An Essay on the Evils of Popular IgnoranceFoster, John
Philosophy
An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance
Foster, John
Education; Great Britain -- Social conditions -- 19th century; Literacy; Missions -- India; Religious education
teachers, or the patrons.
Now let him, when he has contemplated this scene, consider how the
greatest part of this numerous company would have been employed during the
same hours, whether of the Sabbath or other days, but for such a provision
of means for their instruction. And, for the contrast, he has only to
leave the school, and walk a mile round the neighborhood, in which it will
be very wonderful, (we may say this of most parts of England,) if he shall
not, in a populous district, especially near a great town, and on a fine
day, meet with a great number of wretched, disgusting imps, straggling or
in knots, in the activity of mischief and nuisance, or at least the full
cry of vile and profane language; with here and there, as a lord among
them, an elder larger one growing fast into an insolent adult blackguard.
He may make the comparison, quite sure that such as they are, and so
employed, would many now under the salutary discipline of yonder school
have been, but for its institution. But the two classes so beheld in
contrast, might they not seem to belong to two different nations? Do they
not seem growing into two extremely different orders of character? Do they
not even seem preparing for different worlds in the final distribution?
The friends of these designs for a general and highly improved education,
may proceed further in this course of verifying to themselves the grounds
of their assurance of happy consequences. A number of ideas, the most
important that were ever formed in human thought, or imparted to men from
the Supreme Mind, will be so communicated and impressed in these
institutions, that it is absolutely certain they will be fixed irrevocably
in the minds of the pupils. And in the case of many, if not the majority
of these destined adventurers into the temptations of life, these
important ideas, thus inserted deep in their souls, will distinctly
present themselves to judgment and conscience an incalculable number of
times. What a number, if the sum of all these reminiscences, in all the
minds now assembled in a numerous school, could be conjectured! But if one
in a hundred of these recollections, if one in a thousand, shall be
efficacious, who can compute the amount of the good resulting from the
instruction which shall have so enforced and fixed these ideas that they
shall inevitably be thus recollected? And is it altogether out of reason
to hope that the desired efficacy will, far oftener than once in a
thousand times, attend the luminous rising again of a solemn idea to the
view of the mind! Is still less than _this_ to be predicted for our
unhappy nature, while, however fallen, it is not abandoned by the care of
its Creator!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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