ÆäÀÌÁö À̹ÌÁö
PDF
ePub

ads of happy creatures. the human mind vested with its highest dignity and interest, when we perceive that in studying ourselves, we are studying also Him whom we can never fully comprehend, but who has, both in creation and in the revelation through prophets and apostles, declared that we were made in his image.

Then only is the study of

Thus self-evident do I hold it to be, that theology is a fundamental branch, the crown and glory of all the hierarchy of sciences, and that no one branch is, or can be, understood in full, until we have traced its relations to theology.

If, therefore, we would have our course of public instruction possess any thing like even intellectual completeness, it must embrace, from the earliest school to the college and university, a proper proportion of religious teaching.

And that proportion is to be found, so far as relates to the simple intellectual question, in the same manner as we find it for geometry. It will be determined partly by the length of the curriculum. Of course we cannot expect, in a simple, common school, to pursue theology, or any other branch, with the thoroughness with which it should be pursued at a university. It will also depend, partly, upon the circumstances of the individual scholar. A boy who intends to pass his whole life in some mechanical trade, or in a storehouse, should not be expected to study theology to such an extent as one who gives evidence of an

unjust in compelling them to pay taxes to sustain such schools? The writer of this article is a Protestant of the most radical ty does not stop with Martin Luther, but who protests against all of

But,

ability and a desire to become a public teacher, whether in the schoolhouse or the church. with either scholar, the due proportion of directly religious instruction should be determined by this general principle, that sufficient should be given to lead the pupil to see at least the religious bearing of his other knowledge, be that other knowledge much or little,- that he may neither build too much. upon an insecure foundation, nor fail to raise the most worthy structure which his basis and his capital will allow.

In like manner the questions in regard to the form of religion may be answered. The statutes of that State in which I passed the first years of my manhood, make it imperative on the teachers of the common schools to teach good manners and morals. This is teaching religion practically. In the earlier years of school life this is right; —it is the course of nature, and precisely analogous to the course which I would recommend in the teaching of other departments of learning. But as the child grows older, it should learn abstract forms of words as well as practical rules; and in colleges, should have a certain amount of direct studies in natural and revealed religion, moral science, and dogmatic theology, regard of course being had to the general principles before stated, with reference to the amount.

The question may, however, be pressed upon me, concerning the form of religion to be taught; whether

it should be distinctly Christian or not, and if Christian, whether it should be distinctly Protestant or not. If Protestant, shall it be Calvinistic, Arminian, or Pelagian? The usual answers to such questions seem to me founded upon fallacious arguments. The objections to sectarian teachings, and to intolerance of other forms of faith, are valid; but are very generally placed upon what I consider invalid grounds, or at least upon secondary grounds, while more fundamental considerations would more effectually settle the point.

It is frequently said that politics and religion should be excluded from our common schools, and other institutions of public instruction, because they are matters upon which men's opinions are divided; that politics taught in a school must necessarily offend the partisans of opposite views, and religion taught in the schools must necessarily wound the conscience of those whose doctrines differ from those of the textbooks. Others have replied that there are common opinions in these matters, which it would be well to teach; opinions in which all the world are agreed, and which are therefore suitable to be the theme of public instruction.

That such considerations should be only of secondary weight in deciding the great questions under discussion, will be at once manifest when we apply them to the test at the other end of the hierarchy. There are many mathematical and mechanical points, long

unjust in compelling them to pay taxes to sustain such schools? The writer of this article is a Protestant of the most radical ty does not stop with Martin Luther, but who protests against all obs

in dispute among the learned, and upon some of them there is not a perfect agreement even to this day. The foundation of all geometry is in our idea of space, and even that is a subject of irreconcilable differences of opinion. The followers of the immortal Kant (and even many of those who in most things else break away from his paths, follow him here), declare that space has no existence other than in the mind of the observer, and some of them further affirm that it is an idea never attained by those born blind. Space, according to these philosophers (and I think they comprise a majority of those who have shown a decided turn for metaphysical speculation), is only a way in which we view things; it is a law of thought, and the proof that it is so, lies in the fact that we necessarily conceive of things as occupying space. Since we cannot even mentally divest ourselves of the idea of space, it must be, say these men, a part of ourselves and non-existent out of ourselves.

On the contrary, many geometricians of the highest ability believe, as all ordinary men believe, in the reality of space external to the mind. To them the doctrine of "the laws of thought," the doctrine that space and time are forms put upon things by the mind, appears the very quixotism of philosophy. It amounts to saying that we know that space does not exist because we cannot help believing that it does exist.

But, while the fundamental conceptions of geometry, while the very existence of its subject-matter, space, is thus in dispute, and the learned world so equally divided on the point, is geometry to be excluded from the course of public instruction, or shall any believer in space hesitate in his public teaching to proclaim his faith, and to utter his protest against the transcendental delusions and errors which have accompanied the growth of transcendental philosophy? Certainly no man would ask it.

Again, there are those who deny that space is the subject-matter of geometry. The French school of positive philosophy say that geometry is the science of measuring extended bodies. Our own countryman, H. C. Carey, in the introductory chapters of his splendid work on Social Science, denies to geometry the name of science. Science, he says, is the knowledge of external nature, and the mathematics is only a peculiar language to aid in investigating nature and recording results. With still grosser ideas, another American writer maintains that a line is an infinitesimal thread, and a point an atom, thus reducing geometry to the science of extended bodies considered as extended.

Does, therefore, any teacher think that we should not carefully guard the student of geometry from supposing that he is studying either material shapes or mere abstract rules of measuring material things?

The like conclusion, that the mere fact of the ex

unjust in compelling them to pay taxes to sustain such schools? The writer of this article is a Protestant of the most radical tyl does not stop with Martin Luther, but who protests against all obst:

« ÀÌÀü°è¼Ó »