IN every transition-stage of the world's history the question of
education naturally comes to the front. So much depends on the first
impressions of childhood, on the first training of the tender shoot,
that it has always been acknowledged, from Solomon to Forster, that to
"train up a child in the way he should go" is among the most important
duties of fathers and citizens. To the individual, to the family, to the
State, the education of the rising generation is a question of primary
importance. Plato began the education of the citizens of his ideal
Republic from the very hour of their birth; the nursing child was taken
from the mother lest injudicious treatment should mar, in the slightest
degree, the perfection of the future warrior. On this point modern and
ancient wisdom clasp hands, and place the education of the child among
the most important duties of the State. The battle at present raging
between the advocates of "secular" and "religious" education--to use the
cant of the day--is a most natural and righteous recognition of the vast
interests at stake when Church or State claims the right of training the
sons and daughters of England. No one has yet attempted to explain why
it should be "irreligious" to teach writing, or history, or geography;
or why it should "destroy a child's soul" to improve his mental
faculties. It is among the "mysteries" of the faith, why it is better
for our poor to leave' them to grow up in both moral and intellectual
darkness, than to dissipate the intellectual darkness by some few rays
of knowledge, and to leave the moral training to other hands. If we left
a starving man to die because we could only give him bread, and were
unable to afford cheese in addition, all would unite in declaiming at
our folly: but "religious" people would rather that our street Arabs
grew up both heathens and brutes, than that we should improve their
minds without Christianizing their souls. Better let a lad grow up a
thief and a drunkard, than turn him into an artizan and a freethinker.
There can scarcely be a better proof of the unreasonableness of
Christian doctrine, than the Christian fear of sharpening mental
faculties, without binding them down, at the same time, in the chains
of dogma. Only a religion founded on reason can dare to train children's
minds to the utmost, and then leave them free to use all the power and
keenness acquired by that training on the investigation of any religious
doctrine presented to them. We, who have written Tekel on the Christian
faith, share in the opinion of the Christian clergy, that man's carnal
reason is a terrible foe to the Christian revelation; but here we begin
to differ from them, for while they regard this reason as a child of
the devil, to be scourged and chained down, we do homage to it as to the
fairest offspring of the Divine Spirit, the brightest earthly reflection
of His glory, and the nearest image of His "Person"; we would cherish
it, tend it, nourish it, as our Father's noblest gift to humanity, as
our surest guide and best counsellor, as the ear which hears His voice,
and the eye which sees Him, as the sharpest weapon against superstition,
the ultimate arbiter on earth between right and wrong. To us, then,
education is ranged on the side of God; we welcome it freely and gladly,
because all truth, all light, all knowledge, are foes of falsehood, of
darkness, of ignorance. If we mistake error for truth a brighter light
will set us right, and we only wish to be taught truth, not to be proved
right.
Most liberal thinkers agree in recognizing the fact that the duties of
the State in the matter of education must, in the nature of things, be
purely "secular:" that is to say, that while the State insists that the
future citizen shall be taught at least the elements of learning, so as
to fit him or her for fulfilling the duties of that citizenship, it has
no right to insist on impressing on the mind of its pupil any set of
religious dogmas or any form of religious creed. The abdication by the
State of the pretended right of enforcing on its citizens any special
form of religion, is not at all identical with the opposition by the
State to religious teaching; It is merely a development of the very wise
maxim of the great Jewish Teacher, to render the things of Caesar
to Caesar, and the things of God to God. To teach reading, writing,
honesty, regard for law, these things are Caesar's duties; to teach
religious dogma, creed, or article, is entirely the province of the
teachers who claim to hold the truth of God.
But my object now is not to draw the line between the duties of Church
and State, of school and home; nor do I wish to enter the lists of
sectarian controversy, to break a lance in favour of a new religious
dogma. The question is rather this: "What are the limits of the
religious education which it is wise to impose on the young? Is any
dogmatic teaching to be a part of their moral training, and is the
dogmatism against which we have rebelled to be revived in a new form?
Are the fetters which we are breaking for ourselves to be welded
together again for the young limbs of our children? Are they to be fed
on the husks which have starved our own religious aspirations, and which
we have analysed, and rejected as unfit to sustain our moral and mental
vigour? On the other hand, are our children to grow up without any
religious teaching at all, without a ray of that sunshine which is
to most of us the very source of our gladness, and the renewal of our
strength?"
I think the best way of deciding this question is to notice the gradual
development of the childish body and mind. Nature's indications are a
sure guide-post, and we cannot go very far wrong in following her hints.
I am now on ground with which mothers are familiar, though perhaps few
men have watched young children with sufficient attention to be able to
note their gradual development. The first instincts of a baby are purely
personal: the "not-I" is for it nonexistent: food, warmth, cleanliness,
comprise all its needs and all our duties to it. The next stage is
when the infant becomes conscious of the existence of something outside
itself: when, vaguely and indistinctly, but yet decidedly, it shows
signs of observing the things around it: to cultivate observation, to
attract attention, slowly to guide it into distinguishing one object
from another, are the next steps in its education. The child soon
succeeds in distinguishing forms, and learns to attach different sounds
to different shapes: it is also taught to avoid some things and to play
with others: it awakes to the knowledge that while some objects give
pleasure, others give pain: so far as material things go, it learns
to choose the good and to avoid the evil. This power is only gained by
experience, and is therefore acquired but gradually, and after a time,
side by side with it, runs another lesson; slowly and gradually there
appears a dawning appreciation of "right" and "wrong." This appreciation
is not, however, at first an appreciation of any intrinsic rightness or
wrongness in any given action; it is simply a recognition on the child's
part that some of its acts meet with approval, others with disapproval,
from its elders. The standard of its seniors is unquestioningly
accepted by the child. The moral sense awakes, but is completely guided
in its first efforts by the hand of the child's teacher, as completely
as the first efforts to walk are directed by the mother. Thus it comes
to pass that the conscience of the child is but the reflex of the
conscience of its parents or guardians: "right" and "wrong" in a
child's vocabulary are in the earliest stages equivalent to "reward"
and "punishment;" its final court of appeal in cases of morality is the
judgment of the parent.*
* The moral sense does show itself, however, in very young
children, in a higher form than this; for we may often
observe in a young child an instinctive sense of shame at
having done wrong. But the moral sense is awakened and
educated by the parents' approval and disapproval. This may
be proved, I think, by the fact that a child brought up
among thieves and evil-livers will accept their morality as
a matter of course, and will steal and lie habitually,
without attaching to either act any idea of wrong. The moral
sense is inherent in man, and is in no way _given_ by the
parent; but I think that it is first aroused and put into
action by the parent; the parent accustoms the child to
regard certain actions as right and wrong; this appeals to
the moral sense in the child, and the child very rapidly is
ashamed of wrong, as wrong, and not simply from dread of
punishment. I would be understood to mean, in the text, that
the wish for reward is the first response of the child to
the idea of an inherent distinction between different
actions; this feeling rapidly developes into the true moral
sense, which regards right as right, and wrong as wrong.
I append this note at the suggestion of a valued friend, who
feared that the inference might be drawn from the text that
the moral sense was implanted by the parent instead of
being, as it is, the gift of God.
It is perhaps scarcely accurate to call this motive power in the child
a _moral_ sense at all; still, this recognition of some thing which
is immaterial and intangible, and which is yet to be the guide of its
actions, is a great step forward from the simple consciousness of outer
and material objects, and is truly the dawn of that moral sense which
becomes in men and women the test of right and wrong. So far we have
considered the growing faculties of the child as regards physical and
moral development, and I particularly wish to remark that the moral
sense appears long before any "religious" tendency can be noted. There
is, however, another side of the complete human character which is very
important, but which is slow in showing itself in any healthy child; I
mean what may be called the _spiritual_ sense, in distinction from the
moral; the sense which is the crowning grace of humanity, the sense
which belongs wholly to the immortal part of man: the outstretched hands
of the human spirit groping after the Eternal Spirit; the yearning after
that all-pervading Power which men call God. I know well that in many
precociously-pious children this spiritual sense is forced into a
premature and unwholesome maturity; by means of a spiritual hot-house
the summer-fruit of piety may be obtained in the spring-time of the
childish heart. The imitative instinct of childhood quickly reproduces
the sentiments around it, and set phrases which meet with admiration
flow glibly from baby-lips. But this strongly developed religious
feeling in a child is both unnatural and harmful, and can never, because
it is unreal, produce any lasting good effect. Yet is it none the less
true that, at an early age, differing much in different children, the
"spiritual sense" does show signs of awakening; that children soon begin
to wonder about things around them, and to ask questions which can only
find their true answer in the name of God. How to meet these questions,
how to train this growing sentiment without crushing it on the one hand,
and without unduly stimulating it on the other, is a source of deep
anxiety to many a mother's heart in the present day. They are unable
to tell their children the stories which satisfied their own childish
cravings: no longer can they hold up before the eager faces the picture
of the manger at Bethlehem, or dim the bright eyes with the story of the
cross on Calvary; no longer can they fold the little hands in prayer to
the child of Nazareth, or hush the hasty tongue with the reminder of
the obedience of the Virgin's son. To a certain extent this is a loss.
A child quickly seizes the concrete; the idea of the child Jesus or the
man Jesus is readily grasped by a child's intellect; the God of the Old
Testament, the "magnified man," is also, though more dimly, understood.
These conceptions of the childhood of humanity suit the childhood of the
individual, and it is far more difficult for the child to realize the
idea of God when he is divested of these materialistic garments. Yet I
speak from experience when I say that it is by no means impossible to
train a child into the simplest and happiest feelings as regards the
Supreme Being, without degrading the Divine into the human. By one name
we can speak of God by which He will be readily welcomed to the child's
heart, and that is the name of the Father. Most children are keenly
alive to natural beauties, and are quick to observe birds, and flowers,
and sunshine; at times they will ask how these things come there, and
then it is well to tell them that they are the works of God Thus the
child's first notions of the existence of a Power he cannot see or feel
will come to him clothed in the things he loves, and will be free from
any suggestion of fear.* Even those who regard God from the stand-point
of Pantheism may use natural objects so as to train the child into a
fearless and happy recognition of the constant working of the Spirit
of Nature, and so guard the young mind against that shrinking from, and
terror of God, which popular Christianity is so apt to induce. The lad
or girl who grows up with even the habit of regarding God as the calm
and mighty motive-power of the forces of Nature, changeless, infinite,
absolutely trustworthy, will be slow to accept in later life the crude
conceptions which incarnate the creative power in a virgin's womb, and
ascribe caprice, injustice, and cruelty to the mighty Spirit of the
Universe.
* The ordinary shrinking of a child from the idea of a
Presence which he cannot see, but which sees him, will not
be felt by children whose only ideas about God are that He
is the Father from whose hand come all beautiful things. In
any home where the parents' thoughts of God are free from
doubt and mistrust, the children's thoughts will be the same;
religion, in their eyes, will be synonymous with
happiness, for God and good will be convertible terms.
There is a deep truth in the idea of Pantheism, that "Nature is an
apparition of the Deity, God in a mask;" that "He is the light of the
morning, the beauty of the noon, and the strength of the sun. He is the
One, the All... The soul of all; more moving than motion, more stable
than rest; fairer than beauty, and stronger than strength. The power of
Nature is God... He is the All; the Reality of all phenomena." The child
fed on this food will have scarcely anything to unlearn, even when he
begins to believe that God is something more than Nature; "the created
All is the symbol of God," and he will pass easily and naturally on from
seeing God in Nature to see Him in a higher form.
Of course, as a Theist, I should myself go much further than this: I
should speak of all natural glory as but the reflection of the Deity,
or as the robe in which He veils His infinite beauty; I should bid
my children rejoice in all happiness as in the gift of a Father who
delights in sharing His joy with His creatures; I should point out that
the pain caused by ignorance of, or by breaking natural laws, is God's
way of teaching men obedience for their own ultimate good: in the
freedom and fulness of Nature's gifts I should teach them to see the
equal love of God for all; through marking that in Nature's visible
kingdom no end can be gained without labour and without using certain
laws, they should learn that in the invisible kingdom they need not
expect to find favouritism, nor think to share the fruits of victory
without patient toil. To all who believe in a God who is also the Father
of Spirits such teaching as this comes easily; as they themselves learn
of God only through His works, so they naturally teach their children to
seek Him in the same way.
The questions, so familiar to every mother, "Can God see me?" "Where is
God?" can only be met with the simple assertion that God sees all, and
is everywhere. For there are many childish questions which it is wisest
to meet with statements which are above the grasp of the childish mind.
These statements may be simply given to the child as statements which it
is too young either to question or to understand. Nothing is gained
by trying to smooth down spiritual subjects to the level of a child's
capacity; the time will come later when the child must meet and answer
for itself all great spiritual questions; the parent's care should be to
remove all hindrances from the child's path of inquiry, but not to give
it cut-and-dried answers to every possible question; religion, to be
worth anything, must be a personal matter, and each must find it out for
himself; the wise parent will endeavour to save the child from the pain
of unlearning, by giving but little formal religious teaching; he cannot
fight the battle for his child, but he can prevent his being crippled by
a fancied armour which will stifle rather than protect him; he can give
a few wide principles to direct him, without weighing him down with
guide-books.
But even the most general ideas of God should not be forced on a
childish mind; they should come, so to speak, by chance; they should be
presented in answer to some demand of the child's heart; they should
be inculcated by stray words and passing remarks; they should form the
atmosphere surrounding the child habitually, and not be a sudden "wind
of doctrine." Of course all this is far more troublesome than to teach
a child a catechism or a creed, but it is a far higher training. Dogma,
_i e_., conviction petrified by authority, should be utterly excluded
from the religious education of children; a few great axiomatic truths
may be laid down, but even in these primary truths dogmatism should be
avoided. The parent should always take care to make it apparent that he
is stating his own convictions, but is not enforcing them on the child
by his authority. So far as the child is capable of appreciating them,
the reasons for the religious conviction should be presented along with
the conviction itself. Thus the child will see, as he grows older, that
religion cannot be learned by rote, that it is not shut up in a book, or
contained in creeds; he will appreciate the all-important fact that free
inquiry is the only air in which truth can breathe; that one man's faith
cannot justly be imposed on another, and that every individual soul has
the privilege and the responsibility of forming his own religion, and
must either hear God with his own ears, or else not hear Him at all.
We have noticed that the moral sense awakes before the religious (I must
state my repugnance to these terms, although I use them for the sake of
clearness; but morality _is_ religion, although religion is more than
morality, and the so-called religion which is not morality is worthless
and hateful). There remains then to consider what we will call the
second side of religion, although it is by far its most important side.
True religion consists not only in feelings towards God, but also in
duties towards men: the first, noble and blessed as they are, should, in
every healthy religion, give place to the second; for a morally good man
who does not believe in God at all, is in a far higher state of being
than the man who believes in God and is selfish, cruel or unjust. Error
in faith is forgiveable; error in life is fatal. The good man shall
surely see God, although, for a time, his eyes be holden; the evil man,
though he hold the noblest faith yet known, shall never taste the joy of
God, until he turns from sin, and struggles after holiness. Faith first,
and then morality, is the war-cry of the churches; morality above all,
and let faith follow in good time, is the watch-word of Theism; so,
among us, the principal part of the religious training of our children
should be morality; religious feeling may be over-strained, or give rise
to self-deception; religious talk may be morbid and unreal; religious
faith may be erring, and must be imperfect; but morality is a rock which
can never be shaken, a guide which can never mislead. Whether we are
right or wrong in our belief about God, whether we are immortal spirits
or perishable organizations, yet purity is nobler than vice, courage
than cowardice, truth than falsehood, love than hate. Let us, then,
teach our children morality above all things. Let us teach them to love
good for its own sake, without thought of reward, and they will remain
good, even if, in after life, they should, alas! lose all hope of
immortality and all faith hi God. A child's natural instinct is towards
good; a tale of heroism, of self sacrifice, of generosity, will bring
the eager blood flushing up to a child's face and wake a quick response
and a desire of emulation. It is therefore well to place in children's
hands tales of noble deeds in days gone by. Nothing is easier than to
train a child into feeling a desire to be good for the sake of being so.
There is something so attractive in goodness, that I have found it more
effectual to hold up the nobility of courage and unselfishness before
the child's eyes, than to descend to punishment for the corresponding
faults. If a child is in the habit of regarding all wrong as something
low and degrading, he quickly shrinks from it; all mothers know the
instinctive ambition of children to be something superior and admirable,
and this instinct is most useful in inculcating virtue. Later in life
nothing ruins a young man like discovering that morality and religion
are often divorced, and that the foremost professors of religion are
less delicately honourable and trustworthy than high-minded "worldly
men;" on the other hand, nothing will have so beneficial an effect on
men and women entering life, as to see that those who are most joyful in
their faith towards God, lead the purest and most blameless lives. "Do
good, be good" is, as has been well said, the golden rule of life;
"do good, be good" must be the law impressed on our children's hearts.
Whatever "eclipse of faith" may await England, whatever darkness of most
hopeless scepticism, whatever depth of uttermost despair of God, there
is not only the hope, but the certainty of the resurrection of religion,
if we all hold fast through the driving storm to the sheet-anchor of
pure morality, to most faithful discharge of all duty towards man to
love, and tenderness, and charity, and patience. Morality never faileth;
but, whether there be dogmas, they shall fail; whether there be creeds,
they shall cease; whether there be churches, they shall crumble away;
but morality shall abide for evermore and endure as long as the endless
circle of Nature revolves around the Eternal Throne.