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Untitled Article
Cultivate the heart and neglect the mind—and nature will want consistency because it wants principle , and good intentions will perhaps become the more ready and the more efficient , because the fair-seeming * instrument of the designing . Should the mind and heart be well developed , but the soul left uncultivated—you
lose , in the loss of the high and powerful sanctions of religion , the best security of goodness—the best prompter to duty—the noblest impulse to lofty and self-denying beneficence . No , moral perfection consists in the well-proportioned cultivation of all our powers — in their combined and harmonious action—in their entire devotement to the service of God and man . And far
preferable is it . that the degree of cultivation should be less , provided it extend to the whole man , than that any one faculty should be , however fully , exclusively developed * But it may be said , you are pleading for a higher degree of cultivation than it is possible for the youthful poor to receive . I plead not for a high degree of cultivation . I would wish indeed , that the cultivation of the poor as well as of the rich should be of the highest
order—should be carried-to the greatest extent of which the faculties admit . But this is not what I now labour to promote —• but a well balanced , simultaneous , and accordant cultivation of the whole man . I look not at the extent , but the perfection of the work as far as it goes . Let the improvements of the mind , the heart , and the soul proceed at the same time and step by
step . This makes a good education , not the disproportionate cultivation of any one faculty . This fits man for the several stages of being through which he has to pass—this opens out all the springs of excellence and pleasure which God has hidden in the human bosom .
Look at the poor in reference to their duties . Is a child obedient because his mind has been stored , however richly , with knowledge ? Is not something more required ? Ought not that knowledge to be reduced to practice by the cultivation of the heart ? Should not advantage be taken of the power of imitation ~ -the force of habit , in order to make it feel what it knows , and
lead it to observe what it has been taught ? Does a father acquire practical wisdom , and the power of governing efficiently and kindly the inmates of his house , by merely learning the truths of science or perusing the page of history ? Is a member of the state fitted to influence its destinies by having been taught to jread and write , while perhaps he neglects his private duties ,
ministers to the gratification of his passions rather than to the wants of his family , and , in the desperation of his abandoned heart , and the destitution of his neglected home , is ready to promote the yiews of the tyrant or the demagogue ? And what an education for p . mother—one who has to form her children ' s character—to promote their health—to keep her house in order and in peace—to make the most of a scanty provision—to win and keep her hus-
Untitled Article
lof Sunday School Education *
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), March 2, 1832, page 164, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1808/page/20/
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