PART II.
Boys and Young Men, Their Education and Training.
The evils and dangers of the present system of educating and bringing up the boys of our country are too obvious to require minute description; and yet, startling as are the facts, the remedy is strangely obscure to even the very best thinkers of our time, Irreligion and infidelity are progressing pari passu with the advance guards of immorality and crime, and all are fostered, if not engendered, by the materialistic system of instruction, and the consequent wretched training at home and on the play-ground. The entire absence of all religious instruction from the school-room, which has resulted from the utter impossibility of harmonizing the multiform creeds, and the growing fallacy of "refraining from prejudicing the minds of our children in favor of any particular system of theology until they are able to think and choose for themselves," are fast bearing fruit in a generation of infidels, and we are becoming worse even than the pagans of old, who had, at least, their positive sciences of philosophy, and their religion such as it was, to oppose which was a criminal offense. To those who would dispute this somewhat horrible assertion, the author would point to the published statistics of church attendance, from which it appears that of the entire population but a very small proportion are habitual church-goers. Deducting from these again those who attend church simply as a matter of fashion, or from other than religious motives, and there remains a minimum almost too small to be considered, abundantly sustaining our charge.
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