the answer is, it is the Church's special work in this world to make their homes Christian. Let the blessed influences of Christianity radiate into all the homes of the land. In this way teachers and parents, as well as children, may be reached. In this way, and along the channels of domestic and social life, the enlightening and ennobling influences of Christianity may be applied to our public schools as well as to the children within them. In this way, at last, our system of popular education may be made Christian in a deeper sense than would necessarily be indicated, even by ecclesiastical direction and control; and so, spite of all disadvantages, we may still realize for this land the old promise, "All thy children shall be taught of the Lord, and great shall be the peace of thy children.” What has hitherto been said has related chiefly to the common or elementary schools of the country. The same principles apply to higher education. We look to the Church and the home to keep watch and ward over our common schools. We look to Christian fathers and mothers and Christian pastors to keep the hearts of the children true, and their feet in the paths of Christian knowledge and peace. The same instrumentalities must be relied on at our institutions of more advanced learning. Around each great university, Christian colleges, halls or homes should be builded, within which the Christian youth of the land might reside while attending the university classes, and over which strong Christian men should preside, not so much to teach religious truth as to fill the lives of the students with a religious spirit. In this land the educational training of the young has been delegated to a system of secular schools and universities. Be it so. Some of these seats of higher learning are nobly planned and completely equipped. Let us frankly and thankfully accept the fact; and let the Church, released as she is from the work of the classroom, betake herself gladly to her own particular function, and build up around each university, and around the lives of her children there, the hallowing, sanctifying influences of Christianity. To do this is not an easy work, but it is the Church's appointed work. Not to teach the trivium or quadrivium, but to teach men to observe the things which Christ commanded, - this is her appointed work; and she ought to do the latter with all the more energy because she is released from the drudgery of the former. And the Church will do her work all the more effectively when it is once thoroughly realized that Christianity is to be taught, not like a problem of Euclid or an ode of Horace, but through Christian nurture, and by the help of the Spirit of God. |