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IMPROVED ASPECT OF EDUCATION WITH REFERENCE

TO RELIGION.

Ar the commencement of another year, we cannot refrain from drawing attention to one particular, which seems well suited to call forth thankfulness for the past and hope for the future. We refer to the increased importance which all ranks and parties seem now disposed to attach to religion as the most essential element in any system of popular or general education. As one proof of this, we may adduce the manner in which the recent proposition of the Vicar of Leeds has been received by persons of very opposite sentiments. That plan, though it professes to make no less provision for the acquirement of religious knowledge than that which it would supplant, yet, because it goes upon the principle of treating religion rather as appendage to, than as the basis of a general scheme, has been met by an almost universal expression of disapprobation; and it has been whispered, that so convincing does the originator himself deem the arguments that have been brought against him, that he now

"recoils

"E'en at the sound himself has made."

Happily for our country, other nations have already brought to the test of experience systems of popular education not based upon religion; and the further they have advanced in the trial, the more clearly have they proved the absolute inefficiency of such a device as a means of training up the young in the way that they should go. Where such systems have been set up, as in the United States, irreligion has increased, morals have deteriorated; in other words, if the intellect has been sharpened, the moral sense has been blunted, and the debasing love and service of Mammon have taken the place of the ennobling love and service of Him, "in knowledge of whom standeth our eternal life, and whose service is perfect freedom."

Another circumstance which we may notice, as being little short of a proof of what we are asserting, is the effort now making to establish what are called " middle schools" upon a better footing, and to do this not only by raising the standard of knowledge, and improving the mode of conveying it, but by giving it a more religious character, and by bringing it under the parental influence of the Church. That the moral and religious improvement of the class for whose benefit these schools are designed, has been neglected more than that of any other, few will be disposed to deny. More particularly with respect to the members of that class, does it seem to have been forgotten, that the christian minister is, by virtue of his office, as much bound to act towards them as their servant, their friend, and their spiritual overseer, as towards any other class. But now all can perceive the consequences of such neglect, and that it is indispensable to. the general welfare, to strengthen the pastoral ties where they have been loosened, and, as far as practicable, to renew them where they have been unhappily broken. It is obvious, that one of the most important steps, nay, the most important towards this end, is the proper education of the children of the class in question. That this is now seen and acknowledged, and to a certain extent acted upon, by those who have hitherto not duly regarded it, calls for thanksgiving to Him from whom all good counsels proceed. The particular which we would especially allude to in connection with it, as full of encouragement, is the ready and cordial manner in

which the advances made by the clergy in this direction have been received, both by the masters of middle or commercial schools, and by the parents of the children. We could from our own knowledge produce instances of this; and we would observe, that if every similar effort should not at the outset meet with a like favourable acceptance, it must be remembered, that first attempts to do good in any way are liable for a time to be misunderstood, until either the fruits of such endeavours have appeared, or the purity of the motives and the excellence of the objects of the undertakers have been in some degree proved. The fact that, where the character of individual clergymen for faithfulness and diligence in other parts of their ministerial duties has been established among their people, their exertions in the department of which we are speaking have not been misinterpreted, but gratefully acknowledged, is a satisfactory proof that the religious education of that class is a most inviting and fruitful field for labour, and one which never ought to have been overlooked.

One other proof we will adduce in support of our assertion of the greater importance now attached to religion in its bearing upon education, namely, the increased attention and energy with which the managers of our public schools have of late taken up the subject of religious training. The bare mention of the name of Dr. Arnold will of itself suggest to those who are acquainted with his life, almost sufficient evidence in our favour. That life is now before us, and the following extract from it bears so directly upon our present subject, that we cannot refrain from citing it. We are informed by his biographer, a former pupil, that,

His great object was to make the school a place of really Christian education. These words in his mouth meant something very different from the general professions which every good teacher must be supposed to make, and which no teacher, even in the worst times of English education, could have openly ventured to disclaim; but it is exceedingly difficult so to explain them, as that they shall not seem to exceed or fall short of the truth. It was not an attempt merely to give more theological instruction, or to introduce sacred words into school adinonitions; there may have been some occasions for religious advice, that might have been turned to more advantage-some religious practices which might have been more constantly or more effectually encouraged. His design arose out of the very nature of his office: the relation of an instructor to his pupils was to him, like all the other relations of human life, only in a healthy state, when subordinate to their common relation to God. The idea of a Christian school, again, was to him the natural result, so to speak, of the very idea of a school in itself; exactly as the idea of a Christian state seemed to him to be involved in the very idea of a state itself. The intellectual training was not for a moment underrated, and the machinery of the school was left to have its own way. But he looked upon the whole as bearing on the advancement of the one end of all instruction and education; the boys were still treated as school boys, but as school boys who must grow up to be Christian men; whose age did not prevent their faults from being sins, or their excellences from being noble and Christian virtues; whose situation did not, of itself, make the application of Christian principles to their daily lives an impracticable vision. His education, in short, it was once observed, amidst the vehement outcry by which he used to be assailed, "was not (according to the popular phrase) based upon religion, but was itself religious." It was this, chiefly, which gave a oneness to his work amidst a great variety of means and occupations, and a steadiness to the general system amid its almost unceasing change. It was this which makes it difficult to separate one part of his work from another, and which often made it impossible for his pupils to say in after life, of much that had influenced them, whether they had derived it from what was spoken in school, or in the pulpit, or in private. And, therefore, when either in direct religious teaching, or on particular occasions, Christian principles were expressly introduced by him, they had not the appearance of a rhetorical flourish, or of a temporary appeal to the feelings; they

were looked upon as the natural expression of what was constantly implied: it was felt that he had the power, in which so many teachers have been deficient, of saying what he did mean, and of not saying what he did not mean, the power of doing what was right, and speaking what was true, and thinking what was good, independently of any professional or conventional notions, that so to act, speak, or think, was becoming or expedient.

With his usual undoubting confidence in what he believed to be a general law of Providence, he based his whole management of the school on his early formed and yearly increasing conviction, that what he had to look for, both intellectually and morally, was not performance, but promise; that the very freedom and independence of school life, which in itself he thought so dangerous, might be made the best preparation for Christian manhood; and he did not hesitate to apply to his scholars the principle which seemed to him to have been adopted in the training of the childhood of the human race itself.* He shrunk from pressing on the conscience of boys rules of action which he felt they were not yet able to bear, and from enforcing actions which, though right in themselves, would in boys be performed from wrong motives.

Keenly as he felt the risk and fatal consequences of the failure of this trial, still it was his great, sometimes his only support, to believe that "the character is braced amid such scenes to a greater beauty and firmness than it ever can attain without enduring and witnessing them. Our work here would be absolutely unendurable, if we did not bear in mind that we should look forward as well as backward—if we did not remember that the victory of fallen man lies not in innocence, but in tried virtue." (Sermon, Vol. IV, p. 7.) "I hold fast," he said," to the great truth, that blessed is he that overcometh;'" and he writes in 1837:--"Of all the painful things connected with my employment, nothing is equal to the grief of seeing a boy come to school innocent and promising, and tracing the corruption of his character from the influence of the temptations around him, in the very place which ought to have strengthened and improved it. But in most cases, those who come with a character of positive good are benefited; it is the neutral and indecisive characters which are apt to be decided for evil by schools, as they would be in fact by any other temptation."

But this very feeling led him with the greater eagerness to catch at every means, by which the trial might be shortened or alleviated. "Can the change from childhood to manhood be hastened, without prematurely exhausting the faculties of the body and mind?" (Sermon, Vol. IV, p. 19) was one of the chief questions on which his mind was constantly at work, and which, in the judgment of some, he was disposed to answer too readily in the affirmative. It was with the elder boys, of course, that he chiefly acted on this principle, but with all above the very young ones he trusted to it more or less. Firmly as he believed that a time of trial was inevitable, he believed no less firmly that it might be passed at a public school sooner than under other circumstances: and, in proportion as he disliked the assumption of a false manliness in boys, was his desire to cultivate in them true manliness, as the only step to something higher, and to dwell on earnest principle and moral thoughtfulness, as the great and distinguishing mark between good and evil.† Hence his wish that as much as possible should be done by the boys, and nothing for them; hence arose his practice, in which his own delicacy of feeling and uprightness of purpose powerfully assisted him, of treating the boys as gentlemen and reasonable beings; of making them respect themselves by the mere respect he showed to them; of showing that he appealed and trusted to their own common sense and conscience. Lying, for example, to the masters, he made a great moral offence; placing implicit confidence in a boy's assertion, and then, if a falsehood was discovered, punishing it severely, in the upper part of the school, when persisted in, with expulsion. Even with the lower forms he never seemed to be on the watch for boys; and in the higher forms, any attempt at further proof of an assertion was immediately checked:-"If you say so, it is quite enough,-of course I believe your word;" and there grew up in consequence a general feeling that "it was a shame to tell Arnold a lie-he always believes one.'

* Sermons, Vol. II, p. 440.

† See Sermons, Vol. VI, p. 99.

Perhaps the liveliest representation of this general spirit, as distinguished from its exemplification in particular parts of the discipline and instruction, would be formed by recalling his manner, as he appeared in the great school, where the boys used to meet when the whole school was assembled collectively, and not in its different forms or classes. Then, whether on his usual entrance every morning to prayers before the first lesson, or on the more special emergencies which might require his presence, he seemed to stand before them, not merely as the head master, but as the representative of the school. There he spoke to them, as members together with himself, of the same great institution, whose character and reputation they had to sustain as well as he. He would dwell on the satisfaction he had in being head of a society, where noble and honourable feelings were encouraged, or on the disgrace which he felt in hearing of acts of disorder or violence, such as in the humbler ranks of life would render them amenable to the laws of their country,—or again, on the trust which he placed on their honour as gentlemen, and the baseness of any instance in which it was abused. "Is this a Christian school?" he indignantly asked at the end of one of those addresses, in which he had spoken of an extensive display of bad feeling amongst the boys, and then added,-" I cannot remain here, if all is to be carried on by constraint and force; if I am to be here as a gaoler, I will resign my office at once." And few scenes can be recorded more characteristic of him than on one of these occasions, when, in consequence of a disturbance, he had been obliged to send away several boys, and when, in the midst of the general spirit of discontent which this excited, he stood in his place before the assembled school, and said "It is not necessary that this should be a school of three hundred, or one hundred, or of fifty boys; but it is necessary that it should be a school of Christian gentlemen."-(pp. 88-90.)

No doubt these passages are familiar to many of our readers; but they will not be without their interest and use to others who have not so ready access to expensive volumes. That the influence of Dr. Arnold's most energetic labours in carrying out that great object was not confined to Rugby, but extended more or less (though in conjunction, perhaps, with other causes then, as now, in operation) to every public school in England, may be fairly inferred from the following passages of a letter addressed to the writer of Dr. Arnold's life by Dr. Moberley, the head master of Winchester :

"Possibly," he writes, after describing his own recollections as a school boy, "other schools may have been less deep in these delinquencies than Winchester: I believe that in many respects they were. But I did not find, on going to the University, that I was under disadvantages as compared with those who came from other places on the contrary, the tone of young men at the university, whether they came from Winchester, Eton, Rugby, Harrow, or wherever else, was universally irreligious. A religious under-graduate was very rare, very much laughed at when he appeared; and I think I may confidently say, hardly to be found among public-school men; or, if this be too strongly said, hardly to be found except in cases where private and domestic training, or good dispositions, had prevailed over the school habits and tendencies. A most singular and striking change has come upon our public schools-a change too great for any person to appreciate adequately, who has not known them in both these times. This change is undoubtedly part of a general improvement of our generation in respect of piety and reverence, but I am sure that to Dr. Arnold's personal earnest simplicity of purpose, strength of character, power of influence, and piety, which none who ever came near him could mistake or question, the carrying of this improvement into our schools is mainly attributable. He was the first. It soon began to be a matter of observation to us in the university, that his pupils brought quite a different character with them than that which we knew elsewhere. I do not speak of opinions; but his pupils were thoughtful, manly-minded, conscious of duty and obligation, when they first came to college: we regretted, indeed, that they were often deeply imbued with principles which we disapproved, but we cordially acknowledged the immense improvement in their characters in respect of morality and personal piety, and looked on Dr. Arnold as exercising an influence for good, which (for how many

years I know not) had been absolutely unknown to our public schools.”—Ibid, pp. 144-5.

Happily there are many other facts which we might produce in further confirmation of what we are stating. Two courses of sermons, one a volume preached at Harrow by Dr. Wordsworth, the late head-master, and another in two volumes, by his brother, entitled "Christian Boyhood," and containing sermons and lectures delivered in the chapel of St. Mary's College, Winchester, may be specially mentioned on account of the directly practical nature of the subjects discussed in them, and of the desire therein manifested of bringing the daily life of the school boy under the gracious influence of our holy faith, The following sketch of his plan is given by the last mentioned of the two brothers in the preface of his work :

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'He [the author] has thought it best to arrange his materials so as to form something like a system applicable to the edification of christian boyhood at a public school. And, accordingly, it will be found that the first volume relates for the most part, to the outward duties and ordinances of religion, in their natural order (e. g., private prayer, public worship, holy communion), and consists, in great measure, of the more private lectures; while the second volume is devoted to inward graces and examples, to the formation of habits and principles, and to the various growth and progress of the christian life in boys, and is made up exclusively of sermons delivered publicly." Vol. I, p. vii, viii.

How far he has carried out the application of religion to the ordinary employments and even amusements of the young, may be gathered from the following extract :

The employment of your time is a topic so general, that I cannot hope, in a limited address like the present, to treat it fully as it deserves; but if I can say enough to induce you to reflect upon it seriously for yourselves, I shall answer every purpose I desire. So extensive, indeed, and at the same time so important, is the consideration of this duty, that it comprehends, in a manner, and involves the performance of every other. A full and fit employment of our time would go far to enable us to avoid all sin, and to practise every virtue. It would insure fervour in your devotion, diligence in your studies, enjoyment in your sports. An idle body is a house swept and garnished for the indwelling of an unclean spirit. If, with Joseph, you wish to escape temptation, you must be occupied as Joseph was in his master's business. But it is not enough to avoid idleness, you must be doing your duty. It is not enough not to waste your time-you must employ it as fully and as profitably as you can. You should adopt as your motto the heathen maxim, "Quicquid agas, agere pro viribus;" with the addition of the Christian motive, whatever you do, do all to the glory of God: not slothful in business; fervent in spirit; serving the Lord."

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By which I mean, not that the thought of God and of religion is to be ever present to your mind; but that as you are never out of sight of His All-seeing Eye, so you should never do what you know He would be displeased to behold; you should allow no motive to come in competition with your obedience and love to Him; you should require every thought and action of the day to consist with the integrity, and to conduce, if it may be, to the edification of your Christian charac

ter.

Such a course will require the constant practice of vigilance and self-denial. But it carries with it its own reward. What exultation of youthful spirits, arising in the eager pursuit of recreation and amusement, is worthy to be compared with that joy which is shed abroad in the heart by the calm approval of a good conscience? What gratification derived from successful feats of athletic exercise, or skilful dexterity, can be equal to the triumph you would enjoy on achieving a victory over a rebellious passion, or a vicious habit?

Do I then discourage such amusements? On the contrary, I greatly approve and recommend them. As long as they are innocent in themselves, and kept within proper bounds, they appear to me eminently subservient, if not absolutely

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