damental principle, truth. It is so very difficult for persons of great liveliness to restrain themselves within the sober limits of strict veracity, either in their assertions or narrations, especially when a little undue indulgence of fancy is apt to procure for them the praise of genius and spirit, that this restraint is one of the earliest principles which should be worked into the youthful mind. The conversation of young females is also in danger of being overloaded with epithets. As in the warm season of youth hardly any thing is seen in the true point of vision, so hardly any thing is named in naked simplicity; and the very sensibility of the feelings is partly a cause of the extravagance of the expression. But here, as in other points, the sacred writers, particularly of the New Testament, present us with the purest models; and its natural and unlaboured style of expression is perhaps not the meanest evidence of the truth of the Gospel. There is throughout the whole narratives, no overcharged character, no elaborate description, nothing studiously emphatical, as if truth of itself were weak, and wanted to be helped out. There is little panegyric, and less invective; none but on great, and awful, and justifiable occasions. The authors record their own faults with the same honesty as if they were the faults of other men, and the faults of other men with as little amplification as if they were their own. There is perhaps no book in which adjectives are so sparingly used. A modest statement of the fact, with no colouring and little comment, with little emphasis and no varnish, is the example held out to us for correcting the exuberances of passion and of language, by that divine volume which furnishes us with the still more important rule of faith and standard of practice. Nor is the truth lowered by any feebleness, nor is the spirit diluted, nor the impression weakened by this soberness and moderation; for with all this plainness there is so much force, with all this simplicity there is so much energy, that a few slight touches and artless strokes of Scripture characters convey a stronger outline of the person delineated, than is sometimes given by the most elaborate and finished portrait of more artificial historians. very tropes and figures, though bold, are never unnatural or affected: when it embellishes it does not mislead; even when it exaggerates, it does not misrepresent; if it be hyperbolical, it is so either in compliance with the genius of oriental language, or in compliance with contemporary customs, or because the subject is one which will be most forcibly impressed by a strong figure. The loftiness of the expression deducts nothing from the weight of the circumstance; the imagery animates the reader without misleading him; the boldest illustration, while it dilates his conception of the subject, detracts nothing from its exactness; and the divine Spirit, instead of suffering truth to be injured by the opulence of the figures, contrives to make them fresh and varied avenues to the heart and the understanding. CHAP. XI. On religion. The necessity and duty of early instruction shown by analogy with human learning. IT has been the fashion of our late innovators in philosophy, who have written some of the most brilliant and popular treatises on education, to decry the practice of early instilling religious knowledge into the minds of children. In vindication of this opinion it has been alleged, that it is of the utmost importance to the cause of truth, that the mind of man should be kept free from prepossessions; and in particular, that every one should be left to form such judgment on religious subjects as may seem best to his own reason in maturer years. This sentiment has received some counte. nance from those better characters who have wished, on the fairest principle, to encourage free inquiry in religion; but it has been pushed to the blameable excess here censured, chiefly by the new philosophers; who, while they profess only an ingenuous zeal for truth, are in fact slily endeavouring to destroy Christianity itself, by discountenancing, under the plausible pretence of free inquiry, all attention whatever to the religious education of our youth. It is undoubtedly our duty, while we are instilling principles into the tender mind, to take peculiar care that those principles be sound and just; that the religion we teach be the religion of the Bible, and not the inventions of human error or superstition: that the principles we infuse into others, be such as we ourselves have well scrutinized, and not the result of our credulity or bigotry; not the mere hereditary, unexamined prejudices of our own undiscerning childhood. It may also be granted, that it is the duty of every parent to inform the youth, that when his faculties shall have so unfolded themselves, as to enable him to examine for himself those principles which the parent is now instilling, it will be his duty so to examine them. If it be objected to this remark, that many parts of the sacred writings abound in a lofty, figurative, and even hyperbolical style; this objection applies chiefly to the writings of the Old Testament, and to the prophetical and poetical parts of that. But the metaphorical and florid style of those writings is distinct from the inaccurate and overstrained expression we have been censuring; for that only is inaccuracy which leads to a false and inadequate conception in the reader or hearer. The lofty style of the eastern, and of other heroic poetry, does not so mislead; for the metaphor is understood to be a metaphor, and the imagery is understood to be ornamental. The style of the Scriptures of the Old Testament is not, it is true, plain in opposition to figurative; nor simple in opposition to florid; but it is plain and simple in the best sense, as But after making these concessions, I would opposed to false principles and false taste; it most seriously insist that there are certain leadraises no wrong idea; it gives an exact impres-ing and fundamental truths; that there are cersion of the thing it means to convey; and its tain sentiments on the side of Christianity, as well as of virtue and benevolence, in favour of which every child ought to be prepossessed; and may it not be also added, that to expect to keep the mind void of all prepossession, even upon any subject, appears to be altogether a vain and impracticable attempt; an attempt, the very suggestion of which argues much ignorance of human nature. norant not only of the science, but the language of Christianity? But at worst, whatever be the event of a pious education to the child, though in general we are encouraged from the tenor of Scripture and the course of experience to hope that the event will be favourable, and that when he is old he will not depart from it.' Is it nothing for the parent Let it be observed here, that we are not com- to have acquitted himself of this prime duty? bating the infidel; that we are not producing Is it nothing to him that he has obeyed the plain evidences and arguments in favour of the truth command of 'training his child in the way he of Christianity, or trying to win over the assent should go?' And will not the parent who so of the reader to that which he disputes, but that acquits himself, with better reason and more we are taking it for granted, not only that lively hope, supplicate the Father of mercies for Christianity is true, but that we are addressing the reclaiming of a prodigal, who has wandered those who believe it to be true: an assumption out of that right path in which he has set him which has been made throughout this work. forward, than for the conversion of a neglected Assuming, therefore, that there are religious creature, to whose feet the Gospel had never principles which are true, and which ought to been offered as a light? And how different will be communicated in the most effectual manner, be the dying reflections even of that parent the next question which arises seems to be, at whose earnest endeavours have been unhappily what age and in what manner these ought to be defeated by the subsequent and voluntary perinculcated; that it ought to be at an early period version of his child, from his who will reasonawe have the command of Christ; who encourag-bly aggravate his pangs, by transferring the sins ingly said, in answer to those who would have repelled their approach, Suffer little children to come unto me.' of his neglected child to the number of his own transgressions. And to such well-intentioned but ill-judging parents as really wish their children to be hereafter pious, but erroneously withhold instruction till the more advanced period prescribed by the great master of splendid paradoxes* shall arrive who can assure them, that while they are withholding the good seed, the great and ever vigilant enemy, who assiduously seizes hold on every opportunity which we slight, and cultivates every advantage which we neglect, may not be stocking the fallow ground with tares? Nay, who in this fluctuating state of things can be assured, even if this were not certainly to be the case, that to them the promised period ever shall arrive at all? Who shall ascertain to them that their now neglected child shall certainly live to receive the delayed instructions? Who can assure them that they themselves will live to communicate it? But here conceding, for the sake of argument, what yet cannot be conceded, that some good reasons may be brought in favour of delay; allowing that such impressions as are communicated early may not be very deep; allowing them even to become totally effaced by the subsequent corruptions of the heart and of the world; still I would illustrate the importance of early infusing religious knowledge, by an allusion drawn from the power of early habit in human learning. Put the case, for instance, of a person who was betimes initiated in the rudiments of classical studies. Suppose him after quitting school to have fallen, either by a course of idleness or of vulgar pursuits, into a total neglect of study. Should this person at any future period happen to be called to some profession, which should oblige him, as we say, to rub up his Greek and Latin; his memory still retain- It is almost needless to observe that parents ing the unobliterated though faint traces of his who are indifferent about religion, much more early pursuits, he will be able to recover his ne- those who treat it with scorn, are not likely to glected learning with less difficulty than he be anxious on this subject; it is therefore the could now begin to learn; for he is not again attention of religious parents which is here. obliged to set out with studying the simple ele-chiefly called upon; and the more so, as there ments; they come back on being pursued; they are found on being searched for; the decayed images assume shape, and strength, and colour; he has in his mind first principles to which to recur; the rules of grammar which he has allowed himself to violate, he has not however forgotten; he will recall neglected ideas, he will resume slighted habits far more easily than he could now begin to acquire new ones. I appeal to clergymen who are called to attend the dying beds of such as have been bred in gross and stupid ignorance of religion, for the justness of this comparison. Do they not find that these unhappy people have no ideas in common with them? that they therefore possess no intelligible medium by which to make themselves understood? that the persons to whom they are addressing themselves have no first principles to which they can be referred? that they are ig seems, on this point, an unaccountable negligence in many of these, whether it arises from indolence, false principles, or whatever other motive. But independent of knowledge, it is something, nay, let philosophers say what they will, it is much to give youth prepossessions in favour of religion, to secure their prejudices on its side before you turn them adrift into the world; a world in which, before they can be completely armed with arguments and reasons, they will be assailed by numbers whose prepossessions and prejudices, far more than their arguments and reasons, attach them to the other side. Why should not the Christian youth furnish himself in the best cause with the same natural armour which the enemies of religion wear in the worst? It is certain that to set out in life with senti * Rosseau. ments in favour of the religion of our country is, no more an error or a weakness, than to grow up with a fondness for our country itself. If the love of our country be judged a fair principle, surely a Christian who is a citizen of no mean | city,' may lawfully have his attachments too. If patriotism be an honest prejudice, Christianity is not a servile one. Nay, let us teach the youth to hug his prejudices, to glory in his prepossessions, rather than to acquire that versatile and accommodating citizenship of the world, by which he may be an infidel in Paris, a Papist at Rome, and a Mussulman at Cairo. which is now usurped by externals, should be restored to the rightful owners, the understanding and the heart; and that the acquisition of religious knowledge in early youth should at least be no less an object of sedulous attention than the cultivation of human learning or of outward embellishments. It is also not unreasonable to suggest, that we should in Christi anity, as in arts, sciences, or languages, begin with the beginning, set out with the simple elements, and thus go on unto perfection.' Why in teaching to draw do you begin with straight lines and curves, till by gentle steps the knowledge of outline and proportion be ob tained, and your picture be completed; never losing sight, however, of the elementary lines and curves? Why in music do you set out with the simple notes, and pursue the acquisition through all its progress, still in every stage recurring to the notes? Why in the science of numbers do you invent the simplest methods of conveying just ideas of computation, still referring to the tables which involve the fundamental rules? Why in the science of quantity do men introduce the pupil at first to the plainest diagrams, and clear up one difficulty before they allow another to appear? Why in teaching Let me not be supposed so to elevate politics, or so to depress religion, as to make any comparision of the value of the one with the other, when I observe, that between the true British patriot and the true Christian, there will be this common resemblance: the more deeply each of them inquires, the more will he be confirmed in his respective attachment, the one to his country, the other to his religion. I speak with reverence of the immeasurable distance; but the more the one presses on the firm arch of our constitution, and the other on that of Christianity, the stronger he will find them both. Each challenges scrutiny; each has nothing to dread but from shallow politicians and shallow philo-languages to the youth do you sedulously infuse sophers; in each intimate knowledge justifies prepossession; in each investigation confirms attachment. into his mind the rudiments of your syntax? Why in parsing is he led to refer every word to its part of speech, to resolve every sentence into its elements, to reduce every term to its original, and from the first case of nouns, and the first tense of verbs, to explain their forma tions, changes, and dependences, till the prin ciples of language become so grounded, that, by continually recurring to the rules, speaking and writing correctly are fixed into a habit? Why all this, but because you uniformly wish him to be grounded in each of his acquirements? Why, but because you are persuaded that a slight, and slovenly, and superficial, and irregular way of instruction will never train him to excellence in any thing? Do young persons then become musicians, painters, linguists, and mathematicians by early study and regular labour; and shall they become Christians by accident? or rather, is not this acting on that very principle of Dogberry, at which you probably have often laughed? Is it not supposing that religion like reading and writing comes by nature? Shall all those ac If we divide the human being into three component parts, the bodily, the intellectual, and the spiritual, is it not reasonable that a portion of care and attention be assigned to each in some degree adequate to its importance? Should I venture to say a due portion, a portion adapted to the real comparative value of each, would not that condemn in one word the whole system of modern education? The rational and intellectual part being avowedly more valuable than the bodily, while the spiritual and immortal part exceeds even the intellectual still more than that surpasses what is corporeal; is it acting according to the common rules of proportion; is it acting on the principles of distributive justice; is it acting with that good sense and right judgment with which the ordinary business of this world is usually transacted, to give the larger portion of time and care to that which is worth the least? Is it fair that what relates to the body and the organs of the body, I mean those accomplishments which address them-complishments, which perish in the using," selves to the eye and the ear, should occupy almost the whole thoughts; while the intellectual part should be robbed of its due proportion, and the spiritual part should have almost no proportion at all? Is not this preparing your children for an awful disappointment in the tremendous day when they shall be stripped of that body, of those senses and organs, which have been made almost the sole objects of their attentions, and shall feel themselves left in possession of nothing but that spiritual part which in education was scarcely taken into the account of their exist-ledge which parents, even under a darker dis ence ? Surely it should be thought a reasonable compromise (and I am in fact undervaluing the object for the importance of which I plead) to suggest, that at least two-thirds of that time Z be so assiduously, so systematically taught? Shall all those habits, which are limited to the things of this world, be so carefully formed, so persisted in, as to be interwoven with our very make, so as to become as it were a part of ourselves; and shall that knowledge which is to make us wise unto salvation' be picked up at random, cursorily, or perhaps not picked up at all? Shall that difficult divine science which requires line upon line, and precept upon precept,' here a little and there a little; that know pensation, were required to teach their children diligently, and to talk of it when they sat in their house, and when they walked by the way, and when they lay down, and when they rose up,' shall this knowledge be by Christian parents omitted or deferred, or taught slightly; or be superseded by things of comparatively little worth? Shall the lively period of youth, the soft and impressible season when lasting habits are formed, when the seal cuts deep into the yielding wax, and the impression is more likely to be clear, and sharp, and strong, and lasting; shall this warm and favourable season be suffered to slide by, without being turned to the great purpose for which not only youth, but life and breath, and being were bestowed? Shall not that faith without which it is impossible to please God;' shall not that 'holiness without which no man can see the Lord;' shall not that knowledge which is the foundation of faith and practice; shall not that charity without which all knowledge is 'sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal,' be impressed, be inculcated, be enforced, as early, as constantly, as fundamentally, with the same earnest pushing on to continual progress, with the same constant reference to. first principles, as are used in the case of those arts which merely adorn human life? Shall we not seize the happy period when the memory is strong, the mind and all its powers vigorous and active, the imagination busy and all alive; the heart flexible, the temper ductile, the conscience tender, curiosity awake, fear powerful, hope eager, love ardent; shall we not seize this period for inculcating that knowledge, and impressing those principles which are to form the character, and fix the destination for eternity? on which we have already dwelt so much; how We can scarcely believe, even with all the melancholy procrastination we see around us that there is any one, except he be a decided infidel, who does not consider religion as at least a good reversionary thing; as an object which ought always to occupy a little remote corner of his map of life; the study of which, though it is always to be postponed, is however not to be finally rejected; which, though it cannot conveniently come into his present scheme of life, it is intended somehow or other to take up before death. This awful deception, this defect in the intellectual vision, arises, partly from the bulk which the objects of time and sense acquire in our eyes by their nearness; while the invisible realities of eternity are but faintly discerned by a feeble faith, through a dim and distant medium. It arises also partly from a totally false idea of the nature of Christianity, from a fatal fancy that we can repent at any future period, and that as amendment is a thing which will always be in our power, it will be time enough to think of reforming our life, when we should think only of closing it. I would now address myself to another and a still more dilatory class, who are for procrastinating all concern about religion till they are driven to it by actual distress, and who do not think of praying till they are perishing like the sailor who said, 'he thought it was always time enough to begin to pray when the storm began.' Of these I would ask, shall we, with an unaccountable deliberation, defer our anxiety about religion till the busy man and the dissipated woman are become so immersed in the cares of life, or so entangled in its pleasures, that they will have little heart or spirit to embrace a new principle? a principle whose precise object it will be to condemn that very life in which they have already embarked: nay, to condemn almost all that they have been doing and thinking ever since they first began to act or think? Shall we, I say, begin now? or shall we suffer those instructions, to receive which, requires all the con-ed, I do not mean by gross vices merely, but by centrated powers of a strong and healthy mind, to be put off till the day of excruciating pain, till the period of debility and stupefaction? Shall we wait for that season, as if it were the most favourable for religious acquisitions, when the senses shall have been palled by excessive gratification, when the eye shall be tired with seeing, and the ear with hearing? Shall we, when the whole man is breaking up by disease or decay, expect that the dim apprehension will discern a new science, or the obtuse feelings delight themselves with a new pleasure? a pleasure too, not only incompatible with many of the hitherto indulged pleasures, but one which carries with it a strong intimation that those pleasures terminate in the death of the soul. But, not to lose sight of the important analogy But depend upon it, that a heart long harden a fondness for the world, by an habitual and excessive indulgence in the pleasures of sense, will by no means be in a favourable state to admit the light of divine truth, or to receive the impressions of divine grace. God indeed sometimes shows us by an act of his sovereignty, that this wonderful change, the conversion of a sinner's heart, may be produced without the intervention of human means, to show that the work is His. But as this is not the way in which the Almighty usually deals with his creatures, it would be nearly as preposterous for men to act on this presumption, and sin on in hopes of a miraculous conversion, as it would be to take no means for the preservation of their lives, because Jesus Christ raised Lazarus from the dead. CHAP. XII. On the manner of instructing young persons in religion.—General remarks on the genius of Christianity. I WOULD now with great deference address those respectable characters who are really concerned about the best interests of their children; those to whom Christianity is indeed an important consideration, but whose habits of life have hitherto hindered them from giving it its due degree in the scale of education. Begin then with considering that religion is a part, and the most prominent part, in your syslem of instruction. Do not communicate its principles in a random, desultory way; nor scantily stint this business to only such scraps and remnants of time as may be casually picked up from the gleanings of other acquirements. Will you bring to God for a sacrifice that which costs you nothing? Let the best part of the day, which with most people is the earliest part, be steadily and invariably dedicated to this work by your children, before they are tired with their other studies, while the intellect is clear, the spirit light, and the attention sharp and unfatigued. Confine not your instructions to mere verbal rituals and dry systems, but communicate them in a way which shall interest their feelings, by lively images, and by a warm practical application of what they read to their own hearts and circumstances. If you do not study the great but too much slighted art of fixing, of commanding, of chaining the attention, you may throw away much time and labour, with little other effect than that of disgusting your pupils and wearying yourself. There seems to be no good reason that while every other thing is to be made amusing, religion alone must be dry and uninviting. Do not fancy that a thing is good merely because it is dull. Why should not the most entertaining powers of the human mind be supremely consecrated to that subject which is most worthy of their full exercise? The misfortune is, that religious learning is too often rather considered as an act of the memory than of the heart and affections; as a dry duty, rather than a lively pleasure. The manner in which it is taught differs as much from their other learning as punishment from recreation. Children are turned over to the dull work of getting by rote as a task that which they should get from example, from animated conversation, from lively discussion, in which the pupil should learn to bear a part, instead of being merely a passive hearer. Teach them rather, as their blessed Saviour taught, by interesting parables, which, while they corrected the heart, left some exercise for the ingenuity in the solution, and for the feelings in their application. Teach, as He taught, by seizing on surrounding objects, passing events, local circumstances, peculiar characters, apt illusions, just analogy, appropriate illustration. Call in all creation, animate and inanimate, to your aid, and accustom your young audience to necessary for you to be more plain and didactic, do not fail frequently to enliven these less endental imagery which will captivate the fancy; gaging parts of your discourse with some inci. with some affecting story with which it shall be associated in the memory. Relieve what would otherwise be too dry and preceptive, with some striking exemplification in point, some touching instance to be imitated, some awful warning to be avoided; something which shall illustrate your instruction, which shall realize your position, which shall embody your idea, and give shape and form, colour and life, to your precept. Endeavour unremittingly to connect the reader with the subject by making her feel that what you teach is neither an abstract truth, nor a thing of mere general information, but that it is a business in which she herself is individually and immediately concerned; in which not only her eternal salvation but her present happiness is involved. Do, according to your measure of ability, what the Holy Spirit which indited the Scriptures has done, always take the sensibility of the learner into your account of the faculties which are to be worked upon. For the doctrines of the Bible,' as the profound and enlightened Bacon observes, are not proposed to us in a naked logic form, but arrayed in the most beautiful and striking colours which creation affords.' By those affecting illustrations used by Him who knew what was in man,' and therefore best knew how to address him, it was, that the unlettered audiences of Christ and his apostles were enabled both to comprehend and to relish doctrines, which would not readily have made their way to their understandings, had they not first touched their hearts; and which would have found access to neither the one nor the other, had they been delivered in dry scholastic disquisitions. Now, those audiences not being learned, may be supposed to have been nearly in the state of children, as to their recep tive faculties, and to have required nearly the same sort of instruction; that is, they were more capable of being moved with what was simple and touching, and lively, than what was elaborate, abstruse, and unaffecting. Heaven and earth were made to furnish their contributions, when man was to be taught that science which was to make him wise unto salvation. Some. thing which might enforce or illustrate was drawn from every element. The appearances of the sky, the storms of the ocean, the birds of the air, the beasts of the field, the fruits of the earth, the seed and the harvest, the labours of the husbandmen, the traffic of the merchant, the season of the year! all were laid hold of in turn. And the most important moral instruction, or religious truth, was deduced from some recent occurrence, some natural appearance, some ordinary fact. If that be the purest eloquence which most persuades and which comes home to the heart with the fullest evidence and the most irresisti ble force, then no eloquence is so powerful as that of Scripture; and an intelligent Christian teacher will be admonished by the mode of Scripture itself, how to communicate its truths with life and spirit; while he is musing, the Even when the nature of your subjeet makes it fire burns;' that fire which will preserve him Find tongues in trees, hooks in the running brooks, Sermons in stones, and good in every thing |