124 ON THE EXPEDIENCY AND MEANS OF 



from good morals, as merely infamy rendered conspicuous."^ Are 

 we not, as a nation, guilty of Eli's sin, and stand convicted before 

 God ? We strive (though vainly) to make our children learned and 

 influential, forgetting the first law of nature and the simple element 

 of happiness, " that we should love one another," which alone can 

 truly raise our souls through those natural and coalescent virtues of 

 intelligence and love, to the image of God. 



CHAPTEll V. 



THE CONSEQUENCES OF THE DEGRADATION OF THE PROFESSION 

 OP THE EDUCATOR UPON THE NATION. 



As the degradation of the office of the educator necessarily com- 

 plicates the degradation of its officer and his duties, either the ad- 

 vantages of a reformed and national education are questionable and 

 vain, or the existing abuse and neglect of the office and its duties is 

 a reproach against the tyranny, superstition, and ignorance of the 

 whole kingdom. Either the Deity has formed men of dissimilar 

 natures, and raised one above and one below a general and uniform 

 law of nature (exhibiting a contrary scarcely conceivable), or the 

 exclusion of one or any rational and fellow beings from the common 

 property of truth, is the worst of tyranny against man, and a blas- 

 phemy towards God. But the injustice done to a people in this 

 particular is itself a concomitant of the first great and productive 

 evil — the degraded condition of the office ; nor can there be a 

 stronger argument of the abuse than the universal ignorance of its 

 existence. To compare the English nation with itself and with 

 other nations ! 



The religious diathesis of this kingdom, while it argues a preva- 

 lence of religious ordinances, blinds the public eye to the natural 

 and first cause of every evil ; at the same time that the spirit of the 

 word is contending against the " huge overshadowing train of er- 

 ror" that vitiates and darkens the soul of a people, a degraded edu- 

 cation is augmenting and multiplying error upon error in a far 

 greater and more sure ratio. Thus the friend and advocate of reli- 

 gion is converted into an hereditary foe, and the eastern fable of 



* Sir Thomas More, in a Lcltcr (o the Tutor of his Children. 



