This plan alone, with God's blessing to aid it, can ever achieve the so much needed scholastic reforms and amendments in the modes and general scope of parental instruction. This alone can ever materially diminish that enormous mass of vice and crime, with all their soul-sickening consequences, which renders this world a scene of such constant, indescribable wretchedness in so many of its aspects. And who are they, my friends, that make it so? Who are the poor, forlorn, outcast wretches, that have brought disgrace upon their sex, shame on their families, and endless woe upon themselves? Are they not, in almost every case, the miserable victims of infidel opinions imbibed in early youth, under parents and teachers who have incurred the deep and deadly guilt of neglecting to take care of their precious souls, until the critical hours for correcting their evil propensities had forever passed away? Who compose that motley, most pitiable group of both sexes, and of almost all ages, with which our jails and penitentiaries are filled? Who are the shedders of their brother's blood? Who the robbers and murderers for gold, for revenge, for lust? Who the hellish destroyers of female honor, purity and peace—the perpetrators of crimes that carry ruin, misery and death into the peaceful abodes of domestic life, tearing asunder the nearest and dearest ties of our existence, and outraging alike all laws, both human and divine? Are they persons who have been morally and religiously educated from infancy, or such as have been most shamefully, most guiltily neglected in these all important respects—such as have hardly so much as heard of any other bonds—any other fetters to restrain their criminal passions—to prevent their atrocious deeds, than the gossamer filaments of a mere worldly morality? Alas! my friends, the bare contemplation of such heart-rending results, from the neglect or perversion of education, is enough to make every mother of an infant yet guiltless of actual sin, press the little innocent still closer to her bosom than she would do from the ordinary impulse of maternal love, in shuddering apprehension of what may be its future fate. It is enough to make every father tremble in considering the future destiny of his child, lest some neglect of duty, some false instruction, some vicious example on his part, should bring this child of his heart to misery and destruction. Will you then, my dear hearers, do nothing to prevent such consummation, either as regards your own offspring or that of others? Can you, who have so much power—so deep an interest too in this momentous matter—can you deliberately and seriously contemplate these crying evils, this enormous aggregate of human guilt and woe, without ascribing it principally to our defective systems of education, and without some secret dread lest you yourselves individually may have, in some way or other, either directly or indirectly, contributed to augment it? Will you not add to your power of establishing, patronizing and regulating schools, the still more effectual influence of your example in the early instruction of your children, to make education what it should be, in all its branches? Can there be any thing that concerns us in the present life—is there any thing in the whole compass of thought, which should excite half such deep, heart-felt, all absorbing anxiety, as to remove this deadly curse of ignorance and vice from our land and nation? That it is removable—at least in a degree beyond all calculation, greater than we can judge from beholding its present widely spread mischief, none can doubt who believe in the scripture assurance, that if we train up our children in the way they shall go, they will not depart from it; or who confide in the extent to which, by the blessing of God, all human beings may be improved, both in knowledge and virtue, by means of education. Not only our own happiness, but that of our children and children's children, to the latest generation, are at stake; and it depends upon you, my friends, you, who, in full proportion to your numbers, can direct and control the education of the present race, whether this happiness shall be increased or destroyed to a degree which it has never yet reached. Upon your precepts and examples, while your children are under your own care, and upon your choice of preceptors, when you confide them to the care of others, it depends—whether these children shall prove curses or blessings to themselves, to their parents, and to their country. Let all our resources then, both mental and physical—all our available means, both of talent and wealth, be applied to the requisite extent, for the attainment of so glorious a purpose. The individuals who achieve it—if it ever is to be achieved, will merit the highest honors—the richest rewards that this world can bestow, and will enjoy all the happiness promised in the next, to the greatest benefactors of the human race.
And now, my friends, in bidding you farewell, permit me freely, but respectfully, to address my few concluding remarks still more personally to yourselves. Ye parents, who are conscious of faults that obstruct the education of your own offspring and are anxious to mend them—ye who still have children to be instructed, and cherish that deep solicitude for their continual improvement in knowledge and virtue, which it is your most sacred duty to cherish—ye teachers, who justly estimate the nature and extent of the momentous trusts confided to your honor, and the fatal consequences of neglecting to fulfil them—ye young men and maidens, who are still under pupilage—behold, I beseech you, the moral mirror which I have held up to your view. Search it again and again, and if you discern therein any similitude to your own defects, let it not be seen in vain. Oh! suffer it not to pass away “like the morning cloud or the early dew,” but set instantly, earnestly, perseveringly, about the vital work of extirpation, as your only hope for happiness either here or hereafter. Learn to consider—nay, never for a moment to forget, that nothing called education can have a shadow of pretence to be pronounced complete, but that which has for its basis the Gospel of Christ as well as its divine morality—that to act on every occasion as this directs, is true wisdom—and that to gain the power of doing so, you must cherish in your hearts, through all the vicissitudes of life, the same heavenly dispositions and sentiments which the pious Cowper has so feelingly expressed in the following admirable lines.
Thou art the source and centre of all minds,
Their only point of rest, Eternal Word!
From thee departing they are lost, and rove
At random, without honor, hope, or peace.
From thee is all that soothes the life of man,
His high endeavor and his glad success,
His strength to suffer, and his will to serve.
But oh! thou bounteous giver of all good,
Thou art of all thy gifts—thyself the crown.
Give what thou canst, without thee we are poor,
And with thee rich, take what thou wilt away.
THE RAINBOW.
“The Rainbow,” by Campbell, “Triumphal Arch,” &c. is indeed a glorious piece, and worthy at once of the subject and the poet. Nor does it derogate much from his genius, though it does a little perhaps from his honesty, that he has borrowed (without acknowledgment) two or three of the finest thoughts and phrases in it from an older bard, a certain Henry Vaughan, who flourished about two centuries ago, and whose poems, says Montgomery, “amidst much harshness and obscurity, show gleams of rare excellence.” Thus these lines of Vaughan,
How bright wert thou when Shem's admiring eye,
Thy burning, flaming arch did first descry;
When Zerah, Nahor, Haram, Abram, Lot,
The youthful world's gray fathers, in one knot,
Did, with intentive looks, watch every hour
For thy new light, and trembled at each shower
evidently suggested that fine stanza of Campbell—
When o'er the green undeluged earth
Heaven's covenant thou didst shine,
How came the world's gray fathers forth
To watch thy sacred sign.