all creeds are a mistake. Religion rests upon the moral
power, which is not a conclusion drawn from facts, but the fact
itself,--the primal and essential fact in human life. Religion is
simply morality suffused by the glow and warmth of a devout and
reverent temper, and to teach doctrines about God and the church will
not make men religious.
It is obvious to object that morality supposes belief in a Personal God
and in the soul of man, as law implies a law-giver. This objection is
meaningless, not only for the thinkers whom I have mentioned, but for
others who find little interest in the literary and religious ideas of
such men as Matthew Arnold. Morality, they claim, is independent, not
only of metaphysics, but of religion as well. It is a science, as yet,
indeed, imperfectly developed, but a science nevertheless, just as
chemistry or physiology is a science. Human acts are controlled, not
by a higher will or man's freedom of choice, but by physical laws. The
peculiarity of this view does not lie in the contention that ethics is
a science, but in the claim that it is a science altogether independent
of metaphysical and religious dogmas. All forces, it is asserted,
physical, mental, and moral, are identical; and morality, like bodily
vigor, is a product of organism. It is, in fact, but an elaboration of
the two radical instincts of nutrition and propagation, from which
springs the twofold movement of conscious life, the egoistic and the
altruistic. This theory is accepted alike in the German school of
materialism, in the French school of positivism, and in the English
school of utilitarianism. What the influence of modern empiricism upon
American opinion may be, it is difficult to determine. Americans
certainly are a practical people, but they are not devoid of interest
in speculative views. More than any other people, possibly, they have
faith in the marvellous things which science is destined to accomplish,
and they willingly listen to men of science, even when they quit the
regions of fact for those of opinion. Thus the various theories, to
which the progress of natural knowledge has given rise, are received by
them, if not with implicit trust, with a kind of feeling, at least,
that they may be true.
There is even a disposition to treat doubts of the truth of
Christianity as a mark of intellectual vigor, and sometimes as a sign
of religious sincerity. Preoccupied with material interests, but yet
finding time to read the thoughts of many minds and to hear the
discussion of antagonistic opinions and systems, they find it difficult
to trust with entire confidence to what they know or believe. It all
seems to be relative, and another generation may see everything in a
different light. Problems take the place of principles, religious
convictions are feeble, the grasp of Christian truth is relaxed, and
the result is a certain moral hesitancy and infirmity.
They are not hostile to the churches, but they are more or less
indifferent to their doctrines. As each sect has its peculiar creed,
the dogmatic position of the church is thought to be of little moment.
The important thing is to promote intelligence and virtue. The
distinctively sectarian view they look upon as narrow and false, and
the good which ecclesiastical organizations do is done in spite of
their characteristic doctrines. The note of sectarianism is to them
what the note of provincialism is to a man of culture, or lack of
breeding to a gentleman. The moral fervor, which sectarians more than
others feel, is, they freely grant, a power for good. It has a
wholesome influence upon character, and is a support of the virtues
which make free institutions possible, and which alone can make them
permanent. But it has no necessary connection with theological
doctrines, since it is found in earnest believers, whatever their
creed. It is the child of enthusiastic faith, and is nourished and
kept living by worship, not by dogmatic asseverations. As the power of
the churches does not lie in their creeds, to make these creeds a
school lesson cannot be desirable, especially when we reflect that the
method of religion and the method of science are at variance.
Such, I imagine, are the views of large numbers of Americans, who are
not members of any church, but whose influence is strongly felt in
political and commercial as well as in social and professional life.
And numbers of zealous Protestants are in substantial agreement with
them, since they hold that faith is an emotional rather than an
intellectual state of mind, and that religion is not so much a way of
thinking as a way of feeling and acting. They assume, of course, as
the prerequisites of religious belief, the dogmas of the existence of a
personal God and of an immortal human soul; but, for the rest, they lay
stress upon conduct and piety, not upon orthodox faith. A church must
have a creed, as a party must have a platform; but unhesitating
confidence in the truth of the doctrines which it thus formulates is
not indispensable. American churches tend to ignore creeds. This is
due, in a measure, to the growing desire to form a union among the
several sects; but it is none the less a sign of waning belief in
dogmatic religion. Hence the increasing emphasis which preaching lays
upon the moral, aesthetic, and emotional aspects of the religious life.
Hence, too, the assumption that the soul of the church may live, though
the body be dead.
But, apart from all theories and systems of belief and thought, public
opinion in America sets strongly against the denominational school.
The question of education is considered from a practical rather than
from a theoretical point of view, and public sentiment on the subject
may be embodied in the following words: The civilized world now
recognizes the necessity of popular education. In a government of the
people, such as this is, intelligence should be universal. In such a
government, to be ignorant is not merely to be weak, it is also to be
dangerous to the common welfare; for the ignorant are not only the
victims of circumstances, they are the instruments which unscrupulous
and designing men make use of, to taint the source of political
authority and to thwart the will of the people. To protect itself, the
State is forced to establish schools and to see that all acquire at
least the rudiments of letters. This is so plain a case that argument
becomes ridiculous. They who doubt the good of knowledge are not to be
reasoned with, and in America not to see that it is necessary, is to
know nothing of our political, commercial, and social life. But the
American State can give only a secular education, for it is separate
from the church, and its citizens profess such various and even
conflicting beliefs, that in establishing a school system, it is
compelled to eliminate the question of religion. Church and State are
separate institutions, and their functions are different and distinct.
The church seeks to turn men from sin, that they may become pleasing to
God and save their souls; the State takes no cognizance of sin, but
strives to prevent crime, and to secure to all its citizens the
enjoyment of life, liberty, and property. Americans are a Christian
people. Religious zeal impelled their ancestors to the New World, and
when schools were first established here, they were established by the
churches, and religious instruction formed an important part of the
education they gave. This was natural, and it was desirable even, in
primitive times, when each colony had its own creed and worship, when
society was simple, and the State as yet imperfectly organized. Here,
as in the Old World, the school was the daughter of the church, and she
has doubtless rendered invaluable service to civilization, by fostering
a love for knowledge among barbarous races and in struggling
communities. But the task of maintaining a school system such as the
requirements of a great and progressive nation demands, is beyond her
strength. This is so, at least, when the church is split into jealous
and warring sects.
To introduce the spirit of sectarianism into the class-room would
destroy the harmony and good-will among citizens, which it is one of
the aims of the common school to cherish. There is, besides, no reason
why this should be done, since the family and the church give all the
religious instruction which children are capable of receiving.
This, it seems to me, is a fair presentation of the views and ideas
which go to the making of current American opinion on the question of
religious instruction in State schools; and current opinion, when the
subject-matter is not susceptible of physical demonstration, cannot be
turned suddenly in an opposite direction. When men have grown
accustomed to look at things in a certain way, they have acquired a
mental habit, which no mere argument, however cogent or eloquent, is
able to overcome. To what extent this view of the school question
prevails is readily perceived by whoever recalls to mind that not one
of the States of the Union has attempted to introduce the
denominational system of education, while all the political parties
have bound themselves to uphold the present purely secular system. The
opinion that the prosperity of the nation depends upon the intelligence
and activity of the people, and to no appreciable extent upon the
influence of ecclesiastical organizations, has so far prevailed, that
the general feeling has come to be that the State has no direct
interest in the church, which is the concern merely of individuals.
The religious denominations themselves have helped to inspire this
sentiment by their jealousies and rivalries. The smaller sects feel
that State aid for denominational schools would accrue to the benefit
chiefly of the larger; and the others are willing to forego favors
which they could not receive without permitting the Catholic Church to
participate also in the bounty of the government.
The Catholic view of the school question is as clearly defined as it is
well known. It rests upon the general ground that man is created for a
supernatural end, and that the church is the divinely appointed agency
to help him to attain his supreme destiny. If education is a training
for completeness of life, its primary element is the religious, for
complete life is life in God. Hence we may not assume an attitude
toward the child, whether in the home, in the church, or in the school,
which might imply that life apart from God could be anything else than
broken and fragmentary. A complete man is not one whose mind only is
active and enlightened; but he is a complete man who is alive in all
his faculties. The truly human is found not in knowledge alone, but
also in faith, in hope, in love, in pure-mindedness, in reverence, in
the sense of beauty, in devoutness, in the thrill of awe, which Goethe
says is the highest thing in man. If the teacher is forbidden to touch
upon religion, the source of these noble virtues and ideal moods is
sealed. His work and influence become mechanical, and he will form but
commonplace and vulgar men. And if an educational system is
established on this narrow and material basis, the result will be
deterioration of the national type, and the loss of the finer qualities
which make men many-sided and interesting, which are the safeguards of
personal purity and of unselfish conduct.
Religion is the vital element in character, and to treat it as though
it were but an incidental phase of man's life is to blunder in a matter
of the highest and most serious import. Man is born to act, and
thought is valuable mainly as a guide to action. Now, the chief
inspiration to action, and above all to right action, is found in
faith, hope, and love, the virtues of religion, and not in knowledge,
the virtue of the intellect. Knowledge, indeed, is effectual only when
it is loved, believed in, and held to be a ground for hope. Man does
not live on bread alone, and if he is brought up to look to material
things, as to the chief good, his higher faculties will be stunted. If
to do rightly rather than to think keenly is man's chief business here
on earth, then the virtues of religion are more important than those of
the intellect; for to think is to be unresolved, whereas to believe is
to be impelled in the direction of one's faith. In epochs of doubt
things fall to decay; in epochs of faith the powers which make for full
and vigorous life, hold sway. The education which forms character is
indispensable, that which trains the mind is desirable. The essential
element in human life is conduct, and conduct springs from what we
believe, cling to, love, and yearn for, vastly more than from what we
know. The decadence and ruin of individuals and of societies come from
lack of virtue, not from lack of knowledge. "The hard and valuable
part of education," says Locke, "is virtue; this is the solid and
substantial good, which the teacher should never cease to inculcate
till the young man places his strength, his glory, and his pleasure in
it." We may, of course, distinguish between morality and religion,
between ethics and theology. As a matter of fact, however, moral laws
have everywhere reposed upon the basis of religion, and their sanction
has been sought in the principles of faith. As an immoral religion is
false, so, if there is no God, a moral law is meaningless.
Theorists may be able to construct a system of ethics upon a foundation
of materialism; but their mechanical and utilitarian doctrines have not
the power to exalt the imagination or to confirm the will. Their
educational value is feeble. Here in America we have already passed
the stage of social development in which we might hold out to the
young, as an ideal, the hope of becoming President of the Republic, or
the possessor of millions of money. We know what sorry men presidents
and millionnaires may be. We cannot look upon our country simply as a
wide race-course with well-filled purses hanging at the goal for the
prize-winners. We clearly perceive that a man's possessions are not
himself, and that he is or ought to be more than anything which can
belong to him. Ideals of excellence, therefore, must be substituted
for those of success. Opinion governs the world, but ideals draw souls
and stimulate to noble action. The more we transform with the aid of
machinery the world of matter, the more necessary does it become that
we make plain to all that man's true home is the world of thought and
love, of hope and aspiration. The ideals of utilitarianism and
secularism are unsatisfactory. They make no appeal to the infinite in
man, to that in him which makes pursuit better than possession, and
which, could he believe there is no absolute truth, love, and beauty,
would lead him to despair. To-day, as of old, the soul is born of God
and for God, and finds no peace unless it rest in him. Theology,
assuredly, is not religion; but religion implies theology, and a church
without a creed is a body without articulation. The virtues of
religion are indispensable. Without them, it is not well either with
individuals or with nations; but these virtues cannot be inculcated by
those who, standing aloof from ecclesiastical organizations, are
thereby cut off from the thought and work of all who in every age have
most loved God, and whose faith in the soul has been most living.
Religious men have wrought for God in the church, as patriots have
wrought for liberty and justice in the nation; and to exclude the
representatives of the churches from the school is practically to
exclude religion,--the power which more than all others makes for
righteousness, which inspires hope and confidence, which makes possible
faith in the whole human brotherhood, in the face even of the political
and social wrongs which are still everywhere tolerated. To exclude
religion is to exclude the spirit of reverence, of gentleness and
obedience, of modesty and purity; it is to exclude the spirit by which
the barbarians have been civilized, by which woman has been uplifted
and ennobled and the child made sacred. From many sides the demand is
made that the State schools exercise a greater moral influence, that
they be made efficient in forming character as well as in training the
mind. It is recognized that knowing how to read and write does not
insure good behavior. Since the State assumes the office of teacher,
there is a disposition among parents to make the school responsible for
their children's morals as well as for their minds, and thus the
influence of the home is weakened. Whatever the causes may be, there
seems to be a tendency, both in private and in public life, to lower
ethical standards. The moral influence of the secular school is
necessarily feeble, since our ideas of right and wrong are so
interfused with the principles of Christianity that to ignore our
religious convictions is practically to put aside the question of
conscience. If the State may take no cognizance of sin, neither may
its school do so. But in morals sin is the vital matter; crime is but
its legal aspect. Men begin as sinners before they end as criminals.
The atmosphere of religion is the natural medium for the development of
character. If we appeal to the sense of duty, we assume belief in God
and in the freedom of the will; if we strive to awaken enthusiasm for
the human brotherhood, we imply a divine fatherhood. Accordingly, as
we accept or reject the doctrines of religion, the sphere of moral
action, the nature of the distinction between right and wrong, and the
motives of conduct all change. In the purely secular school only
secular morality may be taught; and whatever our opinion of this system
of ethics may otherwise be, it is manifestly deficient in the power
which appeals to the heart and the conscience. The child lives in a
world which imagination creates, where faith, hope, and love beckon to
realms of beauty and delight. The spiritual and moral truths which are
to become the very life-breath of his soul he apprehends mystically,
not logically. Heaven lies about him; he lives in wonderland, and
feels the thrill of awe as naturally as he looks with wide-open eyes.
Do not seek to persuade him by telling him that honesty is the best
policy, that poverty overtakes the drunkard, that lechery breeds
disease, that to act for the common welfare is the surest way to get
what is good for one's self; for such teaching will not only leave him
unimpressed, but it will seem to him profane, and almost immoral. He
wants to feel that he is the child of God, of the infinitely good and
all-wonderful; that in his father, divine wisdom and strength are
revealed; in his mother, divine tenderness and love. He so believes
and trusts in God that it is our fault if he knows that men can be
base. In nothing does the godlike character of Christ show forth more
beautifully than in His reverence for children. Shall we profess to
believe in Him, and yet forbid His name to be spoken in the houses
where we seek to train the little ones whom He loved? Shall we shut
out Him whose example has done more to humanize, ennoble, and uplift
the race of man than all the teachings of the philosophers and all the
disquisitions of the moralists? If the thinkers, from Plato and
Aristotle to Kant and Pestalozzi, who have dealt with the problems of
education, have held that virtue is its chief aim and end, shall we
thrust from the school the one ideal character who, for nearly nineteen
hundred years, has been the chief inspiration to righteousness and
heroism; to whose words patriots and reformers have appealed in their
struggles for liberty and right; to whose example philanthropists have
looked in their labors to alleviate suffering; to whose teaching the
modern age owes its faith in the brotherhood of men; by whose courage
and sympathy the world has been made conscious that the distinction
between man and woman is meant for the propagation of the race, but
that as individuals they have equal rights and should have equal
opportunities? We all, and especially the young, are influenced by
example more than by precepts and maxims, and it is unjust and
unreasonable to exclude from the schoolroom the living presence of the
noblest and best men and women, of those whose words and deeds have
created our Christian civilization. In the example of their lives we
have truth and justice, goodness and greatness, in concrete form; and
the young who are brought into contact with these centres of influence
will be filled with admiration and enthusiasm; they will be made gentle
and reverent; and they will learn to realize the ever-fresh charm and
force of personal purity. Teachers who have no moral criteria, no
ideals, no counsels of perfection, no devotion to God and godlike men,
cannot educate, if the proper meaning of education is the complete
unfolding of all man's powers.
The school, of course, is but one of the many agencies by which
education is given. We are under the influence of our whole
environment,--physical, moral, and intellectual; political, social, and
religious; and if, in all this, aught were different, we ourselves
should be other. The family is a school and the church is a school;
and current American opinion assigns to them the business of moral and
religious education. But this implies that conduct and character are
of secondary importance; it supposes that the child may be made subject
to opposite influences at home and in the school, and not thereby have
his finer sense of reverence, truth, and goodness deadened. The
subduing of the lower nature, of the outward to the inner man, is a
thing so arduous that reason, religion, and law combined often fail to
accomplish it. If one should propose to do away with schools
altogether, and to leave education to the family and the Church, he
would be justly considered ridiculous; because the carelessness of
parents and the inability of the ministry of the Church would involve
the prevalence of illiteracy. Now, to leave moral and religious
education to the family and the churches involves, for similar reasons,
the prevalence of indifference, sin, and crime. If illiteracy is a
menace to free institutions, vice and irreligion are a greater menace.
The corrupt are always bad citizens; the ignorant are not necessarily
so. Parents who would not have their children taught to read and
write, were there no free schools, will as a rule neglect their
religious and moral education. In giving religious instruction to the
young, the churches are plainly at a disadvantage; for they have the
child but an hour or two in seven days, and they get into their Sunday
classes only the children of the more devout.
If the chief end of education is virtue; if conduct is three-fourths of
life; if character is indispensable, while knowledge is only
useful,--then it follows that religion--which, more than any other
vital influence, has power to create virtue, to inspire conduct, and to
mould character--should enter into all the processes of education. Our
school system, then, does not rest upon a philosophic view of life and
education. We have done what it was easiest to do, not what it was
best to do; and in this, as in other instances, churchmen have been
willing to sacrifice the interests of the nation to the whims of a
narrow and jealous temper. The denominational system of popular
education is the right system. The secular system is a wrong system.
The practical difficulties to be overcome that religious instruction
may be given in the schools are relatively unimportant, and would be
set aside if the people were thoroughly persuaded of its necessity. An
objection which Dr. Harris, among others, insists upon, that the method
of science and the method of religion are dissimilar, and that
therefore secular knowledge and religious knowledge should not be
taught in the same school, seems to me to have no weight. The method
of mathematics is not the method of biology; the method of logic is not
the method of poetry; but they are all taught in the same school. A
good teacher, in fact, employs many methods. In teaching the child
grammatical analysis, he has no fear of doing harm to his imagination
or his talent for composition.
No system, however, can give assurance that the school is good. To
determine this we must know the spirit which lives in it. The
intellectual, moral, and religious atmosphere which the child breathes
there is of far more importance, from an educational point of view,
than any doctrines he may learn by rote, than any acts of worship he
may perform.
The teacher makes the school; and when high, pure, devout, and
enlightened men and women educate, the conditions favorable to mental
and moral growth will be found, provided a false system does not compel
them to assume a part and play a role, while the true self--the faith,
hope, and love whereby they live--is condemned to inaction. The deeper
tendency of the present age is not, I think, to exclude religion from
any vital process, but rather to widen the content of the idea of
religion until it embrace the whole life of man. The worship of God is
not now the worship of infinite wisdom, holiness, and justice alone,
but is also the worship of the humane, the beautiful, and the
industriously active. Whether we work for knowledge or freedom, or
purity or strength, or beauty or health, or aught else that is friendly
to completeness of life, we work with God and for God. In the school,
as in whatever other place in the boundless universe a man may find
himself, he finds himself with God, in Him moves, lives, and has his
being.