Jeremiah B. Jeter on education

                                                                                                Vol. XIX, No. 7, September 2006

[J. B. Jeter (1802-1880) was born in Bedford County, VA, long term Baptist preacher, present at the founding meeting of the Baptist General Association of Virginia, a Virginia messenger to the founding meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention in Augusta, GA, in 1845, first president of the SBC Foreign Mission Board, and editor of The Religious Herald. The following is an excerpt from his sermon “The Obligations of Baptists to Their Distinctive Principles” given to the 1877 annual meeting of the BGAV in Danville. Emphasis has been added.]

Education is another and a most efficient means of supporting their principles, which Baptists should not neglect. The religious training of children is the great business of human life. They do not need to be baptized, or to have a quasi church membership; but they need to be carefully and thoroughly instructed in divine truth; and God has graciously provided for securing to them this benefit, not through an unmeaning ceremony, but by implanting in the parental heart an affection, which neither time nor toil can exhaust, nor ingratitude can repress, and which prompts to assiduous efforts for the instruction of children in all that pertains to their welfare, in time and in eternity. Baptists will be false to their principles, unkind to their children, and unfaithful to God, if they do not employ all appropriate means to have them instructed and confirmed in the faith, and especially in their peculiar principles. The notion that they should be left to adopt a religious creed, as chance, ignorance, or inclination may dictate, when they shall attain to maturity, is sanctioned by neither reason nor revelation. Why should they be taught anything, if they are not taught religion? The knowledge of it is not instinctive, or does it come by chance? The apostolic direction to parents concerning their children is: "Bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord;" and this nurture certainly includes instruction in divine truth and a wholesome discipline. Our children, then, should be taught the word of the Lord – that which inculcates our distinctive principles among the rest – in the nursery, in the Sunday-school, and in the higher schools; or, at any rate, we should see to it that they are not misinstructed on these points. Children are not only easily taught, but their minds are extremely credulous and impressible; and early convictions and impressions are not readily changed. Why, then, should Baptists leave their children to grow up in ignorance, or to be erroneously trained, concerning principles of whose truth and importance they have a profound conviction?

[The above is from a very interesting, brief (21 page) booklet on Jeter which is available from Jefferson Park Press, 2505 Jefferson Park Avenue, Charlottesville, VA 22903; 434-293-6175; or jeffparkchurch@juno.com for $3.00]