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Inq. I have only to express my admiration as well as approbation of the social education you recommend. I forbear till we meet again.

CONVERSATION X.

EDUCATION.-Religious education defined and elucidated-It must be both theoretical and practical-The theoretical already set forth in Part I. of this Exposition-The practical consists of Piety, Philanthropy and Morality-These three expounded at full length-Educational Institutions treated of-The family; the combined nursery and infant school; the common school; the grammar school, academy &c.-Educational Homes, complete Universities-Why manual labor schools have heretofore failed-School books and apparatus-How pernicious literature is to be counteracted— Amusements next to be considered.

Inq. I gladly seek another interview. I suppose this conversation will enable you to conclude that portion of your exposition which relates directly to education. Your views of religious education remain to be unfolded, and also of educational institutions.

Ex. Yes, these are the two principal topics now waiting to be discussed; and I will proceed accordingly.

VII. Religious education. I mean by religious education that which trains the young to be, to do, and to suffer always, in all things, conscientiously; i. e. with a supreme reverence for and love of divine principles. This is recognizing the sovereignty of those principles as supreme and absolute. It is acknowledging and cherishing the very highest obligations which can bind the human soul. It is enthroning in the mind the purest and strongest motives by which it can be controlled. It transcends, overrules and corrects all mere philosophy, expediency and policy, and establishes firmly the conviction, that only what is right can be best. It brings the creature into true spiritual relations with the Paternal Creator, and with fellow creatures. Human beings thus receive the inspirations of the spiritual world, realize that they are accountable for all their conduct, and learn how vast and far-reaching will be the good or evil consequences of their actions. Thus inspired with faith, hope and charity, they may be, do and endure all things

necessary to the sublimest practical results. I should therefore deem my scheme of education superficial, incongruous, impotent and impracticable without a thorough religious tuition pervading every part of it. Thus religious education becomes the life and perfection of the entire superstructure.

Inq. Could you not rely on morality without religion?

Ex. All true morality grows out of true religion, derives its vitality from religion, and would die without its sustaining forces, as a tree does when cut away from its roots. Without religion, morals become mere manners, liable to change with the fashions of time and place. What are manners without principles? They are little to be trusted.

Inq. I fully agree with you; but I have met with a considerable class of persons who praise morality, and seem to despise religion. These are confident that morality can be maintained independently of religion, and ought to be; because religion, in their minds, is always associated with superstition, bigotry, formality or hypocrisy, or with all four together.

Ex. False religion may and often does involve all these evils. So may and does false morality. But true religion and true morality exclude them. We must be careful, however, not to take every person's assumptions as just, when superstition, bigotry, formality or hypocrisy is charged. Some minds mistake facts, and some misapprehend them, through the perverseness of their own prejudices. Let us be intelligent, discriminating, just and candid. And if others are not so, let them go their way. By their fruits will they be known. One thing I am sure of, that no human being ever did or ever will accomplish any thing morally great and enduring without some strong religious principles.

Inq. Proceed then to expound your views of religious edu

cation.

Ec. Religious education must be both theoretical and practical. Theoretically the young should be seasonably, gradually and thoroughly indoctrinated into what I call the essential divine principles of the Christian Religion. These I have set forth in Part 1. of this general Exposition. In my Table, you recollect, they are comprehended under three divisions, viz:

Eight principles of Theological Truth, Eight of Personal Righteousness, and Eight of Social Order; in all TwentyFour. I need not now repeat them. I would have educators make these divine fundamental principles the basis of all theoretical religious teaching; following them out into their legitimate bearings, as set forth in my exposition; tracing them back to their divine source; simplifying them to the common understanding; adapting them to the comprehension of each mind; and so ultimately bringing all to a complete knowledge both of their nature and practical requirements. In accomplishing so important and complex a process, much discretion, patience and perseverance will be requisite. A beginning will have to be made in early infancy, and progressively followed out in an orderly and well graduated course to adult age. All this should be done in the most simple, natural and pleasant manner possible. But the persistent design should be to graduate every young man and woman a willing subject of acknowledged, well-understood divine principles; so that each should always be able to judge whether any law, custom, habit, practice, act, expression, idea, feeling, was true, right, good and best, by a ready reference to those great first principles. Thus would the sovereignty of divine principles become supreme and absolute over all mere human assumptions and prescriptions.

In respect to practical religious education, I must be somewhat more particular. This should be carried along concur rently with the theoretical as its inseparable and necessary complement. It consists in habituating the young to be consistent in practice with their acknowledged principles. Now the genius of the Christian Religion, as I have expounded it, is averse to all mere external show made to be seen and admired of men, and insists uncompromisingly on practical substantial goodness. It is therefore extremely simple and unostentatious in respect to what may be called the ceremonials or externals of religion. It does not prohibit them, yet denounces all humau show of them. It tolerates and even recommends the simpler forms of them, but constantly urges its disciples to transcend them in spirituality and absolute

righteousness. This distinguishing peculiarity of the Christian Religion must be impressed on the young indelibly from the outset. For there is no religious error, perhaps I ought to say vice, into which mankind more easily slide, than imagining that forms and ceremonies, observances and solemnities, are religion; when in reality they are at best only the husk which protects the ripening kernel of religion, and after its full maturity are separable from it, as chaff is from wheat. Wherever people fall into this error so as to become confirmed, they are mere idolators. Thenceforth they substitute the non-essential for the essential, the shadow for the substance of religion; resisting and despising all appeals in behalf of the weightier matters of the law-the plain dictates of divine principle. These are the Scribes, Pharisees and Formalists of all ages. Antipodal to these are those extremists who, through disgust with Formalism and Pharisaism, denounce all external manifestations of religious devotion, even its most harmless observ. ances, and strain themselves into a studied anti-formalism, which itself becomes absurdly formal. I would have the young educated to avoid both these and all similar extremes.

Practical religion consists in piety, philanthropy and morality. Consequently religious education must relate especially to the habitual practice of these. Let us consider each of them separately.

1. Piety. This is love to God, as required in the first great commandment, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength." God is a person, in respect to all that spiritually constitutes a person. But being an infinite person, finite beings cannot conceive of him comprehensively. They can form only a general idea of his personality, which must be simple or complex, diminutive or grand, according to age and development. child can conceive of him only as an exalted and mysteriously constituted man. The Mosaic Religion would not tolerate the natural tendency of the mind to delineate God in a comprehensible form, because it finitized him, was derogatory to his true nature, and led to idolatry. The Christian Religion follows up the same idea, and insists that God shall be worshiped

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