صور الصفحة
PDF
النشر الإلكتروني

established by history, and they prove to demonstration that Christ is truly what He declared Himself to be, the light of the world, and the Saviour who came down from Heaven to guide men through the difficulties and dangers of civilisation.

Our course of language will, therefore, speak to children of the Saviour, for they have been dedicated to Him in baptism; they are surrounded by the churches in which He is worshipped, and they belong to a nation which professes Christianity. But it will not encroach on the province of direct religious instruction, which must take its due part in education. We only wish to pave the way for it. Our teaching will be elementary, which, unhappily, our catechisms are not. We shall touch on some of the most striking circumstances of the purest life and most exalted character which ever ennobled human nature; and, instead of enlarging on heathen mythology, we shall speak of our Father in Heaven, and of His beloved Son, who died for us. We shall keep within the natural limits of a course of language, without diving into abstruse theology, or polemical divinity, which are alike unsuited to the mind of youth. The Apostle speaks of the milk which must be given to babes in Christ, because they are not yet able to bear strong meat; and this is the milk we shall give to our pupils.

But, perhaps, it will be said, "You will not surely speak to them of the miracles of the Saviour, or of His super-human dignity and office which they prove. Such subjects are too profound for children, and moreover they are not fully attested."

66

Not fully attested? They are so, at least to the faithful, and we have nothing to do with those that are without." If these subjects have, indeed, a dark side, they have a bright one too, which may be seen and apprehended by children. They know very well that a word is but a sound; and that a mere sound cannot restore sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, speech to the dumb, and health to the sick. Therefore, when they see that our Saviour cured all these infirmities in a moment and by a word, they will exclaim as did the multitude, “Surely no man

can do these works except God be with him." The facts speak for themselves, and good sense listens to its language and adopts it.

Now, a man who is thus proved to be the depository of divine power, proves also that His dignity is superhuman; and if He speaks in the name of the Deity who endues him with this power, His words are no longer the words of man but of God. Sceptics have ever felt the force of these inductions, and their only escape from them has been to deny the truth of the facts. Yet these facts have not only the testimony of Christians, but of the adverse party, of the persecutors of Christ, who have recorded whilst ascribing them to the agency of the evil one!

Children love the marvellous. It is not, however, in order to gratify this taste that our course of language will speak of the miraculous cures of our Saviour, but in order to give their additional sanction to his character and doctrine. I well know that those who are strong in faith no longer need such testimony; but we have to deal with children, who require, like the first disciples of our Lord, to be led on by facts which appeal to their eyes and understandings, until their moral and intellectual faculties are sufficiently developed for them to rise to a higher level. Such is our intention; nor shall we neglect to give a reasonable foundation to evangelical truths; for the object is to produce not a blind but a reasonable faith; such a faith as the Gospel requires. Do we not know that the Apostles were ready to believe their Lord's words without taking the trouble of understanding his teaching? But He continually reasoned with them; continually appealed to the light of conscience within, to the face of nature around them, that they might there read the will of the Creator, and the types of His doctrine. In one Gospel alone you will find a hundred such appeals; and you will also read the reproof addressed to the Twelve, "Are ye also without understanding?" So far was our Lord from requiring blind faith in His disciples.

Our course of language will also speak of our Saviour offering Himself as a sacrifice for our sins and dying for us; but it will not leave Him in the grave, from whence

He rose triumphant on the third day. The Christian *Church is the visible proof of this resurrection, without which Christianity would have been but a meteor, which would have appeared for a few short days, and would then have vanished for ever. The resurrection of our Lord puts the seal to His Divine mission and to His doctrine. It is, at the same time, the pledge of the life which awaits us beyond the grave, and furthermore is the type of it. And wherefore should we withhold this knowledge from those who have learnt the Creed, who keep the feast of the Resurrection with us, who must die, and who thirst for everlasting life? No; we shall impart it; and we shall borrow our teaching from that of St. Paul. (1 Cor. xv.)

Morality adapted to Childhood.

Though this subject comes last in our enumeration, it, in fact, pervades the whole of our teaching from beginning to end. As we are not now treating of the right training of the heart, but of the head, we must not forestall, and shall, therefore, confine our observation at present to the developement of the moral judgment.

Animals, as well as men, can distinguish between agreeable and disagreeable; between good and hurtful; though they do so in a lower degree and within a narrower compass. But man alone can discern between right and wrong. Thus he is, at once, a denizen of two worlds, of the material, which he shares with the animal at his feet; and of the moral, which appertains to him alone, for he alone can choose between what is right and what is agreeable; if he prefers the former, he acts up to his rank in creation and deserves approbation; but if the latter, he sinks to the level of the animal, only with this difference, that no guilt attaches to the animal, whilst degraded man will sooner or later be driven to despise and condemn himself. Our course of language will assuredly impart these ideas to our pupils.

We have already said that we shall determine what is morally right or wrong, according to the great rational principle of harmony. We shall declare every action to be right, which corresponds with the relationship that we

bear to the object of it; and we shall pronounce it to be wrong if it offends against this relationship. But this abstract definition belongs to the department of science, beyond the reach of children; only the teacher should bear it in mind, that he may not lose sight of the mainspring that must be worked in order to awaken the conscience of his pupils. It will readily respond, and in accordance with this principle, whether from a general maxim he invites it to deduce particular consequences, or whether he lays down clear and precise ideas of different relationships, as for example between parents and children, brothers and sisters, in order to ascertain its judgment on such and such actions. And this will be attended to in our course of language.

It will also aim at two results. First, not to limit the moral judgment of our pupils to the good or evil which is apparent to the senses, but to lead them to the inward source, to the heart, and thus to introduce them to the world of spirits; for we know that Christian morality appeals to the inner man, and such is the morality that we would inculcate. And secondly, we shall endeavour to excite in them ideas of merit, of rewards and punishments, according to the rules of eternal justice; and thus lead them on to the immortality of the soul, to a future state of retribution, and to the Supreme Lord who will judge the world in righteousness. But we shall speak of all this more fully hereafter.

Suitableness of the Instruction we have chalked out.

Every reflecting mind will immediately perceive that all the distinct parts of this teaching form but one and the same body of doctrine, in which the various parts are connected and mutually assist each other.

We have not attempted to give technical knowledge in our lessons. It will be time enough to do this when the man shall have been sufficiently developed in the child. Our teaching is applicable to both sexes alike; and the girl inspires us with equal, if not with deeper, interest than the boy, because she will become a mother. Our object is to develope human nature; and if this is delayed

the opportunity will be lost, because the mind left to itself and to the influence of surrounding objects, will have taken a very different bias from that which ought to regulate, to strengthen, and to ennoble its action through life. We ever bear in mind that early impressions are the deepest, and that, though they may appear to be obliterated by the impetuosity of youth, or the pressure of business, they generally return again at a later period and resume their empire.

In our course of instruction we have adopted a process the very reverse of that self-called educative system, which has in view but the grosser material interests of man; and which only teaches the art of acquiring wealth, and by means of wealth every gratification except that which is connected with the conscious dignity of our nature, and which is associated with virtue founded on the religion of the Gospel. Such instruction does but lead its victims astray to their own ruin and to the detriment of all around them.

It appears to me that any one who reads attentively this statement of our plan of instruction, must see how suitable it is for the developement of childhood; but in order to leave no doubts on this important head, we shall take the intellectual faculties one by one, in order to point out cursorily the advantages which each will derive from it.

PERCEPTION

presents itself first, as the basis of all our knowledge, the stimulant of all our intellectual faculties, the regulator of their whole action. Unquestionably all our knowledge of every kind arises out of the suggestions imparted by our outward senses and internal consciousness.

Our course of language is not called upon to develope the organs of our pupils, by presenting them with fit objects for their exercise, for this has been already done; but it may contribute largely to the developement of the faculty of perception, as that property of the mind which seizes the impressions conveyed through the instrumentality of the organs, and which multiplies and selects from

« السابقةمتابعة »