What should secular education embrace? / By George Combe.

  • Combe, George, 1788-1858.
Date:
1848
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: What should secular education embrace? / By George Combe. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    12/66 (page 4)
    with eager curiosity. I could discover no trace of alteration in its size, either of increase or decrease. I was greatly dis- appointed ; my faith in the reward of virtue by the Ruler of the world received its first shock, and I feared that God did not govern the world in the manner which the nursery-maid had represented. Several years afterwards, I read in the Grammatical Exer- cises, an early class-book then used in the High School of Edinburgh, these words: “ Deus gubernat mundum” “ God governs the world.” “ Mundus gubernatur a Deo“ The world is governed by God.” These sentences were introduced into the book as exercises in Latin grammar ; and our teacher, the late Mr Luke Fraser, dealt with them merely as such, without entering into any consideration of the ideas embodied in them. This must have occurred about the year 1798, when I was ten years of age ; and the words “ Deus gubernat mundum— Mundus gubernatur a Deo,'1 made an indelible impression, and continued for years and years to haunt my imagination. As a child, I assumed the fact itself to be an indubitable truth, but felt a restless curiosity to discover horn God ex- ercised his jurisdiction. In the course of time, I read in the Edinburgh Advertiser, the newspaper taken in by my father, that Napoleon Buona- parte (instigated and assisted, as I used to hear, by the devil) governed France, and governed it very wickedly ; and that King George III., Mr Pitt, and Lord Melville, govern- ed Great Britain and Ireland—not very successfully either, for I read of rebellion, and murders, and burnings, and ex- ecutions in Ireland; while in Scotland my father complained of enormous Excise duties which threatened to involve him in ruin. I saw that my father ruled in his trade, and my mother in her household affairs, both pretty well on the whole; but with such evident marks of shortcoming and im- perfection, that it was impossible to trace God’s superintend- ence or direction in their administration. In the class in the High School of which I was a member, Mr Luke Fraser seemed to me to reign supreme; and as I felt his government to be harsh, and often unjust, I could not recognise God in it either. Under his tuition, and that of Dr Adam, the Rector of the High School, and of Dr John Hill, the Professor of Latin in the University of Edinburgh, I became acquainted with the literature, the mythology, and the history of Greece and Rome ; but in these no traces of the Divine government of the world were discernible. These were the only governments of which I then had