Fifty Years in the Church of Rome

by Charles Paschal Telesphore Chiniquy

The meaning of the word education among Protestants is as far from the meaning of that same word among Roman Catholics as the southern pole is from the northern pole. When a Protestant speaks of education, that word is used and understood in its true sense. When he sends his little boy to a Protestant school, he honestly desires that he should be reared up in the spheres of knowledge as much as his intelligence will allow. When that little boy is going to school, he soon feels that he has been raised up to some extent, and he experiences a sincere joy, a noble pride, for this new, though at first very modest raising; but he naturally understands that this new and modest upheaval is only a stone to step on and raise himself to a higher degree of knowledge, and he quickly makes that second step with an unspeakable pleasure. When the son of a Protestant has acquired a little knowledge, he wants to acquire more. When he has learned what this means, he wants to know what that means also. Like the young eagle, he trims his wings for a higher flight, and turns his head upward to go farther up in the atmosphere of knowledge. A noble and mysterious ambition has suddenly seized his young soul. Then he begins to feel something of that unquenchable thirst for knowledge which God Himself has put in the breast of every child of Adam; a thirst of knowledge, however, which will never be perfectly realized except in heaven.

When God created man in His own image, He endowed him with an intelligence and moral faculties worthy of the high, I was going to say the divine, dignity of His own beloved children. He Himself put in us aspirations and instincts by which we were to be constantly longing after the oceans of light, truth and knowledge, whose waves wash His eternal throne. It is that thirst after more knowledge, that constant longing after more light, which constitutes the difference between man and brute. Man has received from God an intelligence which, though clouded now by sin, is to him what the helm is to the noble ship which crosses the boundless ocean; he has a conscience, an immortal soul which binds him to God, and he feels it. His destinies are glorious, they are incommensurable, they are infinite, and he knows it. Though a dethroned king, he feels that he is still a king. The six thousand years which have passed over him since his fall have not yet effaced the kingly title which God Himself wrote on his forehead when He told him, “Multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it” (Gen. i: 28). With that glorious, that divine mission of subduing the air and the light, the wind and the waves, the seas and the earth, the roaring thunder and the flashing lightning constantly before his eyes, man marches to the conquest of the world with the calm certitude of his power and the glorious aspirations of his royal dignity.

The object of education, then, is to enable man to fulfill that kingly mission of ruling, subduing the world, under the eyes of his Creator. Let us remember that it is not from himself, nor from any angel, but it is from God himself that man has received that sublime mission. Yes, it is God himself who has implanted in the bosom of humanity the knowledge and aspirations of those splendid destinies which can be attained only by “Education.”

What a glorious impulse is this that seizes hold of the newly awakened mind, and leads the young intelligence to rise higher and pierce the clouds that hide from his gaze the splendors of knowledge that lie concealed beyond the gloom of this nether sphere! That impulse is a noble ambition; it is that part of humanity that assimilates itself to the likeness of the great Creator; that impulse which education has for its mission to direct in its onward and upward march, is one of the most precious gifts of God to man. Once more, the glorious mission of education is to foster these thirstings after knowledge and lead man to accomplish his high destiny.

It ought to be a duty with both Roman Catholics and Protestants to assist the pupil in his flight toward the regions of science and learning. But is it so? No. When you Protestants send your children to school, you put no fetters to their intelligence; they rise with fluttering wings day after day. Though their flight at first is slow and timid, how happy they feel at every new aspect of their intellectual horizon! How their hearts beat with an unspeakable joy when they begin to hear voices of applause and encouragement from every side saying to them, “Higher, higher, higher!” When they shake their young wings to take a still higher flight, who can express their joy when they distinctly hear again the voices of a beloved mother, of a dear father, of a venerable pastor, cheering them and saying, “Well done! Higher yet, my child, higher!”

Raising themselves with more confidence on their wings, they then soar still higher, in the midst of the unanimous concert of the voices of their whole country encouraging them to the highest flight. It is then that the young man feel his intellectual strength tenfold multiplied. He lifts himself on his eagle wings, with a renewed confidence and power, and soars up still higher, with his heart beating with a noble and holy joy. For from the south and north, from the east and the west, the echoes bring to his ears the voices of the admiring multitudes—“Rise higher, higher yet!”

He has now reached what he thought, at first, to be the highest regions of thought and knowledge; but he hears again the same stimulating cries from below, encouraging him to a still higher flight toward the loftiest dominion of knowledge and philosophy, till he enters the regions where lies the source of all truth, and light and life. For he has also heard the voice of his God, speaking through His Son Jesus Christ, crying, “Come unto me! Fear not! Come unto me! I am the light, the way! Come to this higher region where the Father, with the Son and the Spirit, reign in endless light!”

Thus does the Protestant scholar making use of his intelligence as the eagle of his wing, go on from weakness unto strength, from the timid flutter to the bold, confident flight, from one degree to another still higher, from one region of knowledge to another still higher, till he loses himself in that ocean of light and truth and life which is God.

In the Protestant schools no fetters are put on the young eagle’s wings; there is nothing to stop him in his progress, or paralyze his movements and upward flights. It is the contrary: he receives every kind of encouragement in his flight.

Thus it is that the only truly great nations in the world are Protestants! Thus it is the truly powerful nations in the world are Protestants! Thus it is that the only free nations in the world are Protestants! The Protestant nations are the only ones that acquit themselves like men in the arena of this world; Protestant nations only march as giants at the head of the civilized world. Everywhere they are the advance guard in the ranks of progress, science and liberty, leaving far behind the unfortunate nations whose hands are tied by the ignominious iron chains of Popery.