The Importance of Parochial Schools (Pasche)

Ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath, but bring 

them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. Eph. 6, 4.

    True education means the training not only of the intellect, 

but also of the heart. Without religion a man cannot be lifted to 

a higher moral plane. There can be no true morality without 

Christian doctrines. For this reason, then, the Church must be 

active in building Christian schools and colleges.

    Also the Sunday-school and the confirmation class spend all 

their time in the consideration of the Word of God. But it is well 

to consider whether these institutions do really suffice. It is not 

astonishing that the religious spirit is on the wane in our country, 

since thousands of churches rest content with such meager spiritual 

food as the Sunday-school, can furnish their children. And even 

confirmation classes are not sufficient if the children come to the 

pastor without the most elementary knowledge of spiritual things; 

for even if the pastor makes the most earnest efforts, he cannot 

succeed in teaching the children all that Christ has commanded us 

in the course of a few months. 

    Religious schools for Christian children must be our watchword if we desire to fulfil our duty and to give our children what they need. Not schools where religion should be taught to the exclusion of all other knowledge, but schools in which religion shall also pervade all other instruction, being the divine force which controls the entire school. In such schools alone may we hope to educate our children as     God would have it, bringing them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. With such school system it -will be a rare thing to find a child fifteen years old which does not sufficiently know what to believe, how to live, and how to die in order to be saved. There is no other church which lays so much stress on a thorough Christian education as our Church does and always did.