I find my views on this important subject so admirably expressed in the writings of some of the most eminent men of the age, that I feel it both a privilege and a duty to enforce the sentiments I would inculcate by the introduction of their testimony.
Dr. Humphrey observes,[25] that "it must strike every one who is capable of taking a just and comprehensive view of the subject, that the common idea of a good education—of such an education as every child in the state ought to receive—is exceedingly narrow and defective. Most men leave out, or regard as of very little importance, some of the essential elements. They seem to forget that the child has a conscience and a heart to be educated as well as an intellect. If they do not lay too much stress on mental culture, which, indeed, is hardly possible, they lay by far too little upon that which is moral and religious. They expect to elevate the child to his proper station in society, to make him wise and happy, an honest man, a virtuous citizen, and a good patriot, by furnishing him with a comfortable school-house, suitable class-books, competent teachers, and, if he is poor, paying his quarter bills, while they greatly underrate, if they do not entirely overlook, that high moral training, without which knowledge is the power of doing evil rather than good. It may possibly nurture up a race of intellectual giants, but, like the sons of Anak, they will be far readier to trample down the Lord's heritage than to protect and cultivate it.
"Education is not a talismanic word, but an art, or rather a science; and, I may add, the most important of all sciences. It is the right, the proper training of the whole man, the thorough and symmetrical cultivation of all his noble faculties. If he were endowed with a mere physical nature, he would need, he would receive none but a physical training. On the other hand, if he were a purely intellectual being, intellectual culture would comprehend all that could be included in a perfect education. And were it possible for a moral being to exist without either body or intellect, there would be nothing but the heart or affections to educate. But man is a complex, and not a simple being. He is neither all body, nor all mind, nor all heart. In popular language, he has three natures, a corporeal, a rational, and a moral. These three, mysteriously united, are essential to constitute a perfect man; and as they all begin to expand in very early childhood, the province of education is to watch, and assist, and shape the development; to train, and strengthen, and discipline neither of them alone, but each according to its intrinsic and relative importance.
"When it is said that 'man is a religious being,' we should carefully inquire in what respects he is so. In a guarded and limited sense the proposition is undoubtedly true. Terrible as was the shock which his moral nature received by 'the fall,' it was not wholly buried in the ruins. Though blackened and crushed to the effacing of that glorious image in which he was created, his moral susceptibilities were not destroyed. The capacity of being restored, and of infinite improvement in knowledge and virtue, was left. In the lowest depths of ignorance and debasement, the human soul feels that it must have some religion, some support, some refuge 'when flesh and heart fail.' There is a natural dread of annihilation, a longing after immortality, a starting back from the last leap in the dark. Men, if they have not true religion, will cling to the greatest absurdities as substitutes. Hence the pagan world is full of idols. Tribes and nations seemingly destitute of all moral sense, nevertheless have 'gods many and lords many.' If there are any cold-blooded, incorrigible atheists in the world, you must look for them not in heathen lands. You must go where the altars of the true God have been thrown down. In this view, man is a religious being. He has a moral nature. He is susceptible of deep and controlling religious impressions. He can, at a very early period of life, be made to see and feel the difference between right and wrong—between good and evil. He can, while yet a child, be influenced by hope and by fear—by reason, by persuasion, and by the word of God; and all this shows that religion was intended to be a prominent part of his education. There can be no mistake in this. It is plainly the will of God that the moral as well as the intellectual faculties should be cultivated. Every child, whether in the family or the school, is to be treated by those who have the care of him as a moral and accountable being. His religious susceptibilities invite to the most diligent culture, and virtually enjoin it upon every teacher. The simple study of man's moral nature, before we open the Bible, unavoidably leads to the conclusion that any system of popular education must be extremely defective which does not make special prevision for this branch of public instruction.
"Even if there had been no fatal lapse of our race—if our children were not naturally depraved, nor inclined to evil in the slightest degree, still they would need religious as well as physical and intellectual guidance and discipline. It is true, the educator's task would be infinitely easier and pleasanter than it now is, but they would need instruction. They would enter the world just as ignorant of their immortal destiny as of letters. They would have every thing to learn about the being and perfections of God; every thing about his rightful claims as their Creator, Preserver, and moral Governor; and every thing touching their duties and relations to their fellow-men. Moreover, there is every reason to believe that moral and religious training would be necessary to strengthen the principle of virtue in the rising generation, and confirm them in habits of obedience and benevolence. As, notwithstanding their bodies are perfect bodies, and their minds perfect minds at their creation, no member or faculty being wanting, still they need all the helps of education; so, if they had a perfectly upright moral nature, they would need the same helps. There is no more reason to think, had sin never entered into the world, every child would have grown up to the 'fullness of the stature of a perfect man' in a religious sense, without an appropriate education, than that he would have become a scholar without it. But the little beings that are all the while springing into life around us to be educated are the sinful offspring of apostate parents. How deeply depraved, how strongly inclined to sin from the cradle, this is not the place to inquire. All agree that they show an early bias in the wrong direction; and that, left to grow up without moral culture and restraint, the great majority would go far astray, and become bad members of society. This is sufficient for our present argument. The evil bias must be counteracted. For the safety of the state, as well as for their own sakes, all its children must be brought under the forming and sanative influence of religious education. No adequate substitute was ever devised, or ever can be. 'Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.' This is divine; and the opposite is equally true. Train up a child in the way he should not go, or—which comes to about the same thing—leave him to take the wrong way of his own accord, and when he is old he will not depart from that. His tread will be heavier and heavier upon the broad and beaten track. 'Men do not gather grapes of thorns, nor figs of thistles.' 'Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? Then may those also do good who are accustomed to do evil.'
"Moral and religious training ought, undoubtedly, to be commenced in every family much earlier than children are sent to school, and no parent can throw off upon the schoolmaster the responsibility of bringing them up in the 'nurture and admonition of the Lord.' He must himself teach them the good way, and lead them along in it by his own example. But few parents, however, have the leisure and ability to do all that is demanded in this vitally essential branch of education. All are entitled to the aid of their pastors and religious teachers; and every good shepherd will feel a tender concern for the lambs of his flock, and will feed them with the sincere milk of the word both in the sanctuary and at the fireside. But the work should not stop here. There ought to be a co-operation of good influences in all the seminaries of learning, and especially in the primary schools. This co-operation would be necessary if moral and religious household instruction were universally given, and if all the children of the state regularly attended public worship, and enjoyed the benefits of catechetical and Sabbath-school teaching. But those who would banish religion from our admirable systems of popular education by the plea that it belongs exclusively to the family and the Church, ought to remember what multitudes of children this exclusion would deprive of their birth-right as members of a Christian community. There are tens of thousands in our own heaven-blessed New England, and hundreds of thousands in these United States, who receive no religious instruction whatever at home, and whose parents are connected with no religious denomination. What is to be done? We can neither compel ignorant and graceless fathers and mothers to teach their children the fear of the Lord, nor to send them to any place of worship or Sabbath-school. I ask again, what is to be done? These neglected children are in the midst of us. Our cities swarm with them. They are scattered every where over our beautiful hills and valleys. Grow up they will among our own children, without principle and without morals, to breathe mildew upon the young virtues which we have sown in our families, and to prey upon the dearest interests of society, unless somebody cares for their moral and religious education. And where shall they receive this education, if not in the school-house? You will find them there, if in any place of instruction, and multitudes of them you can reach nowhere else.
"A more Utopian dream never visited the brain of a sensible man than that which promises to usher in a new golden age by the diffusion and thoroughness of what is commonly understood by popular education. With all its funds, and improved school-houses, and able teachers, and grammars, and maps, and black-boards, such an education is essentially defective. Without moral principle at bottom to guide and control its energies, education is a sharp sword in the hands of a practiced and reckless fencer. I have no hesitation in saying, that if we could have but one, moral and religious culture is even more important than a knowledge of letters; and that the former can not be excluded from any system of popular education without infinite hazard. Happily, the two are so far from being hostile powers in the common domain, that they are natural allies, moving on harmoniously in the same right line, and mutually strengthening each other. The more virtue you can infuse into the hearts of your pupils, the better they will improve their time, and the more rapid will be their proficiency in their common studies. The most successful teachers have found the half hour devoted to moral and religious instruction more profitable to the scholar than any other half hour in the day; and there are no teachers who govern their schools with so much ease as this class. Though punishment is sometimes necessary where moral influence has done its utmost, the conscience is, in all ordinary cases, an infinitely better disciplinarian than the rod. When you can get a school to obey and to study because it is right, and from a conviction of accountability to God, you have gained a victory which is worth more than all the penal statutes in the world; but you can never gain such a victory without laying great stress upon religious principle in your daily instructions.
"There is, I am aware, in the minds of some warm and respectable friends of popular education, an objection against incorporating religious instruction into the system as one of its essential elements. It can not, they think, be done without bringing in along with it the evils of sectarianism. If this objection could not be obviated, it would, I confess, have great weight in my own mind. It supposes that if any religious instruction is given, the distinctive tenets of some particular denomination must be inculcated. But is this at all necessary? Must we either exclude religion altogether from our common schools, or teach some one of the many creeds which are embraced by as many different sects in the ecclesiastical calendar? Surely not. There are certain great moral and religious principles in which all denominations are agreed; such as the ten commandments, our Savior's golden rule—every thing, in short, which lies within the whole range of duty to God and duty to our fellow-men. I should be glad to know what sectarianism there can be in a schoolmaster's teaching my children the first and second tables of the moral law; to 'love the Lord their God with all their heart, and their neighbor as themselves;' in teaching them to keep the Sabbath holy, to honor their parents, not to swear, nor drink, nor lie, nor cheat, nor steal, nor covet. Verily, if this is what any mean by sectarianism, then the more we have of it in our common schools the better. 'It is a lamentation, and shall be for a lamentation,' that there is so little of it. I have not the least hesitation in saying, that no instructor, whether male or female, ought ever to be employed who is not both able and willing to teach morality and religion in the manner which I have just alluded to. Were this faithfully done in all the primary schools of the nation, our civil and religious liberties, and all our blessed institutions, would be incomparably safer than they are now. The parent who says, I do not send my child to school to learn religion, but to be taught reading, and writing, and grammar, knows not 'what manner of spirit he is of.' It is very certain, that such a father will teach his children any thing but religion at home; and is it right that they should be left to grow up as heathens in a Christian land? If he says to the schoolmaster, I do not wish you to make my son an Episcopalian, a Baptist, a Presbyterian, or a Methodist, very well. That is not the schoolmaster's business. He was not hired to teach sectarianism. But if the parent means to say, I do not send my child to school to have you teach him to fear God and keep his commandments, to be temperate, honest, and true, to be a good son and a good man, then the child is to be pitied for having such a father; and with good reason might we tremble for all that we hold most dear, if such remonstrances were to be multiplied and to prevail.
"In this connection I can not refrain from earnestly recommending the daily reading of the Scriptures, and prayer,[26] in all our schools, as eminently calculated to exert a powerful moral influence upon the scholars. It is melancholy to think what swarms of children are growing up even in Massachusetts—and what multitudes of them in every one of these United States—who will seldom, if ever, hear the voice of prayer if they do not hear it in the schools, and to whom the Bible will remain a sealed book if it be not opened there. I would not insist that every primary teacher should be absolutely required to open or close the school daily with prayer. Great and good as I think the influence of such an arrangement would be, it might be impossible, at present, to find a sufficient number of instructors otherwise well qualified who are fitted to lead in this exercise. The number, however, I believe is steadily increasing. It is probably too late for me, but I hope that some of you, gentlemen, may live to see the time when the voice of prayer, and of praise too, will be heard in every school-house of the land. Could I know that this would be the case, it would give me a confidence in the perpetuity of our civil and religious liberties which I should exceedingly rejoice to cherish as I pass off from the stage."
It would seem that these patriotic sentiments, enforced by such persuasive eloquence by this venerable man, can hardly fail to find a permanent lodgment in every truly American bosom. The great principles of natural and revealed religion, in which all are agreed, ought to be inculcated in our common school-books,[27] just as every teacher ought orally to instill these principles into the minds of his pupils. That will be a happy day, especially to the children of ignorant and vicious parents, when they shall learn more of that "fear of the Lord which is the beginning of knowledge" in the school-house than they have ever yet done. Nor is it discovered that the practice of teaching morals according to the Christian code, and using the Bible for that purpose, the great majority adopting it, is any infringement whatever on the religious rights and liberty of any individual.