to be Christians? With only a Catholic spirit, why may they not with great advantage dwell together, as one family in Christ, in such relations that they may approach and confer, and modify and rectify among themselves, trusting the better views to their better merits?

Episcopacy boasts that it has differences without divisions. With all the material for vastly more sects than are found in the dissent ing world, she has no sects. From Laud to Baxter, from Pusey to Whateley, there is room and wel come for all things but non-conform ity. Such power is there even in a form, when duly fostered. Now substitute among Christians, for any such outward point of union, one that is inward and vital-enthrone evangelical goodness as alone indispensable, and let grace be the solvent of all minor diversities-and why may not the children of the spirit dwell together in virtue of their spiritual oneness, with the infinitely higher tolerance of love, as well as the children of form on the strength of a form?

We

the necessity, and hasten its removal.

It may be but a dream that such a catholic Christian body, as we have been supposing, is possible on earth

that such a degree of tolerance can ever be attained among Christians in the flesh, as would be requi site to such a body. Certainly no sanguine expectations of its speedy realization are authorized by the present attitude and spirit of the churches. Sectarianism has in it a self-perpetuating power. Once parcel off Christians into parties, with their several peculiarities stereotyped in denominational creeds, and the whole tendency is to wider and deeper mischief. At once these peculiarities acquire an unnatural importance; jealousy forbids the approach to one another in frank, unpartisan discussion; the like-minded are set off together in unhealthy isolation to brood over their nestegg, and nurse their zeal; predatory incursions are made in all directions to carry off Christians over certain lines; the sect spirit is instilled into the children, and shows its first workings on the play-ground, and thus, one generation moulding another in its own likeness, the evil seems interminable. do not despair of the future. There are hopeful indications, at least of a growing dissatisfaction among good men with the present divided state. Among these indications is the late Evangelical Alliance, or the effort at such an Alliance, if that be all we have attained. Many such failures may lie between us and the future church catholic of the good. We may all leave our bones in the wilderness. Yet we are persuaded there is coming a day of completer unity to the Christian church, a day of long-deferred beauty and prevalence, when Christians shall no longer be ruled by their diversities, but builded togeth er in Christ on the broad identity of evangelical goodness. It will, per

It pleases many to discourse of the present fragmentary condition of the Christian world as being, after all, very well as it is. hope it is only from a secret despair of anything better, and with the amiable wish to reconcile themselves and others to what they deem a remediless evil, that so many labor to extenuate its mischiefs, and even praise the whole arrangement. Many ingenious euphemisms have been sought out for this purpose, and are doing much to content men with things as they are. figures can disguise the fact, that the effective force of the Christian religion is greatly diminished by these separations. It is needless to depict the workings of the system; but at least, let us not hear it commended. We may be compelled to submit to it as a necessity among such Christians as we are; but let us blush for

But no

And yet we

haps, then be found that this denominational era, this sect-age, was not without its uses as a period of tuition and trial, preparing the way, it may be, in more ways than we see, for the better things that shall come

after; a period in which, as on Mount Lebanon, the cedars are hewn, that shall enter without sound of hammer into a temple whither all the tribes shall go up.

We know of no public documents more deserving the attention of wise and philanthropic men, than the Annual Reports of the Massachusetts Board of Education. They contain statistics upon the subject of education which it is important for every citizen to know; and set forth the bearing of systems of public instruction upon individual, social and national welfare in the clearest and most impressive manner. As mere literary productions, the Reports of the Secretary deserve the highest praise. His powerful arguments, his incontrovertible logic, his strong appeals in behalf of the cause of primary education, he clothes in the most appropriate and beautiful language. His diction borders on the poetical. He thinks in figures as Pope thought in rhyme. Yet the imagery with which his exuberant fancy supplies him, is chastened by a highly culti vated taste, so that he constantly pleases and never offends.

His Reports, from year to year, bring prominently to view some new aspect of the great cause of education. That before us shows, by the most conclusive evidence of which the nature of the case admits, that the school system of Massachusetts, without any change in its fundamental principles, may be so improved as greatly to diminish the

* Eleventh Annual Report of the Massachusetts Board of Education, together with the Eleventh Annual Report of the Secretary of the Board.

vice, crime and waste, and greatly increase the virtue and prosperity of the state; and demonstrates the pecuniary ability of the state to make such improvement. In the course of our remarks we shall have occasion to refer to the kind of testimony brought forward in the ar gument, and show its application to other states as well as Massachusetts. For the present we proceed to offer a few thoughts upon the main subject suggested by this Report:-The relation of education to the well-being of states.

Cause and effect are scarcely more closely connected in the natural than in the moral world. As a general fact, it is as true, that a right education for an entire generation of children and youth will result in public happiness and prosperity, ast that the right cultivation of a piece of land will result in good crops. In both cases, the amount of success will correspond with the thoroughness and efficiency of the means. We have good authority to believe, that a generation of children, no less than a single child, if trained in the way they should go, will not depart from it. The power of early education to shape the fu ture character and destiny of indi viduals and nations, has been understood from the earliest ages. History has preserved the systems of training adopted by several ancient nations, and we can discover in them a wise adaptation of the means to the ends which they had

in view. That of Sparta was one of the most efficient ever adopted. The state regarded martial prowess and glory as the great object of ambition, and sacrificed for this end do mestic and social happiness, wealth, commerce, learning, and every other interest. All the male children were taken at the age of eight from their parents, supported at public expense, and trained to be expert, bold and invincible in the use of arms. The state educated them to be soldiers, and was not disappointed. The valor and self-sacrifice of Leonidas, and his little band of heroes at Thermopyla, were the natural product of this training, as natural as any vegetable growth from the seed and toil of the husbandman. Modern nations have adopted systems of education differing in character, according to the reigning ideas of the people. But all aim to repeat themselves in their posterity by some kind of educational institutions. Whether the mass of the people shall be educated or not, and what shall be the kind of education imparted, depends upon the object which the leading minds of the nation have in view. The early colonies of New England opened the fountains of knowledge to all. The first system of free schools in the history of our race was adopted on these western shores. It was a new measure, a most radical step, an innovation beyond all for mer innovations. Our fathers reasoned and nobody now questions the soundness of their logic-that if all were trained aright, intellectual ly and morally, the people would be able to take care of themselves, and save the enormous bill it had always cost the world to be civilly and ecclesiastically governed. They denied that God created a few men with better blood in their veins, on purpose to be the monopolists of all the wealth, and learning, and power of the world. And they act ed consistently. The success of

their experiment shows their wisdom. Public schools are esteemed among us as necessaries of life, and New England men carry them wherever they go in their migrations: so that they are established, with various modifications, in all the northern and western states of the Union.

Look now at the result of the general education of the people in those states where the school system has been in operation for the longest period? You behold a degree of order, thrift, enterprise, wealth, virtue, and general comfort and happiness, unequaled in any country where the like cause has not been operating. In Massachusetts and Connecticut this cause has been at work for two hundred years; and although we can not say precisely what proportion of influence is to be attributed to the public schools of these states, and what to other influences which have tended to the same results, yet wise men never hesitate to assign them a prominent place among the causes which have made these states so prosperous. The great mass of the people have been so educated in these schools, have acquired such an amount of knowledge, and been subjected to such mental and moral discipline, that their skill and effi ciency in all kinds of productive labor, and the facility with which they turn their hands to all sorts of business, are mentioned to their credit throughout the world. They have thus been qualified, beyond any other nation, to be a self-supporting and self-governing people. Whence the contrast between them in respect to character and condition and those states and nations which have no similar system of public education ? Whence their wealth? Not the opulence of the few scattered amidst a thousand poor; but the abundance and independence of the masses? the wealth that enables them to sustain their

numerous churches, their civil, char. itable and literary institutions? to invest millions in public works at home and abroad? to meet the calls of benevolence which come so frequently from the East and the West? to add ornament and luxury to the comfort and competence of tens of thousands of happy homes? Did our ancestors unlade upon these shores the riches of England? Did the mother country, in her maternal kindness, give her daughter a princely dowry? Did it not rather cost us millions to get ourselves safely out of this mother's grasp ? Since we can not find the cause in any superior advantages of soil or climate, we must seek the answer in intellectual and moral influences; and of these, none is more fundamental, indispensable and peculiar, and none less unquestionable than our system of primary schools. Each rising generation has received in the family, the school and the church, the moral and mental training that has made the people frugal, temperate, industrious, dexterous in adapting means to ends, provident of the future, and skillful in turning every thing to the best account; which is a sufficient explanation of their unparalleled prosperity. They have gathered wealth from their hard soil, from their granite hills, from their lakes of ice, from every water-fall, more abundant than the golden dust of the fabled Pactolus. They have turned the desert into a garden, the wilderness into a fruitful field, and spread the sails of commerce to every breeze. All this they owe to their common school system; at least as one of the necessary conditions.

But is this all that could have been accomplished? Have the best possible results been realized? Has the system of public education, even in New England, effected the great est possible good? Might not the system be improved so as to confer still larger blessings on society? VOL. VI.

27

Make the system what it ought to be, what it is within the ability of the people to make it, and what proportion of the children enjoying its blessings, would fail to become useful members of society? This interesting inquiry occupies a prominent place in the present Report of the Secretary of the Massachusett's Board of Education. That it might be settled upon the best ev. idence, he sent out a circular addressed to several of the most distinguished and experienced teachers in the country, asking for an answer to the following question:

"Should all our schools be kept by teachers of high intellectual and inoral qualifications, and should all the children schools, for ten months in a year, from in the community be brought within these the age of four to that of sixteen years; then, what proportion,-what per-centage-of such children as you have had under your care, could, in your opinion, be so educated and trained, that their existence, on going out into the world, would be a benefit and not a detriment, an honor and not a shame to society? if all children were brought within the Or, to state the question in a general forin, salutary and auspicious influences I have here supposed, what percentage of them you pronounce to be irreclaimable and hopeless?"—pp. 56, 57.

should

To this circular answers were returned the tenor of which may be learned from the following extracts:

My belief is that, under the conditions mentioned in the question, not more than two per cent. would be irreclaimable nuisances to society, and that ninety-five per cent, would be supporters of the mor al welfare of the community in which they resided.

normal schools, and with such a popular "With teachers properly trained in disposition towards schools as wise legis lation might effect, nineteen twentieths of the immoralities which afflict society might, I verily believe, be kept under hatches, or eradicated from the soil of our social institutions.

"Every step in such a progress renders the next more easy. This is proved not only on the grand scale of comparing country with country, and state with state, but district with its adjacent district, and neighborhood with neighbor

hood.

teachers to be imbued with the gospel spirit, I believe there would not be more than one half of one per cent. of the children educated, on whom a wise judge would be compelled to pronounce the doom of hopelessness and irreclaimability."-John Griscom.

"I should scarcely expect, after the first generation of children submitted to the experiment, to fail, in a single case, to secure the results you have named.

"With my views of human nature, I should not expect to succeed, in every case in securing for each young heart what I understand to be a truly religious character. This is not, as I think, wholly a work of education, for ، neither is he that planteth any thing, neither he that watereth, but God that giveth the increase; still, I am firmly of the opinion that the right of expectation of a religious character would be increased very much in proportion to the excellence of the training given, since God never ordains means which he does not intend to bless; and he has said, Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.' But I should not forgive myself, nor think myself longer fit to be a teacher, if, with all the aids and influences you have supposed, I should fail, in one case in a hundred, to rear up children who, when they should become men, would be ، honest dealers, conscientious jurors, true witnesses, incorruptible voters or magistrates, good parents, good neighbors, good members of society ;' or, as you express it in another place, who would be 'temperate, industrious, frugal, conscientious in all their dealings, prompt to pity and instruct ignorance, instead of ridiculing it and taking advantage of it, public spirited, philanthropic, and observers of all things sacred ;' and, negatively, who would not be، drunkards, profane swearers, detractors, vagabonds, rioters, cheats, thieves, aggressors upon the rights of property, of person, of reputation or of life, or guilty of such omissions of right and commissions of wrong that it would be better for the community had they never been born."-D. P. Page.

،

"I confess I do not see how our different theological views can essentially alter our modes of instruction. We are all to train the young in the way in which they should go, giving line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little and there a little, waiting for, and expecting. precious fruit. The fruit may ripen slowly. From day to day you may not be able to see any progress. This holds true both in moral and intellectual training. But by comparing distant intervals, progress is perceptible. At length a result comes, which repays all the teacher's labor, and inspires new courage for new efforts.

You ask for my own experience. This is my apology for alluding, with freedom, to myself. Permit me to say that, in very many cases, after laboring long with individuals almost against hope, and sometimes in a manner too which I can now see was not always wise, I have never had a case which has not resulted in some degree according to my wishes. The many kind and voluntary testimonials given, years afterwards, by persons who remembered that they were once my wayward pupils, are among the pleas antest and most cheering incidents of my life. So uniform have been the results,

when I have had a fair trial and time enough, that I have unhesitatingly adopted the motto, Never despair. Parents and teachers are apt to look for too speedy results from the labors of the latter. The moral nature, like the intellectual and physical, is long and slow in reaching the full maturity of its strength. I was told, a few years since, by a gentleman who knew the history of nearly all my pupils for the first five years of my labor, that not one of them had ever brought re. proach upon himself, or mortification upon friends, by a bad life. I can not now look over the whole list of my pu pils, and find one, who had been with me long enough to receive a decided impression, whose life is not honorable and useful. I find them in all the learned professions, and in the various mechanical arts. I find my female pupils scatter. ed as teachers through half the states of the Union, and as the wives and assistants of Christian missionaries, in every quarter of the globe.

So far, therefore, as my own experience goes, so far as my knowledge of the experience of others extends, so far as the statistics of crime throw any light on the subject, I should confidently expect that ninety-nine in a hundred, and I think even more, with such means of education as you have supposed, and with such divine favor as we are authorized to expect, would become good members of society, the supporters of order, and law, and truth, and justice, and all right.

eousness.

*

one of

"Another difficulty, greatly magnified by the zealots of different religious sects, is the apprehension that some these sects will get an advantage over the rest. Our constitutions of government, and our laws, recognize no privileg ed sect, but extend equal protection to all. Good sometimes comes of evil. This very jealousy is a guaranty that this prevision of our constitution and laws will not be infringed. Majorities can not rule conscience. As a mere matter of policy, aside from all higher considerations, the only way I can think of, for