A TUTELARY SHADE FOR THE EDUCATIONISTS. Tun moral propriety of
separating secular from religious in- struction has received an unexpected sanction, as it were from the other world, in the posthumous declaration of Dr. Chalmers.
The great "difficulty" with which the statesmen who advocate public education have to contend, in separating secular instruction from religion, is not their own conviction that such a separation would be in any way dangerous but the fear of what others will think. Ministers know that they do not waver in their own faith; they know that they are not so many witty Voltaires dis- guised as Whig statesmen; they know well enough that they are not bent upon "undermining the Protestant religion," or "all religion" ; and they know that nobody really believes they are : they are simply afraid of the epithets which the professedly sanctimonious do not scruple to use. Timid people dread the epithets of the foul-mouthed in proportion to the very extrava- gance of the vituperation ; and thus the less applicable, the more a statesman shrinks at the mere threat of being called "infidel."
Now Dr. Chalmers was one of those fortunate beings who re concile opposite influences. The emphatic cordiality of his nature helped to impress all with the sense of the piety within him. It would be a profitless and unpopular outrage to level the epithet of "infidel" at him. No man ever was known on stronger evi- dence to be more hearty in his piety, in his zeal to advance reli- gion. He was an avowed advocate for making religion the high- est duty of a state. But his acute insight into worldly affairs made him perceive the fact, that while men are hesitating to permit secular without religious instruction—while they cannot agree about the religion to be taught—a large portion of the people remains hopelessly wicked through sheer ignorance. To promote religion, therefore, in this testamentary declaration he exhorts statesmen to separate the religious instruction from the secular. His motives are unimpeachable, his name is unassailable.
Here then is a position for timid Ministers : let them take their stand under the shelter of Dr. Chalmers's name. Let them stick by his text—declaring that they want no more than the great teacher of theology in the strictest section of the Church of Scot- land would have been satisfied with.
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