SEPARATE FUNCTIONS OF SECULAR AND RELIGIOUS TEACHERS.
A CLERICAL correspondent, writing under what we shall show to be a misconception of our meaning, passes strictures on some observations we lately made respecting the Government Edu-
cation contest : but we venture to accept his representations as substantially confirming our views. This is his letter.
TO THE EDITOR OF THE SPECTATOR.
a recent number of your paper I read, "What these antagonist par- ties are contending for is their own augmentation, a theological victory for them- selves. Neither party will have education without discipline in religious dogma; none will agree upon the dogma to be taught The instruction of the people for practical purposes is set aside. Hypocrisy is a harsh term, but we do not know what other to apply to oondact so inconsistent with professed purposes? Forgive me if t. say that I cannot recognize in these remarks the calm thought- fulness and candour, which For years past I have found to distinguish the Spec- tutor from other journals. Your position is, Sir, that religious persons are hy- pocritically using the name of education to advance the aims of theological partisanship. not there are instances of such conduct on the hustings and the platform, I do not deny. But that these orators afford any index to the real feel- ings and motives of religions eduestiouists, is wholly untrue. I dare assert, that in the entire course of recent discussion, in or out of Parliament, no single speaker has given adequate expression to the mind of the real promoters of Christian education. Take a case of every-day occurrence. A clergyman comes into a parish, believing himself to be solemnly intrusted with the spiritual charge of such as will accept his care and acknowledge his office. He finds no greater ob- stacle in his efforts to promote their welfare than a settled, apathetic ignorance. In vain he reasons and exhorts; his people have not the ideas that correspond with his language; they have not even the faculty of paying attention to a given subject of thought for five consecutive minutes. What must he do? to the old he would apply in vain ; with the young there is hope. He establishes a school, secures (if he can) an efficient master, and devotes as large a portion of his own time as he can spare to personal aid in the culture of the children around him. So far you approve his zeal and praise his benevolence: but here comes the crime--he holds "a dogma." That is to say, certain religious convictions are bound up with his whole nature and being—are so dear to him, that he would die sooner than contradict them. He believes in a judgment to come, when all must give account for their deeds, and a divinely-constituted society on earth, of which all should be members. His system, which he ascribes to direct revelation, obliges him to the acceptance of many truths of daily and hourly application,— as, for instance, the necessity of sacraments and the efficacy of prayer. Now, for such a man to go day after day into his school and speak no word of what he believes more important than all other truth, would be simply impossible. He could not teach without teaching religion. Hundreds there are such as I have described, who if your secular schools were opened tomorrow in their perishes,would forthwith turn their own houses into schools, and invite every child to come and be trained to lead not merely a useful but a Christian life. Is this " hypo- crisy"? Is this "setting aside the instruction of the people"? Why may not this man have an honest aim as well as yourself? Your aims are different, it is true; you train children for their stations in life, he trains them for life only as a preparation for eternity; you wish to make them useful citizens, he would have them become also saints in heaven; you appeal to their intellect, he to their con- science; you try to arouse them to understand the rule of public opinion and the claims of social duty, he teaches them to live by such a rule as he believes will be the measure of their conduct at the last judgment This is a view of education—perhaps a wrong view, but at least a view, con- sistent, definite, practical—held by very many persons living and talking and acting in this nineteenth century. To ignore it, or to stigmatize it as "hypo- crisy," seems to Inc to be neither fair nor philosophical.
I am, Sir, with the highest respect for your general tone and temper, your obedient servant,
To our correspondent's own view of the general question at issue we make no objection; we are in the main agreed with him : but he does not correctly describe the "position " which we had taken. We by no means charged "religious persons" with hypo- crisy. Those whose conduct we were discussing were the "an- tagonist parties" whose speeches did come under review, and not those sincere religious persons whose opinions, according to our correspondent, have been wholly unrepresented either in or out of Parliament. On the contrary, we think that, taking the whole of our writings on the subject, and in particular the most recent, he might perceive that we have had in our eye the kind of case which he so earnestly describes. We accept the explicit and trustworthy evidence supplied above, that the totally uninstructed mind is incapable of receiving the ideas which a religious teacher desires to impart ; we make no" crime" of any "dogma," but ad- mit, without qualification, that every man whose mind is big with momentous convictions may claim free scope for imparting them; and we allow that such a teacher as "M." might not feel at home in merely secular schools. What we have said is, that, for secular purposes, it is a duty incumbent on the State to secure that every subject should have access to secular instruction in the use of the tools of education ; and that, as religious dogma is not the proper function of the State—as, with the endless sectarian conflicts of this country, the attempt to impart religious dogma provokes such opposition that any secular instruction combined with it must be crippled if not defeated—it is proper for the State, as such, to meddle with the secular part alone, leaving the doctrinal part to the several religious bodies whose function it is to undertake such teaching. We believe that if efficient schools for public educa- tion were at work, congregational schools more numerous and of a character higher that any yet seen would be established ; and is a competent witness in corroboration of that belief. Such zeal would be anything but " hypocrisy " : the hypocrisy would lie in professing; to desire such results while impeding the very course that would lead to them.
Observe, it is not proposed that the State should educate the whole people : it is only proposed that the State should establish a system of instruction in the use of the elementary tools of edu- cation, which should fulfil these two simple conditions,—that it should be in itself efficient for that modest purpose ; and that it should be open to all who have not elsewhere the means of so efficient training. Such an establishment would not prevent the existence of a single school, or even of a single scholarship, in which earnest and pious persons might desire to blend religious with secular instruction. An earnest man like our correspondent would be fitly employed in his own school. "1114 se jactet in aula"; but do not let him plead that liberty, which is not gain- said, as a bar to the existence of what may be called the State- guarantee schools ; the result of which would be immeasurably to raise the standard of instruction throughout all persuasions, and to abolish that disgrace to our country, the existence of whole classes born to the faculties of humanity, but so totally unculti- vated that "they have not even the faculty of paying attention to a given thought for five consecutive minutes.'
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