Christian Education
If we look to the nature of the human mind itself, if we consider its longings, how comprehensive is its range, how great its capabilities, how little its best and highest faculties are satisfied with the objects that are placed before us upon earth, how many marks this dispensation bears of being a temporary, and, as it were, an initiatory dispensation, is it not monstrous to pretend that we are giving to the human being such a cultivation as befits his nature and his destiny, when we put out of sight all the higher and more permanent purposes for which he lives, and confine our provision to matters which, however valuable (and valuable they are in their own place), yet of themselves bear only upon earthly ends? Is it not a fraud upon ourselves and our fellow-creatures? is it not playing and paltering with words? is it not giving stones to those who ask for bread, if, when man, so endowed as he is, and with such high necessities, demands of his fellow-men that he may be rightly trained, we impart to him, under the name of an adequate education, that which has no reference to his most essential capacities and wants, and which limits the immortal creature to objects that perish in the use?—W. E. Gladstone.
On the whole subject of National Education, how enlarged and liberal are the views taken by the Bishop of Oxford, in one of his recent Sermons. “Our National Education is at this moment surrounded by many difficulties. Among the chief of these are those which spring from the relations of our Church and State. There is no use in disguising from ourselves the fact that these questions exist, and some of them press for settlement. I believe it to be the more manly and the more Christian way freely to admit their existence, and to lend our aid with all honesty in working out their true solution. We cannot, of course, concede one of our principles. We must teach the truth as we have received it—whole, unmixed, uncompromised. But this point secured, whatever we can do we ought to do, by a kindly regard to the feelings of others, by an allowable co-operation and all lawful concession, to loose the hard knot which discord has tied, and unite the hearts of this people in the mighty work of educating its youth to do good service to our God, and to maintain truth and righteousness throughout his world.”