Common Sense Applied to Religion; Or, The Bible and the PeopleBeecher, Catharine Esther
Religion
Common Sense Applied to Religion; Or, The Bible and the People
Beecher, Catharine Esther
Religion -- Philosophy
For, during the whole period of these efforts to promote the _right
training of the human mind by woman as the Heaven-appointed minister for
this end_, the influence of this dogma has been constantly forced on
attention as the real antagonistic force. That is to say, the whole
energies of the Christian Church, in its distinctive character, are
organized to remedy the evil _after the mind is educated wrong_, while
little is attempted by the powerful agency of _organization_ to secure
its _right education_. In proof of this, it will be seen that all the
great benevolent organizations for which collections are enforced from
the pulpit are for adults, with one only seeming exception. There is an
organization to send Bibles, another to send tracts and colporteurs,
another to send missionaries abroad, another to send home-missionaries,
another for the sailor, another for the slaves, another to educate
ministers, another to raise up colleges, another for temperance, and so
on. All these have as their direct aim those who are educated wrong, and
are to be redeemed from sinful habits. Not one has any direct reference
to the _formation of right habits in the daily training of every-day
life_.
The Sunday-school is the only seeming exception. But this is only a
weekly exercise of an hour or two, in which every sect secures the
training of its children in its own religious system, while this system,
in most cases, is based on the Augustinian doctrine of the inability of
children to feel or do a single right thing till they are "regenerated,"
while not only the teaching, but the Sunday libraries for children all
enforce this dogma. The practical influence of this, though counteracted
more or less by other influences, is fairly illustrated in the mental
history of the author in the Introduction.
Thus the Christian Church has all its organizations to _cure_ diseased
and miseducated mind, and not a single one to _prevent_ this ruin by its
right training.
This being so, this effort to promote the neglected and yet great end of
Christian effort has been looked on with indifference, or as a small
concern to receive its mite, while all others are to receive their
hundreds and thousands.
Moreover, the enterprise has been looked upon with jealousy by many
whose attention has been called to it as a _covert_ sectarian movement
to promote the interests of that denomination with which some of its
movers have been connected. Then, too, because it really has not favored
any one sect, it has secured the special favor and sympathy of none.
There has never been a time when its movers have not been made to
understand that success in raising endowments would be certain if the
anti-sectarian feature could be relinquished, and the enterprise could
assume a sectarian banner.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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