History of Early Scottish Education - John Edgar

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1893 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER XVIII. SUBJECTS OF INSTRUCTION IN SCOTTISH SCHOOLS. The great subject which the Celtic Church had to teach was Christianity. Its mission teachers had, in the sixth century, to deal with fierce and barbarous peoples quite unprepared for the developed literature of Greece and Rome. Their own lives were their chief lesson books. The self-denial, and the patient labour of the pious monk was an education: the monastery, with its religious zeal and untiring energy methodically devoted to manual labour, writing, and study, was in every district a centre of moral stimulus and spiritual quickening. Moral and religious truth, and the idea of an organised society wider than the tribe, were gradually but surely instilled into the people. The organisation and labours of the Church prepared the way for civil unity and civil freedom. The lesson of the early Church was the transcendental one, "in the world, and yet not of it." In the Southern countries of Europe the Church had to struggle against paganism, and hold up the ascetic side of Christianity as the ideal against the sensuous culture of Greece which had penetrated the Roman world. The Church in early Scotland, on the other hand, had rude and fierce barbarians to convert, and it was by setting up the ideal of monastic asceticism, industrious toil, and pious contemplation that it secured for Christianity a permanent victory. Like the Greek state, it had a system of life for its members. The true education for the Church therefore, implied not the imparting of ideas likely to unfit the mind for the full acceptance of that system, but the moulding of the life of the community in accordance with its ascetic ideal. The ritual and observance of the Church's ordinances in the matter of fasts and...