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ing spent some of the most active if not the best years of life as an humble primary teacher, I should be recreant indeed if I did not cherish a lively interest in the prosperity of our common schools. And although for the last twenty years what little I could do has been required in another department of education, I am sure I can never forget those rosy cheeks and bright eyes which used, in olden time, to greet me, as I went forth in the clear, frosty mornings to my daily task. I can see those blue skies and happy faces now-those nice dinner baskets, so carefully hoarded in the closet till noon-time, and the showers of snow-balls which used to fall so thick and fast in every warm day. And then that living stream, gushing out like glad and leaping waters when school was done, is yet present to my delighted eye and those gushing peals of laughter, and sweet babel voices, still ring in my delighted ear.

When a great public edifice, requiring a thousand hands is going up, it behoves such as come late to the work, or return to it after a temporary absence, to step in where their help is most needed, and to take hold of what they can do to the best advantage. The education of the people, of the whole people, is a vast undertaking, which, with whatever ability it may be prosecuted, can never be finished, because new generations are coming up in unbroken succession to occupy the places of those already educated. You, gentlemen, and your worthy associates, are doing the same work which your fathers did, and which your children will have to do after you, down to the latest posterity.

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 extremely 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 upon 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 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

tellectual 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 provision 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 everything to learn about the being and perfections of God, everything about his rightful claims as their Creator, Preserver, and moral Governor, everything 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 that had sin never entered into the world every child would have grown up to the "fulness 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. 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."

Train

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 school-master 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 coöperation of good influences in all the seminaries of learning, and especially in the primary schools.

This coöperation would be necessary if moral and religious household instruction was 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 system 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, at this moment, tens of thousands in our own heaven-blessed New England, who receive no religious instruction whatever at home, and whose parents are connected with no religious denomination. What is to be done? You 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

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