oncerned in the management of a
school: and I do think that we could not answer them satisfactorily,
that our work would absolutely be unendurable, if we did not bear in
mind that our eyes should look forward, and not backward; if we did not
remember that the victory of fallen man is to be sought for, not in
innocence, but in tried virtue. Comparing only the state of a boy after
his first half-year, or year, at school, with his earlier state as a
child, and our reflections on the evil of our system would be bitter
indeed; but when we compare a boy's state after his first half-year, or
year, at school, with what it is afterwards; when we see the clouds
again clearing off; when we find coarseness succeeded again by delicacy;
hardness and selfishness again broken up, and giving place to affection
and benevolence; murmuring and self-will exchanged for humility and
self-denial; and the profane, or impure, or false tongue, uttering again
only the words of truth and purity; and when we see that all these good
things are now, by God's grace, rooted in the character; that they have
been tried, and grown up amidst the trial; that the knowledge of evil
has made them hate it the more, and be the more aware of it; then we can
look upon our calling with patience, and even with thankfulness; we see
that the wilderness has been gone through triumphantly, and that its
dangers have hardened and strengthened the traveller for all his
remaining pilgrimage.

For the truth is, that to the knowledge of good and evil we are born;
and it must come upon us sooner or later. In the common course of
things, it comes about that age with which we are here most concerned. I
do not mean that there are not faults in early childhood--we know that
there are;--but we know also that with the strength and rapid growth of
boyhood there is a far greater development of these faults, and
particularly far less of that submissiveness which belonged naturally to
the helplessness of mere childhood. I suppose that, by an extreme care,
the period of childhood might be prolonged considerably; but still it
must end; and the knowledge of good and evil, in its full force, must
come. I believe that this must be; I believe that no care can prevent
it, and that an extreme attempt at carefulness, whilst it could not
keep off the disorder, would weaken the strength, of the constitution to
bear it. But yet you should never forget, and I should never forget,
that although the ev