Religious Education
The whole period of youth is one essentially of formation, education, instruction,—I use the words with their weight in them—intaking of stores, establishment in vital habits, hopes, and faiths. There is not an hour of it but is trembling with destinies,—not a moment of which, once past, the appointed work can ever be done again, or the neglected blow struck on the cold iron. Take your vase of Venice glass out of the furnace and strew chaff over it in its transparent heat, and recover that to its clearness and rubied glory when the north wind has blown upon it; but do not think to strew chaff over the child fresh from God’s presence, and to bring the heavenly colors back to him—at least in this world.
—John Ruskin.
Education For Good Behavior
Education does not mean teaching people to know what they do not know. It means teaching them to behave as they do not behave. It is not teaching the youth the shapes of letters and the tricks of numbers, and then leaving them to burn their arithmetic to roguery, and their literature to lust. It is, on the contrary, training them into the perfect exercise and kingly continence of their bodies and souls. It is a painful, continual, and difficult work, to be done by kindness, by warning, by precept, and by praise, but, above all,—by example.
—John Ruskin.
Golden Bands To The Throne Of God
During a long life I have proved that not one kind word ever spoken, not one kind deed ever done, but sooner or later returns to bless the giver, and becomes a chain, binding men with golden bands to the throne of God.
—Earl of Shaftesbury.
Alternate Reading: Jonah 3:10 to 4:11.