OF RELIGION FROM SCIENCE.

213

substance."1 Again: "Wherefore we conclude that sacred theology, which in one word we call divinity, is grounded only upon the word and oracle of GOD, and not upon the light of nature. This holdeth not only in those points of faith, which concern the great mysteries of the Deity, of the creation, of the redemption, but likewise those which concern the moral law truly interpreted, love your enemies, &c." (P. 222.)

Elsewhere he says most wisely, "a little learning doth incline man's mind to atheism; but much learning inclineth him unto God."

1 Book II., p. 127.

CHAPTER XXII.

ON PREJUDICE.-WE ARE ALL PREJUDICED, AND OUGHT TO BE SO IF NOT, WE MUST NEEDS BE VERY IGNORANT. -THE GREAT OBJECT IS THAT WE SHOULD BE PREJUDICED IN FAVOUR OF WHAT IS RIGHT.-JOHN STUART MILL, A REMARKABLE INSTANCE OF THE CONTRARY.

WHEN sceptics wish to express special contempt for those opposed to them, they commonly say that they are prejudiced, as if that were sufficient at once to refute their argument and condemn them.

But in truth all men are prejudiced. If they are not, they must needs be very ignorant. "Prejudice," says Johnson, is "a judgment formed beforehand, without examination." But how can a child examine into the truth of things? He must needs take the information given him by his parents and teachers. His parents tell him that fire will burn. If he is so unwise as not to believe this without "examination” he will burn his fingers. For many years a child must take for granted what his parents teach him, and afterwards rely on his school teachers for all the prin

PREJUDICE OF CHILDREN.

215

ciples of knowledge. "He," says Plato, in the Laws (B. 2,) "He that is to take his part amongst the perfectly blest and good must be a partaker of the truth from the very beginning of his life; that all that is possible of life may be spent in the enjoyment of truth." It will not do to leave children and youths untaught in the truths according to which they ought to live, and leave them to find them out for themselves; for this simple reason, because they ought to be living according to the truth from the beginning. Truths must be engrafted in the minds of children even before they are able to understand them. In point of fact almost every one grows up more or less in the notions of his fathers. The scion of a Whig, or Radical, or Tory family commonly adopts the opinions of his parents. The children of Churchmen commonly grow up Churchmen; the children of Dissenters, Dissenters. I am speaking of the fact: I do not say that children ought not, when they come of age, to judge for themselves. The child of bad and drunken parents will often see the evil of his parents' course, and be prejudiced against it. The child of religious parents, who are morose and unsympathetic in their religious views, is disgusted with the religion of his parents, and often takes an entirely different But generally speaking, a child ought to believe what he is taught, and follow the reli

course.

216

UNPREJUDICED GROUND.

gion of his parents, and not wait till he has had time to investigate the matter for himself, if only for this reason, that he ought from the beginning to be living religiously. For the same cause it is that the Church does, from the earliest years, teach her children the great and primary truths of religion. This may be prejudice if you please, but it is common sense.

It was the Bishop of Peterborough, I think, who illustrated the necessity of early culture in this way. Discussing the question of religious education with a friend, as he was walking in his' garden, he pointed out a piece of land which was full of weeds. "This," said he, "is entirely unprejudiced; it has been left entirely to itself. And see what it is." Then, pointing to another bed, he said, "This, you see, is prejudiced in favour of strawberries. I have had all the weeds kept down and rooted out, and the ground preoccupied with strawberry plants." So it is with religious education: we should root out, and keep down, "the weeds which grow apace" in the natural soil, and sow the seeds of what is good and wholesome.

The truest view of the case is that it is impossible for the mind to grow up without prejudice; if it is not preoccupied with good it will certainly be so with evil. Perhaps, there never was a more prejudiced man than the late John Stuart Mill,

STUART MILL'S FATHER.

217

as we may guess from his description of himself in his own Autobiography, "He was brought up by his father utterly to hate all religion as mischievous, and to entertain the most extravagant veneration for a small knot of thinkers, culminating in the most extravagant self-esteem." "Both Mill and his father sat down in the conviction that nothing whatever could be known of the origin of the universe, and whether or not there does exist a GOD." "In his frequent walks with his father, he had to give to that most exacting of parents a clear account of what he was reading, receiving from him in return explanations and ideas respecting civilization, government, morality, mental cultivation, which he had afterwards to repeat in his father's own words." "His father's intention, from the first, was to invent a new and prodigious thinking machine." "He was, in fact, an illustration of the effects of a training entirely unlike that to which boys and young men are ordinarily subjected, either in this or any other country."1

The necessity of early influencing the mind of children is still more apparent, if the theories of Physiologists have any truth in them. Their notion is that the grey portion of the brain consists of eight thousand four hundred millions of different threads or nerve tracks, and that through

1 See Contemporary Review, Dec. 1873.