32.

INSTITUTION OF THE PARENTAL STATE.

For by the necessitous condition to which man was exposed, and in which he was brought into contact with outward nature, he had the opportunity afforded, nay, the necessity imposed upon him, of becoming conversant again with the laws of his Maker, against which he had rebelled. He had had access to them in their highest perfection and fulness, inasmuch as he was admitted to the divine presence, but having rejected them, he was incapacitated for approaching them in any other manner than as they are displayed at the very lowest stage in earthly existence. But what most immediately refers to our present subject, is what is most profanely called the curse upon woman,' viz.—the establishment of that sacred relationship between parent and child, which was the principal of the means of restoration appointed by God at that period. To this relationship no allusion whatever is made previously to the fall, and it is, therefore, highly probable that it was not intended in the primitive state of man; at least, it cannot, without a most gratuitous assumption, be asserted that it was. The supposition that it was not intended, is not only more conformable to the scriptural account, but it receives an additional weight from the fact, that the establishment of that relationship has a definite object, which could not possibly exist before the fall, but which was, most immediately and indispensably, required subsequently to that event.

After the fall, man was in a state, in which the knowledge of himself was of all things the most necessary to him, and at the same time that which he would most anxiously avoid. His nature was vitiated, and the first step to its

curse from thee upon the ground. This specious support of a profane view of one of the most important parts of Scripture falls, however, soon to the ground, if we compare the use of the word in other passages. We shall then find that both as a preposition and as a conjunction, it conveys the idea, with a view to, with the purpose, by reason of, on account of. So, for instance, in Gen. xxvii. 4; 2 Sam. x. 3, and in 1 Sam. xii. 22, in which latter passage the context, "The Lord will not forsake his people for his great name's sake," altogether precludes the idea of transition.

ITS MERCIFUL PURPOSE.

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restoration was the knowledge of its vitiated condition. Where then should he acquire this knowledge?-In whom should he observe the baneful effects of his rebellion? In himself?-But self-love, the very root of his sin, would for ever prevent him from taking of his own nature that impartial view, which would have rendered him hateful to himself. Or was he to study the vitiated nature of man in his fellow-creatures, in his equals? But the same cause which deterred him from self-examination, would render him blind likewise to the faults of his fellow-creature, as long as their effects did not encroach upon his own wishes and desires. As soon, on the contrary, as he would feel himself wounded by them, his eyes would be opened; yet, acute as his sight might henceforth be in discovering them, he would not be able to make correct observations, from the excitement of his passions, of his feelings of wrath and vengeance, which would inevitably be called forth on those occasions. Thus, then, we see, that, neither from the observation of himself, nor from that of his equals, man could come to that knowledge of his nature which was the first and indispensable condition of his being ever rescued from his vitiated condition. To exhibit that nature and that condition before his eyes in a being different from himself, and at the same time in a manner which would not arouse his hostility, and thus to enable him to take of it a view at once impartial and unimpassioned, this was the great object for which the relation between parent and child was established. In his own offspring, as it were the miniature likeness of himself, he was able to perceive the same seeds of moral corruption, by which his own nature was infected; and while, on one hand, his observation was as much as possible freed from the bias of self-love, he was, on the other hand, induced, by the interest which an innate feeling of his heart taught him to take in the condition of so helpless a being, altogether thrust upon his mercy, to meditate on the causes of its wretchedness and of its perversity, and to penetrate more and

D

4

34

OUR FATHER IN HEAVEN.

more deeply into the mysteries of its state, till at length he discovered, to his astonishment, that in the nature of his child, he had read the deeply hidden and carefully disguised secrets of his own breast. Moreover, his endeavours to counteract, in the child, the growth and the manifestation of the evils which he observed in him, as they required the exercise of a nobler and holier power than his own vitiated nature was possessed of, subjected him, in his agency upon the child, unconsciously to the internal operations of that divine life and power, the rule and guidance of which he had rejected for himself; and, at the same time, the position in which he found himself thus, with reference to his child, as law-giver, chastiser, instructor, and corrector, was the most admirable practical illustration of the new dispensation, under which he himself was placed by God. Conformably to this, we find that, in his perfect manifestation of himself through Jesus Christ, God chose the relationship, primitively ordained by him with a view to man's restoration, as an image, under which to represent his own relation to the Saviour, and, through his mediation, to the whole human kind.

If this be the view which we take of that important subject, and I do not see how we can, consistently, either with the account of Genesis, or with the whole tenor of Scripture, take any other, in what a different light does education appear! Where is now the curse-where the burden? It is an untenable ground of argument against this position to say, that education has actually been felt by man as a curse, and as a burden. Be it so; although I should be inclined to think, that there may be some exceptions to this general state of feeling. Yet supposing, for argument's sake, it were felt by every parent and every teacher, as a curse, and as a burden only, what would this prove but that man has contrived, in this instance, as in so many others, to turn into a curse that, which God intended for a blessing. There is not one of the good gifts which come from above, that has not been, in some way or other

EDUCATION MADE A CURSE.

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more or less extensively, turned, by the perverse spirit of man, into a source of misery and suffering, and into an occasion of sin to himself. But all this, I repeat it, can only prove the perversity of man, and leaves the original purpose of God unchanged, as in itself, so for every one that chooses to receive the gift, in the spirit in which it was given. So in education: whilst it is but too certain that by far the majority of parents feel it as a curse and as a burden, every one is free to convert it into the greatest blessing to himself and others, by handling it in a right spirit. If the oversight of God's purpose in it have been productive of much evil, as I shall be able to prove to you that it has, we have on the other hand the comfort of knowing, that it may become also a source of much good. Let us for a moment compare the position of a parent or teacher, who considers it in the former light, with the condition of one, who takes the latter view of it, and we shall soon find practical confirmation of the correctness of our principle.

As regards himself, the parent or teacher who considers education as a curse and as a burden, deprives himself of one of the richest and purest sources of information concerning his own character. Wherever his feelings are at variance with those of the child, he takes for granted that the fault must be with the child; acting up to this his persuasion, he increases the causes of discrepancy of feeling, and, by a consequence morally inseparable from such conduct, hardens himself in his own blindness. What might have been for him an ample means of self-improvement, thus becomes a source of constant irritation and annoyance, which both, deteriorate his mòral state, and obscure his apprehension of truth and of the nature of things. The injury which he inflicts upon himself is, however, but half the mischief he does. If he choose to make education a curse and a burthen to himself, that is his own business; but where is his commission to render it so to the child, who has no remedy against this perver

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HOW TO BE MADE A BLESSING.

sion of the divine purpose? There is in the child an innate feeling, bearing witness of that purpose, and apprizing the child that it is destined to imbibe and to diffuse happiness and joy. Hence the loving and inexpressibly endearing smile, with which the unconscious infant greets those to whose care it is committed, a sacred trust: hence that unsuspecting confidence, that unrestrained openness of feeling, with which children are generally inclined to abandon themselves to the guidance of those, with whom they associate their earliest impressions, and the mysterious and attractive reminiscences of dawning self-consciousness. All these pure and tender outlines of a divine influence and impulse, which might, by the delicate touch of an education conducted in a Christian spirit, be perfected into the full image and stature of faith, are however distorted or obliterated by the coarse hand of a despotic, presumptuous, unfeeling, and regardless tuition! Alas! that ever a parent's eye should be so blind to those heavenly beams of love, whose purple streaks are shed over the nursling's countenance, indicating the approaching rise, within its soul, of the sun of everlasting life; that ever a parent's hand should be so unhallowed, as to thrust back into the darkness of wrath, the being that was born to see the light of love!

How different would be the fruits of our education, if we had humility, wisdom, and love enough to acknowledge and to kindle that spark of life in the child !-if we knew how to establish a holy sympathy between the child and ourselves, and upon the ground of this sympathy, to make education a course of mutual improvement! How differently must a child feel in the hands of a parent, or teacher, who is guarded in his mode of proceeding by a severe watchfulness, not over the child only, but likewise over himself, by a careful attention to the motives from which he acts, as well as the effects which he produces, and by a consciousness that God has appointed him to the important duty of educating his child, with a view to give him an opportunity