EDUCATION. We have been waiting with a good deal of impatience for room to call the attention of our readers to the subject of education. Next to the gospel, this is the most important of human concerns and interests. We hope soon to have room for something on this subject interesting to our readers. Meanwhile we extract from the "Religious Herald" the following judicious remarks on a very useful question, viz: WHAT IS USEFUL ÉDUCATION? A. C. We put the question in reference to the great body of American youth who are to earn their bread by the sweat of their brows, and, under Providence, to wield the future destinies of our country. Two principles should be aimed at-To provide for themselves honorably, under any ordinary contingencies-and qualify them to become useful to society. The times, as well as universal experience, abundantly admonish us that, however the children of wealth may indulge in indolence and dissipation, while their means last-the great mass of American youth must, and ought, to depend upon their labor for their fortunes and their usefulness. Fortune is at best precarious-patrimonial dependence is uncertain, and reliance upon the friendship or charity of the world, or upon office, is frail and often debasing. Self-depend ence is the only sure stay. We are ever most willing to help those who help themselves. Productive labor is the legitimate source of all the wealth, individual and national-and this labor is profitable to the individual and to the nation in proportion to the measure of intelligence and scientific knowledge which guides and directs its operations. Hence it is of primary importance that our youth should be efficiently taught to labor, and that their minds should be early imbued with that kind of knowledge which will instruct them in the principles of their business, render it honorable, and make them independent in conduct and in fortune. We have, to be sure, colleges and academies, more than can be well supported, or that can be made economical and useful. But these are in a measure consecrated to the learned professions-to the privileged few-for they are privileged, inasmuch as they are the exclusive recipients of public bounty in the higher branches of learning. Productive labor derives little or no advantage from their teaching. Few of the youth who enter their halls, ever seek for a livelihood in the laboring arts. They learn to look upon labor as servile and demeaning, and to seek their living in what they consider the higher classes of society. They do not go to these schools to learn to work or to learn to live by work-in the common meaning of these terms-but to learn to live without work or above work. They are virtually withdrawn from the producing classes. These young aspirants flock to the learned professions, and the genteel employments, as the avenues to honors and office; and notwithstanding the laborer is taxed heavily, in one way or another, to supply their real or imaginary wants, yet the genteel professions have become overstocked, and the threshold of power so thronged with applicants, that hundreds and thousands are thrown back, as parasites upon society, exhibiting the melancholy spectacles of men, born to be useful, but unable or unwilling, from the bias of a wrong education, to become so. Had these men been taught to look upon labor as it truly is, a necessary, healthful, independent, and honorable employment, and been instructed in its principle and its practice, while young, they would have cherished its interests, respected its virtues, and cheerfully shared in its toils and its pleasures. We seek not, by these remarks, to pull down that which is, but to build that which is not. It is not that we have a part less, but the whole more. We would raise the standard of labor, without depressing that of literature. We have common schools too, munificently endowed, where all may acquire the elements of knowledge, but the rudiments only. They teach nothing of the sciences which are necessary to the success in prosecution of the arts-and give no instruction for the best models of practice. They neither learn the boy how to provide for himself, nor fit him for extensive usefulness. They lay the foundation, but they do little to build up and beautify the temple. Who will tell us why it is, that classic schools, available only to those who design to live without labor, are made the special and exclusive objects of legislative bounty, in regard to the higher branches of instruction? Why is it, that six or seven thousand youth, which is about the number in our colleges and academies, should receive gratuities from the public treasury, till the aggregate exceed three millions of dollars, to enable them to live without work, while half a million of other youth, with like capacities and like claims, destined to labor, and to augment the resources, the wealth, and the happiness of their country, are denied a miserable pittance, in the higher branches of knowledge, to qualify them for their more important duties in society? Is not knowledge as beneficial to the arts of labor as it is to the learned profession? Is it not as efficiently and beneficially applied in develop ing the riches of the earth, in perfecting the mechanic and manufacturing arts, and in augmenting the products and profits of labor generally, as it is in the warfare of party politics, in the chicanery of the law, and in prolonging unprofitable debate in legislative halls? May not natural science be as profitably studied and applied on the farm, where nature is constantly presenting new subjects of illustration and application, as in the town or in the closet? Is not chemistry, which instructs in the nature and properties of all bodies, as useful to farmers, in ascertaining the qualities of his soils, and their adaptation to particular crops, and in regulating the multifarious operations of husbandry—and to the artizan, in managing his various processes, as it is to the lawyer, the statesman, or the divine? There is probably no employment in life that embraces so wide a scope of useful study, as that of cultivating the soil. The great use and end of science, is to improve art, to impress us with a sense of our obligations to God, and our duty to man. In truth, science belongs to, and continues an integral portion of the arts, and cannot be divorced from them without throwing us back into a state of semi-barbarianism, such as now debases a great portion of the population of the old continent. Why then teach science exclusively to the few, who have comparatively so little use for it, and withhold it from the many, to whom it would be a help and a guide. 'We look to Europe for precedents, and blindly adopt those that are prejudicial, as well as many that are good. We forget that we are a new people in government, manners, and law, and that there is no country which will serve, as ours, a model in all cases. The education bestowed upon the working classes in Europe, is designed to qualify them for the subordinate stations in society-for labor and obedience, as subjects. Their governments recognize a privileged class-who are the owners of the soil, and live upon the labors of the many. The working classes have very little to do with the affairs of government, Here all are professedly upon a footing of equality. All enjoy political rights, and have political duties to perform-and all should be equally favored, so far as the public bounty is dispensed in the means of obtaining useful knowledge, and of acquiring wealth, and honors. We should take care to have good farmers and good mechanics, as well as good lawyers and good doctors. We want not only good subjects, but intelligent freemen-high-minded, independent freemen, who know their rights, and knowing, dare maintain them. We wish to keep the fountain pure, that the stream of power may not become defiled. We wish to base our political and social fabrick upon a rock, steadfast and sure upon the intelligence, industry, and moral rectitude of the great working community. When this class shall cease to exert a healthful and controlling influence in political affairs, our boasted freedom will be at an end. A privileged class, whom the bounty of government has assisted to arm with exclusive power, will control and direct the political machine, as may best subserve their aggrandizing views, with regard to the common weal. Ambition is the same in all ages and countries. Man loves power, and is corrupted by it-and in its prolonged exercise the servant will ever swell into the master. Our freedom can only be securely guarded by the vigilance of an enlightened, independent, prosperous yeomanry. Men have tried all sorts of expedients, for thousands of years, to obtain wealth and happiness; and after all it has become pretty evident, that there is no course that wears so well, that is so self-approving, that is so certain in its success, that gives so much health, contentment, and independence the substantial elements of happiness-as habitual industry, tempered and directed by a cultivated mind, be it in the learned or laboring professing. The consciousness that we are not only providing for ourselves, and those naturally dependant upon us, but that we are doing good to society, and thereby fulfilling one of our highest mortal obligations, is a rich source of enjoyment, in which the indolent and dissipated must ever remain utter strangers. We say, therefore, that we want schools of moral, industrious, and scientific instruction, for the working classes of society, and that their establishment would conduce alike to the prosperity of the country, and to the perpetuity of our political and religious freedom. Kingdom of Satan---No. 5. THE POLICY OF THE WAR. SATAN and his angels, of which there are countless legions, are now in possession of the field. The whole human race, in the persons of Adam and Eve, are his captives. Having taken part with him, they are involved in his fortunes, unless they are rescued from his dominion. But such is the nature of rebellion, that the sinner colleagues with his worst enemies rather than his best friends, and prefers the slavery of the worst of tyrants to the voluntary service of the best of benefactors. Conscious of his own ingratitude and demerit, he attributes to his Maker every indication of hostility he feels in himself, and concludes that God is his worst enemy because he has forfeited his favor and provoked his indignation. Duped by Satan, he prefers his livery to that of Heaven, and fears and trembles in the ratio of his per. suasion that God is just, and able to return his evil into his own bosom. It should not then confound us to see how cheerfully human kind are led captive by the Devil at his bidding, and with what reluctance they even lend an ear to any voice coming from another quarter. In the marvellous philanthropy of God our Father a remedial system is set up, and gradually developed as the circumstances of mankind required. The root of all future promises and blessings is found in the early intimation of a man-child descending from a woman, to become an avenger of our wrongs and the destroyer of our great adversary. But this intimation is preceded by what may with propriety be called a Declaration of War. It is brief, clear, and comprehensive. "I will," says the Creator, "put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed." To which declaration of war he adds a very cheering intimation of its triumphant termination-"He shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel." God himself, then, has put this enmity between the woman and her destroyer, and between the two races-hers and the Devils, and it must continue until the power of the adversary is forever crushed. The policy of the belligerents in conducting this most eventful struggle is first of all worthy of our most profound consideration. Of all minds in this universe, save one, it is highly presumable that the Rebel Chief is the most politic and powerful. The su preme intelligence is to be displayed in a conflict and contrast with the most splendid created intellect, that the difference between the Self-Existent and a derivative nature, however exalted, may appear; for it is only by comparison we can acquire a distinct view or conclusion upon any object within or without us. The rebellion of Satan is now to be managed to the illumination and sanctification of an incomprehensibly vast and infinitely varied universe, by him whose sovereign policy it is to rise forever in the estimation, love, and adoration of all loyal minds, by a continuous and ever-varient display of the useful, the beautiful, the sublime, the glorious, and the blissful, in all his creations. and administrations. "To educe from evil good, and better still in infinite progression," is a godlike scheme; and the policy which accomplishes this is supremely grand and interesting. Creation, vast and diversified though it be, is too short a page on which to transcribe all the perfections of the godhead. The volumes of Universal Providence, Human Redemption, and Eternal Judgment, are indispensable to the full manifestation, and consequently to the full and perfect enjoyment of the infinite fountain and source of all being and of all bliss. Light and shade are both necessary to illumination, and the dark lines are often the most luminous. Black though this ink be which flows from my pen, still it will illuminate some minds; and though there may appear black, and dark, and awful lines in the great series of divine administrations, nevertheless the blackest and the darkest of them may perhaps throw the greatest light and lustre over the face of the divine government, and make the Deity stand out before the universe infinitely more pure, and holy, and lovely in our eyes than had there been no darkness at all. The whole Divinity must be revealed before he can be known, as certainly as he must be known before he can be enjoyed; and this is a revelation which creation and providence without redemption never could have perfected; for how, let me ask, could mercy, compassion, condescension, forbearance, justice, vengeance, wrath have been revealed had sin and Satan never appeared in the dominions of God! If the justice, mercy, and truth-if the vengeance and wrath of the godhead ought to be known to perfect in our minds the divine character, then was it necessary that neither Sin nor Satan be crushed, or blotted out the instant they appeared "Nor yet could sin forgiving Grace While all were good, no room could be Some weak or corrupted minds object to the whole scheme of divine justice, mercy, and wrath, because they cannot or will not see how sin and Satan can be necessary to any scheme of divine government, and yet in and of themselves wholly evil and eternally to be reprobated; nor can they distinguish between the simple permission of their admission on the part of the Supreme Governor, and his positive and direct volition of their being and existence. Yet certainly these are different things. To create evil, and to bring good out of evil-to permit sin and overrule it, are not the same thing. Though attributes of the same mind, they are as diverse as mercy and wrath. But the fact of the existence of evil and good, both natural and moral, is indestructible |