FUNDAMENTAL CHRISTIANITY AND RELIGIOUS EDUCATION.
[TO THE Burros OF THE SPEC PATOIL1 SIE,—The following extract from a memorandum by that great and good administrator and soldier, Sir Henry Lawrence, on the project for a school for soldiers' children at Ootacatunni% dated August 27th, 1856, seems strongly applicable after an interval of fifty years, and may be of interest to some of your readers. After saying that he wished the rules of this school to be the same in spirit as those of the Lawrence Asylum—where the children are dealt with on Bible principles, and are taught all the leading truths of Christianity without unnecessary allusion to disputed points, aud where the Scriptures are daily read, daily taught, daily enforced, in fact where Bible teaching is the basis of religious instruction— he concludes with these words :— "There is ample in the Bible, at least for children, without running into religious controversy. We wish to make Christians, not controversialists. I regret deeply if in these remarks I have fallen into the danger I would wish to avoid. I rather hope that the differences that have hitherto divided the promoters of the education of the soldier's child, may, by mutual concession and forbearance, resolve themselves into earnest and united effort to secure the great object that all parties have at heart, and 'that an example may be set to the natives around of Christian charity, not of controversial hostility."—" Life of Sir Henry Lawrence," by Sir Herbert Edwardes and Herman fderivale, Vol. IL, p. 268.
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