ELEVATING THE PROFESSION OP THE EDUCATOR. 123 



are naturally infallible ; the bigotry of home is interwoven in the 

 memory of home, and the unchristian-like intolerance of age is thus 

 rekindled, with an undying fire in the heart of the child : fanned 

 and fed by the encouragement of the many and the opposition of 

 the few, it flames into a beacon light of savage superstition and 

 bigotry. With the specious empiricism of a mis-called " religious 

 education/' is it strange that the faith of the parents should wax 

 warm, and prognosticate of their children an illustrious race of good 

 and wise men ? But with this general looking for of wonders, and 

 prophesyings of a better and regenerate time, there can be discovered 

 no harbinger, no a vaunt- courier in the van of this golden era, though 

 mankind are still prescient of its coming. The studies of schools 

 begin and end with the mere elements of knowledge, and leave the 

 mind inoperative and incurious after truth. Intellectually and mo- 

 rally the nature of man is depressed below its capacities and pur- 

 poses ; and even with all the violence and ardour of some masters, 

 the progress of the scholar is marked by the memory more than the 

 understanding of their lessons. The good will of the teacher who 

 ignorantly constrains the mind of youth beyond its own powers and 

 inclinations, and which it might be more slowly brought to approve 

 and accomplish as an agreeable study, causes an aversion to all kind 

 of knowledge, and which their minds may never afterwards shake 

 off, to the injury of themselves and the world. So prevalent is the 

 evil of coercion in the misguided attempt to accelerate the progress 

 of learning, that it may be fairly presumed that mankind, by this 

 means, have lost the valuable efibrts of innumerable minds, which, 

 had they at first been encouraged by an easy and agreeable mode 

 and subject of teaching, would have kept ever after in the pursuit 

 and discovery of truth, to the great and universal interest of the 

 world. 



Systems of education, however ingenious in theory, are often fal- 

 lacious in practice. The God of Nature and Revelation has opened 

 to man the true and only way of truth : for man to " know him- 

 wself " involves the complex relations of all human knowledge and 

 wisdom. 



The first and principal defect in education, even before the de- 

 fects of learning, is the resignation of the affections to the despotism 

 of accidental circumstances. The affections are the elements of re- 

 ligion, and to train up a child in all knowledge, without keeping 

 pace in the affections, is but to lend a splendour to sin. 



"As I prefer learning united with virtue to all the treasures of 

 princes, so I look upon the reputation of learning, when separated 



