The Education of Catholic Girls. Janet Erskine Stuart

soft fold on fold;

       Though fairer he it, to behold

       Stately and sceptral lilies break

       To beauty, and to sweetness wake:

       Yet fairer still, to see and sing,

       One fair thing is, one matchless thing:

       Youth, in its perfect blossoming.

       LIONEL JOHNSON.

INTRODUCTION

       Table of Contents

      A book was published in the United States in 1910 with the title, EDUCATION: HOW OLD THE NEW. A companion volume might be written with a similar title, EDUCATION: HOW NEW THE OLD, and it would only exhibit another aspect of the same truth.

      This does not pretend to be that possible companion volume, but to present a point of view which owes something both to old and new, and to make an appeal for the education of Catholic girls to have its distinguishing features recognized and freely developed in view of ultimate rather than immediate results.

CHAPTER I.

       Table of Contents

      RELIGION.

      "Oh! say not, dream not, heavenly notes

       To childish ears are vain,

       That the young mind at random floats,

       And cannot reach the strain.

      "Dim or unheard, the words may fall.

       And yet the Heaven-taught mind

       May learn the sacred air, and all

       The harmony unwind."

       KEBLE.

      The principal educational controversies of the present day rage round the teaching of religion to children, but they are more concerned with the right to teach it than with what is taught, in fact none of the combatants except the Catholic body seem to have a clear notion of what they actually want to teach, when the right has been secured. It is not the controversy but the fruits of it that are here in question, the echoes of battle and rumours of wars serve to enhance the importance of the matter, the duty of making it all worth while, and using to the best advantage the opportunities which are secured at the price of so many conflicts.

      The duty is twofold, to God and to His children. God, who entrusts to us their religious education, has a right to be set before them as truly, as nobly, as worthily as our capacity allows, as beautifully as human language can convey the mysteries of faith, with the quietness and confidence of those who know and are not afraid, and filial pride in the Christian inheritance which is ours. The child has a right to learn the best that it can know of God, since the happiness of its life, not only in eternity but even in time, is bound up in that knowledge. Most grievous wrong has been done, and is still done, to children by well-meaning but misguided efforts to "make them good" by dwelling on the vengeance taken by God upon the wicked, on the possibilities of wickedness in the youngest child. Their impressionable minds are quite ready to take alarm, they are so small, and every experience is so new; there are so many great forces at work which can be dimly guessed at, and to their vivid imaginations who can say what may happen next? If the first impressions of God conveyed to them are gloomy and terrible, a shadow may be cast over the mind so far-reaching that perhaps a whole lifetime may not carry them beyond it. They hear of a sleepless Bye that ever watches, to see them doing wrong, an Bye from which they cannot escape. There is the Judge of awful severity who admits no excuse, who pursues with relentless perseverance to the very end and whose resources for punishment are inexhaustible. What wonder if a daring and defiant spirit turns at last and stands at bay against the resistless Avenger, and if in later years the practical result is—"if we may not escape, let us try to forget," or the drifting of a whole life into indifference, languor of will, and pessimism that border on despair.

      Parents could not bear to be so misrepresented to their children, and what condemnation would be sufficient for teachers who would turn the hearts of children against their father, poisoning the very springs of life. Yet this wrong is done to God. In general, children taught by their own parents do not suffer so much from these misrepresentations of God, as those who have been left with servants and ignorant teachers, themselves warped by a wrong early training. Fathers and mothers must have within themselves too much intuition of the Fatherhood of God not to give another tone to their teaching, and probably it is from fathers and mothers, as they are in themselves symbols of God's almighty power and unmeasured love, that the first ideas of Him can best reach the minds of little children.

      But it is rare that circumstances admit the continuance of this best instruction. For one reason or another children pass on to other teachers and, except for what can be given directly by the clergy, must depend on them for further religious instruction. This further teaching, covering, say, eight years of school life, ten to eighteen, falls more or less into two periods, one in which the essentials of Christian life and doctrine have to be learned, the other in which more direct preparation may be made for the warfare of faith which must be encountered when the years of school life are over. It is a great stewardship to be entrusted with the training of God's royal family of children, during these years on which their after life almost entirely depends, and "it is required among stewards that a man may be found faithful." For other branches of teaching it is more easy to ascertain that the necessary qualifications are not wanting, but in this the qualifications lie so deeply hidden between God and the conscience that they must often be taken for granted, and the responsibility lies all the more directly with the teacher who has to live the life, as well as to know the truth, and love both truth and life in order to make them loved. These are qualifications that are never attained, because they must always be in process of attainment, only one who is constantly growing in grace and love and knowledge can give the true appreciation of what that grace and love and knowledge are in their bearing on human life: to be rather than to know is therefore a primary qualification. Inseparably bound up with it is the thinking right thoughts concerning what is to be taught.

      1. To have right thoughts of God. It would seem to be too obvious to need statement, yet experience shows that this fundamental necessity is not always secure, far from it. It is not often put into words, but traces may be found only too easily of foundations of religion laid in thoughts of God that are unworthy of our faith. Whence can they have come? Doubtless in great measure from the subtle spirit of Jansenism which spread so widely in its day and is so hard to outlive—from remains of the still darker spirit of Calvinism which hangs about convert teachers of a rigid school—from vehement and fervid spiritual writers, addressing themselves to the needs of other times—perhaps most of all from the old lie which was from the beginning, the deep mistrust of God which is the greatest triumph of His enemy. God is set forth as if He were encompassed with human limitations—the fiery imagery of the Old Testament pressed into the service of modern and western minds, until He is made to seem pitiless, revengeful, exacting, lying in wait to catch His creatures in fault, and awaiting them at death with terrible surprises.

      But this is not what the Church and the Gospels have to say about Him to the children of the kingdom. If we could put into words our highest ideals of all that is most lovely and lovable, beautiful, tender, gracious, liberal, strong, constant, patient, unwearying, add what we can, multiply it a million times, tire out our imagination beyond it, and then say that it is nothing to what He is, that it is the weakest expression of His goodness and beauty, we shall give a poor idea of God indeed, but at least, as far as it goes, it will be true, and it will lead to trustfulness and friendship, to a right attitude of mind, as child to father, and creature to Creator. We speak as we believe, there is an accent of sincerity that carries conviction if we speak of God as we believe, and if we believe truly, we shall speak of Him largely, trustfully, and happily, whether in the dogmas of our faith, or as we find His traces and glorious attributes in the world around us, as we consider the lilies of the field and