Deuteronomy 29:29 The secret things belong to the LORD our God: but those things which are revealed belong to us and to our children for ever… Let me open my subject with the thoughts of a great man of science. "Supposing," he says, "that the life and fortune of every one of us would one day depend on his winning or losing a game of chess, don't you think that we should all consider it a primary duty to learn, at least, the names and moves of the pieces, to have a notion of a gambit, and a keen eye for all the means of giving or taking a check. Do you not think that we should look with a disapprobation almost amounting to scorn upon the father who allowed his son, or on the State which allowed its members to grow up without knowing a pawn from a knight? Yet it is a very plain and elementary truth that the life, the fortune, and the happiness of every one of us depend on our knowing something of the rules of a game infinitely more complicated than chess. It is a game which has been played by the human race for untold ages, every man and woman of us being one of the two players in a game of his or her own. The player on the other side is hidden from us. We know that His play is always fair and patient; but we know to our cost that He never overlooks a mistake, or makes the smallest allowance for culpable ignorance. Well, what I mean by education is learning the laws of that mighty game — in other words, education is the instruction of the intellect in the laws of nature, under which name I include, not merely things and their forces, but men and their ways, and the fashioning of the affections and the will into an earnest and living desire to move in harmony with those laws." Now, I will not criticise this passage, nor expand its suggestive metaphor, nor point out the elements in which it is wanting. Education is surely something very much more and deeper than merely training the intellect in the laws of nature. Its alpha and its omega should be rather to train the spirit in the knowledge of God. But leaving the passage and its general suggestiveness, I will try to point out something of what we are neglecting and of what we are doing, some of the ends at which we now aim in our schools, and some at which we should aim more and more. To begin with, we ought undoubtedly to connect all our higher education with the development of health, the happiness of the children, and the welfare of the nation. 1. Firstly, we too much neglect physical vigour. It depends on health; and if we injure the health of the children of the nation, we blight their whole lives. Our system is certainly too rigid and too mechanical. It tends to keep back the gifted and the eager, and to oppress the weak and the dull. It expects the same polish from the slate as from the agate. It makes but scant allowance for differences of ability and circumstance. 2. Then, secondly, how woefully do we fail to train the sense of beauty which God has given us, and which He, for His part, has endeavoured amply to satisfy! Our schoolrooms, instead of being, as they almost everywhere are, dingy, dirty, stuffy, and generally repellent, ought to be the airiest, happiest places in each parish; fresh and clean, and with flowers in them, and with beautiful pictures and simple works of art, and most of all in cities like this, where our children live, for the most part, in a wilderness of squalor and ugliness. 3. Then, thirdly, as to the cultivation of special gifts. A gift is a very rare and sacred thing, and it would be well if we could have the gifts of our children watched for and trained. Far too much have we, as a nation, confused the notion of education with the infructuous cramming of so much reproducible knowledge. "What is the education of the majority of the world?" asked Edmund Burke. "Reading a parcel of books? No! Restraint and discipline, examples of virtue and of justice — these are what form the education of the world." 4. And, fourthly, we have, as a nation, I am convinced, great need to pay attention to the subject of technical training. This is a most serious national question, for, amid the universal competition of nations, the empire of British commerce is being seriously threatened. They who watch over the future interests of England, and not merely its present comforts, point to facts like these. The web of lace curtains is made in England, but before they can be sold they have to be sent to France and Belgium to have a pattern put on them, because we have not the requisite machinery. The steamers built on the Clyde for the Germans, as soon as they can float, are manned by German crews and sent over to that country to have their interiors completed, because that can be done better and more cheaply in Germany than in England. We have too much book work, depend upon it, and too little exercise for the powers and faculties of the body; and I feel sure that even the book work would be the better if our system were more human and more humane, if there were less grinding routine and more activity of soul. Our present wooden system tends at once to quench the glow and enthusiasm of many teachers, and the brightness and animation of many a child. Here, then, you have the fact which constitutes the central use and inestimable blessing of such schools as these you are asked to support, and to support with generous liberality, today — they are religious schools, or they are nothing. In these schools at least we have a moral education that endeavours to form the judgment and the character, which are too often neglected by official pedagogy. Here, at least, we do try to get the saving facts and saving doctrines of Christianity apprehended and appropriated by our school children. "The aim of teaching," says a great schoolmaster, "is to train generally all who are born men to all that is human." Let us do our best, and leave the rest to God. On the tombstone of one Frobel, the great loving German teacher, are carved the words: "Come let us live for the children." I would say the same to you. If we neglect them, depend upon it, the devil will not. Let us teach our children, on the other hand, that the end of all education is to learn that all happiness depends, not on external good, but on inward blessings, because the kingdom of God is within them, let them be educated in such a way as to know that education is not to have and to rest, but to grow and to become, forgetting all the evil behind and reaching forward to all the good that is before; that the true end of life is not selfishness but beneficence, looking not every man on his own things, but every man on the things of others; that life, true life, is to be found in Christ and Christ alone, and consisteth not in the multitude of things we possess. (Dean Farrar.) Parallel Verses KJV: The secret things belong unto the LORD our God: but those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children for ever, that we may do all the words of this law. |
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