On a Virtuous Education

by Cardinal Nicholas Patrick Wiseman

SERMON I.

"Hast thou children?  Instruct them, and bow down their neck from their childhood." —Ecclus. vii.25.

WHILE a few years suffice to give to the brute creation all the perfection of which they are capable, and natural instinct leads them invariably to that degree of it which distinguishes each species, it has pleased God to make many years of constant attention requisite to bring the mind and faculties of man to their full maturity, and to make the degree of perfection which they may attain, depend in a great measure on the care bestowed by others on their education. To secure this important care, He has rooted deeper in man the natural fondness of the parent towards its offspring and made it not a transient passion but a lasting affection; He has entwined together so completely the happiness of the two that through life, whatever affects that of the child must necessarily have an influence no less on that of the parent.

Thus has He added self-interest to natural feeling in order to secure to us in infancy and youth that education which may ensure our welfare through life. A serious responsibility consequently springs from this connection, and that parent may have to reproach himself forever with having caused the ruin of his children who neglects the important duty of educating them well which nature has put into his hands.

To one part indeed of this duty sufficient attention is generally paid. Every accomplishment is bestowed on them which tends to make them attract notice or can advance their prospects in the eyes of the world. All possible pains are taken with their outward appearance, every natural or habitual defect in their persons or carriage is carefully eradicated or corrected, the finest polish is given to their minds, the greatest brilliancy and effect to their talents. All the keenness of a father's eye, every feeling of a mother's heart is alive to these and a thousand other particulars. But amidst so much anxiety and thought, how often is that portion of education totally overlooked or very much neglected which can alone secure happiness through life; every attention is paid to the worldly, little or none to the religious education. This is frequently totally overlooked, because parents are not sufficiently convinced of its importance; it is still oftener very much neglected because they know not the proper method of conducting it. To these two points I beg to call your attention this day.

By a religious education I mean the instilling into the mind from childhood that elevated sense of principle which makes it consider right or wrong not merely as a deliberation between reward or punishment from man, but as a choice between pleasing or offending God: that lofty feeling which considers virtue as an honour and sin as a degradation, which accustoms the soul from infancy to follow the straight line of duty, however arduous, without swerving from fear of opposition or of ridicule, and which in fine leads it to choose always what it deems right, without considering whether the eye of God alone or the observation of man is upon its conduct. To this truly noble character which religious education alone can give, must be necessarily added its external fruits: a respect for religion and its worship, a scrupulous discharge of its duties, considered not merely as outward proprieties but as divine injunctions, a zeal for its interests, and a pleasure in its observance. These, my brethren, are the qualities and sentiments which a truly virtuous education should inspire; and if no other motive could induce you to bestow such an education as this, except the conviction of its being necessary to secure the happiness of your children through life, a few considerations will, I trust, demonstrate that it really possesses this advantage. You who have passed through life yourselves well know that it is not a flow of smooth and uninterrupted pleasure; you have felt and seen that suffering, however varied in degree, must fall to the lot of every individual, that difficulties of position will occur at some period of life through which it is hard to steer without either causing offence on one hand or sacrificing duty on the other—difficulties from which it will require all possible coolness and prudence to escape; that in fine a thousand and a thousand temptations will have to be encountered where passion may hurry or the love of pleasure may seduce into irretrievable ruin. If you love your children with a nobler affection than that of the brute creation, you must wish to guard them against these evils which you have experienced. It would be truly as unnatural as to launch them upon the troubled ocean without an oar or helm, as to cast them into a labyrinth without a clue to extricate them, were you to send them into life after what you have felt, without instilling into them some principle which may mitigate their sufferings, may solve their difficulties, and may correct their passions. That virtue which I have already defined can alone answer this threefold purpose. For there is only one substitute which can be devised as at all likely to supply its defect; namely, that jealousy of a good character and that high feeling of honour which generally distinguishes every well-born and well-bred person and is not unfrequently considered as a sufficient and even as the best rule for his conduct before the world. But this feeling, however noble, is far from sufficient to secure the well-being of your children.

In the first place, it must of its own nature be ineffectual whenever the current of practice or opinion runs in favour of vice. For this principle of honour without the sanction of religion is only a principle of pride and vanity; it has no motive but public opinion, and the moment this is even indifferent towards any species of vice, it leaves the whole impulse of the passions without a check, to rush toward their gratification. Educated therefore with this high and gentlemanly feeling, your son may indeed abhor every stain of dishonesty worse than death; he may be jealously alive to whatever may tarnish his fair reputation before the world as an upright and honourable man; he may be candid and fearless for the truth; he may be generous and liberal; but you will have armed him with no principle sufficient to preserve him from a thousand hateful vices which may destroy his happiness for life, and which yet pass in the world as excusable in a young man of spirit and rank. You have no security that he will not be led into habits of excess and intemperance which may undermine his health and finally brutalize his mind, provided he be countenanced and encouraged in them by persons of his own age and rank, under the seducing plea of social enjoyment. You have no security that he will not be drawn into expensive and extravagant habits which may entail debt and ruin upon his family, if seduced by the ambition of making a good appearance in the world and of rising to a higher level than his own in society. Above all, you have no security that he will not give himself up to the desires of his own heart, which will make him a joy to his enemies; that he will not engage in the base pursuit of pleasure, though it may cost the seduction of innocence and blight the peace of families, till he be irretrievably involved in habits and connections degrading to himself and painful to his friends. Such, in fact, are the vices which disgrace so many young men, who are otherwise amiable in their manners and cultivated in their minds, whose souls would scorn whatever might be dishonorable, who bear an erect and unblushing front in society, and who would resent at the peril of life the slightest imputation upon their character.

Now, my brethren, if you give your children higher principles of rectitude to guide them than the jealous care of reputation and the laws of honourable bearing, you leave yourselves no guarantee for their preservation from the ruin of vice, provided they are able to escape its disgrace. They will perhaps be ready to silence obloquy by making every compensation when they have injured, but they will not be restrained from inflicting the wound. They will pay their debts of honour to a farthing, though it may reduce them to beggary, but they will have no principle which will prevent them from risking their own happiness and that of their children upon one cast on the gaming table. There is a second defect in this miserable principle which is so often the substitute of Christian virtue in education: it cannot influence the interior. And yet our happiness cannot depend merely upon the capricious approbation of others. There will be times when we must apply to our own hearts for relief or support. There will be moments of sorrow which we would not communicate to the companions of our revels; there will be calm moments when self-approbation or self-reproach must be the occupation of our minds; there will be moments of agitation when we shall have to struggle against our own thoughts and feelings and prevent them from precipitating us into disgrace or despair. The opinions of the world, the reputation of honour can have no influence there; the mind has been left without any moral elasticity to bear itself up when desponding and impart vigour to its determinations: rashness or despondency become the consequences; nor is this the age, my brethren, when much reflection is necessary to remember innumerable instances of young men of talents and prospect who have completed their career of ruin, or become wearied of life, before they have well advanced into maturity. Whatever principle has to secure true happiness must be seated in the heart; without this you can only make your children whited sepulchres, dazzling to the eye, but inside only rankling with decay and corruption, fruit fair as that "of the vine of Sodom and of the fields of Gomorrah; but their grapes will be grapes of gall" (Deut. xxxii.32); their interior will be nothing but dust and poison, worthlessness and mischief. And surely this is not the character which any parent can wish to give his children, this is not the happiness he can be anxious to procure them? If then, my brethren, the highest and noblest principle which a worldly education can give is not sufficient to secure happiness, because it is no preservative against many and those the most ruinous courses, and because it cannot reach the heart which is the source of all true happiness, nothing remains sufficient for this purpose except the early bestowing of a fund of solid Christian virtue. It alone can ensure support in trials, counsel in difficulties, strength in temptation. Had you, my brethren, to select the method in which these advantages were to be secured to your children through life, you could not fix upon a surer or more pleasing way than by preserving that influence over them as they grow up which you possess when they are young, could it be done in a manner suitable to their advantage.

You perhaps remember with regret those times when you were the depositaries of their little griefs and the counselor in their petty deliberations, when a kind word from you soothed their pain, and a smile from you rewarded their exertions; you would willingly recall and continue that sweet docility and obedience which made the fear of displeasing you a sufficient preservative against faults, provided all this could be done without diminishing in them the manliness and steadiness of character which should distinguish them in maturer years. One thing only in addition might you desire, that your eye could be on their heart to mark its wanderings and check them, to see its good wishes and gratify them, to read its thoughts and direct them. Oh! instill into them the principles of Christian virtue, inspire them with the fear and love of God, and you have answered all these objects, you have perpetuated a parental control over them for life.

They Are Never Alone

Make them know from infancy that they have a Father in Heaven, whose eye closes not over them, whose spirit relaxes not in their guardianship. Accustom them from the cradle to feel that they are never alone, that they have ever at their side the Being Who created them, more anxious for their well being than the parents who were the instruments of His goodness in giving them existence; more jealous of their obedience than they who derive their authority only from Him; more deserving of their love than even they who are only His imperfect image. Can you give your children a stronger support in their sufferings and afflictions than the intimate persuasion that they are administered by the hand of Him whom they have been ever taught to revere thus, and that they are only a means of bringing them closer and endearing them still more to such a Parent? Can you provide your children a surer guide in all their difficulties than that sense of duty which makes them look at every object only with reference to the law of God, who rules all things, and look up for support towards Him who can do all things? In fine, can you implant within them a stronger safeguard against the seductions or tumults of passion than the consciousness that, however secret, however unobservable to man, there is His attention fixed upon the contest, whom they have ever revered as more than a parent, in order to crown their victory or to punish their cowardice? No, my brethren, make your children true Christians, and you have secured their happiness through life—you have secured it on a basis which no malignity will be able to undermine, no violence to overthrow; you have secured it independent of chance and of the world; you have secured it on the protection and under the bond of the Almighty. If then, my brethren, parents were properly convinced of the importance of this virtuous education for securing the happiness of their children, we should never see this solemn duty so dreadfully overlooked; did they know the easy means of carrying it into effect, we should not find it so frequently neglected. The first measure to be taken for this purpose is that it should be commenced early. The faintest dawn of reason should scarcely appear before the most simple moving truths and principles of religion should be softly instilled into the mind; its yielding surface should be impressed with the most striking of its maxims, its unsuspecting feelings gently drawn to find pleasure in its practices. But above all you must begin early to watch the first appearance of those passions which may strengthen with their growth, and resolve to check and to curb them while as yet weak and tender. Reject as an injury that foolish fondness which fears to thwart the little inclinations of a child, because it may cause momentary trouble. For if while yet so young these sometimes break out with such dreadful violence, what are you to expect when they have strengthened with the frame and constitution in which they are inherent? How many affect to consider this doctrine harsh and devoid of feeling: that scarcely born, their child should be subjected to law and to discipline; that abstruse doctrines should be whispered into its ear almost before that organ is fully developed; that severe restraint should be put upon its mind almost before it is capable of a wish, and that this rigid course should be continued through all the buoyancy and spirits of youth. But, oh, if these are your sentiments now, what would they have been had it been your misfortune (for so I must call it), to be placed in those primitive ages when religion commanded you to educate your child, not merely as a Christian but as a future martyr; when you would have had to instill into his tender mind a respect for the religion which degraded its followers, and made him an outcast; an attachment to that faith which brought persecution on its professors and rendered him a pauper; when you would have had to trust him to look towards heaven with eagerness, though it was to be sealed from the rack and the scaffold. What would you have felt had you lived in daily apprehension that your son or your daughter might be snatched from your bosom, and you be called to stand like the mother of the Machabees to witness his tortures, without a tear or a sigh. But now that you are only to teach him to love a God who has removed from him every evil and heaped upon him a thousand blessings denied to the great proportion of his fellow creatures; now that you have only to accustom him to a few duties which occupy little time and cost no trouble; now that you have only to seek the increase of his happiness by removing those little passions which would check it and which as yet yield to your first and gentlest remedies; now, in short, that in teaching any virtue you confer even a temporal advantage, you find a false tenderness a plea for not inspiring it. Had the feelings of Christian parents been always these, our religion might have wished in vain for its triumphs and its heroes. But this is a false, no less than a foolish objection, for the second precaution to be taken in order to conduct with success a virtuous education is that it should be rendered pleasing and agreeable. This may appear at first sight a difficult task, but it is very far from being so. For in the first place were virtue and religion as difficult as you please, you have only to follow the same method which you do in recommending or enforcing anything else that requires trouble or pain. The bitterest draught appears sweet when administered by the hand of a parent, with that caress of which it alone is capable.

Virtue And Religion Alone Can Secure Their Happiness

When you have determined upon an arduous profession for your son, how many arts do you possess to propose it to him, to strip it of its objections, to make it become even an object of his desire. The most pleasing side which it presents is ever kept in view, while its difficulties are carefully concealed: those who have risen to eminence or distinguished themselves in it are pointed out as objects of envy; every branch of education is bent so as to direct to this one object; it is carefully mingled in all that can charm or invite. Use these same methods for that profession to which all are called, and which alone can justify all that can possibly be said in its favour, and you will certainly obtain the same results. Show your children that virtue and religion alone can secure their happiness, instill into them a sense of its importance and its advantages with all the skill, with all the address with which you seek to lead them on other occasions, and fear not but your efforts will be crowned with success. Oh, God, were only half the pains taken to make Thy sweet ways seem agreeable, which are taken to make the rugged paths of this world appear delightful!

In addition to this, my brethren, bring all their early affections into play to aid this holy cause; make your children feel that whatever is virtuous is pleasing to you, that the transgression of any duty, the neglect of any practice of religion gives you pain. Identify the commands of God with the injunctions of the parent; the compliance with His will with the acquisition of your favour; and the practice of virtue will be a pleasure instead of a toil to those who so tenderly love you.

Instead of this method, religion is generally communicated with all the dry formality of an abstract study; it is forced upon the mind after it has been rendered by liberty impatient of restraint, with all the hateful forms of a task and an obligation; it is taught as something merely speculative, which has no hold upon the affections; it is imparted as a science instead of being inspired as a feeling.

Pursued in this manner, a good education causes the principles of virtue to mingle so completely with our natural feelings, and to enter so fully into the composition of our tone of mind, that unable to trace their origin they appear natural to us in after life; it makes the practices of religion to be so interwoven with our daily actions as to become habitual, and almost necessary to us.

There is a second attention, which may make the conduct of a virtuous education agreeable and pleasing, and that is a careful study of the dispositions of children. Nothing, my brethren, is more usual than to see a disposition which, with a little culture, might have borne the most virtuous principles, ruined by injudicious treatment for the purpose of correcting its faults. A child, for instance, of timid, unassuming character might, by gentle encouragement and moderate stimulus, be perfected into an amiable, mild and engaging disposition. But this is considered too little; the supposed defect of character must be not only corrected, but removed. Nature must be forced, and all that was amiable in the mind is violently rooted out together with its faults, in order to make room for an artificial assurance and forwardness which, probably, ends in making an insupportable man out of the timid child. Indeed, nothing is more common than to see the germs of the milder virtues of Christianity considered as faults where they seem to spring spontaneously in the heart, and much more trouble taken to make children of perdition by totally plucking them out than would have been requisite, by judicious treatment, to have softly molded them into the purest Christians.

But, however early you may begin to give your children a virtuous education, however agreeably and sweetly you may conduct it, the principal quality yet remains, without which the others will be of no force: you must teach by example. Nothing can be more keen than the observation of children, nothing more apposite than the estimation which they generally make of the sentiments and opinions of those whom they have around them. Their parents, particularly, who are constantly before their eyes, and who throw off in their presence all the disguise which may screen their character from the notice of the public, must necessarily be the principal object of their attention. Their taste forms that of the child, their behavior becomes his model; he is in fact trained up to believe that they are the rules by which he must direct his conduct. He grows up insensibly under this influence; he is proud in proportion as he sees a resemblance between himself and them.

If your precepts are different from your conduct, which do you think it more probable that he will follow? Those he will see are not your own choice, however you may say they are your opinion; you must be content to see him either imitate your bad conduct or learn from you a lesson of hypocrisy and double dealing. And if from your example he does learn vice and acquire bad habits, oh God, what a judgment will you have brought upon your own head! "Whoever," says our Saviour, "scandaliseth one of these little ones who believeth in Me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea." (Matt. xviii.6) If this be the sentence of those who seduce, by bad example, a child, though they may have no connection or interest in his welfare more than that of Christian charity, what tenfold force must it bear against those who are bound by every tie of nature to provide for his happiness!

But not only, if from this source, but from any other, you overlook or neglect the virtuous education of your children, whether from want of attention to its importance, or to the manner of conducting it, you are guilty of a great and mortal breach of trust before the eyes of God. At the last day He will ask a solemn account from you for these pledges, dearer to Him than they are to you. In the words of St. John to the Bishop to whom he had entrusted a youth for education, the Almighty will then demand of you, "Deliver Me back the deposit which I put into your care in the presence of Jesus Christ and of His Church." Through the hands of my minister I placed it in your charge when it rose from the waters of baptism clothed in a white garment, the emblem of innocence and grace. I gave it you without a stain, and without a wrinkle; it was a soil without a weed, a soul without a passion; it was the co-heir of Christ; it was the child of heaven. What has it become under your hand?" Will you reply that under your tuition it grew up to be accomplished and engaging though worldly and irreligious, wealthy and courted though vicious and abandoned? And yet, such must be your reply if conscience and fact make you feel that such has been the case. For you will not be able to shelter yourself under the excuse which Cain made when asked where was his brother Abel—an excuse that might have discharged him of responsibility if his own hands had not been reeking with his blood. "Am I," demanded he, "the guardian of my brother?" Alas! would you be able to ask: Was I the guardian of my child? Every feeling of nature, every affection of your own bosom, the brute creation itself, would rise against so barbarous an apology. No, the lot of a parent who can neglect the moral education of his children has been too clearly denounced by the Apostle of God, in those dreadful words that he who neglects the care of his family "has already denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever." (1 Tim. v.8) He has denied his faith by the neglect of one of the first duties which it enjoins, and by bringing up so many others to neglect them. He is worse than the unbeliever who, in his ignorance, educated his children in erroneous principles while he, fully aware of the truth, has deliberately suffered them to run astray; he is worse than the Pagan, who, in his blind zeal, passed his sons and daughters through fire, or even flung them into the blazing arms of Moloch, while he, fully instructed of the consequences, has suffered them to be victims of eternal perdition. But if from this dismal responsibility of a neglected education, you turn to the advantages which giving a virtuous one will procure you, what motives you have to do so! Do you wish to see your children become the support of your infirmities, the light of your aged years, the crown of your grey hairs? Teach your children the Law of God, and you teach them to be docile and obedient, to be grateful and affectionate to yourselves. Teach them the fear of God, and you teach them to avoid all that can give you pain in their conduct, or anxiety for their success; you secure them from every vice, from all imprudence, from all dangers. Teach them the love of God and you adorn their minds and hearts with all that can render them amiable in life, with that sincere piety which will endear them to the good, with that sweetness and fraternal love which will make them revered by the evil. But above all, you ensure them the protection of heaven, and when its decree calls you away from them and the world, you will feel that you are not leaving them orphans, but under the protection of God, who will support, strengthen and console them, till He restores them to your arms again in the joys of His kingdom.