Excerpt from The Early Moravian Contribution to Liberal Education in Eastern Pennsylvania

Now, for several reasons, it was natural that the re port of this consecrated pioneer, who had been sent to spy out the religious and moral requirements of Pennsylvania, met a sympathetic response in regard to school matters.

Modern pedagogy recognizes that a revolution in educational conceptions was wrought by Amos Come nius, a Moravian bishop, at this time dead about seventy years. He stood for universal education. He postulated that every man [and every woman also is entitled to the best education possible in Virtue of inherent humanity. From education all ranks and conditions should gain vigor of intel lect and soundness of judgment, by it have tastes cul tured, and through it receive information needful for happiness and usefulness. Step by step, -and at first by object teaching, each should be brought to feel thoroughly at home in the world, finding none of its interests foreign to him, so as to be fitted to con tribute his part to the common advantage, the while he himself is prepared for eternal happiness in accordance with the will of God.

When the awful Thirty Years' War was sweeping Central Europe like a series of tornadoes, these werenew notions. Men on the heights, who saw above and beyond the sulphur smoke in the valleys of strife, desired the services of Comenius for England, for France, for Sweden, yes, even for New England. Some of us now think it was a pity he did not close in with the overtures of Governor Winthrop, respecting the presidency of Harvard. As it was, his intense literary activity - he wrote more than one hundred works, many of them educational - left permanent effects in the improvement of scholastic methods.

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