Page:The Great Didactic of John Amos Comenius (1896).pdf/240

 These three principles, therefore, learning, virtue, and piety, are the three founts from which all the streams of the most perfect pleasures flow.

15. Lastly, God Himself, manifest in the flesh (that He might exhibit in Himself the perfection of all things), has taught by His example that these three elements must exist in each individual. For the Evangelist testifies that He advanced not only in stature, but also in wisdom and favour with God and man (Luke ii. 52). Here can be seen the blessed Trinity that adorns us. For what is wisdom but the knowledge of things as they are? What is it that brings us favour with men, if not amiability of character? What procures us the grace of God, if not the fear of the Lord, that is to say, inward, serious, and fervid piety? Let us, therefore, realise in ourselves that which we have seen in Jesus Christ, the absolute ideal of all perfection, the standard set up for us to imitate.

16. For this reason He said, “Learn of me” (Matt. xi. 29). And since this same Christ has been given to the human race as the most learned teacher, as the most holy priest, and as the most powerful king, it is evident that Christians should be formed on His model and should be enlightened through their intellects, sanctified through their consciences, and made powerful through their deeds (each in his own calling). Our schools, therefore, will then at length be Christian schools when they make us as like to Christ as is possible.

17. It is, therefore, an unhallowed separation if these three elements be not bound together as if by an adamantine chain. How wretched is the teaching that does not lead to virtue and to piety! For what is literary skill without virtue? He who makes progress in knowledge but not in morality (says an old proverb), recedes rather than advances. And thus, what Solomon said of the beautiful but foolish woman, holds good of the learned man who possesses not virtue: “As a jewel of gold in a swine’s snout, so is a fair woman which is without discretion” (Prov. xi. 22). For, just as gems are set not in