One of the most promising men in the House of
Peers, the Earl of Rombery, speaking at Queensferry this day week, after treating with force and wit of the agricultural-labour question and the Bishop of Gloucester's 'horse-pond' speech, went into a defence of the policy of the Secularists in Scotland, regretting that the Scotch Bill had not left religious education entirely to the parents and religious teachers. For this he used the usual argu- ments, together with the very feeble one that all subjects would be better taught if there was a division of labour between the reli- gious and secular teaching. Would Lord Rosebery apply the same reasoning to any other subject whatever ? Would he suppose for a moment that history, or literature, or music would be better taught and better learned, through being left to the teaching of parents and independent professors ? Why, the mere suggestion would be universally accepted as a virtual shelving of any subject so excluded from the ordinary school teaching. Religion is either a part of all culture, or it is nothing at all ; and to exclude it from the echool under the pretence of reverence for it, is very like the policy of forbidding vernacular translations of the Bible on the same reverential plea. That is a kind of reverence which starves and kills the emotion of veneration.
Previous page
