Christian education

“ The unchanging aim of Christian education is, and always has been, to put the pupil into possession of a body of truth derived from nature and from Divine Revelation, from the concrete work of man's hand and from the content of human speech, in order to bring his conduct into conformity with Christian ideals and with the standards of the civilization of his day. ”

“ Many people feel that the purpose of the church school is to transmit the content of the Christian faith. Christian education, however, must be personal. It must take place in a personal encounter, and only secondarily is it transmissive. It is true, however, that Christian education is responsible for the continued recital of God’s saving acts, and for the transmission of the subject matter of the historical faith and life of the Christian community. The content of our faith was born of God’s action and man’s response—a divine-human encounter. ”

“ Now the Christian school is the place and the provision made for the training of those who are baptized into the Christian faith. They have been made children of God, and as such they have a right to four things belonging to them by a right of inheritance, to which all other rights are secondary. They have a right to the knowledge of their faith; to the training of their conscience by the knowledge of God's commandments; to the Sacraments of grace; and to a moral formation, founded on the precepts and example of our Divine Saviour. ”

“ A thorough Christian education, then, is the basis of all happiness and peace, for the family as well as for the State itself; for every State is but the union of several families. It is for this reason that we find good parents so willing to make every sacrifice for the Christian education of their children, and that all true statesmen, and all true lovers of their country, have always encouraged and advocated that kind of education which is based upon Christian principles. ”

“ But all these scripture lessons, chapel services and confirmation preparation will be powerless to produce a Christian education, if they be not held together by every lesson and by the whole life of the school. Industry and obedience, truthfulness and fidelity to duty, unselfishness and thoroughness, must form the soil without which no religious plant can grow; and these are taught and learnt in the struggle with Latin prose, or mathematics, or French grammar, or scientific formula ”

“ In addition, therefore, to the elements of education which have been named before, we see that, at the beginning of the third century, Christians were expected to teach and study the liberal arts, profane literature, philosophy, and the Biblical languages. Their teachers commented on the Scriptures, and devoted themselves to a critical study of its text; positive theology, as it is called, had established itself in the schools, together with a certain systematic science of Christian ethics, and, we may add, many branches of physical science also. ”

“ Our national institutions, our prosperity and civilization depend for their permanence and perpetuity not so much on the culture of the arts, sciences, literature, or philosophy, as on the general diffusion of the salutary and vivifying principles of religion.
Let us then infuse good morals by the most powerful of all means, Christian education; let doctrine be taught simultaneously with science ”

“ XII. Education The cause of education in the kingdom of Christ is co-ordinate with the causes of missions and general benevolence and should receive along with these the liberal support of the churches. An adequate system of Christian schools is necessary to a complete spiritual program for Christ's people. ”

“ It is not sufficient to say, that education is to be conducted on religious principles, for on the subject of religion there exists, in this day, a most unfortunate and mischievous variety of opinions, which would be much diminished if the Holy Scriptures were made the real, as they are the professed, groundwork of every system of Christian instruction. ”

“ Let them every where teach and impress, as a duty of paramount importance, that not only the education of all classes, from the prince to the peasant, should be conducted on the principles of the Bible; but that all should acquire that knowledge of the evidences as well as doctrines and duties of Christianity, which may fit them in their several stations to overcome, through the grace of God, the temptations to unbelief or immorality, which are likely to assail them. ”

“ The aim of religious education is to fit the child for complete Christian living, to make him not simply a religious individual but a useful member of society, intelligently devoted to the highest welfare of his fellows and of mankind. ”

“ Moreover, it is the Christian religion alone that affords men the means to obtain God's grace, which enlightens the mind to see the beauty of virtue, inflames the heart with love for it, and inclines the will to practise it with perseverance. If we then wish to be sure of having a virtuous and virile people, we must Christianize our youth, especially during their school hours; we must bring up our children in a religious atmosphere. I have already remarked that religion may be compared to leaven. ”

“ We want then to know the literacy of the Christian community as compared with the literacy of the non-Christian population from which it springs, and, if possible, a little more than that—what proportion of the Christians have had a sufficient education to enable them not only to satisfy the very slight demands of a literary test, but to have some wider knowledge with which to improve their own position and to enlighten others. ”

“ In the Christian schools, while the carefully-selected American teachers insure good schools and good teaching of the ordinary branches, there is a place for moral education, for simple religious exercises and for Bible study. ”

“ I have spoken of the Christian religion as the most important branch of a common school education. The cultivation of the intellectual faculties alone constitutes no sufficient guaranty that the subject of it will become either a virtuous man, a good neighbor, or a useful citizen. ”

“ As, however, it is only as a Christian, be he consciously or unconsciously so, baptised or unbaptised, taking the Christian name or rejecting it, that he can think and act after this fashion, you can see at once the reason why my system of education feels itself to be, and in fact claims to be, an education after the true spirit, and following the precepts of Jesus Christ. ”

“ It recognizes the fact that finite things can not be rightly understood without knowing their relation to the Infinite. Our Lord Jesus, who came into the world to make known the will of the Father, "holds in his girdle the key to all the secrets of the universe, and no education can be thorough without the knowledge of Him."
Christian schools are established for the culture of souls. Their aim is to develop men and women as persons to the full extent of their powers for the sake of their contribution to the personal welfare and progress of society. ”

“ The Christian religion affords the broadPage 115est educational basis, because it presents the most exalted notion of personality and its development. It takes account of the deepest facts of our nature, and teaches philosophical principles that are true for all created intelligences. Hence it is that Christianity is essential to the best educational system. It precedes and governs true education. A narrow and false conception of man leads to building only one side of his nature. The will, the conscience, the emotional and spiritual natures demand a share in the broadest culture. ”

“ I doubt not to affirm, that a godly education is God's first and ordinary appointed means, for the begetting of actual faith, and other graces, in the children of believers: many may have seminal grace before, but they cannot sooner have actual faith, repentance, love, or any grace, than they have reason itself in act and exercise. ”

“ The virtuous education you have received, and the good principles which have been instilled into your minds from infancy, will render the enforcement of Christian precepts and duties a pleasing lesson.
“Religion is to be considered as an essential and durable object; not as the embellishment of a day; but an acquisition which shall endure and increase through the endless ages of eternity. ”

“ It is necessary that the religions and creeds of the Christian world be defended by the most able and learned students, in order to make them popular and to appear as true. But after these Christian students have been through academies and colleges; and the most famed seminaries in the world, and after they have studied and studied, spending a life-time in the acquisition of a theological education, it takes but one of our boys, with the aid of the Bible and the little Catechism, to wind them up as you would an old clock. ”

“ The Bible, with its stories, promises, history, and doctrines, should be the chief text-book.
4. Not only monks and priests should be allowed to teach, but also the laity.
5. Children while still young and innocent must be taught good habits and right precepts.
It is worthy of note that Chrysostom and Basil were the first to mark out definite lines of Christian instruction. During this period, also, the first songs of the Christian Church originated in the huts and caves of the poor. Thus in religious instruction and church song the foundations of the Christian common school were laid. ”

“ They have altered methods of Biblical education in our Sunday Schools, have shown us helpful and harmful ways of presenting religious appeals, and have given us scientific standards to test the value of the materials employed in public worship. ”

“ Anyone who is honestly trying to be a Christian will soon find his intelligence being sharpened: one of the reasons why it needs no special education to be a Christian is that Christianity is an education itself. ”

“ Since my connection with this school, my knowledge has been increased, false ideas have been corrected, truths have been established, life broadened, desires multiplied, faith in Christ increased, and I have been enabled to advance a few steps toward my ideal. My greatest desire is to do as much for Christ as I may among my fellow men." Who could show better results of education? ”

“ You are raising up in these schools men and women who, in the years to come, can, will and must teach the children of their people. Hundreds of them are doing it now. I say must; for Christianized education must, by its instinctive and divine impulses, perpetuate itself and diffuse itself. ”

“ For it is in these schools, above all, that the children of the people ought to be carefully taught from their tender years the mysteries and precepts of our holy religion, and to be trained with diligence to piety, good morals, religion and civilization. In such schools religious teaching ought to have so leading a place in all that concerns education and instruction, that whatever else the children may [Pg 312] learn should appear subsidiary to it. ”

“ It is a fundamental principle of Christianity, admitted even by Protestants, that man cannot reach his destiny without a knowledge of the religion which Jesus Christ taught, and which He sealed with His precious Blood. Now this fundamental principle is virtually ignored in our present school system, which proposes to educate without religion. ”

“ And so this Association has sought, and this body of Christians that represent the Association has sought, by gifts and by teaching, to develop the thought that there always should be an educational work going forward that there may be something to build upon. Christianity needs education in order to give it its largest power. ”

“ The aim has been to give in concise, popular form answers to some of the many questions thus raised, with the conviction that they are in the mind of every thoughtful man and woman to-day, and especially on the lips of earnest pastors, missionaries, and Sunday-school teachers. There are indications on every side of a deepening and far more intelligent interest in the needs and possibilities of religious education. Its vital importance to the life of the Church and the nation is being understood as never before. ”

“ It is safe to say, and this without reservation, the most fundamental problem in England and America to-day is the problem of religious education, because this lies at the roots of all else—political, social, and theological. ”

“ Christians all acknowledge and teach that man is here to know, love, and serve God and save his soul. These two, therefore—redemption from ignorance and a rude state, and the end for which man is here—give us the right idea of what education ought to be. ”

“ That in the Roman Catholic Church the literary and religious instruction of youth are universally combined, and that no system of education which separates them can be acceptable to the members of her communion; that the religious instruction of youth in Catholic schools is always conveyed by means of catachetical instruction, daily prayer, and the reading of religious books, wherein the Gospel morality is explained and inculcated ”

“ To-day they receive the movement, in fifteen years they will give it. They will transmit good principles, happy inclinations to their own children, who will transmit them in their turn. Behold, it is thus that holy traditions are established, and a chain of solid virtues perpetuated; ages will reap what I have sown in a few days. It is by these considerations that the greatest saints, and the finest geniuses of Christianity, became so much attached to the education of youth. ”