CMP Review 2023-07-13

July 13, 2023

In a moment of transparency in 1902, Charlotte Mason wrote, “I was charged the other day with putting habit … in the place of the grace of God.” Her choice of tense was interesting. She might as well have said, “I *will* be charged some day with putting habit in the place of the grace of God.”

For that is indeed what happened, in a popular 1999 critique which said that “while Mason’s emphasis on the formation of good habits may seem fine on the surface, once it is penetrated, one sees how Mason perceives that even man’s conversion, salvation, hinges upon or is the result of his forming good habits based upon good thoughts based upon good ideas.”

Many have since elucidated the relationship between habit and grace in Mason’s thought, most notably Dr. Benjamin Bernier. I have contributed my own attempts. But perhaps Mason’s own 1902 response to the charge is still best: “On the contrary, the P.N.E.U. recognises the laws of habit as laws of God, and the forming of good and the hindering of evil habits as among the primary duties of a parent.”

And surely any approach based on the laws of God “may look, without presumption, to inherit the Divine blessing.”

@artmiddlekauff