Methodism has been in the forefront of the long battle with
ignorance.
The establishment of "week-day schools" in connexion with this great
Church owed its origin to the declaration of the Conference in 1833.
that "such institutions, placed under an efficient spiritual control,
cannot fail to promote those high and holy ends for which we exist as
a religious community." The object was to give the scholars "an
education which might begin in the infant school and end in heaven,"
thus subserving the lofty aim of Methodism, "to fill the world with
saints, and Paradise with glorified spirits"; a more ambitious idea
than that expressed by Huxley when he said, "We want a great highway,
along which the child of the peasant as well as of the peer can climb
to the highest seats of learning."
[Illustration: Queen's College, Taunton.]
In 1836 the attention of the Conference was directed to education in
general, and especially to Wesleyan day schools; the Pastoral Address
of 1837, regretting that children had to be trained outside the
Church or be left untaught, expressed the hope that soon, in the
larger circuits, schools might be established which would give a
scriptural and Wesleyan education.
Pages:
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246