The Southern Literary Messenger, Vol. II., No. 10, September, 1836 — John Shaqi
The Southern Literary Messenger, Vol. II., No. 10, September, 1836Various
General
The Southern Literary Messenger, Vol. II., No. 10, September, 1836
Various
American literature -- 19th century -- Periodicals
I can bear the same testimony
with respect to a large Sunday School with which I have been connected
for many years. I have often heard of _virtuous_ emulation—but can
emulation ever be so characterized in a christian sense? Whether it
may in that loose sense of virtue which those adopt who take the
worldly principle of honor for their rule, I will not stop to inquire.
“_But it is not sufficient not to excite and employ emulation on plan
and system, as a stimulus in education—great care ought to be taken to
exclude it._ And great care will be necessary, for it will be
continually ready to show itself; and if not checked, it will soon
attain strength, strike its roots deep in the heart, and produce
bitter fruits, which, in the eyes of a christian, will be
ill-compensated by the extraordinary vigor and energy it will give to
scholastic studies. When examples are held out for imitation, (a very
different thing, be it remembered, from emulation,) or _as warnings_,
the child must be made sensible that its state in the sight of God is
rendered neither better nor worse by the virtues or the faults of
others, except so far as they may have influenced, or may have failed
to influence, its own conduct—that it ought to love its neighbor as
itself, and to rejoice in every advance made by another in what is
good, and to lament over all his faults and defects, without one
selfish thought being suffered to check the joy or the concern—that it
ought therefore to wish all its companions all success in their common
studies, with the same sincerity with which it wishes its own
success—and to be affected by their faults and failures in the same
manner it would be by its own. It should be made sensible, in
proportion as it may give way to feelings the reverse of these, that
its ‘eye will be evil because others are good’—and it will act in
opposition to the injunction, ‘mind not every one his own things, but
every one also the things of others,’ and to a whole host of
Scriptural precepts and examples. These things must be inculcated, not
by lectures in general terms, but by applying such views to all the
little incidents which call for them as they successively arise. The
child must also be made sensible, how much better it is for himself
that his companions should be eminent for laudable attainments and
good qualities; for that, in proportion to their excellences in these
respects, they will be useful and estimable companions, and ought to
be objects of his affection. All little boasts of having done better
than this or that brother or sister, and every disposition to
disappointment when _they_ succeed best, should be most carefully
checked, and the lesson of ‘rejoicing with them that do rejoice, and
of weeping with them that weep,’ must be very diligently inculcated.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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