Baxter on Christian Education

I found some interesting comments by Richard Baxter in his work The Reformed Pastor about why Christian education is necessary.

"Nothing can be rightly known, if God be not known; nor is any study well managed, nor to any great purpose, if God is not studied. We know little of the creature, till we know it as it stands related to the Creator. He who overlooks Him who is the 'Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending,' and sees not Him in all who is the All in all, does see nothing at all."

"None but a Christian can read one line of his Physics so as to understand it rightly."

"Your study of physics and other sciences is not worth a rush, if it be not God that you seek after in them. To see and admire, to reverence and adore, to love and delight in God, as exhibited in his works - this is the true and only philosophy. This is the sanctification of your studies, when they are devoted to God, and when He is the end, the object, and the life of them all."

"Theology must lay the foundation, and lead the way in all our studies. If God must be searched after, in our search of the creature, then tutors (or teachers) must read God to their pupils in all; and divinity must be the beginning, the middle, the end, the life, the all, of their studies."

"Our physics and metaphysics must be reduced to theology; and nature must be read as one of God's books, which is purposely written for the revelation of Himself."

"If tutors would make it their principal business to acquaint their pupils with the doctrine of salvation, and labor to set it home upon their hearts, that all might be received according to its weight, and read to their hearts as well as to their heads."

And here is his word to teachers

"You, that are schoolmasters and tutors, begin and end with the things of God. Let some piercing words fall frequently from your mouths, of God, of the state of their souls, and the life to come. Do not say, they are too young to understand and enterain them."