1857.] My Spelling Book. 331 "This testimony to the inadequacy of the system which we are reviewing is so much the stronger from the fact that the Christian system is praised in contrast with it by the same committee. I start in quoting farther from the same report at the very next sentence where I left off: 'It is a consolation, however, to reflect, that during the last eight years, in the course of which almost $200,000 have been spent upon a scheme of public instruction so uselessly, there have been in successful operation numerous schools for the free education of indigent children, superintended from the most praiseworthy motives by respectable citizens; and that in these institutions many pupils of charity have had their minds imbued with sound morals, and been otherwise fitted for the proper discharge of their various duties in future life. But for this reflection, the prospect would indeed be gloomy; for in these benevolent labors, it is hoped, a redeeming principle has been established, the happy effect whereof may yet be manifested.' "These extracts need no comments. We see in them the difference between education without religion, and education with religion. "The present Common School System in Pennsylvania has only existed some eighteen years. Already it is deeply felt to be wanting. It does not answer the purpose. We will not speak of the general mutterings of dissatisfaction which are heard, especially among the Christian community; but we will quote from the confessions of its very foster parents, to show that it bears the elements of degeneracy in its own bosom-that it cannot sustain sufficient interest in itself to carry out its own regulations, and to reach forward towards the securement of its own end. "I will quote from the Report of January, 1850, by Thomas H. Burrowes, the most zealous friend of the Common School System in Pennsylvania: Whoever shall closely examine the annual reports of the Superintendent of Common Schools, will find, that very soon after the establishment of the system, say about the year 1839, a certain degree of progress had been effected towards its perfection; but that, since that period, little if any improvement has taken place in its most essential particulars. School-houses have, it is true, been erected by thousands, and teachers in the same proportion have been employed; hundreds of thousands of pupils have been brought into the schools, and the gross expenditure of the system has risen to ten millions of dollars; but when he comes to the true test of its efficacy and utility-the pay of teachers, and the duration of teaching in each year he finds a sad falling off. In the years 1838, 1839, 1840, teachers seem to have been better paid, and consequently their services better appreciated, than at any time since; and in 1837 and 1838, the duration of teaching was one-fifth greater than in 1847,-'48, and greater than in any year between those two eras, or since. These indications are unerring. They point to one or other of two inevitable results-either that a system which thus fails in accomplishing its great object, viz: that of giving sufficient instruction, by means of capable, and, therefore, well paid teachers, must go down; or that it must be so strengthened as to effect its noble purposes.' Again, he says: 'But among the evils of the system . . . is the want of an efficient head-a sufficient driving power in the System.' That it lacks this, he says, is evident from the falling off just mentioned. 'This manifest want of vigor, the committee believe, exists in the head, not in the body of the system.' "Here we have the true, and what is worse, the incurable weakness of the system exhibited. It degenerates-is less efficient by far in 1847 than it was in 1837. It started, like all false systems, with a spasm, and gradually died down to a tame level. The plant shoots up with extraordinary facility, just because it has no real depth of earth, and then pines away for the same reason. It lacks motive power, it lacks vigor, it lacks a head. Thus it lacks all; for what is that worth which has no head, no vigor, and no driving power. All these, which a state system that regards nothing in man but mind, must ever lack, are supplied in a system which connects the School with the Church. Where the Church underlies the School, imparting her nurture to the whole being, regarding him in his eternal as well as temporal interests, there will be head and motive power in abundance. The vigor of her infinite earnestness will be infused into all her educational operations. Then the School Law will be the law of life and grace in Jesus Christ, and not merely the pamphlet laws of an ever-changing legislative body, to be administered by an ever-changing committee of directors. The teacher will be no hireling for a few months, but a functionary of the Church, whose piety insures his faithfulness-a teacher who is not merely asked by a committee, Do you know science? but one whom the Saviour himself asked over and over, Lovest thou me?' before he gave him that awfully solemn and responsible commission: 'Feed my lambs!' "Whoever will read the annual reports of the Superintendent of Common Schools with care, will feel convinced that the evils which are the burden of ceaseless complaint are essentially in the system, and cannot be cured. We hear without end of the sluggishness of Directors and parents;' and of the carelessness and unfitness of teachers.' In the report of 1849 we read: The practical effects of the plan are truly deplorable. Scarcely a mail arrives that is not loaded with complaints of the inability of the teacher, of his immoral habits, and of the bad condition of the schools. Petitions to the Superintendent, for redress of grievances over which he has no control, are frequently presented; and expressions of dissatisfaction are not rare against the continuance of the system.' Report of 1849. "This indifference and opposition are not to be ascribed to a want of interest in education, but to a want of interest in schools without a soul or a God. There is an instinctive sense of the false principle upon which the system rests; and its practical exhibitions daily increase that suspicion. Hear the Report of 1850: Complaints are heard from various quarters that the system has failed to accomplish the purposes for which it was designed, and that the funds of the State are wasted. These expressions of dissatisfaction must not be ascribed entirely to ignorance and prejudice; they come, in too many instances, from honest, intelligent citizens, true friends of Education.' Even the zealous advocates of the system betray that they know where the difficulty lies. They feel that the motive power,' which they say the system lacks, could be furnished by religion.Ministers of the Gospel,' says the report of 1848, 'could exert an influence which might reach every fireside, opening the eyes of the blind, and unstopping the ears of the deaf, on the subject of rational 1857.1 My Spelling Book. 333 and moral education.' So they might, and so they would, were not they, in the capacity of ministers, virtually shut out from the schools. If parents are sluggish in sending their children, how can they be moved to duty except by the higher driving power' of religion; but this is contraband in the system. Shall ministers be expected to manifest zeal for the education of immortal beings for this world merely? The Common School System can never, in its present form, gain the confidene of the Church and ministry; even it the system did not itself virtually exclude their influence, the false principles which it involves are too radical, and in their practical workings too disastrous, to receive either favor or toleration. The time is not yet, and it never will be, when those, who alone have received the commission, 'Go ye, and teach all nations,' will surrender their responsibilities into hands which they know are not adequate to the task. They must first forget their own accountability, and lose all respect for the will of Him, whose they are, and whom they serve. "It is all idle. The interests of education cannot be long sustained and vigorously carried forward, unless religion underlies the movement as its motive power. It is well known that colleges do not flourish except under the auspices of the Church. It is Christianity, and that alone, which wakes man to industry and earnestness in every sphere, and consequently also in reference to the cultivation of mind. It is the feeling of immortality that is the impulsive power toward all ambition in expanding the intellectual faculties. It is sin that darkens the mind, and its removal must accompany all attempts to brighten and expand the intellect. All history declares that religion is the mother of science -that faith is the mother of knowledge. "In the establishment of our Common School System there was professedly at least an aim at imitating the Public School System of Prussia. In 1836 Professor C. E. Stowe, who was about to make a tour through Europe, was requested by a resolution of the Legislature of Ohio, to collect facts in reference to Public Schools. In 1837 he made a long report, in which he dwells principally on the Prussian system, and rocommends it in the highest terms; this report was published by order of the Legislature of Ohio. In 1838, the same report was ordered to be published by the Legislature of Pennsylvania. In the same year a large pamphlet of seventy-eight pages was published in Philadelphia, 'On the System of Education adopted in the celebrated Common Schools of Prussia.' All this was intended to effect a conformation of our system to that of Prussia. But how great is the deception! Almost the only thing in which our schools and those of Prussia are alike, is that they are both public, state schools. Farther than this there is no resemblance at all. How do they differ? In their system religious instruction is included by law; in ours it is excluded by law. In their schools religious instruction is the first thing; here it is not at all. There the religious element pervades every thing connected with the school; here it is contraband in every thing. That is religion as the mother of education; this education without religion. That is nurture in the Lord; this is nurture without the Lord. "The first vocation of every school,' says the Prussian school law of 1819, (the system went into operation in that year) 'is, to train up the young in such a manner as to implant in their minds a knowledge of the relation of man to God, and at the same time to excite in them both the will and the strength to govern their lives after the spirit and precepts of Christianity. Schools must early train children to piety, and therefore must strive to second and complete the early instruction of parents. In every school, therefore, the occupation of the day shall begin and end with a short prayer and some pious reflections, which the master must contrive to render so varied and impressive, that a moral exercise shall never degenerate into an affair of habit. All the solemnities of the school shall be interspersed with songs of a religious character.' In another section of the law it is enjoined that the Bible and the Catechism shall be used. The New Testament shall be read by the smaller children in the common language; and by the youths in the gymnasia, in Greek. It is also provided that, 'In all the parishes of the kingdom, without exception, the clergyman of every christian communion shall seize every occasion, whether at church, or during their visits to school, or in their sermons at the opening of classes, of reminding the school of their high and holy mission, and the people of their duty towards the school.'* "Now contrast with this, our own Public School System. 'No catechism, creed, confession, or manual of faith shall be used as a school book nor admitted into the school.' 'The Old and New Testament may be used in reading, but without comment by the teacher," 1838. The difference between the Prussian system and our own is that of direct opposites; and yet we are told that 'the province of education in the two countries are nearly the same, except that the Prussian system aims at higher objects than the common education of this country.' Only this difference! as if this was a matter of no importance! The 'higher objects' may be set aside. So think these sages of the State, in the face of all history-in the face of the wisdom of the wisest men that ever lived-and in the face of the holy instincts of pious parents. "The fear of the Lord, is the begining of wisdom.' "One who, in a publication in 1838, exhibits the Prussian system by way of lesson and example to the friends of the Common School System in this country, makes a remarkable confession. After expatiating on It is argued, by those who are in favor of excluding the Bible from the schools, that children become profanely familiar with it, that they are apt to lose all reverence for it, and that it creates in after life a feeling of distaste and even disgust for it. Never was any idea more false. The direct reverse is true. Are not those things that were most common and familiar to us in our childhood the dearest and most cherished by us now? When we, after years return to the dear scenes which our infancy knew, how strong and affecting are those feelings awakened in our bosoms by the smallest and most trifling things. Every tree, every stump, and every stone, preaches to us silently till we stand and weep. A similar feeling is bound up with our associations in reference to those passages so often read from the Bible, in our school-boy days. Many of us know it by experience; and the Scriptures, when we read them now, have a new glow of warmth and power of attraction, because they connect our present life, deep in our memories, with childhood's happy, happy days. Reading the Bible in school make it tasteless and profanely familiar!-as well might we argue the same of the love of a mother. No, there is a light in which all things are sacred; it is in the light of those impressions which memory receives in childhood. In the language of one who knew better to preach than practice, "Long, long be my heart with such memories fill'd!-- 1857.] The Spelling Book. 335 the excellencies of the Prussian system, he says: 'But if those schools only taught letters and science, if they formed no moral principles and habits; if they took no cognizance of the laws of duty-none of the defenceless state of a mind uninformed of the evil that is in the worldif they never turned the attention of the young to the Providence of God, and his divine attributes; if they never connected the present life to the eternal; if they afforded no expositions of morality; if they presented it only in negations; if they referred it exclusively to the Sunday, the minister, the Church, and the casual Sunday-school, and the self-culture of ripe age-to what mere worldliness and technicality, to what selfishness and implied materialism, to what small effects and low purposes, would they be employed, and how much would they leave undone, which their broad policy, and tried efforts actually accomplish?' Every word of it is true. And every word a just judgment and condemation of our ten-times helpless, wretched, and ruinous Common School System. "To show how perfectly inadequate our system must be, we need only remark, that even this Prussain system, so thoroughly religious, is pronounced a failure, by Samuel Laing, Esq., an English traveler of much weight, on account of its subserviency to the State. Says this learned traveler in 1842: 'If the ultimate object of all education and knowledge be to raise man to the feeling of his own moral worth, to a sense of his responsibility to his Creator and to his conscience for every act, to the dignity of a reflecting, self-guiding, virtuous, religious member of society, then the Prussian educational system is a failure. It is only a training from childhood in the conventional discipline and submission of mind which the State exacts from its subjects. It is not a training or education which has raised, but which has lowered, the human character. This system of interference and intrusion into the inmost domestic relations of the people, this educational drill of every family by State means and machinery, supersedes parental tuition. It is a fact not to be denied that the Prussian population is at this day, when the fruits of this educational system may be appreciated in the generation of the adults, in a remarkably demoralized condition in those branches of mora. conduct which cannot be taught in schools, and are not taught by the parents, because parental tuition is broken in upon by governmento' interference in Prussia, its efficacy and weight annulled, and the natur.dependence of the child upon the words and wisdom of the parent -the delicate threads by which the infant's mind, as its body, draws nutriment from its parent-is ruptured.' Page 172, Laing's Notes. "If a system so decidedly religious fails, just because it is a creature of the State, what can we hope for in ours! We believe, however, that Mr. Laing attributes the failure, so far as it is one, to the wrong source. The Church and religion have sufficient prominence in the system to insure complete religious culture; in so far as the system falls short of answering its end, the failure is to be sought in the fact that ever since the system was organized until lately, the Church has been so petrified by the reign of rationalism, as to disable it entirely from infusing a truly regenerating influence into th School System. The school had an inactive Christianity to un lerne it-its religious teachings were merely theoretical. But we repeat-if the Christian system of schools in Prus |