CHAPTER XLIV. TENDENCIES OF THE TWO SYSTEMS IN THE TRAINING OF CHILDREN.

It has been shown that the common‐sense system results from the implanted principles of mind, so that no person can be entirely free from its influence.

The Augustinian system has also been shown in its Calvinistic and Arminian tendencies.

The Calvinistic form, making it certain that, owing to the depravity of nature consequent on Adam’s sin, every moral act is sin and only sin, while there is no revealed mode of securing regeneration, leads to hopeless inefficiency and neglect of religious advantages. The Arminian form, maintaining the efficacy of certain rites and ceremonies in securing regeneration, tends to a disastrous dependence on outward observances.

Those parents who are trained in the Calvinistic school, usually _begin_ education more or less on the common‐sense theory that children can and do please God when they are obedient, gentle, kind, self‐denying and conscientious. Prayers and hymns are also taught to the little ones that make this impression.

But when advancing years bring the pulpit and other Calvinistic influences to bear, these impressions, more or less, fade away, and are followed by the depressing feeling that nothing that a child does is either good or pleasing to the heavenly Father till the “wicked heart” is changed by God, and that there is no definite, practical mode of securing this change. The consequence, in many cases, is, that all prayer and all attention to religious instruction ceases, and a desperate course of worldliness and departure from all recognition of God ensues. In other cases, the natural result of this Augustinian theory is more or less counteracted by conscience, common sense and the Bible.

On the other hand, the Arminian view of the efficacy of rites and means of grace sanctioned by God as the mode of securing regeneration, has led to great stress on the use of those rites and forms. The Catholic and a portion of the Episcopal church, have taught that the rite of baptism was the appointed mode of remedying the depravity engendered from Adam. And so indispensable was it deemed to the salvation of infants, that not only laymen, but women were allowed to administer this rite at the approach of death, when no priest could be obtained, lest the infant soul should go to endless perdition with the taint of Adam’s sin unremoved.

There have been great dissensions in the Episcopal church as to the efficacy of baptism. Some have taught that regeneration was imparted by this rite. Others have taught that this rite secured the implanting of “a seed,” or some new mysterious principle, which if cherished and cultivated by the church, would result in Christian character. Those who hold this view, rely chiefly on the training of children in the church as the appointed mode of securing their salvation.

That branch of the Arminian school which left the Episcopal church under Wesley and his associates, were driven off by the laxity and want of spiritual life consequent on these tendencies to reliance on rites and forms. In place of this, they urged the doctrine of instantaneous regeneration, to be gained by certain means of grace. According to these teachers, regeneration consists in the return of God’s Spirit to the soul, which is withheld in consequence of Adam’s sin. The tendency of this view was to lessen reliance on educational training and to exalt the importance of other means of grace by which regeneration seemed to be secured, and to which the Bible, as was claimed, promised success.

Thus, in the Arminian sects, where the efficacy of rites and forms by a regularly ordained and authoritative priesthood has been relinquished, educational training has conformed more to the Calvinistic view. As eternal salvation depends on securing regeneration, every thing is made secondary to those methods by which regeneration is to be gained.

The Episcopal Arminians, therefore, depend more on educating the young aright, and have little dependence on revivals, while the Methodist Arminians look less to education and more to revivals and other modes of securing religious excitement.

But the foundation difficulty alike of the Calvinists, the Episcopal Arminians and the Methodist Arminians, is the assumption that _regeneration of a ruined nature_ is the thing to be sought, both by children and by adults, as the indispensable prerequisite to salvation, and that “the means of grace” are not for the training and development of a perfect nature, but to gain from God the cure of a ruined and helpless one.

In contrast to this, the common‐sense system recognizes all that is practical in any of the three methods. It teaches that man’s _nature_ is perfect, and yet that he is utterly helpless without the _knowledge_, _training_ and _motives_, for which he is dependent alike on God and on man. It teaches that this nature can be trained to “a new life” by educational instrumentalities and by a slow and gradual process. At the same time it teaches, that when men have lived a worldly life there may be a _sudden_ change of character by _voluntarily_ commencing a life of love and obedience to God, in place of a life of unregulated self‐indulgence.

Since the days of Pelagius and Augustine, there has never been any large body of Christians who have trained children on the common‐sense system dissevered from the Augustinian theory. This experiment is yet to be tried before its full and proper tendency can be truly developed.

The Unitarian sect, who reject the Augustinian dogma, also reject some of the fundamental principles of the common‐sense system, especially that on which the whole system of moral and religious duty and motive rests, _the dangers of the race_ in the invisible world, and the _power of motive_ secured by “God manifest in the flesh” as the long‐suffering and self‐ denying Creator, coming to aid his creatures by his teaching, sympathy, example, and abounding love.