574 History of Methodism 



tinent of Christendom in favor of religious institutions of learning 

 universal by formally enjoining in their highest ecclesiastical as- 

 semblies the inculcation of religion in schools and colleges as an 

 important part of Church policy. Indeed, the relation between 

 religious education and the prosperity of the Church is so intimate 

 that it is scarcely conceivable that the cause of religion should per- 

 manently flourish in the midst of an educational system that did 

 not give prominence to the truth of God, upon which the well-being 

 of society rests. Such has been the necessary influence of a mere 

 intellectual development of the powers of man that the sentiment 

 is gaining general prevalence that education, if not religious, is a 

 curse to any society. "Religious and moral education," says Cousin, 

 "is the first want of a people. Without this every other education 

 is not only without real utility, but in some respects dangerous. If, 

 on the contrary, religious education has taken firm root, intellectual 

 education will have complete success, and ought on no account to 

 be withheld from the people, since God has endowed them with all 

 the faculties of acquiring it, and since the cultivation of all the 

 powers of man secures to him the rfeans of reaching perfection, and 

 through that supreme happiness." 



Guizot has also said : "There is one thing that demands our zeal 

 above all others. I mean moral and religious instruction." You 

 know that virtue is not "always the concomitant of knowledge, and 

 that the lessons which children receive may become pernicious if 

 addressed only to the understanding." 



Napoleon is reported on one occasion to have declared: "No so- 

 ciety can exist without morals, and there can be no sound morals 

 without religion. Hence there is no firm or durable bulwark for a 

 State but what religion constructs; let, therefore, every school 

 throughout the land assume the precepts of religion as the basis of 

 instruction. Experience has torn the veil from our eyes." 



Dr. Reese says: "Without the inculcation of that system of 

 morality which the Bible reveals, the mere instruction in letters will 

 pi ove a curse rather than a blessing ; " and Dr. Canning well ex- 

 claims: "The exaltation of talent, as it is called, above virtue and 

 religion is the curse of the age. Talent is worshiped, but if divorced 

 from rectitude it will prove more a demon than a god." For, in the 

 language of another gifted writer, "Better that men should remain 

 in ignorance than that they should eat of the tree of knowledge 

 only to be made more subtle and powerful adversaries of God and 

 humanity." 



