p. 26 | Moral Teachings of History by James Currie

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D.C. · Jul 2, 1908

Moral Teachings of History

By James Currie

HISTORY should be studied with a moral purpose as well as with an intellectual. No one who is not more or less acquainted with his country can feel an enlightened interest in its fame and its privileges, can judge of those discussions of vital moment which are unceasingly on the lips of a free people, or can understand its current literature. And he is excluded from all those pleasant associations which almost every spot of its soil suggests to him who has traced its growth from infancy to manhood. But beyond contributing in an indirect way to raise the whole tone and temper of those who read it, history stands forth with claims to be regarded as a great moral teacher. It exhibits the punishment of crime, it may be after temporary success; and, where crime seems to prosper continuously, the miseries which follow in its train. It draws lessons of personal improvement from the characters who appear upon its stage, whether good or bad; from the devotion of the patriot, the fortitude of the martyr, the integrity of the honorable, and the charity of the pious, not less than from the craft and falsehood of the intriguer, the corruptness of the unjust, and the unscrupulousness of the selfish. The reader should have his own character heightened by the attraction of the virtuous and by the repulsion of the vicious. Thus it is that this subject occupies no mean place among the instruments for forming the moral judgment of youth.—James Currie.