---
title: 'T.V. Moore: The Oldest Seminary is the Family Fireside'
type: post
author: 'R. Andrew Myers'
date: 2022-12-22
url: https://confessional.org/blog/2022-t-v-moore-the-oldest-seminary-is-the-family-fireside
---

# T.V. Moore: The Oldest Seminary is the Family Fireside

“The oldest seminary on earth is the family fireside. It is not only the oldest, but the most important and universal; indeed, the only true university, for it is the only educational institute that extends to the whole human race, and all these interests and pursuits. Other seminaries reach but few, this reaches all; others take the mind after it has received its mould in a great measure, this takes it from the very beginning of life, when its powers are most plastic; others act but for a few months or years of school-time, this acts from the beginning of life to its close, in youth and maturity, labor and rest, joy and sorrow, and ceases its agency only with life itself;...

The learning of other seminaries may be forgotten, the formulas and problems, the lines and thoughts of scientific and classic lore may fade from memory, but the lessons of the fireside and the family are woven with the very warp and woof of the nature, and even in old age, in distant exile from our native land, though the tongue has long ceased to utter the language of its nativity, yet in the evening of life will the tones and accents of earlier years come back to the old man’s thoughts, and the lessons of childhood and youth be repeated in the decrepitude of age.” — [T.V. Moore](/authors/thomas-verner-moore), *God’s University; or, The Family Considered as a Government, a School, and a Church, the Divinely-Appointed Institute for Training the Young for the Life that Now Is, and for that Which is to Come* (1855)