Page:Logic Taught by Love.djvu/138

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134
Logic Taught by Love

Old pupils assure me that they never discovered any jarring contradiction between my views and those of our clerical heads. The substance of their comments is much as follows:—"I didn't know you were teaching us anything on those happy Sunday evenings; I thought we were being amused, not taught. But after I left College I found you had given us a power. We can think for ourselves, and find out what we want to know." Now what was Sabbath instituted for, and what was Logic made for, except to create free-thinkers, free men and women, intellectual athletes, Prophets, and, in the best sense of the word, priests? Moses wished that all the Lord's People should be Priests and Prophets, even as he was.

It is almost needless to remark that the result indicated is due to the observance of a Sabbath of Freedom, sharply contrasted with week-day discipline. No such good effects follow the practice of leaving girls to think at random, and to study what they choose (or not study at all), all the week long. I would never again try to teach under similar circumstances. The logician should not be a servant of a clerical body. If any true mode of teaching Logic became general, it would gradually modify all religious teaching, and make it tend to become a training in order and reverence, not an inculcation of opinions or prejudices. Few clergymen would preach such sermons as they now do, if they knew that their arguments were subjected each week to a careful logical analysis, and all the reasons for the contrary opinion to their own were pointed out before the younger members of their flock. In fact, the same change would pass over religious