THE

PRESBYTERIAN MAGAZINE.

JULY, 1852.

Miscellaneous Articles.

THOUGHTS ON THE FUTURE OF OUR COUNTRY.

TRUE history is prophecy. It utters the thoughts of Him who seeth the end from the beginning. The ground of all the phenomena of the universe, is that vast texture of cause and effect which holds the course of change, from the creation of the system to its dissolution, in perfect harmony and unity. The Infinite Mind, which laid the course at first through the bright region of its own perfect knowledge, conducts the movement, as a chosen way of revealing its character and designs. It uses the world as its organ of speech. Particular events are its words, eras are its sentences, and the whole course of time is a sublime discourse on the wisdom, power, and love of God.

While the world is thus revealing its Maker, it holds all reflecting observers of its course in the posture of expectation. As the Maker saw the end from the beginning, man has, from the beginning, been ever looking towards the end. The changes of the world are successive steps towards a consummation in the future. They are steps of preparation for the future. As the leaf opens out of the bud, as the fruit is formed from the blossom, as the man is the development of the child, so things to come are to rise out of the things which have been and are. The past has lived not unto itself, but unto the present. The present lives not unto itself, but unto the future. By the study of nature we learn what to expect from her course. From history we may learn to prophesy; and the world, as a volume of prophecies, is intended for the study of mankind.

Our desire to know the future belongs, indeed, with the natural desire for knowledge in general; but is mightily strengthened and enlivened by the conviction, that with the events to come we have a VOL. II.-No. 7

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personal concern. They involve our own welfare, and we have a causal agency respecting them. We have a future of experience for ourselves, and we have a responsible agency in forming a future for others. It is from regard to both interest and duty that we try to discern beforehand the events of coming time. And for our help in this investigation we go to the past. When we have succeeded in spreading the light of history over the future, we judge that the records of the past have done their service for us, and that we have not read the annals of the world in vain.

Besides this prophetic voice of nature, we have a surer word of prophecy, which leads our thoughts with unerring foresight quite to the end of time. The divine purposes for the future are foreshadowed in the past; but in the book of inspiration we have a plain description of the state towards which the world is tending-a consummation of the ages of time-a summing up of this world's mighty argument for the glory of God. And so plainly does the Bible speak of such a future for the world, that it sets every earnest reader upon the watch for the opening leaves of the fig-tree, which are to show that summer is near.

It is a cherished impression of our own people, and more or less an impression among the enlightened of other nations, that some unusual signs of progress towards this consummation appear in this land; and that this nation holds some high and responsible position with reference to the destiny of the world. This view of what we are to be suggests to many what we ought to do. And it is to our countrymen a powerful argument for patriotism, as well as for religion. For if the social institutions, and the prevailing sentiment of this country, look at all more directly than those of any other nation towards such a result, they will prefer unqualified claims to our patriotic and conscientious regard.

What is the predicted consummation of the world, and how is this country looking towards it?

Our sacred records speak, as with the assurance of a present fact, of the prevalence of true and useful knowledge among men, particularly the knowledge of the true religion. The very least we can understand from their language is, that in the last state of the world there will be a measure of knowledge and piety among all people, above that of any previous age. It will not be only intellectual refinement among the few, for the world has already, and in ages long gone by, given examples of culture in reason and taste, which need not be exceeded for any ends within the reach of human nature. It will not be the strength or the purity of religious principle among the few; for brighter examples of individual piety than have been given in every age of the world, are not to be looked for on earth. But it will be the endowment of the many with the knowledge and the piety now reached only by the few, and the lasting and living union of true knowledge and true religion in all the people of the earth. This is the least that is expected in the last age of time by any enlightened believer in the Bible. This will raise man to the

perfection of his earthly life. And the right application of this knowledge and purity in the mutual relations of men, will give the perfect social state-the complete civilization of the human race.

We take this to be the destiny of the world, and proceed to observe in what respects this country is looking towards it.

Most certainly, if our country may claim any distinction at all in this respect, it must be on such grounds as these: that the prevailing sentiment, and the institutions of the nation, are favourable to the best education of the largest number;-that they promote the best religious instruction of all the people, and the perfect development of religious character.

. And, first, we can surely say, with a fair appearance of truth, that the prevailing sentiment of this country on the subject of education, and our institutions for that purpose, fulfil the conditions of the future culture of the world, by favouring the best education of the largest number.

1. We read the ruling sentiment of the nation concerning educa tion partly as expressed in the cherished views of the natural connection between intelligence and virtue. Our doctrine is, Light in order to Virtue. If there be among us such a dream of benighted and perverted humanity as that ignorance favours virtue, it has no place in our embodied public sentiment, and never ventures forth in the writing or the speech of our people. It is contradicted in every needful and impressive way. Courts and prisons are summoned to testify to the ignorance of the many who become the victims of justice under their hands. We are ashamed of the column in our census which reports any large number of freemen, in any part of the country, who cannot read and write. It is with us a sort of intuitive conviction that ignorance is in itself a vicious condition of human nature. We do not conceive the difference between the savage and the citizen to be wholly intellectual, but reckon it an essential characteristic of natural ignorance, that it knows no morality has no consciousness of true merit and desert-has no perception of duty-yields no obedience to law.

This is one of our forms of judgment respecting the natural connection between intelligence and virtue. The old despotisms of the world, both in church and state, were ever beset with temptation to undervalue the benefits of knowledge to the people. For where government thrives chiefly by the quiet submission of the people to an infringement of their natural rights, it must keep the people ignorant of those rights, and of the means of defending them. It is the happiness of our government to be free from that temptation; to recognise all the rights of the people, and to wish that the people should understand, prize, and defend them. It is the happiness of our people to be committed, prejudiced, if you will, by all our social prepossessions, against fostering ignorance in order to peace. The security which ignorance can give to power our government would scorn, as a delusion and a shame; -a delusion, because without foundation in the spirit of our organization; a shame, because it would presuppose the degradation of the people.

It is one of the best known maxims of heavenly wisdom, that people are destroyed for lack of knowledge; and it is one of the intuitive truths for human reason, that all men have a natural claim to sound and thorough instruction. Yet how dark and mournful has been the history of education in our world! You see the strictly patriarchal ages, with mental culture only in the richer families, while the rest of the race remained through successive centuries in a common intellectual darkness. When nations rose by the union of families, those who conducted the affairs of State were almost the only educated. Even in the Hebrew commonwealth, the popular ignorance was grievous, and is recorded as a warning to other people. Through all the ages before the invention of the art of printing, the difficulty of spreading knowledge was such as is wholly unknown to modern times. And during that large part of the lifetime of the world, what wonder that such a thought as that of the general education of the people should seem extravagant and visionary, and that the means of instruction, as we now understand them, should be wholly inconceivable? What wonder that governments should feel no responsibility in such a work, and expect no good from promoting it? And since government, then, must rule ignorant people, and adapt its laws and the spirit of its administration to masses who knew only to be abject in submission, what wonder it should contract habits, and imbibe principles, unfriendly to popular education? And then it is not wonderful that those principles and habits should be slowly reformed; lingering long in their decline, even after popular education came to be possible.

Ever since the revival of learning, and the great reformation of religion which followed so close upon it in the sixteenth century, the sentiment in favour of general education has been seeking opportunity for free expression, and a field for free application. It had to contend on the one hand with the hierarchy of the Church, which needed popular ignorance for security in its own corruption; and on the other, with despotism in the State, which could not expect to hold enlightened people under arbitrary power. Its progress could not be otherwise than slow. In the monarchies of the old world, the government must originate the movement, judge what is best for the people, provide instruction for them so far, and in such way, as may seem best for itself, and then commend its provisions to the ignorant with the repulsive air of authority.

Now we consider it a most significant fact relating to our connection with the progress of popular intelligence, that the doctrine of thorough education for the mass of the people had full possession of the mind of this nation from the first. It was from the beginning a sentiment of the people, and was carried by them into their government and laws; not a doctrine of government to be inculcated with authority on the people. From the popular mind, which is the fountain of power, it passes into the government, which is the organ of power. In the heart of the people, forming custom, and in the

hands of the government, forming law, it is working mightily in this country to shape the destiny of the world.

And what an advance is this upon all past times! We look back with grateful amazement to the time before the Reformation, when the people of the civilized world, all who could in any proper sense be called the people, were the benighted victims of an intellectual bondage; when almost the only vehicle of popular knowledge was the human voice, and when the priests of science and religion, whose "lips should keep knowledge," were almost as ignorant as the people themselves; when the mass of human beings, who really formed the nations of Christendom, and whose toil was the life of the world, were only the victims and the tools of priestcraft, and the slaves of the darkest superstition. We then advance to the most favoured portion of the world after the great reformation had begun, and to the time when the human mind in our mother country began its signal movements under the impulse of a partially reformed Christianity; when a brilliant and energetic queen of the most enlightened nation then on earth, with all the splendor of genius, learning and eloquence which adorned her court, and which have immortalized her reign, could not supply the churches with men who could decently read the service appointed for public worship; when amidst all the literary lustre of the Cecils, the Walsinghams, the Shakespears and the Spensers, the Sydneys and the Raleighs, the masses of the people, whose physical force, courage and patriotic devotion were of such account to their superiors, stood on the scale of culture scarce a single degree above barbarism, and groped their way to the grave through as deep a darkness as ever enveloped benighted humanity. As we watch the widening conflict between growing intelligence and arbitrary power, and see how many ages must be occupied in preparing light for the millions, and the millions for light; when we witness the embarrassment of nations who begin to know their intellectual rights, but know not how to assert them; when we see governments forcing instruction on unwilling people, who cannot freely use their learning when they get it; we may contemplate our own position with thankfulness and hope. We may be thankful for the wisdom and kindness of Providence which set apart so efficient a portion of that enlightened mind in the midst of its invigorating struggles for freedom, and transplanted it on these shores; and which has fostered it here till its power is felt through all the earth. We may hope that such a beginning, which has already been followed by such an increase of general intelligence for the world, will be remembered to the end of time as the opening of a new era of light, and liberty, and peace to mankind.

2. We have a presentiment of our future in the views of our people concerning the relation between popular intelligence and freedom.

It is not, indeed, the chief aim of education to promote good government, although free government itself may lawfully contemplate nothing but its own preservation, in its measures for the better education of the people. Government may use its political phraseology