EDUCATION: ITS TRUE PROYINGE THE FORMATION OF INDIVIDUAL CHARACTER. A LETTER TO THE RT. HON. WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE, M.A. M.P. By EDWARD MONRO, M.A. INCUMBENT OF HARROW WEALD, MIDDLESEX. OXFORD: JOHN HENRY PARKER, AND 377 STRAND, LONDON. MDCCCXLIX. LONDON*. PRINTED rlV I, F.VEV, ROBSON, AND FRANK TAN, Great New Street, Fetter Lane. KAT5.«- r* jr* EDUCATION, ETC. MY DEAR SIR, 1*3 si $ Having been requested to arrange, in a form more suited to the public eye, a few observations I had printed on education for a specific and local purpose, I am anxious to do so by addressing them to yourself. Remarks on education have become in this day trite and proverbial, and to offer any thing which wears the face of originality is almost a hopeless task. The ever-varying form, however, of human nature will invest perhaps with a certain freshness any statements which are the result of even the smallest experience in her school, and the frequent contem- plation of youth will suggest ideas as to its treatment which may not be useless. It seems that the regarding education as the cultivation of the intellect, and an acquiring accom- plishments alone, is a mistake into which educators have very frequently fallen ; or if they have gone a step farther, it is scarcely beyond the addition of the formation of the taste to the above attainments. The creating distinct and strong moral habits — the close study of individual character — the watching minute traits, and striving to discover for what ends they were made and implanted, do not seem to have B f 45039 2 )// been objects contemplated in the education of the day. The consequence is, that the intellectual and rational powers are strengthened and sharpened, and that is all; no moral impetus is given — no moral habit formed — no food supplied for the exercise of those powers when brought into operation. They are left to find their own support ; and it is needless to say how often they imbibe poison, not food. Whereas true education surely should influence the will, and give it right tendencies — should form moral habits and direct the taste — should not be satisfied with bringing out works from the human machine of the highest capa- city, but rather should aim at placing a main-spring on those works, and giving them an impetus in a right direction. The true subject-matter of education is the heart, more than the intellect. Many causes may account for the absence of a more exact and individual mode of education. It takes time and trouble, and cannot be easily applied by one man to a large number. Besides which, it pre- vents the arrangement of children in classes, over which one system of management will be effective, and the dispensing with which involves considerable effort. But education cannot be education, in a true or high sense, without this. It appears from any ob- servation of our nature, that each man is placed here with certain strong tendencies, capacities, cha- racteristics, and constituent parts, all tending to a given point, which point they will reach only by being brought out, exercised, and disciplined. Those ends of their existence are a work for the Church here, to enable us to fill a place in God’s great system upon earth, and to fit us to occupy the position 3 prepared for us above, by the perfection and dis- cipline of our own individual character. But what- ever the end intended may be, it is clear that, while all these propensities and tendencies are unheeded, while all are cut by one rule, while the same system is observed towards the reserved and the open, the innocent and the penitent, the cold-hearted and the affectionate, the result must be, that the whole cha- racter will be dwarfed and stunted ; nay, more than this, that it will actually deteriorate, from the mere fact of having vast and violent propensities left with- out a fitting object for their application, or a safety- valve for their exhaustion ; the result of which will be, that they will flow back on the moral constitu- tion, and obstruct and hinder whatever wholesome developments may be in process. The waste of human character must be appalling under this kind of method. We can hardly imagine what the effect might be of a close and accurate study of these inward indications and tendencies; how much, by God’s grace, it might enable us, with the aid of the expansive and elastic system of the Church, to bring out high and great men ; in short, how many might have reached an exalted condition, if only their pro- pensities had been watched, and their particular lines attended to. As it is, it frequently happens that, in the course of a few neglected years, there is scarcely a trace left of those paths which in childhood or youth so plainly pointed at distinct and elevated ends. We may exemplify this in some such case as was suggested above. Take a boy whose mind is naturally irreverent, and deficient in religious aspi- rations, with perhaps a rationalising cast, and place 4 before him high motives, expect from him high acts : the effect will be to create disgust in him, confirm the predisposition to scepticism, and in- spire a settled distaste for religion ; and in the end you will probably have to discard him altogether, owing to his confirmed opposition to all that is right. But apply to that character a method suited to his capacities ; approach him on lower grounds — grounds which he will acknowledge — appeal to him as a rational being, and, if possible, avoid so bringing forward high motives as to create a conscious repug- nance in his mind, by which his aversions will be- come strengthened ; address to him what he does acknowledge sympathy with, and you will gradually lead him on till his whole tone has become elevated, and high aspirations developed. It is manifest that such a process as this will require great patience and close observation ; but without great patience, such a boy as this will be (as thousands have been) cast aside, though clearly there are elements of character in him which were intended to be educed, and which would, if attended to, have enabled him to fill that place in God’s scheme for which he was born. In every one there are those first seeds of natural character and baptismal grace, which, if duly cultivated, will produce that perfect Form which the individual was intended to become, but which, if neglected, will gradually dwindle out, to his temporal and eternal ruin. Again : take other examples. In every set of boys, there will probably be one who is naturally ambitious, and conscious of an inward yearning after the attainment of influence, and the capacity 5 for achieving that object. There will be, perhaps, by his side, a boy of an opposite cast altogether, whose chief inclination tends towards ease, quietness, and irresponsibility, with probably a vein of vanity and trifling conceit about him. It would clearly be a mistake to treat these two under the same system : if it were one that suited the latter boy, it would in- jure the former ; since the necessary check that should be given to the self-confidence and indolence of the one, would, when applied to the natural yearnings of the other, produce a baneful effect — it would either check the whole impulse, which was intended to have a vent, or that impulse would direct itself into another channel — would influence for evil, instead of for good — would spend its powers in corrupting schoolfellows, instead of in receiving discipline and strength, by which it might hereafter benefit mankind ; or perhaps it would find for itself a sphere of apparent usefulness, misguided, and probably mistaken. We must guide tendencies, or they will guide themselves ; any thing like an enlarged scheme of education or Church discipline must find a place and scope for every class of character and energy ; nothing must be neglected which has a trace of God’s creative or regenerating hand upon it, since each trait of disposition is, as it were. His finger pointing in one direction, with the words : “ This is the way ; walk ye in it.” We might instance another case. There are dis- positions in which love and affection are so powerful, that, if appealed to, they will lead the child to almost any acts of obedience and patience. These tendencies should be noticed and directed ; it would be absurd to treat a boy possessed of these feelings, and one 6 who was destitute of them and unconscious of any of the kind, in the same manner. The power of love is placed in the disposition for the sake of being acted on, and made the instrument of good to the possessor ; and that in such degree, that, if neglected, it will be- come a curse rather than a blessing. Such a boy yearns for an object on which to bestow his power of affection ; he very likely found it in a parent or bro- ther at home ; but that home once left, he too often seeks for it in vain in school or in the world. The educator may become the object ; he may place him- self as the point which may receive and exhaust that affection ; he may work through it as a most power- ful means of reaching the final end in the education of the youth, the attainment of obedience and disci- pline. Such feeling, once evoked and worked through, becomes an instrument of indescribable power, far, in- finitely far, beyond the influence of fear and terror. The eye of the teacher may become the index of his mind and feeling towards the boy ; a glance may impart forgiveness, and receive in return the reci- procal expression of satisfaction, obedience, and peace. It would be quite impossible to use the same treat- ment in the same way towards a boy of cold and un- amiable disposition ; he would neither understand nor thrive under the process ; it would take the shape of the worst of unreality, and create disgust and aver- sion. Simplicity and guilelessness of character need, in the same way, the most anxious study and careful management. While in most characters you have to create consciousness and self-confidence, in the sim- ple you have continually to be on your guard, lest 7 you give a consciousness which will be far inferior to the existing condition of instinctive goodness. In short, the educator must be guided by nature in the choice of his weapons and the mode of his at- tack, and not blind his eyes to all natural hints, and, by fusing all traits of disposition into one, apply one sys- tem as the panacea for every moral evil. While certain points of the moral constitution will be the better for an expansive and united system, other parts require the most delicate, minute, and critical care. Any true plan of education must re- cognise and act on both of these principles. In any number of boys there will be found as many different characters as there are individuals ; and the more each is watched and brought out, the more apparent will the difference become : these manifest hints of nature are not to be passed by ; it is acting in direct opposition to the only guiding hand we have in this matter, to take no notice of such tendencies. It is impossible to apply the same rule to the naturally vain and the naturally diffident, to the energetic and the indolent, to the truthful and the equivocating, to the youth possessed of high spiritual aspirations and to him who is scarcely open to the appeal of the lowest reason, to the strongly sensual and to the pure and intellectual ; the same teaching, the same discipline, « the same words, the same reproof, the same encou- ragement, may destroy the one and save the other. Another essential mistake has been made in the working of education, resulting from the idea on which men have acted, of the entire corruption of each part of the whole human being. Some men 8 appear to think that our nature is so utterly vitiated, that there is not one high or good feeling left to which we can hope successfully to appeal. Among other evil results of which view is, the impression that cor- rection can never be applied to the moral character, except forcibly and against the will of the recipient. The higher, truer view is, that there are distinct leadings to good in every one ; if not, we ignore baptismal regeneration and the image of God in man. While there is a witness of the Divine Being within us, we must appeal to that witness ; while there is a response to the invitation to wisdom, we must strive to gain it ; while the moral ear is left, we must address it ; and if there be aught in bap- tismal grace, God has a witness in every heart and a response in every soul. The object of true edu- cation must be to work through these inward agents and advocates for good. No man is left without God’s witness ; consequently the educator should always appeal, if possible, to the inw r ard approval of good ; and that appeal should be suited in proportion to the degree and kind of good which is inherent in the educated. If the boy be open to a high sense of holiness and devotion, let the educator address that sense ; if, as suggested above, the irrationality and misery of a sinful course be the highest view the boy is able to take, he must found his claim to his attention on that inw'ard conviction. Let him be real, honest, and earnest in his claim upon his ear, and there is scarcely a boy on earth, unless he has been allowed to go to ruin already, who will not listen. Goodness, in spite of all corruption, does recommend itself to every man’s 9 reason ; no one admires vice as such, and for its own sake. Baptismal grace and Conscience are still au- thoritative voices within us ; and to pass them by as if they were not so, is a distinct act of unbelief and irreverence. With this view the educator should, if possible, gain the consent of the boy’s will to each step in the process of education ; for instance, let his attainment of knowledge be founded either on his sense of duty, or his appreciation of the intrinsic value or interest of such knowledge ; let his religious acts be, if possible, regarded in the light of privileges more than duties ; let his will, if it be possible (and it is possible), consent even to the reception of punish- ment, viewed in the light of a chastisement corrective of evil, and aiding to the attainment of real happiness. I do not hesitate to say, and I speak it from experience-, that most boys will go through threefold the actual privation of bodily pleasure, and the endurance of per- sonal discipline, under the idea that these punishments are pleasing to God, and really preparing them more for that condition to which every high feeling within calls them, than they would if they viewed it simply as acts of external restraint, having no reference to their real well-being. Surely every view of punishment we gain from holy Scripture is of this nature. Let the educator, if possible, apply it in the position of a father and of a spiritual guide rather than of a school- master ; let him shew the boy that he sorrows with him, not that he triumphs in the possession of power over him ; and that while he suffers with him in his fault, he will not rejoice till penitence and correction be complete. The boy will realise a confidence in his guide, will actually trust him, and so consent to 10 his punishment that a blessing will be diffused over his whole moral being. I do not fear to assert, that there is not one boy in a hundred who is not open to this method of dealing. The fact is, boys have been too often made to feel that they are mere machines, butts for the exercise of arbitrary power, and that they were taught by those who had interested motives only in the work, and no real concern in their temporal or eternal welfare. In the exercise of the one method, I believe boys will cheerfully go through the highest acts of suf- fering without resistance, whereas, under the other, they will scarcely consent to the least expression of authority without compulsion ; the result of which latter is, that a double character is produced, — a con- scious desire to be free from what is an irksome re- straint, a continual smothering of every little whisper which seems to recognise the truth of the plan adopted ; instead of (which is quite possible) the mind of the boy and his teacher being carried in one channel, so that the closest of unions is realised, and the deepest reciprocity of affection gained. There will, of course, be exceptions to this rule, and cases which will require force and coercion, where the consent of the will cannot be gained ; but these exceptions will be com- paratively few. The reason for all this, which was referred to above, seems plain. The child is, of course, by Baptism, a born saint, possessed of a heart which is continually, till sin has ruined it, suggesting holy desires, counteracting the evil suggestions of an original nature, and struggling to rise through all obstacles, as water to its level : he must, there- 11 fore, be treated as ever under the influence and direct guidance of the Blessed Spirit. Take this for granted, and expect to find in him such rela- tionship ; the whole process of his education will be affected, and in many respects materially altered by it from that which we find so commonly in use. If a child is treated as a matter of course as wicked, it tends to make him so ; he forms his view of himself to a great degree from what he sees the opinion of him to be ; and having once discovered that he is sus- pected and distrusted, and expected to act wrongly, he will become accustomed to that idea of himself, and shape his own conduct on the type thus presented to his mind’s eye. It is a truth in human nature, that children and the great mass of mankind have but little knowledge of their own characters and dispositions, and quickly form that idea about themselves which is suggested by the conduct of others towards them. They see themselves, as in a mirror, in the treatment they receive ; they become accustomed to a view of them- selves borrowed from without, and on that view they act; they see it is taken for granted they will do wrong, and think they therefore must do wrong ; they lose self-respect, and with that a large portion of the desire to do right. It is remarkable to observe how ♦ much a man’s opinion of himself affects his conduct ; how much he tests his acts and motives by the standard of himself ; and this being true, it is of the first importance to let a child see we expect good of him and not evil, truth not falsehood. In fact, it is an act of real irreverence to approach with any other feelings one who has received regenerating Baptism, 12 and claims God as his Father. Not only does the taking for granted that a child will do wrong accustom him to the thought of it, but often it will actually suggest the sin we profess to correct. It is impossible to see fully how withering, how depressing and ruinous to the moral condition of a boy it is for him to dis- cover that he is never treated with respect. Give him free scope, trust him, take for granted God’s Spirit does speak within him, expect to find him holy and good, and he will realise to himself that he occupies a firm ground on which to exercise his inward ten- dencies ; his character will develope itself in that direction towards which his feelings guide him, and he will return to his educator that confidence he has received ; and it will be his delight to shew that that trust has not been misplaced. There is an impression, and not an unnatural one, that this close observation and guidance of boys’ natural tendencies will unnerve the vigour of the constitution, and destroy manliness of cha- racter. It is perfectly true, that where treatment of this kind is adopted partially, and without being fully and consistently applied in each and every part, this will be the result, and boys will become unhealthy from a continual tendency to self- consciousness and an over-dependence on others ; but this fault will reside in the educator, and the im- perfect method in which his scheme has been applied and worked. A priori, we have no right to expect such will be the result, and experience in the few instances in which we have the power to read it, shews us that it need not be the case. Our original 13 creation contemplates the gradual approach to a state higher than that in which we are born ; that per- fect condition, or the nearest approach to it which we can reach, must be attained by the application • of each constitutional element of the character to its proper object. The subject of those tendencies cannot do the work for himself, he needs an edu- cator ; and the work of that educator is the judicious and close application of each part to its true end. The human being falls short of attainable perfection if the working out of one such constitutional germ be overlooked, and the youth thus neglected feels the loss of it throughout his after life. “ The child is father to the man.” We have no right to expect that the true aim of nature in the whole man is attained till the completion of this work on each of his powers, and in that completion will consist true manliness. The aim of nature cannot be imper- fect, and if the effort to work out her hints results in an imperfect character, the fault must lie with the educator. Manliness and energy of character must, of necessity, be the points in the human being to which nature, as a whole, tends. It has often happened that men who have used the kind of system advocated above, have worked it par- tially, — have allowed many of the seeds of the charac- ter to remain in an undeveloped condition, forgetting that the human mind which is incompletely educated is in a condition inferior to that which has received » no education at all. The rough, uncultivated bold- ness of a savage will be more striking than the effeminate enervation of a half-formed youth. The former, left with no attempt at individual training 14 or direct care, presents a feature of severity which is agreeable to the mind, when seen by the side of the contrast we have referred to above. Imperfect forms suggest the idea of failure, which is not sug- gested where no effort appears to have been made. But the perfect work of education will effect some- thing of a far higher stamp ; and manliness com- bined with religion, generosity disciplined by per- sonal denial, independence leavened by humility, will be more truly great and admirable results than we are often in the habit of contemplating. There is nothing abstractedly great or admirable in the youth who despises his mother — who denies any consciousness of a tender affection to the brother and companion of his childhood — who utters an oath to a schoolfellow, and laughs at saintliness of character evinced by acts of holiness and watchful- ness. Still some men have fallen into the habit of admiring all this; and even the good will some- times wink at its grossness, or admire its seeming vigour and manliness, simply because this kind of result has been seen in contrast with systems of education, which, from their imperfect working, have resulted in producing a dwarfed and hypocritical character. And since any thing approaching to hypocrisy and meanness is despicable and odious, men will sometimes admire what is only good by contrast, and mistake it for abstract perfection. Any thing morbid, affected, or unhealthy in moral development, is odious ; and nothing so tends to pro- duce these as a partial effort to cultivate the moral constitution. We could not bear intense light ; it would be painful, not pleasing. We need shadows ; 15 and certain elements of character brought out, to the exclusion of others, produce actual injury, and a painful effect. Religious life in boys has continually resulted in an affected and restrained manner — an unhealthy and morbid exterior — the absence alike of the reality of the Christian, the cheerfulness of the boy, or the generosity and openness of the youth ; and this result has been attributed to the effort at re- ligious life at all ; while the fault does not lie here, but in the mode in which religious education has been attempted, either by applying a system utterly alien to the character ; as, for instance, the attempt to graft habits suited to the Italian mind on an English youth ; or by such injudicious attention to the individual case as tends, by excessive cultivation, to produce in the subject a manner full of conscious- ness, vanity, and unreality. I have thus tried to shew the need of the parti- cular study of individual character in education, made the more important from the fact of our regenerate condition ; and to answer an objection often raised, founded on the dread of the formation of an unreal and over-conscious exterior. There are one or two further points, to which I would refer, affecting com- monly adopted modes of education. It is important to consider the delicacy with which the principles of love and fear should be applied in education. There is no essential advan- tage in compulsion, nor is there any superiority in the obedience which results from coercion exercised on an unwilling subject, over that which is pro- duced by the spirit of love. Corporal punishment is 16 a necessary evil, and must be acknowledged to be so by those who count it needful. It appeals to inferior principles and feelings within us ; feelings which are not intended to be called into play until those of a higher order have been appealed to un- successfully. The genuine love produced by grati- tude, sympathy, or admiration, the love of appro- bation, respect for the approval of the good, are all of them feelings which rank higher than those of fear and shame ; and where these are used, the result on the general moral character will be, to produce a very much more elevated tone than is produced by these latter principles. This lower order of moral feelings is placed in us to effect the work which higher ones cannot ; but to prefer the former is inverting the order of nature. It really seems wonderful that men should prefer working by means of inferior instru- ments. Contrast the two characters which will be the effect of these contrasted systems. In the one case, we shall find a hoy viewing his instructor in the light of a natural enemy and an object of terror, instead of feeling towards him as one whose very presence inspires confidence and affection : his object will be to avoid and shun him, and to form a double life, a two-faced existence, one which may be assumed to meet the eye of him whose disapprobation is a matter of terror, but whose regard is undesired and unaimed at ; the other face will be his real one, which he presents to his schoolfellows, and which expresses his true self. There can be no advantage in a double character ; it is and must be an essential evil. 17 This feeling existing towards the instructor, a distaste is created for all the subjects in which he is brought into connexion with him — knowledge be- comes uninteresting, and all study insipid. The very ► objects which should excite the keenest interest, and would do so, if not placed before the attention in a mode which inspires aversion and distrust, become * dull and irksome. There may be a certain apparently rough manli- ness produced by this treatment ; but is this to be gained at the cost of all the higher and better parts of the human character, — confidence, generosity, and truth ? Besides which, the contrary mode of dealing is perfectly consistent with all we can desire of severity and vigour of mind. One result of this state of things will be repre- sented by the following illustration : — A boy comes to school with every holy feeling in embryo, encrusted in natural diffidence and boyish reserve ; he finds no one to sympathise with the faint efforts at expression which these latent feelings seek, since distance and fear have been at once established between himself and his teacher. It needs the deepest trust to en- able him to refer his feelings to another; and this trust is the last feeling which that distance has in- spired. The seed of good soon dies within him ; he feels repulsed, checked, and thwarted, instead of led on and encouraged ; and the calls to every vile sin and profligate course to which the open * vice of his schoolfellows invite him, find a ready response from a mind already prone to evil and conceived in sin. This boy, full of tender feelings of affection, of delicate respect, of a keen conscien- c 18 tiousness, which has been nourished with care by a parent’s hand at home, would still love the objects which naturally attract his affections, and still pay deference where it was due ; but he comes to school, and all these tendencies are crushed and blighted. i His affections for home and the ties of family be- come objects of ridicule ; he dare not express them ; he soon himself joins in the laugh against the very feelings in another which were laughed out of him- self ; and yet, strange to say, there is not one of the whole band of scoffers, or the object of their scorn, who does not feel himself inwardly conscious of the very same affections they are leagued to decry, and which, if taken singly, and transplanted from the soil of school, they would again express, and perhaps glory in. Where is the use of this un- reality — this mockery of the guiding hand of God within us ? There follows a stiff, restrained, formal demeanour before his superior, w'hich becomes the cause, as it has been the result, of suspicion, a natural aversion for his presence and control, a countenance which expresses, or but ill conceals, dislike, contempt, and an intention to deceive. It is rare that, through life, such a boy recovers any feeling of real regard for his master. He may look at him with a certain satisfaction, resulting both from the conviction that he is no longer in his power, and from the natural gratification every one feels in finding that he who has been the ob- ject of fear consents at length to recognise some common interest with him. But that is all. All this is unreal, false, and inferior. There is a higher condition for boyhood ; there are higher relations 19 which can be attained between the instructor and the taught. This is the effect of coercion, not of influence ; of fear, not of love ; it is a system of working through inferior motives, and appealing to # inferior principles. In the same way that very boy who would feel drawn towards the aged, the person in authority, or f the afflicted, with feelings of deference and respect, is induced to violate all these feelings, and to count himself worthy of his position as a boy, in propor- tion as he succeeds in damping and dwarfing them ; and this is the result of school-life generally ; and this heartless state of things, the absence of personal sympathy and affection in the educator has promoted. It does not follow that the allowing natural tenden- cies to come out will effeminate and weaken the cha- racter. It is morally impossible that the following out the very hints and guidings of the Divine creative hand in a child should injure and destroy that child’s mind. It must be manifest to the most heedless that Nature does not guide towards an end that is fatal to her own object. “ Nature does nothing in vain still less does she implant tendencies in her highest subject-matter, the human heart, without definite intentions of good to the final character. It cannot be that the heeding these internal traits, the permis- sion of affections, the full recognition of every more delicate feeling, should really injure or enervate the final whole ; it must be the fault of the educator if , this be the result ; either he has developed one germ without attention to others which are intended to blend and counterbalance, or he has treated them all unhealthily and unadvisedly. 20 No man can think it a right state of things for a boy to make a mock of, or at least to slight, those very sensations which, in his calm moments, he approves and thinks right. This must result in duplicity ; and the fault here does much rest with the mode in which education is worked. Is it not, as we said above, that men seem to have felt it a necessary part of education to inspire an awe and distance at the first beginning of intercourse ? And is not this a sign and confession of weakness and inability to achieve the object in view by the na- tural means. Respect and obedience are gained at once by moral worth and the dignity of goodness, added to the authority of position. The instructor who assumes a cold distance and stiff reserve to- wards his pupil seems to admit that he is too weak to work with real weapons, and that he must resort to the substitute of fictitious ones. What is the result? The loss of all ease and confidence at the time, and the nearly certain effect of indignantly bursting from restraint when a boy has seen through the flimsy veil, and found out the unreality of the adopted and fictitious power. The educator must have moral weight ; of course there must be offi- cial dignity and intense respect inspired by position, but these must in no shape be the substitute for weight of personal character. The attempt to make it so will result in a poor patchwork. It is an anomaly to speak of a man without moral weight attempting the work of education. There is nothing more ruinous to a boy than the discovery of having been deceived, or made a victim. 21 The result is to drive him into the worst excess of the opposite extreme to that from which it has been the educator’s aim to divert him. On the other hand, where a master makes a boy feel he cares for him and loves him, and does not shew a desire to create a distance between them — , where he inspires confidence and respect, by shewing a sympathy with every portion of a boy’s character, the character which will result will have a very dif- ferent complexion to the one described above. There will be an ease and freedom of manner, which always recommends itself to every lover of truth, and which is inspired by trust and a desire to be trusted, and, on the other hand, an absence of any over-intimacy and disrespect, from the real regard created by ap- preciation of motive and character. There will be a feeling that as no resistance is offered, as a matter of course no resistance need be opposed, and the de- sire to please will, from the very constitution of our nature, take the place of the desire to resist. The more irksome parts of study will become lightened, by their being new channels to the approbation of the instructor. Thus will a certain delicacy of refinement be produced, which only the appeal to high inward principle could produce; and an open- ness and freedom of face and eye, which can only » exist where there is perfect unity of character. There will not be the same excess of obsequious deference, because there will be no necessity to make efforts to shew what is known to exist. A boy will feel encou- raged to confide his most interior difficulties to his master, unhindered by reserve or shame, because he knows he will not meet with repulse and distance. 22 The sinful influence of companions will thus be- come counteracted by the far stronger one of the moral instructor and guide ; school will be divested of many of its worst and most alarming characteristics, and the embryo seed of Baptismal Grace will find a fitting soil for growth and perfection. The result that will be attained will be that of order without force, discipline from moral influence, not from com- pulsory control. It is only by such personal influence that the minute and delicate attention can be given which will check slight deviations to evil, without injuring or violating high and good feelings; which will carefully avoid giv- ing blame where blame is not deserved, and always give encouragement where encouragement is needed; which will equal the punishment inflicted on a sin with the amount of that sin itself, and shrink from treating as equally heinous the accidental destruction of property and a breach of the Eighth Commandment. Nothing is worse than to allow a boy to feel that he is unjustly blamed. He is conscious that the amount of blame is disproportioned, and this impression once created, soon works on to entire self-exculpation ; our evil na- ture is ready enough to shelter itself under plausible excuse ; the sinful heart uses no sound logic in the deductions it draws from the premisses offered, and entire self- exculpation is no uncommon conclusion arrived at from the premisses offered by dispropor- tioned blame. Of all species of correction, that which evokes the feeling of shame is, when misapplied, the most injurious. To call up the sensation of shame, when the intention of the youth has been good, when the fault is one of accidental carelessness or natural 23 infirmity, is of all mistakes the most fatal to true education. While misapplied blame is injurious, withheld encouragement and approval is equally so ; our natures often need encouragement as much as , check ; diffidence is as common as confidence ; dis- trust in possessed powers as frequent as overtrust in them. We often see these mistakes most fatal where * youths are urged in a course of work utterly alien to their taste and capacities, and yet judged by the standard of those who are proficients in it. The importance need hardly be pointed out of studying carefully the particular turns of each boy for the pursuits of after-life ; for manifestly that to which he has a direct tendency is the line by which he will probably most efficiently do his work as a member of the human society. By the help of this kind of discrimination, many feelings which are now poorly and meagrely gained through force, would spring up freely and spontane- ously ; and respect, obedience, courtesy, value for what was truly great, kindness, and self-denial, would be the natural offspring of the heart, and flourish with a health, a freedom, and an ease, which would present a striking contrast with the stiff and often hypocritical appearances of those which we so often see among youths of every rank in English so- ciety. Of course, this mode of dealing requires effort, labour, and trouble ; but what subject-matter on earth > so deserves that trouble as the mind of a Christian youth ? There is one object also which surely should be 24 kept especially in view in education, and that one which the practical teaching of the day, it is to be feared, but little recognises or aims at ; I mean, the preservation of baptismal innocence. Surely, it may be, that a boy has never left God since he left the font; has never wilfully persisted in the violation of conscience for one whole day ; holy Scripture, and the voice of the Church of all times, would lead us to expect this. And there can, I should ima- gine, be none who have with any attention studied human nature, who have not known cases where prayer had never been given up, where the slightest deviation from the narrow road was always repented of with real sorrow, and where the mind, which had never been darkened by the shadows of accustomed sin, was living on in unconsciousness, governed by Grace as by an instinct, and presenting an almost astonishing simplicity from the mere ignorance of sin. In expecting to find such characters, surely holy Scripture and every other authoritative voice would justify us ; and that such conditions do exist, the personal experience of many must have dis- covered. The blessing of such characters in and to the Church is incalculable ; and may-be the reason we have so few saints among us, and so little elevated purity of motive, is, that we have so little made it our object to discover, preserve, and cherish the inno- cence of boyhood. How appalling it is to think of the wreck there must take place of this condition of mind in our great schools, where, in a few days, the purity of a child, which has been hitherto preserved by a parent’s earnest care, is suddenly exposed to all 25 the diabolical influence of unblushing lust and unre- strained vice. The close and tender attention such cases require can hardly be known, except by those who are used ♦ to the work of a deep religious education. The need there is of due discrimination ; of caution, lest a consciousness should be produced where al- ready there is an instinct far above consciousness; the exceeding importance of avoiding the imputation of a fault where there was really none intended, and thereby destroying the exquisitely simple structure of the moral power : these are all parts in the process of the guidance of the innocent, which require the most calm, patient, and anxious attention, and freedom from those fearfully antagonistic principles which every large school presents. There will be a simplicity about this kind of cha- racter which will be most astonishing to an unprac- tised eye ; and that so childlike, as to lead to the impression that it must be affected : whereas it is, in truth, that childlike mind of which our blessed Lord has so awfully spoken as the essential Christian attri- bute. This spirit has been, in the darkest day and the most neglected condition, preserved, and has re- sulted in a similar character in the man to that which had begun in the child. How important it is that , such characters should be preserved and cherished for the Church, standing in such need as she does in this our day and this our land ! It is an alarming con- * templation, that. God’s work should be so marred, as it must often be, by neglect and carelessness on the part of those into whose hands the work has been 26 committed, and of whom, “ when He comes again,” He will require it. In the same way, there are features in the cha- racter of the penitent which need the calmest and closest attention and cai'e. There are intense * 3 yearnings after self-devotion and self-abnegation, strong desires to own utter worthlessness, in the hearts of boys who have fallen, which, if heeded, watched, and guided, may result in the intense love of St. Mary Magdalene or St. Peter; while, if left, as they generally are, to themselves, they will wear out presently, and, from the mere fact of their having existed, will leave the mind seven times worse than they found it. The force of ridi- cule, the impossibility of finding sympathy, the ignorance of the meaning of their condition, the natural reserve of boyhood, will all co-operate in raising a barrier which only the most anxious care can hope to destroy. How awful it is to think of these desires and feel- ings being implanted by God, with a command to His ministers and educators to heed them, and yet to know that, in nine hundred and ninety cases out of a thousand, they are never heeded, and, from neglect, never find that object which He intended them for! Of whom will they be required? Who will be responsible ? Surely those to whom the f charge has been given, “ Feed my lambs.” For although His Grace alone can effect this work, still it need not be shewn to any one that His Grace * operates ordinarily through channels which are in our hands, and for the use of which we are answerable. 27 It may be objected to all this, that the experience of the past has been sufficient to shew that boys will not bear the freedom of treatment which I have advocated, that they will abuse so large an amount of confidence, and that the attainment of any effective discipline will be incompatible with such a principle of , trust. But surely the answer may be given with truth, that it is but in few instances that this system has had fair play. So strong has been the impression that it will fail in attaining the desired object, that scarcely more than a few educators have had the courage to break through the limits imposed on them by prestige, and have taken for granted that the difficulty in adopting so liberal a process is insurmountable. A few instances are on record of singular suc- cess in the work of education, where that word has been taken in its highest sense, viz. the forma- tion of moral habits, and inducing the will to ad- mire and choose what is good, and to pursue it for its own sake. In each of these cases the slightest attention will shew, that in proportion as the work had been successful, it has been through the ap- plication of a strong personal influence, by the illus- tration of the inculcated principle in the life and conduct of the educator. The names of Arnold, Wordsworth, and Coleridge are still not only fresh * in memory, but represent, in some of the cases, men who are still living to give energy to their work. Most men who feel greatly indebted to a public school education will discover that that result was at least as much owing to the individual teacher as to the sys- tem ; or, to speak more truly, it was the system ap- plied and illustrated by the educator, that did its work. 28 There is in some minds a dread of the acknowledged principle of personal influence ; but systems the most perfect are, and must be, substitutes after all. They cannot have the elasticity of life ; they must be in- ferior in their power of working to the direct appli- cation of the human mind. They are substitutes, though, perhaps, necessary substitutes, where human infirmity, secondariness of purpose, and a thousand other incidents are taken into consideration. They must be viewed in the light of a code of laws and rules which are drawn up on the largest possible plan, and the best system will be that which admits of the largest elasticity consistent with discipline. But, after all, they do resolve themselves into rules made by men for the government of man ; so that, according to this view, we come to two kinds of edu- cation through the aid of personal influence : that which is struck out by the mind in immediate and direct collision with its object, and that which only reaches it through the medium of a code of rules which are professedly substitutes for a more direct intercourse. Take the schemes of education which have been invented and set afloat in different days by minds of the highest order, and which at times have been worked most efficiently, whether in colleges, schools, or other institutions more or less ecclesiastical ; we shall find that they did their work efficiently exactly in the proportion as they were in the hands of men, to work and apply them, who were adequate to their task ; and that there have been times when they have shrunk up into a mere barren and empty husk, without life or energy, — when they became 29 unreal, and their existence well-nigh the cause of irreverence, from the fact of their being extended to the cases of youths who, while embraced by an exalted system, were leading debased and depraved lives. 4 Of course, the individual must always work through a system for his own protection and defence ; he must reduce his own work to systematic and methodised if action — he will not work desultorily. But what is objected against here is, that which seems a prevail- ing tendency in the education of the day, that if a certain scheme is formed and set afloat, it will work itself out, even though little place or scope be given to individual influence. The life of true education is the personal influence and example of the teacher; and in support of this, I appeal to facts as well as to a priori reasoning. Facts — instanced in the cases of the palmy days of great schools, which have ever been the result of the great minds and exalted lives which immediately influenced them ; and a priori reasoning, — drawn from the expectation that the living mind must be better able to work on a fellow-mind than a set of rules, however elastic, well digested, and comprehensive. Personal influ- ence has always done the great work of the world, and it is to the power of living examples we attri- bute all the great movements, re-actions, and changes in the intellectual and moral creation. And if such changes are attributed to the existence, though well nigh dormant, of schemes invented ages ago, and > which have run parallel with the stream of human corruption, it will, I think, be seen that such systems have only really effected their purpose when they have been filled out by the lives and examples of the men 30 of a passing generation. I do not object to system — it is self-protective — but to its being considered as any thing more than a machinery through which the educator applies his powers, his principles, and his energies. It is hard to love abstractions, still harder for youths whose minds are undisciplined to love a mere frame-work, however beautiful ; we need some- thing more tangible and visible before we can wil- £ lingly love the path of discipline. It seems that the W'hole theory of God’s dealing with us recog- nises this truth, whether in our moral or social life. The parent influences the child, not the scheme of domestic rule ; this is to be used but as a substi- tute, and must recede in proportion as the parental influence can be brought into personal contact. Men must be governed by system when taken in the mass, simply because men cannot be brought into contact with individuals on the broad stage of life: the subject-matter of religion itself de- scended from abstracts when our nature was as- sumed by our Blessed Lord. It may be objected, men are fallible ; good men are few ; fitting men are fewer still ; there must be system which may outlive men, which may give per- manence, and be proof against changeableness, which may suggest truth to the mind, which might forget it. This is no doubt true ; but what I wish to urge is, that whenever such system exists alone or promi- nently, it should be looked upon merely as a for the time necessary substitute, acknowledging inferiority and weakness, and that the less it appears throughout the history of every work of guidance, government, or education, the better. 31 It will be objected, all this will place the educator in a dangerous position. It certainly does ; but is not every man who occupies a high office of trust in a dangerous position ? Is not the priest of the % Church in a place equally difficult ? and is that diffi- culty a reason for his deserting his post ? to which may be added the fact, that the greater proportion of ? educators are priests. It is true, beyond controversy, that he who undertakes the office I have suggested is in a place where every word must be weighed, and every action measured. But there is grace given ; and can any educator’s position be viewed indepen- dently of its relation to God’s aiding grace ? It is true that the chance of failure from false judgment, or from inconsistent life, is greater in the case of an individual than in that of a system. But in any fair average, is there not a greater amount of actual danger from the deadness of an antiquated system, than from the chances of an individual failure ? As a matter of experience, has the opposite plan been free of harm ? Have the systems of collegiate life, however good in their conception, prevented the walls within which they have been worked from wit- nessing the darkest profligacy, rebellion, and irrever- ence ? and has there not been a continual danger of sin, from the fact of the constant opportunities of- fered, through holy forms and holy services, to those who were leading unholy and reckless lives ? while, on the other hand, has not personal influence, when brought into play, always done its work in inducing goodness and morality ; and through scenes of vice, good men have w r alked, and shed light into the dark- est corners ? 32 I cannot feel that there is much force in any objection which might be raised, on the score of the evils which the fall of individual educators might cause. There must be infirmity in all human acts ; and, do what we will, we dwell daily amid the choice of evils. High responsibilities call out ener- gies and powers. Men become more elevated in life in proportion as they occupy high position : their standard becomes raised ; leaning on system tends to depress the man. We are so made, that we are induced to rouse ourselves in proportion as we are expected to rise. It is, of course, after all, but one step in a ladder towards the only really influ- encing power, God’s grace ; but w'e must ascend by degrees, and while human influence may be many steps short of the highest one, mere system is a step lower still. Every means is short of the highest one ; but if personal influence is to be suspected and thrust aside on the score of its being short of God’s grace, and its tendency to eclipse Him, the same may be said of every human effort. It is, after all, in this view, a question of degrees, and among these, personal influ- ence does but take a higher position than barren sys- tem. It is the educator who is in fault if he suffers himself to stand between God and the individual soul ; and, after all, the same will be seen in every form of administration in which human operation enters as a medium. It is perfectly true, the Church is herself in part a system ; but individuals, in one sense, give her active and effective life. She is the necessary channel of a greater grace, through her sacraments ; but they are beyond our present analogy, since they form a step in the ladder nearer to God than His 33 priest is ; but in other views of the Church system, it is undeniably true that her active energy has de- pended on the men who have ministered her offices, and swelled out her frame-work. ♦ The objection to personal influence reaches no further than to the fact that, however good, this mode of education is difficult of application, and so that where it cannot be worked, of course sys- tem must supply its place. But there is no valid objection in this to the principle of individual in- fluence in itself, but simply to the difficulty of its operation. It should be applied and carried out where it can be ; it must not be paralysed, and crippled, and discountenanced, merely because it is difficult of application. Let each educator use it in his own sphere, and apply it where he can — in the parochial school, in the boarding-house of the public school, in private tuition, and in the relation of the college tutor to the student, it has been, and I it can be, worked with full effect. Once tried by the few, it will soon be worked by the many ; the light of one man will be the fire from which twenty others will kindle their own lamps ; the idea once suggested, and the plan once seen as possible and successful, we little know how many are prepared to follow it. Men are hindered by imagined impossibi- l lities ; they need to be shewn that things are not im- possible. What man has done man may do. We must act more on faith ; we must be less deterred by appa- rent difficulties. God will bless ventures made for His sake, and against the probability of worldly success. We little know what store of Grace He has in His treasury reserved for a more energetic life and walk of D 34 faithful ministration. To the attentive eye the page of educational history is rife with vivid interest attached to names of men who, from time to time, have given life to sleeping systems — have raised by their ex- ample a depressed standard, and, by the application of a vigorous personal influence, given a new turn to the educational energy of their day. And noble is the field on which such an educator is called to play his part. The age of youth and child- hood is the great nursery, the vast treasure-house of the Church of future days; she has committed them to our care ; she wants all, she has a place for all, she has a work for all : the place must remain empty, the work must be unfulfilled, if her baptised children are not prepared to fill them. She needs the innocent, the penitent, and the disciplined. She has her work which only the inno- cent can do ; she has her place which only the disci- plined can fill. And the Church on earth is but the portrait of the Church of eternity ; there are various places there, and there are only certain of her children who can fill them. Those who were suited for a distinct sphere here, will probably find a similar one above. The Church wants all kinds and shades of dispo- sition to fill her places, and to do her service. The bold and the retiring, the loving and the calculat- ing, the energetic and the cautious, all alike have a sphere within her system. They are hers ; she sent them with these dispositions in germ, from the bap- tismal font, she sent them back to the world strength- ened and nourished by the Grace of the ever-blessed Spirit, and she said to ministers, parents, sponsors. 35 and teachers : “ Go, prepare these various cha- racters and traits to do my work hereafter.” And how little is it being done ! It is sad that human nature, though the greatest of all subject-matters, is H not more carefully considered ; and while the material and intellectual worlds are made the subjects of vast and accurate scientific arrangement, the moral state of man alone, by far the highest of all, is left to the most irregular treatment. The present day seems likely to present to our eye no small application of enlarged systems of edu- cation ; and already we have seen the effects of exam- ple set no long time ago working surely and safely on to a happy and hopeful end. The present seems the age of the regeneration of education ; the life of the boy at school points to a brighter destiny than it did in the days of our fathers. There is a vast heaving underground ; what it will result in, it is for other days to see ; that it should be watched and used by the Church is beyond controversy. The larger, deeper view of education, the applica- tion of individual influence, and the attempt to meet the most latent sympathies and yearnings of youth, are points which are now daily and successfully aimed at. It will be done by the Socialist and the teacher of here- , tical bias, if it is not done by the Church. It is no longer a matter of choice. The more effective mode is in use ; and if we do not apply it through our own machinery, we shall lose our standing. This is a day of close struggle ; every inch of ground must be con- tested ; and the nineteenth century is not the age in which any thing like unreality and superficial systems 36 will be tolerated. The same spirit is at work through every muscle and vein of our social and political body. Education will no more bear the continuance of the unreal than any other part of human govern- ment. It is not the day when disease, ignorance, or holy offices can be made the means of accumulating wealth and earning a livelihood. A clear and steady ray of light has pierced the deepest recesses of the home of society; and whether for good or for evil, each object is brought out in vivid colouring to the eyes of millions. The hand which weighs actions and motives, holds the scale with a firmness which past generations have not been accustomed to. May the Church take up her position ! It seems the day when all the powers of the world are on the march to occupy their portion of the ground on which they are to play their part in some near and impending struggle — a struggle from which no single portion of society will be excluded. Education will be one great weapon of the contest ; and if the Church is to do her work, it must be by wielding that weapon. It is true that many places seem unfurling her banner, and occupying in ber name their position in the educational field. Winchester and Eton are in many respects following the steps of the educational energy of a sister public school. We are justified in expecting to add Harrow to their number. The name of Uppingham is already reminding us of the latent power too long hidden within the walls of our old gram- mar-schools, and is raising the standard of a deep, religious, and real education. St. Columba and Radley shew us that the powder to create and give energy to the created system is reviving among us. We hail 37 with gratitude and joy all these tokens ; they are among the first sounds of the trumpet with which the Church among us seems preparing to rouse herself to take her stand ; and may we not sanguinely hope that | the re-echo of their notes will ere long tell us that in our great Universities, in all our public schools, and many a grammar-school long forgotten, men t are preparing to assert boldly their allegiance to the Church, and, by a close, anxious, and vigorous educa- tion, to send forth her children armed for the ap- proaching conflict, in which they shall either live to assert her principles, or die to defend her right. I remain, My dear Sir, Your faithful and obedient servant, EDWARD MONRO. Harrow Weald, March 26 , 1849 . To the Right Hon. William Ewart Gladstone, M.P. * 4 LONDON : PRINTED BY ROBSON, LEVEY, AND FRANKLYN, Great New Street, Fetter Lane.