These hints are for the negative side of the question:  and for the positive,—­what conceit, and presumption, and vanity, and envy, and mortification, and hypocrisy, &c. &c., are the unavoidable result of schemes where there is so much display and contention!  All this is at enmity with Christianity; and if the practice of sincere churchmen in this matter be so, what have we not to fear when we cast our eyes upon other quarters where religious instruction is deliberately excluded?  The wisest of us expect far too much from school teaching.  One of the most innocent, contented, happy, and, in his sphere, most useful men whom I know, can neither read nor write.  Though learning and sharpness of wit must exist somewhere, to protect, and in some points to interpret the Scriptures, yet we are told that the Founder of this religion rejoiced in spirit, that things were hidden from the wise and prudent, and revealed unto babes:  and again, ’Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings Thou hast perfected praise.’  Apparently, the infants here contemplated were under a very different course of discipline from that which many in our day are condemned to.  In a town of Lancashire, about nine in the morning, the streets resound with the crying of infants, wheeled off in carts and other vehicles (some ladies, I believe, lending their carriages for this purpose) to their school-prisons.

But to go back a little.  Human learning, as far as it tends to breed pride and self-estimation (and that it requires constant vigilance to counteract this tendency we must all feel), is against the spirit of the Gospel.  Much cause then is there to lament that inconsiderate zeal, wherever it is found, which whets the intellect by blunting the affections.  Can it, in a general view, be good, that an infant should learn much which its parents do not know?  Will not the child arrogate a superiority unfavourable to love and obedience?

But suppose this to be an evil only for the present generation, and that a succeeding race of infants will have no such advantage over their parents; still it may be asked, should we not be making these infants too much the creatures of society when we cannot make them more so?  Here would they be for eight hours in the day like plants in a conservatory.  What is to become of them for the other sixteen hours, when they are returned to all the influences, the dread of which first suggested this contrivance?  Will they be better able to resist the mischief they may be exposed to from the bad example of their parents, or brothers and sisters?  It is to be feared not, because, though they must have heard many good precepts, their condition in school is artificial; they have been removed from the discipline and exercise of humanity, and they have, besides, been subject to many evil temptations within school and peculiar to it.

In the present generation I cannot see anything of an harmonious co-operation between these schools and home influences.  If the family be thoroughly bad, and the child cannot be removed altogether, how feeble the barrier, how futile the expedient!  If the family be of middle character, the children will lose more by separation from domestic cares and reciprocal duties, than they can possibly gain from captivity with such formal instruction as may be administered.