Jeffersonian Republican. [volume] (Stroudsburg, Pa.) 1840-1853, 1850-07-18


different parts of but single work, and there is
the same common interest between them as be-
tween the sower of the seed and the gatherer of
the harvest.
Heretofore, there has often been something, at
least of indifference, if not of alienation and re-
pulsion, between those who preside over the COM
menccment of education and those who superin-
tended its close. 1t is time they should see that
their interests are not adverse. but identica nay,
that when pursued in harmony, they cumula-
lively benefcent. These parties may create some
benefits when acting separately; but when coop
Grating, they multiply those benefits by high
moral power. The child, whose mind was well
developed in the school-Ioom, not only shoots a.
head, but speeds farther and farther ahead of all
that he could have been without such early devel-
opment. His advancement is represented by a
kind of compound as well as geometrical series,
made up by multiplying time into velocity. When,
in his turn, such child becomes a parent, be
sends better prepared children to the schoolroom.
And out OF a larger number of minds, awakened
in their youth, and made self-conscious of the ex
istence of their faculties and of the glowing de-
light of their exercise, all the colleges to
lengthen their catalogues; for child whose mind
has been fired by love of knowledge cannot be
kept back from those deeper fountains where his
thirst can be slaked. The college draws him ir-
resistible, and he will break through every bar
rler,-poverty, discouragement, toll, sickness, all
but the unconquerable bar" of death itself,-to
reach and enjoy it. The colleges will not only
lengthen their catalogues, but illuminate them
with brighter names. And a community so trained
and advanced. will look back with flial piety to
the institutions where their honorable career be-
gan, and will love to cherish, honor and elevate
them, and all who labor in them Such action
and reaction cannot fail to lift up the race. is,
therefore, most earnestly hoped that all grades OF
teachers, from the earliest to latest, will attest
their interest in their sacred profession, and their
regard for each other, by their presence at the pro-
posed Convention.
A few considerations will serve to show that
there never has been period in the history Of
man, when Universal Education was so impera-
tive duty as at the %resent moment / mean ed
ucation in It's most comprehensive and philosophic
sense, as including the education Of the body, the
heart.
In regard to the first topic, it is well known that
physical quantities are hereditary. Disease and
weakness descend from parent to offspring by a
law of nature, as names descend by law custom.
God still ordains that the bodily iniquities of the
fathers shall be visited upon the children unto the
third and fourth generation. When we look back.
ward and see how the number of our ancestors is
doubled at each remove in the ascending scale, it
afrights US TO reflect how many continent streams
from vicious fountains may have been poured into
the physical system of single individual. Where,
for many generations, this horrd entailment of
maladies has not been broken by single obe-
dient and vrtuous life, who conceive of the
animal debasements and depravities that may CEN
tire in single person. At every descent, the
worst may become more worse and the possible
series of deterioration is infinite Before the hu-
man race, or any part of it, becomes more dis
eased, or physically more vile, is it not time to ar
rest and restore This can only be done through
education, or through Miracles and it would re-
ouire more than three hundred and sixty five mir
acles each year, to preserve health and strength
under our present vicious social habits. Those
who do not expect the Intervention of miracles,
are false to their families, to the community and
TO God, if they do not urge forward the work OF
Physical Education as the only means OF rescu-
ing the race from an in6nity OF sicknesses, weak
nesses and pains. Public Schools are the only in
strumentality for inculcating upon the communi-
ty at large knowledge of the great laws OF
Health and Life.
There never was such necessity of imparting
power to the human intellect, and of replenishing
it with knowledge, as at the present time; and in
no country is this necessity SO imperative as in
our own. The common affairs of life require a
hundred times more knowledge now than they did
century ago. New forms and kinds of business,
too, are daily emerging into practice, which must
be conducted with intelligence and skill, or they
will ruin their conductors. How much more
knowledge and art are requisite to make cotton
or woollen factory, with all its nice and numerous
appendages than to make spinning-whcel or a
distaf; to manage locomotive on railroad,
than to drive team on highway; to build and
navigate a steamship, than to sail vessel; to
make chronometer, than dial or an hour-glass;
to manage telegraph than to send courier; to
make power-press that shall strike off ten thou
sand comics in an hour, or telescope that shall
Al 4lrv, So