Green-Mountain freeman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1844-1884, 1857-07-23
Religion and Education.

I hold it to be one of the laws OF God that
the talents of man can be developed IN the
best way, and can produce the most beneficial
results only when they act IN consonanee wlth
all the precepts and the principles. OF religion
The pursuit of knowledge or science is the
pursuit of truth. All truth comes from. God.
No knowledge or science, therefore, can be
vitalized by the true life, breathed upon by
the true spirit, er come into the human con-
seriousness irradiated with the same empyrcan
glory with which it emanated from God, un-
less it is acquired and embraced by ,vlrtuous
and religiously affected SOUL We SHOULD
grasp knowledge, not with one only, but with
all onr faculties. Behold an infant, when its
curiosity is intensely aroused by a new toy
1t subjects the plaything to all its senses
1t handles, eyes, smells, tastes, and puts it to
its ear. Every sense that holds any relation
to it fastens upon it with a new grasp, and
creates new tie between it and the inquir-
ers mind. So with knowledge; it should be
seized and appreciated by all our faculties
that have relations to it. To the merely sci
entifc mind, for instance, there are several
kinds of rays Or influences emitted or pro-
duced by the sun. 1t Eliminates, it warns,
and it effects new chemical arrangements
among atoms. Now the optician analyses its
light the galvanist measures its heat, and
the chemist notes the atomic changes wrought
by its chemical power. But to the religious
minded man, whenever he beholds that glorl-
Gus orb through the prism Of our Heavenly
Fathers care and love, he sees something
above and beyond what optician, galvanist Or
chemist can see. Its beams are irradiated
and followed by q diviner efulgence than
that which reaches the natural eye; they
penetrate his heart with a warmth more glad
dening than any the nerves can feel, and they
so purify and re-combine the elements of
thought and affection as to distill the elixir
of celestial joy through all his soul and
over all his days. The philosopher looks at
the scientific properties of matter, and adj
mires; the Christian beholds not onl y the
gift, but the Giver, and adores. The one has
only the knowledge of truth; the other the
rapture of devotion. They have two hori-
IONS, Que of which embraces the wonders of
nature but the other embraces not only all
natures wonders, but their more wonderful
Author also. Who would not rather see all
the rays of spectrum than a part of them
On his own principles, the scientific man
must admit that the bliss of beholding and
comprehending must increase with the ampli.
tude of the horizon surveyed, and the mag
ni6cepce and beautiful variety of the objects
it embraces. Does not the eye which stands
in such a relation to the dew-drops that they
are all transmitted into pearls, and each re-
fleets the splendors of the armament, beholc
loveler sight than the eye to which they
appear only as Opaque goubes of water
and shall not the eye behold a still more glo
rious vision, which sees reflected in every dew
drop, not the heavens only, but the Majesty
that stitch upon the heavens?
How much vaster and more glorious do the
heavens appear when seen by the eye of sci
ence, than when seen by the eye of sense
So much beyond all scientific glory will they
appear when seen by the eye of religion.
To the devout heart, all the objects in thu
universe, however minute, Or however mag
ni6cent, are clothed with divine and lumin
Gus ether, whose beauty and radiance are in
visible to the soul that sin has struck will
its blindness. The filial and trusting lover O
God lives in the presence of splendors, out
side and beyond what Shakespeare, with al
his genius ever beheld for, to see the grea
and benefcent Father in all his works, doe
"gild refined gold, and paint the lily, an
add another hue unto the rainbow"
81, too, had wandered" says Goethe, "in
to every department of knowledge, and ha
returned, early enough satisfied with the var
ity of science" He never could have spoke
3 thus of the /" vanity of science" if he ha
beheld science under its religious aspects. N
part of the tomple of knowledge can eve
seem empty to any votary who sees the spir
of God that dwells within, and glorifes it.
I affirm, then, with the logical emphas
E and positiveness of demonstration, that n
man can look upon any kind of knowledge
I however common or however abstruse it ma
, be, whether the multiplication table or til
t problem of the asymptote, in the full majest
Y Of its proportions, or in the blessed sanctitit
| of its minstrations, unless he receives it int
a virtuous and reverent heart The prof
-. gate man, even when mastering the most bri
;. liant and enchanting series of trrths, is onl
!, like the sick man when eating the most del
n cious tropical fruits, who may indeed feel Il
= pressure of the substance of their fibre Vi
v on his tongue, but whose distempered pala
f cannot revel on the exquisite richness of the
e favor; or he is like jaundiced botanist, wi
u may trace the wonderful structure of plant
n but all the beauty of their many-oolored tin
E, ings is lost to his ycllow-painting vision
When the staggering inebriate looks up
o the firm heavens, he thinks the stars are rex
h ing and plunging before his eyes, though it
e. only himself who plunges and reels. And
m to one who does not recognize the attribut
l. of God in his philosophic contemplations, t
/, eternal varieties of the Universe float loo
m and vagrant before his gaze, the starry worl
" above are but as driftwood, tossed hither al
thither in the chaos of immensely, and he
bound to men only by the base tie of SELLS
ness, and not by the sancties of brotherhoo
r. as children of common Father
l. Vice and immortality then, and the promr
l. ings Of an irreliglous heart, stand in dire
e. antagonism to all true progress in knowledg
and under their influence, whatever knowled
10 may be acquired is shorn of its divinest bea
,e ties.-Demonds Of the Age.