THE EDUCATION CONFLICT. go THE EDITOR OF TUE "SPECTATOR.'] SIR,—The
controversy on Education which is agitating this country has evoked some phases of character and modes of con-
duct in those engaged in it which it is instructive for bystanders to contemplate, and the exhibition of which to those who have in the heat of the strife perhaps unconsciously manifested them may not be without a good practical result.
The fight has been fiercest over the questions—Shall religion be taught in the schools to be established by Government? and, shall religion, if taught, be sectarian or unsectarian as to character ? As was to be expected in a country happily ao deeply religious as our own, the great preponderance of opinion proves to be in favour of religious education. Many of those who plead for purely secular day-schools do so out of no hostility to religion ; but because they believe that religion, even if excluded from the week-day schools, will still be taught, perhaps more efficiently taught, at home or in Sunday-schools.
It is noteworthy, however, that the argument in favour of re- ligious, though unsectarian, day-schools is based almost entirely on sectarian considerations. Those who have argued against teaching distinctive denominational tenets to children under thir- teen years of age, on the ground of the utter unsuitableness of such teaching to children, have been very few in number. Both in Parliament and out of it, a few voices have been raised in favour of the exclusion of dogmatic formularies from elementary schools because of the absurdity of admitting them, but the bulk of argument has been drawn from sectarian sources and urged with sectarian zeal. The Dissenter has contended that to allow the teaching of the Church Catechism is unfair towards him as a Dissenter ; and the Churchman has maintained that to prohibit Prayer-Book and Catechism is unfair to him as a Churchman, since it is likely, in a coming generation, to deprive him of that influence over the national mind which, having exerted for centuries, he has come to regard as his right. It is lamentable to see how in the midst of this strife the highest welfare of the children has been lost sight of. It seems to have been assumed by all parties that the children of the country are a corpus vile on which they may continue to try experiments which have certainly been tried long enough and often enough to prove their worthlessness. The clergyman, who in the village has had things pretty much his own way, and tried to instil into the mind of childhood the very quint- essence of his creed, is constantly heard complaining that so many of his parishioners are deeply irreligious, and not a few of them grossly immoral ; and the Dissenter, who has sought to infuse into his children the very dissidence of Dissent, is as constantly heard lamenting that the youth of his flock wander to strange folds, or are lost amidst worldliness and sin. Yet, for all this, Churchmen are doing their utmost to be allowed to try, on a largo scale, what, on a small one, has been proved to be, to say the least of it, nugatory ; and the Dissenter seems as if he can find no better argument with which to rebut the Churchman's aim than this,—if the Churchman has his way, be, as a Dissenter, will be less likely to have his. It will be said, perhaps, that neither Churchman nor Dissenter is aware of the im- propriety on natural grounds of teaching distinctive theological and ecclesiastical tenets to children ; a supposition evidently true, so far as Churchmen are concerned, and which, so far as Dissenters are concerned, seems proved by the offer, on the part of the Liberation Society, of a prize for the best book for children on its thebry of Church organization. If such bathe state of the case, it is a pity that a far greater amount of ability and time has not been spent during the last few months in teaching the extreme men of all parties that denominationalism is not milk for babes, but strong meat (hard bones, rather) for those who are of full age; that whilst a child is quite capable of receiving into his soul real religion if conveyed in the form of parable, narrative, and life, he is incapable of receiving it if presented in the form of dogma, creed, and abstract reasoning ; that to seek to make a child side with a sect or party is to force him into a position which, for a child, is just as grotesque as that which he sometimes assumes for himself when he mounts a chair for a pulpit, or bestrides a walking- stick for a war-horse. Perhaps more would have spent their time and their strength in asserting this truth, did they not feel that those who cannot see it must be so blinded by sectarianism that nothing will make them aware that they cannot see, but falling into that ditch which is not far ahead of all sectarian leaders of
children. For their own fate one feels not much concern, but for the sake of the children one can but utter a warning voice.
The position which has been assumed in the controversy by the
extreme section of Nonconformists is a very remarkable one. Until lately, a large body of Dissenters, led by Mr. E. Baines, resisted every scheme of education by Government, on the ground that all education ought to be religious ; that to teach religion, Government must assume an unlawful function : and that, there- fore, the Government must leave education to voluntary effort. This doctrine Mr. Baines aud a good many with him have re- canted ; or rather they have practically abandoned their position, though still bolding their theory. Controlled by circumstances too strong for them, they say they will no longer put their veto upon a national scheme of education, and yet they are arguing and acting as if they could consistently hold their theory, whilst pursuing a line of policy the opposite of that which once they followed ; that they could allow the State to educate the people, and that religiously, and still hold to their theory of the unlaw- fulness of State interference in religion. For neither Mr. Baines nor the bulk of those who are under his leadership plead for a purely secular system of education. They are too deeply religious for that. And yet in arguing against Mr. Forster's Bill some of them are constantly assuming as a truth that to take State pay for teaching religion is in any form anti-Scriptural. The fact is, that they have put themselves in a thoroughly false position. They have not abandoned their ecclesiastical theory. It is the ground on which their dissent is based. They advocate their theory, pure and simple, on the platform of the Liberation Society ; but when arguing on the question of education, they are bewildered between a deeply religious feeling that to prohibit the teaching of religion in day-schools would be a disgrace to a Christian nation, and their politico-ecclesiastical creed that for the Government to teach reli- gion is wrong. The various suggestions that have been made by them as to the time and mode of teaching religion in the day- schools are but ineffectual devices to remove this inconsistency.
From another point of view it may be seen how anomalous is the position in which they are. Leaving out of view now the few who are escaping from the dilemma, and maintaining their consistency by asking for a purely secular system of education, the majority of them now ask that the religious instruction given in the Govern- ment schools shall be unsectarian. The teaching of all merely denominational tenets is to be forbidden, and only that body of Christian truths in which all the great Churches of this country agree is to be taught, some provision being made for the case of those who, unhappily, may wish their children to have no Christian teaching at all. Yet how one who holds the theory of the unlaw- fulness of religious education by the State can consent to this is indeed a marvel. For surely if the State does unholy work in teaching religion at all, she ought to be especially warned not to meddle with the teaching of those truths which are the very core and essence of the Christian faith. That which distinguishes Calvinism from Arminianism, or Episcopacy from Congrega- tionalism or Methodism, may turn out to be simply human, after mould or form in which, by human hands, essential truth has been cast ; but the truth common to all the Churches,—surely if anything is divine, that is. Surely the member of the Libera- tion Society might, without much inconsistency, go in for thoroughly denominational schools, on the ground that what man made man may still manipulate ; but ought to hold that that body of essential truth which is not of man, but of God, the State must let alone. Surely he means by religion that, and not distinctive denominational tenets, all of which cannot be true. Unless he is prepared to argue that the sectarian element in the religion of this country is more divine than its common faith, he ought, to be consistent, to hold that denominationalism may, perhaps, be taught by the State, but that the great body of Christian truth in which all Churches are agreed must not.
No one laying any claim to "judge, not according to the appearance, but to judge righteous judgment," will be prepared to maintain that the controversy at present going on is altogether, or even mainly, an unholy strife. Even admitting that it is a struggle of Church parties for power, the strife for power may be a perfectly legitimate one. The desire to influence the thought and life of a nation is one for cherishing which a man or a Church ought to be commended. But admitting this, it may still be asked whether the parties in the present strife have not forgotten the method in which the power they crave is to be won. It is assumed by all of them that it is to be won by political means. It is taken for granted that the party which can so determine political arrangements as to adjust them according to its own
idea of what should be, the party that can secure for itself the education of the largest proportion of the children of the country, will win the power. But is this true ? True, we mean, judged in the light of the Word of God ? I will suppose that the Dissenter is worsted in this contest ; that the clergy in the villages and small towns have their own way, secure the establishment of denominational schools, and get the rankest sectarianism taught. I am aware that in making this supposition I am assuming that which is unfair to a very large number of clergymen ; for although it must be allowed that some are thus onesided, it is not to be doubted that the spirit of proselytizing in others has been greatly exaggerated. But, assuming for illustration's sake the worst, 'does it follow that the party which has succeeded in its immediate object will succeed in its ultimate aim,—the acquisition of the chief power in the country. Must the Dissenter sit down in despair as a hopelessly vanquished man ? If he believes in the truth and rectitude of his cause, and believes, moreover, in his New Testament, his spirits will rise on the day he finds himself beaten in Parliament, and he will confidently anticipate ultimate victory. There is no truth more plainly written in the New Testament than this, —that the final triumph of Right is ever through the momentary success of Wrong; that no good cause was ever yet established except through suffering ; that meek submission to what is felt to be unjust is the method of triumphing over injustice. This is the lesson of the Cross. This is the meaning of the promise, "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth." The Dissenter, believing himself to be in the right, is doing perfectly right in using all the liberty of protest and political action which the con- stitution of the country allows him for the prevention of the passing of what he deems a bad law. He might not, consistently with allegiance to the greatest of all masters, tamely submit to the perpetration of a wrong against which he had the right to protest, and possibly the power of prevention. He might not meekly let wrong be done unresisted, on the plea that victory is promised to the meek. But having protested and fought, but been worsted, he may take his defeat meekly and calmly, but confidently hope for victory through defeat. Indeed, it must be evident to all that nothing would so accelerate the downfall of that tyranny which in platform-speeches has been represented as existing in villages, and as waiting to manifest itself more fully through the contemplated School Boards, than the exercise of it. In a free country like this, with its free press, let the poor Dissenter be deprived of his bread, or be subject to insult because he has availed himself of a right given him by the conscience-clause to withdraw his children from religious teaching of which he dis- approves, and no law to prohibit sectarian teaching would work so effectively for its destruction as the law which permitted it. I might follow a similar line of reasoning, on the assumption that in the pending strife the Dissenter wins and the Churchman loses. As a Christian man, believing in the truth of his cause and of his Bible, he may take meekly the temporary triumph of the Dissenter, expecting, for himself victory in the end. Were a religious and not a political spirit the predominant one in this professedly religious conflict, little of the bitterness that has been displayed could have entered into it. There have been those who, believing in the righteousness of their cause and the word of their Lord that victory is for the meek, have accepted without bad feeling worse defeats than in the present instance Churchman can inflict on Dissenter, or Dissenter on Churchman. And the confidence of being in the right which each party is now displaying only needs to have super- added to it a firmer belief in essential practical Christianity, to convert a strife scandalous in the eyes of the world into a contest worthy of Christian men. As it is, the Nonconformist has given a fresh occasion for the application to himself of the epithet "politi- cal dissenter," whilst at the same time the Churchman has more than ever deprived himself of the right to apply it. Unhappily, this is far from being the only occasion on which, with the display of great zeal for creeds and doctrines, the practical precepts of our
holy religion have been ignored.—I am, Sir, &c., M.
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