Dr. JEBB'S Pastoral Instructions consist of practical discourses on the
character and principles of the Church of England ; and they form a plain and sensible publication, calculated to produce strong impressions of the importance and necessity of cultivating Christian temper of mind. They pretend to no eloquence, or to any of the ornaments of style: their beauty is in their homeliness. The following extract, on the importance of training, may be taken as a key to the whole. The passage is a valuable one ; it is part of a discourse on transmissive religion.
"In the religious education of youth, our first concern should be, as I have already intimated, with the affections and the passions—a truth which plainly instructs us, that it is training, rather than teaching, which should be our earliest object. In the way of moral discipline and train- ing, many valuable lessons may and should be taught, many lasting prin- ciples instilled, before the child is able to understand the difference be- tween right and wrong. The very senses, which, in other circumstances, perpetually withdraw us from things eternal, may now receive such a right direction as will make them conductors to heaven. The blind man knows colours by the touch ; how, we cannot comprehend, but so the fact is: the old philosophers talked of knowing God, by a certain intellectual touch ; and this, also is true ; we know not how, but so it is : 'The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth ; and so is every one that is born of the Spirit.' But, even in this mysterious process, Christian parents may assist. They may so discipline the very senses of their chil- dren, that beautiful sights, delightful sounds, and grateful odours, may be associated, as they are, in the book of God's word, with the future blessedness of heaven, and with the present anticipation of heaven upon earth. But there is a graver, yet not less indipensable part of the process. From the first dawn of sensation, the child must learn to submit his will to the government and direction, his passions to the censure and control, of those whom Providence has placed over it : from the first dawn of sen- sation, the child should be led to bow itself to authority ; at this early age, the only guidance it is capable of following. First, to human autho- rity, as representing the divine ; until, having thereby imbibed the habit of willing obedience to the authority of man, it can, in due time, be led -upwards, to know, to reverence, and to obey, the supreme authority of God.
"The groundwork thus wisely laid, in early moral training, the child will be prepared, as mind and intellect unfold, to enter, by due steps, on the exercise of the understanding. This will be done, without violence to the will, for the will has already been broken in; this will be done without injury to the heart, for the heart has been already prepossessed. The whole faculties of the child's nature being now cultivated in the order intended and ordained by Almighty God, progress in its attainments, whether of divine or human knowledge, will be made with freedom, with sobriety, and safety. Intellect, on the one hand, will not be exercised at the expense of the affections ; there will be no danger of a chill : while, on the other hand, the child will, in proportion to the goodness of its moral training, be spared the ordinary, but perilous temptations, of vanity, of self-esteem, and self-complacency; temptations, which, expe- rience shows us, are but too generally and too fatally attendant on man's intellectual progress, whether in the exercise of reason, or in the acqui- aitgin of science and learninp. BEFORE giving an account of the Lower Rooms, we will just glance round the upper ones, that we may supply any accidental omissions. We have strangely overlooked 63, "A Storm,"—the only oil picture of STANFIELD'S in the exhibition. This talented artiati "lathe present dayit is peculiarly needful to recur to those only just has been for some time laid up with an inflammation of his pamung. and true principles of early religious education. There now exists an un- exampled zeal for the instruction of the young; but a zeal, it is to be feared, not always according unto knowledge. The opinion would seem to he daily gaining ground, that to exercise the head, to make sure of the heart ; that the child whose understanding is cultivated, will himself come to discipline his passions, and regulate his affections, in the right way ; in a word, that the arts of reading, writing, and arithmetic, constitute a panacea for all the mental and moral maladies of our nature. But this opinion is wholly without sanction, either from Scripture or from experience. For my own part, I do not see how, in itself, the act of reading, should be more morally beneficial to child or to grown person than the faculty of hearing ; while, on the other hand, I am compelled to observe the superadded danger, that they who now hear bad words, in bad company, may be drawn to read bad words in had pub- lications. Nor is even the reading of the best books, in itself, a moral security. Infidels and profligates have often been students of the Scrip- tures: and to many, who read the Scripture as their daily text-book of instruction, it may prove little more than the mere vehicle of so muck mechanical power. The preparation of the heart is indispensable ; and unless the heart be wisely and carefully prepared, sacred knowledge it- self may be perverted into the instrument of wickedness, and seal of re- probation. But, whilst I would guard against the error, that knowledge is all in all, I cheerfully and thankfully admit, that knowledge is most valuable in its proper place and degree. What I would impress is simply this, that training is previous to teaching ; that teaching without training may be useless, may be hurtful ; that training without teaching, that without grammatical institution, may make a. sincere and pious Chris.. tian ; that a man may go to heaven who does not know his alphabet. On the whole, then, with respect to training and to teaching, I would say, This thou shouklest have done, and not have left the other undone."
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