Page images
PDF
EPUB

tensely and comprehensively; he must put himself in the condition of another, and many others: the pains and pleasures of his species must become his own: the great instrument of moral good is the imagination."

[ocr errors]

Now, whether we entirely agree with the author of these remarks or not, thus much I think we must admit, that the imagination is the instrument of sympathy, for how can we sympathize unless we first imagine the condition of those to be sympathized with? It is most true that feeling is the root of all sympathy, but feeling (like all things else) must have a medium for operation; and experience, that other teacher, however valuable as another instrument, is too limited in its range to be of much avail for the general purposes of sympathy, as persons in the higher ranks of life, for instance, can have no experience of the privations of the lower-hence the necessity for the one being able to imagine the condition of the other. But as what I have said may appear a digression, although in reality it is not, I will return to the point from whence I set out, viz., that I would not on any account direct our endeavours to the cultivation of this faculty alone; for, the things implanted in the memory forming the basis for the structure of rational thought in after-life, of course the seed ought to be sown there, however long it be before the tender blade may spring forth. But it is scarcely necessary to recommend attention being paid to the memory, seeing how much consideration has been bestowed on this faculty, time immemorial, in all schools, whether the ideas reproduced in the mind bear any proportion in worth to the pains bestowed in the cultivation of the memory or not; so I will leave it, and pass on to the curiosity of children, which, being a result of the affection of knowing, I would gratify to the utmost extent, where means and opportunities concur, by revealing to their sense of sight the wonders and the beauties of nature; which, whether selected from the animate or inanimate parts of the creation, are equally wondrous and beautiful. A microscope, therefore, in a school, would, by varying the objects, afford an endless source of amusement and instruction. It is only to be regretted that our limited means put this at present out of our power; but the perception and conviction that certain things are desirable and necessary, is the first step towards their attainment, be the nature of those things what they may. It is in truth a sad reflection, that curiosity, that useful faculty of the mind-that great instrument by which truths of various kinds are acquired, should, from want of worthy objects on which to exercise itself, be perverted from its legitimate use, and be left to exercise itself on unworthy objects; but, if we cannot do all we would, we must endeavour to do all we can, and there is no doubt the attempt to make the

effort in the right direction will produce, at least, some kind of beneficial result.

With regard to the development of the intellect, this should be attempted gently and gradually, for, considering the age of the majority of the children under our care, a due attention to their affections is of primary importance; these we should endeavour for the most part to awaken; for, independently of the forcing system being a very bad one, as applied to the mind, it would, in the majority of cases, be labour utterly lost, as applied to the children of many of the lower orders of society; for education among the masses being, as it were, a thing of yesterday, these chil dren, it may be presumed, come into the world with a feebler aptitude than the children of the educated classes, for comprehending things of an abstract nature; individual exceptions not affecting the general rule. But as Sunday schools offer less opportunity than others for forcing the intellect, it is scarcely worth while to dwell on the subject; obvious truths, however, will sometimes bear reiteration, and as New Church juvenile literature is susceptible of great improvement, notwithstanding the advances that have been made by some writers, in which those of America must not be forgotten, it may be useful to bear these observations in mind, and there being other schools in the New Church besides Sunday schools, a short extract from a writer, a contemporary of Miss Murray, may not be out of place on this occasion. Speaking of infant schools, Mr. Hamilton says, "It is the senses and the affections, not the intellect, of infants that should be exercised. The noisy display, and morbid excitement, which we too often meet with, are a perversion of the infant system, and have contributed, in no slight degree, to strengthen the prejudices against it. An infant school should be the happy asylum of babes, rescued by the hand of benevolence from poverty, vice, and crime. When such an institution becomes an intellectual hot-house, it should be put down as a nuisance of the worst description." I feel satisfied that, whatever be the faculty of the mind we are endeavouring to develope, nothing effects the end desired better, nor perhaps so well as oral instruction, provided the teacher be adequate to the task; for, by this means, the mind of the man comes into closer communion with the mind of the child than by any other, awakening and directing, by his affection or his intellect, the opening affection or intellect of the child, and thus exciting in each its proper life and activity. Of this I am convinced by my own personal experience, when attempting to make the endeavour; but so little can I do efficiently in this way, my thoughts not lying very near my speech, and many other teachers being, no doubt, similarly conditioned, the greater the necessity for devising some general

N. S. No. 94.-VOL. VIII.

2 F

plan that shall best effect the end we have in view-the drawing forth of the children's affections, and which can only be done by making what they learn pleasant to them, as far as possible.

Children should, most assuredly, be early taught obedience and the art of discipline, but they should learn to discipline themselves, from a 'holy fear of doing anything contrary to the will of that God whom they have been first taught to know, love, and worship, viz., the Lord Jesus Christ, and whom they would fear to offend in the same way they would fear to offend a kind and tender father; and from the fear, likewise, to speak in childish language, of not going to heaven if they do wrong, the nature of which kingdom can be so satisfactorily and beautifully explained to them from the doctrines of the New Church, which offer many advantages in the way of instruction over all other doctrines.

I will only notice one or two other points. The first is, the great utility of addresses to the children; as they have hitherto been given only at intervals "few and far between," it may be as well to advert to them, and to beg those gentlemen who feel equal to the task, frequently to undertake it, whenever it may suit their convenience to do so;-the peculiar forms of selfishness, as they manifest themselves in children, with the opposite virtue, or forms of virtue, affording perpetual variety of themes to descant on.

The other point on which I must beg your indulgence a few minutes longer, is one I have very much at heart, and the more so from its being so little thought of or talked about, and that is, the necessity of inculcating in the minds of children the duty of kindness to animals, in which, however, I have been encouraged, and know I ever shall be, by our estimable and intelligent superintendent, I might say superintendents; and it was only a Sunday or two ago that a remark to this effect occurred incidentally in the discourse of our respected minister:-" Nothing is a surer sign of a depraved heart than cruelty to the animal creation." Now we all know that children, for the most part, are by nature cruel ;—that men, and women too, are cruel likewise-some from a diabolical love of cruelty, others from obtuseness or absolute indifference; now, as the two last very frequently degenerate into the first, or, at any rate, are productive of the same effects, how much is it the bounden duty of all those who entertain a proper sympathy for the creatures which their Creator has endowed with bodily sensations like unto their own, to strive, by every means in their power, to kindle a like sympathy in their children, or those children under their care; for nothing less than active sympathy will avail to oppose the sphere of active cruelty that prevails in the

world, and especially among the lower orders of society, in respect of the wants and sufferings of the animal creation. This, the kindly intelligent portion of the community are beginning sensibly to feel; hence the institution of a society for the express purpose of the

66

Prevention of Cruelty." Hence, also, the number of tracts issued by Chambers on the subject, to say nothing of the beautiful little poems and stories on animals by various writers, including Mary Howit, and our American friend, Mrs. Childe, the best of which I would certainly have in all school libraries, and would take care to make frequent use of them. Of course the love of animals, where it is found to exist, like all other natural loves, requires the regulation of reason and common sense; but for one morbidly-conditioned mortal who would prefer studying the comfort of an animal to that of a human being, and who would feed them with food for which human beings might be thankful, there are hundreds who would not care whether they had any food at all, and as many more, it is to be feared, who would not mind subjecting them to any kind of distress, and even torture, to serve their own selfish purposes, either for the sake of their profit, by over-working them, or, what would seem incredible if we did not know it to be truetheir amusement, or the pampering of their sensual appetite! Hence the duty and the obligation that we, as Christians, are under, to strive to eradicate the tendency to cruelty, and thus to destroy in the germ this poisonous plant. In so doing we shall achieve a yet higher good; for if a well instructed child would as a man shudder at the thought of inflicting a wanton injury on an unthinking animal, how much greater would be his repugnance and horror at the idea of inflicting the like on a conscious human being-a tender little helpless child, or on a fellow man! In the list of subjects that may form the materials for future addresses to the children, I would earnestly recommend, and I know I shall not recommend in vain, "kindness to animals" among the number; and should any of the foregoing observations be the means of inducing any friends to renew the subject of education generally, by throwing out any improved suggestions, my trifling labours will not have been spent in vain. E. F.

THE LORD'S REPLY TO HEROD'S MESSAGE.

"And he said unto them, Go ye, and tell that fox, Behold, I cast out devils, and I do cures to-day and to-morrow, and the third day I shall be perfected." (Luke xiii. 32.)

THE reply of the Lord Jesus to the Pharisees who came to him to inform him that Herod was desirous of killing him, has, by some, been considered as unworthy the dignity and majesty which, on all other occasions, he manifested in his intercourse with those who attended his ministrations when on earth. It is presumed, however, that such an opinion is entirely without foundation in truth, and has its origin in a mistaken notion of the nature of the language in which the Lord always expressed himself, which was that of correspondence or analogy, the language in which the Word of God is written throughout.

Had Jesus been a mere man, and had he spoken as mere men speak, and must speak, it will be readily admitted that his reply to Herod's message would have been unbecoming and undignified, amounting even to sinful reproach. But such was not the case. We are assured that he spoke as never man spoke, as one having authority, and not as the Scribes; that his word was with power; and numerous are the instances that might be adduced to shew that his speech was the utterance of Omniscience itself.

It is strictly true of the Lord Jesus, that though he was in all points tempted as we are, he was yet without sin; that he did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth; that though reproached and reviled, he meekly and patiently bare the most cruel insults of men; that when he was reviled he reviled not again; and that when he suffered he threatened not. These are facts that cannot be denied. How, then, it has been asked, are we to reconcile these facts with the expressions so often used by the Lord when reproving the Jews, as a nation, for their wickedness; as, for instance, when he styles them an evil and adulterous generation, a generation of vipers, likening their leaders to white-washed sepulchres, and denouncing them as hypocrites and children of the devil, who could hardly escape the condemnation of hell? On no other ground, we conceive, than that of at once admitting the supreme divinity of the Lord, can the apparent difficulty be removed. For, let this admission be once made, and we have the majesty of heaven and earth speaking from his own underived authority, and as the great Judge of all the earth

« PreviousContinue »