The Reign of Law in Education

I've been reading Home Education by Charlotte Mason (1842-1923) with a yahoo reading group for over a month now. It's definitely not an easy read, partly because of her Victorian style of writing. In fact, somebody has complied a sentence-by-sentence modern English paraphrase as an  attempt to make Charlotte's words accessible to modern parents. 


Anyway, something in last week's reading was so enlightening to me that I have to quote it. 

It is a shame to believing people that many whose highest profession is that they do not know, and therefore do not believe, should produce more blameless lives, freer from flaws of temper, from the vice of selfishness, than do many sincerely religious people. It is a fact that will confront the children by-and-by, and one of which they require an explanation; and what is more, it is a fact that will have more weight, should it confront them in the person of a character which they cannot but esteem and love, than all the doctrinal teaching they have had in their lives. This appears to me the threatening danger to that confessed dependence upon and allegiance to Almighty God which we recognize as religion––not the wickedness, but the goodness of a school which refuses to admit any such dependence and allegiance. (Vol I page 39)

Although my children have not been confronted by the fact that some nonbelievers are living a more righteous life than some believers, this fact has indeed been one of the stumbling blocks for a few of my non-believing friends and acquaintances.

As for this superior morality of some non-believers, supposing we grant it, what does it amount to? Just to this, that the universe of mind, as the universe of matter, is governed by unwritten laws of God; that the child cannot blow soap bubbles or think his flitting thoughts otherwise than in obedience to divine laws; that all safety, progress, and success in life come out of obedience to law, to the laws of mental, moral or physical science, or of that spiritual science which the Bible unfolds; that it is possible to ascertain laws and keep laws without recognizing the Lawgiver, and that those who do ascertain and keep any divine law inherit the blessing due to obedience, whatever be their attitude towards the Lawgiver; just as the man who goes out into blazing sunshine is warmed, though he may shut his eyes and decline to see the sun. (underlines were added by me) Conversely, that they who take no pains to study the principles which govern human action and human thought miss the blessings of obedience to certain laws, though they may inherit the better blessings which come of acknowledged relationship with the Lawgiver. (Vol I page 40)

Reading this was like having a light bulb went off for me. I have not read elsewhere that explained so clearly why law-biding lives are often more blameless and accordingly more blessed than pious lives. A quote from Francis A. Shaeffer seems to strike a cord with what Miss Mason was saying. (No, I have not read Shaeffer's book. Just saw the quote a while back and was able to locate it.)

When I say Christianity is true I mean it is true to total reality--the total of what is, beginning with the central reality, the objective existence of the personal-infinite God. Christianity is not just a series of truths but Truth--Truth about all of reality. And the holding of that Truth intellectually--and then in some poor way living upon the truth, the Truth of what is--brings forth not only certain personal results, but also governmental and legal results.  (A Christian Manifesto, page 19-20)