Divinity school

“ Some say religious instruction should be given in the home. This is usually done, in the intelligent christian home; but there are many homes, where it is impossible, and others indisposed. The fact that the church has seen, as if with a new vision, the method of Jesus, the Great Teacher of all men, reveals itself more clearly in the Sunday school, than in any other department of its work. There it attempts the task of religious education by instruction from the Bible, and endeavors to inspire the child, youth and man with the purest and greatest motives for action. ”

“ There had not been time for her even to take a class in Sunday school, and she knew her religion only as it applied to her one little narrow life, she thought, not realizing that, when one has applied a great faith to the circumstances of even a narrow life, and applied it thoroughly through a lifetime, one has learned more theology than one could get in years of a theological seminary. ”

“ Said one young preacher: “The school is the primary department of the church. It trains the children and youth to think, and hence to accept of a thoughtful religion like ours, instead of the mere shouting and emotional style to which the ignorant and untrained cling. The true religion is one which teaches us to love God and our neighbor supremely, and this can be done best by the intelligence which comes only through the school training.” ”

“ Religion, then, forms the spirit and essence of all true education. As leaven must be diffused throughout the entire mass in order to produce its effects, so religion must be thoroughly diffused throughout the child's entire education, in order to be solid and effective. Not a moment of the hours of school should be left without religious influence. It is the constant breathing of the air that preserves our bodily life, and it is the constant dwelling in a religious atmosphere that preserves the life of the youthful soul. Here are laid the primitive principles of future character and conduct. ”

“ 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 ”

“ If we may judge from a hasty inspection of classes, from the scope and skillful expression of thought in the graduating exercises, and from the testimony of teachers, a thorough and sufficiently extended education in all mental departments is given. Best of all, as the crown no less than the beginning of wisdom, the students, entering the school without special religious impressions, seldom leave it without becoming devoted Christians. ”

“ Yet it should be evident that how things are taught, even things which have no direct relation with religious teaching, makes all the difference to the effect of an education. The teaching as a whole must be Catholic or non-Catholic. You cannot make a school which shall not be the one or the other, any more than you can make a home which shall not be the one or the other. ”

“ As for a college education in divinity qualifying boys for "preaching the word", the absurdity of the conceit is manifest in the fact that the "college-bred divines" are all at variance among themselves upon its meaning. Call a convention of priests and preachers of all religious sects and parties, and assign to them the work of publishing a scriptural and unanimous reply to the simple question, What do the scriptures teach as the measure of faith, and rule of conduct, to him who would inherit the Kingdom? ”

“ 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. ”

“ Thousands of children are now regularly receiving instruction in our holy religion, and the enlightenment which comes from mental training. [9] Already one high-school has furnished a score and more of catechists and teachers; has produced three native young men, fit candidates for holy orders in the Church, who are preaching the Gospel to their own kith and kin in heathen darkness. ”

“ In religion theories have their uses, but the school of experience is the only school that can be relied upon for instruction in the mysteries and deep things of God. It often seems to me as if the Christian world, ministers included, were looking more to their creeds, and to one another, for their theology, than to the Word and the Spirit. ”

“ First, it is argued that however clearly religious may have been the origins and early nature of daily prayer and Bible reading, these practices today serve so clearly secular educational purposes that their religious attributes may be overlooked. I do not doubt, for example, that morning devotional exercises may foster better discipline in the classroom, and elevate the spiritual level on which the school day opens. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There were, are, and will be members of the Catholic Church, who, ignorant of science, of book-learning, did not become infidels, but exhibited a practical faith throughout life, and died in the odor of sanctity. Divine faith does not require as a companion, in the individual Catholic, a knowledge of profane literature, but humility, compunction, self-denial, and a contempt of the world. Schools are therefore not absolutely necessary for our children. ”

“ But now beside all that I have spoken of in the school, besides the bodily training and the teaching of the mind, there is a great deal else,—there is its Christian purpose, its chapel services: among its masters it has clergymen: out of its time something is taken to prepare you for Confirmation, to teach you the Bible, to collect you here for worship. What can we say for this? Is this right? Will this meet the same test, the test namely of providing that, and only that, which makes human nature grow as it should grow to be what it should be? ”

“ In every one of our schools the Bible is read, hymns sung, and prayer offered. The first thing is to teach them to read the Bible in the simple village school; then follows the Anglo-vernacular school for wider training; then the orphanages, to raise teachers and preachers; then the boarding and high schools; then comes the Christian college, male and female, for special training. Adding the theological seminary, we have thus amply provided for the wide Christian culture of our membership and ministry. ”

“ A great majority of the teachers of our common schools are professing Christians. Very many of them are among our most active Sabbath-school teachers. Now a truly godly man or woman, at the head of a school, though never speaking a word directly on the subject of religion, yet by the power of a silent, consistent example, exerts a continual Christian influence. In the second place, as a matter of fact, direct religious teaching is not entirely excluded from our public schools. I think, it by no means holds that prominent position in the course of study which it should hold. ”

“ They should place them under the tuition of those who will teach them the principles they are employed to teach, and not instil [l] into their minds those things that will lead them to destruction. The catechism for children, exhibiting the prominent doctrines of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, should be in every family, school and Bible class. ”

“ The Catholic view of the school question is as clearly defined as it is well known. It rests upon the general ground that man is created for a supernatural end, and that the church is the divinely appointed agency to help him to attain his supreme destiny. If education is a training for completeness of life, its primary element is the religious, for complete life is life in God. Hence we may not assume an attitude toward the child, whether in the home, in the church, or in the school, which might imply that life apart from God could be anything else than broken and fragmentary. ”

“ I have remarked on the strictly classical character of the school; but, after all, if one learns only one good thing well, one wishes to know others, and can teach one’s self. Then, classics have another advantage: Horace alone can make a gentleman. But what is more remarkable than all the other omissions in the school is, that the boys were never, individually, taught a word of religion. When it is remembered what a powerful influence the wealth of the clergy exercises, one must pause in wonder over the fact of religious teaching being a thing unknown. ”

“ Even the very fact that many of the teachers in the Public Schools are good Catholics, is no recommendation whatever for these schools, for it matters nothing, absolutely nothing, whether the teacher be Catholic or not; according to law, no teacher is allowed to explain a single dogma of Catholic faith. Now the dogmas of our holy faith have been revealed, and, in order to be known, they must be taught. Ordinarily speaking, education is necessary to learn and preserve the faith. ”

“ For, while other students are spending their days and their nights on the ancient classics of Greece and Rome, the student who is to be a minister is buried in the Psalms, in the Gospels, and in the Epistles. While the student of law is deep in his commentaries and his cases, the student of divinity is deep in the study of experimental religion. And while the medical student is full of the diseases of animals and of men, the theological student is absorbed in the holiness of the divine nature, and in the plague of the human heart, and, especially, he is drowned deeper every day in his own. ”

“ Not only will this method require less strain and compulsion on our part, but it will result in more uniform churchgoing, attention to devotions, and the overcoming of temptation.
The age for habit forming.—The principle, then, is simple and clear. At the beginning of the child's contact with the church school he cannot grasp the broader and deeper meanings of religion ”

“ We occupy this position in the name of God, in order that we may preserve and disseminate that truth which gives salvation to the human race; and God demands diligence both on the part of teachers and pupils. We must enter the school with the same feelings with which we enter the temple, namely, that we desire to learn and communicate divine things. If any man enters the school merely to acquire a portion of knowledge, which he may use for gain or empty ambition, let such an one remember that he is desecrating the holiest temple of science. ”

“ Let a stranger, say an educated Pagan, enter one of our public schools; will he discover sign, symbol or token of any kind to indicate that either the teacher or children are Christians? Or suppose this Pagan, or a Turk, or Atheist sends children there to be educated, they can do so with perfect safety to their Pagan, Mohammedan, or infidel superstitions or opinions. They will not, through the whole course of instruction, hear a prayer, a lecture, or a single advice, lesson, or precept of the Church ”

“ Most theologians grow up from infancy under a system of doctrines inculcated both from the pulpit and in the family. This enlists all the strong and inveterate influences of early education in its favor. Next, the collegiate pulpit instructions and associations all favor the same system. Next, the theological school brings the young under the direct training of the most acute minds, whose express business it is to teach all methods of supporting and defending that system. ”

“ A teacher that is not in the habit of questioning persistently and searchingly can have no idea of the depth and at the same time the shallowness of the religious thinking of the average scholar. Far too many teachers prove everything by quoting the inspired Bible, taking it for granted that their scholars accept the Bible as inspired; or by referring to our divine Saviour, taking it for granted that their scholars believe Christ to be a divine Saviour. Our scholars are more shrewd than that. ”

“ But the necessity of sending a child to a pagan school, because otherwise it could not be properly educated, did not settle the question whether it was prudent, or even right, for a Christian in afterlife to study pagan literature ”

“ Whether the ardour for literature, for which the students of this university were distinguished, has abated in the same proportion, I cannot determine; but I am informed, that by far the greater number of the young men who now attend the university, are designed for the priesthood, and apply to the study of divinity as a science, for comprehending and preaching the mysterious parts of which, a very small portion of learning has been observed to succeed better, than a great deal. ”

“ 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. ”