the-way place, and with a small income. He collected himself, and said, "Why, the truth is, that when I first took the place I was on the eve of being married, and we calculated that domestic happiness in scenery so glorious as this was worth an additional £40 a year of income." There are people who would say to me, "Why speak to the working classes of refinement and beauty and taste and sentiment, when all you have to do is to teach them how to get meat and drink and clothing?" But I think the veriest son of clay would be tempted to qualify his verdict if it could be proved that merely as a matter of pounds, shillings, and pence, this refinement might be weighed, and if it could be shown that a sense of the beauty of God's universe was equivalent to £40 a-year.

Now, working men of Hurst, I calculate it must have struck many of you that much has been omitted. I have not put before you the highest motives. I have not led you to the loftiest atmosphere of thought. I have left this unsaid designedly-advisedly; for there is a propriety, a fitness, in things. The platform is not the pulpit. We are not erecting a church, or inaugurating a college; but merely setting up a Reading Institution, and therefore advisedly I have abstained from those high and sacred topics. But yet, if any one of us should forget that all those things whereof I have . . . . the progress of the Working Classes, the progress of humanity itself, is but subsidiary to a higher fact-the Life of God in the soul of man; the Life of God in the individual, the Life of God in society; then a work, even so trifling as this, the setting up a Reading Institution, would be practical Atheism.

277

THE EDUCATION OF THE HUMAN

RACE.

By GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING.

"When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things.”—ST. Paul.

"Our little systems have their day;

They have their day, and cease to be:
They are but broken lights of Thee,
And Thou, O Lord, art more than they.

"We have but faith; we cannot know;
For knowledge is of things we see ;
And yet we trust it comes from Thee,
A beam in darkness: let it grow.

"Let knowledge grow from more to more,
But more of reverence in us dwell;
That mind and soul, according well,
May make one music, as before.

"But vaster.

We are fools and slight ;

We mock Thee when we do not fear;

But help Thy foolish ones to bear;

Help Thy vain worlds to bear Thy light."

TENNYSON.

I

PREFACE.

T is of some importance to understand rightly what principle really underlies the Divine Education of the Human Race, because we may be sure that such should be our rule in training and educating each Individual member.

Two ideas seem now in force; one a combination of Hope and Fear, by which some teachers think it best to educate— Fear of a Material Hell, Hope of a not much less Material Heaven. These are the ultimates, up to which the lesser rewards and punishments lead.

There is also the doctrine of the Divine Paternity of each individual soul, in virtue of which every member of the Race can be appealed to as a Child of God, and be urged to live as becomes such high relationship.

The writer of this Treatise thinks the latter is the true mode of dealing with the subject; and although he calls not on any hasty traveller, who may be impatient to reach his night quarters, to turn aside from the eminence from which he is gazing—yet he believes that he sees somewhat more than the prescribed road of his time: that he sees somewhat of the plan by which the Race has hitherto been educated: and he obtains, therefrom, some hints and suggestions as to its future destiny.

He does not offer these thoughts as the sum and substance of the matter, but rather as suggestions tending towards the discovery of fuller truth through some other minds. And in this mood he seems to harmonize well with those who are expecting, not a new Revelation, but an evergrowing development of the meaning of that with which God has already furnished us: for assuredly we have not yet

fathomed the infinite depths of the Divine Love for His Creatures. In our "Schemes of Redemption," and "Plans of Salvation," we have not yet reached the full meaning of that name under which God has revealed Himself in these latter days-OUR FATHER.

In our eagerness to prove the damnation of every soul who does not believe this or that dogma, we are in danger of forgetting that Christianity is either a Gospel of Salvation, or is valueless: and we overlook the inevitable necessity that the human mind must pass through phases of ignorance, doubt, and even error, before it can become capable of receiving pure truth.

All the laws of the Universe have had existence from the beginning, yet how recently is it that Electricity has been discovered? and do we yet know all which this power implies?

Did the earth ever do other than go round the sun? yet how long is it since man found this out?

And are the spiritual truths of man's nature more easily discerned than the physical phenomena which surround him? Why should there not be development in these as well as in those?

Each little sect or religion has, doubtless, had some germ of the truth within it, which has rendered it subservient to the great purpose of fertilizing the world-but so long as the professors of either of them think that they are favoured Children of the Divine Father, whom He regards with a complacency with which He does not view the rest of Humanity, so long is the fulness of God's idea not attained by them.

There may be much in this little Treatise which will be perplexing to men who merely read by the light of established

and recognised formulas; much which may sound like heresy to those who believe only that which can be found to be contained within the Articles and Creeds of their own school; but to the honest, earnest Enquirer, it may suggest very profitable currents of thought, in which he may let his reason and imagination flow together, possible in one of these flowing at last into the great ocean of Truth itself.

THE EDUCATION OF THE HUMAN RACE.

I

`HAT which Education is to the Individual, Revelation is to the Race.

TH

2

EDUCATION is Revelation coming to the Individual Man; and Revelation is Education which has come, and is yet coming, to the Human Race.

3

WHETHER it can be of any advantage to the science of instruction to contemplate Education in this point of view, I will not here inquire; but in Theology it may unquestionably be of great advantage, and may remove many difficulties, if Revelation be conceived of as the Educator of Humanity.

4

EDUCATION gives to Man nothing which he might not educe out of himself; it gives him that which he might educe out of himself, only quicker and more easily. In the same way too, Revelation gives nothing to the human species, which the human reason left to itself might not