Christian Education Author:Daniel Curry Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: III. CHRISTIAN EDUCATION-ITS PURPOSE-THE WHAT-FOR OF EDUCATION. /CONCEDING the desirableness of education? textit{j which, indeed, all our conditions take ... more »for granted?it is pertinent that we should ask, What is its purpose and in what consists its value? To this question we may answer in the words of a living writer of high renown?Mr. Herbert Spencer? though we would give to his words a much broader application than he does. He tells us, " To prepare us for complete living is the function which education has to discharge." We accept this statement as both comprehensive and felicitous, and also as well adapted to suggest both the object to be pursued in practical education and the methods of doing the work. But we should riot confine our considerations to merely secular affairs, as Mr. Spencer's unspiritual philosophy compelled him to do; but seeing in our broader outlook other than merely secular relations, which qualify and vastly elevate our conception of " complete living," we must comprehend in the measure and scope of the things to be cared for in education all that relates to the spiritual life; and as we claim that these are incomparably the greatest of our interests, and that " complete living" is especially concerned in them, we must also contend that the spiritual character of its subject is the chief concern in practical education. Our notions as to what education is for and what it is designed to accomplish for its subjects, will largely determine both its substance and its methods. These we have already indicated as consisting in the proper development and discipline of all that belongs to man's real nature; and manifestly, therefore, the neglect of any part of his essential manhood must result in an unsymmetrical and unwholesome condition of the mind and cha...« less