UNSECTARIAN EDUCATION.
rrE THE EDITOR or THE " SPROTATOR.:1 'Sin,—Mr. Abbott's valuable letter in the Spectator of last week, and also the interesting letter of your correspondent "\V." to
which it was a reply, both appear to me to overlook the fact that a very large proportion of the teaching now given in our Elementary schools is precisely of that undenominational character which they desire to have, but find it so hard to define. The problem may be a hard one when thrown to controversialists for solution ; but, solvitur ambulando. When the teacher of a school finds himself face to face with a multitude of thoughtless, ignorant little children, whose hearts and understandings he desires to reach, the problem is usually solved by the necessities of the case, and he draws out for them in the religious lesson such simple narratives as may awaken their interest and fix their attention,—such simple lessons of duty to God and man, such simple pictures of their Saviour and Good Shepherd, as the lambs of the flock can receive.
But this, it will be said, is trenching on dangerous ground ; already the teaching is "denominational." It is at least, then, that of a wide-spreading denomination, including Church people and Wesleyans and all the orthodox Dissenters ; and how large a portion of our village schools contain children of these communions alone. If these are all easily, naturally, provided for by a common teaching, how many in England would be left unprovided for ? One must be blind not to see that the difficulties of the case are often wilfully exaggerated by those who, unlike your correspond- ents, desire to find them insoluble, and always argue apparently on the supposition that every village school in England is a microcosm of all the known and unknown religions of the world.
But such teaching as I have spoken of, while in full accord with the faith of all the great religious communions of England, contains nothing which need repel Unitarians, and certainly nothing which is not accepted by Roman Catholics as fully as by the Church and orthodox Dissenters ; and though Roman Catholics would doubtless consider it incomplete, their objections to a non- Catholic school lie quite as much against the general tone and influence of it, as against the actual religious lesson, and would still continue in vigour if this were withdrawn. And it must not be forgotten that both Roman Catholics and Jews, in respect to the last of whom alone any insuperable difficulty exists, are found chiefly in the towns, where they have a choice of schools.
Mr. Abbott, who, by the help of a liberal mind and a catholic heart, has, as we know, successfully accomplished the more diffi- cult task of giving united religious teaching to older and more advanced students, does not, of course, question the possibility of doing it for children ; and he would rejoice, I am sure, if he were aware how commonly it is done already.
I have no wish to draw an ideal picture, or to deny that there are also many schools where the teaching is truly "sectarian," though that the children become ' sectaries ' under it no one pretends. But there can be little doubt that the number of these schools, never happily large, will tend continually to decrease under the present Education Act, the operation of which is one both of direct and indirect discouragement to sectarian teaching in schools ; and we may hopefully trust to the good sense of teachers and managers for the continually wider adoption of such simple Christian teaching in their schools as will unite the largest number possible of their scholars in the religious lesson, and save us from the shame of seeing the children of our land sorted into sectarian coteries, for the sake of controversies which, in no teaching that is either rational or spiritual, could be so much as named amongst
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