subsequent training on the promise of which baptism is conferred, the rite itself is but an empty form and a mockery.1

We have refrained from touching upon the practical difficulties that arise in connection with the teaching of religion in State-aided schools, because we think that the question should be argued upon much higher grounds. But even here we are met with the difficulty of either being made parties to the endowment of what we believe to be an error, or of seeking to perpetrate an injustice. The only

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TRIMMER: Christian Education.) Baptism is a sacrament of the New Testament, ordained by Jesus Christ, not only for the solemn admission of the party baptised into the visible Church, but also to be unto him a sign and seal of the covenant of grace, of his ingrafting into Christ, of regeneration, of remission of sins, and of his giving up unto God through Jesus Christ, to walk in newness of life."-(Confession of Faith.)

1 Parents offer their children to God in baptism, and then they promise to teach them the doctrine of the Gospel, and bring them up in the nurture of the Lord. But they easily promise and easily break it; and educate their children for the world and the flesh, although they have renounced these, and dedicated them to God."-(Introduction to Confession of Faith.) 'Constant regard should be had, through the whole course of a child's education," to "the holy sacrament by which infants are received into the Christian Church."-(Mrs. TRIMMER.) "How awful is the responsibility of parents! God will require an account at your hand of every child He has given you. It is, therefore, your duty to employ all the methods within your reach to promote its salvation. Much depends on a steady, uniform perseverance in the use of means; the neglect of one only may cause a failure."--(ANON.)

2" No one should claim for himself a liberty he is not willing to allow to another." (J. A. LANGFORD.) The English Nonconformist, in speaking of the Scotch Education Bill, says: "Is it possible that United Presbyterians and Free Churchmen can go hand in hand in support of an Education Bill which permits the endowment of the schools governed by a Catholic hierarchy, and be contented with a mere declaration that 'the grant is not to be made in respect of instruction in religious subjects,' when, by the aid of the grant, such instruction is, as a matter of fact, actually provided! Yet if the United Presbyterians and the members of the Free Church insist upon the application of rates and taxes to schools in which their own doctrines are taught, they cannot prevent a correspondent endowment of Catholic schools. There are men who so far permit their love of sect to conquer their love of justice as to cry, 'Let truth be endowed and not error! Our religion is the truth-it is proper we should receive public money; but it should be given to none but us!' But we cannot believe that such a sectarian caricature of the doctrine of religious equality can prevail in the great Christian Churches of Scotland; and they must be prepared to endow Roman Catholicism if they accept any endowment for themselves." "Government should have so regulated their measure as to afford secular education-the capacity of reading and writing, and the ordinary elements of mental culture—and not take upon

way out of the difficulty is that which we advocate,-a separation between religion and secular education.1.

POSTSCRIPT. -There are many persons who hesitate not to apply the term "godless" to any proposed system of national education having for its basis a separation between secular and religious instruction. But, to our mind, that is the more godless education of the two in which the unspeakably highest and most important part of education is left to the chance qualifications of the ordinary teacher. It is no disparagement to our teachers that we say we believe that the great body of them are not qualified to perform the duty of religiously instructing the young with themselves the responsibility of the religious instruction. The religious instruction might have been left to be communicated by other parties on their own responsibility."-(Prof. RAINEY: Life of Principal Cunningham.) "To class our national schools under partial designations of Protestant, and Catholic, and Presbyterian is a contradiction. . . . We tell the child that it is in his nature and in his duty to live apart and hostile. We grow Protestants and we grow Catholics for future conflicts," and " we convert into a law of hate what Heaven gave us as a law of love, and degrade our seminaries for the universal mind of the country into rival garrisons for a faction."-(WYSE: On Education Reform.) The Nonconformists of England, in the reign of Charles II., consented to the passing of the Test and Corporation Acts, by which they were shut out from all public offices, “in order to exclude the Papists from them, because they did not well see how they could secure the exclusion of the Papists without consenting to exclude themselves."

1 "I think I could see my way, without much difficulty, if the Government were to introduce a really national system of education which left the religious element to other parties... to acquiesce in it, and to feel that in that case the duty of the Church would be to endeavour to make that system as extensively available as possible for promoting the welfare and the education of the community."-(Speech of Principal Cunningham.) "A Christian father, in Apostolic times, might send his son for instruction in letters to a heathen school, and yet retain in his own hand his child's direct Christian education. In the same way now, day schools might be exclusively secular as to instruction, and yet the Christian education and culture of the pupils be fully attended to by those to whom the duty is assigned by the law of Christ."-(Rev. T. BINNEY.) 'Notwithstanding our religious differences, we are all in the main agreed as to the principles in which we would have our children trained. We all alike would have a child taught to do to others as it would have others to do to it; to love, honour, and obey its parents, and all who for the time stand in the parents' place; to be true and just in all its dealings; to keep from evil deeds and evil words; to hate all falsehood, and to keep its conscience clear."—(Rev. Dr. ALFRED DEWES.)

that care and efficiency which the importance of the subject demands. For such a work special qualifications are required in the teacher, and special modes of teaching; and, above all, the teacher should have within himself, as living and abiding principles, the truths which he desires to communicate to his pupils. Very much of the impressiveness or power of any truth to reach the heart and to influence the conduct depends on the manner in which it is communicated, or the circumstances that attend it.1 Not more necessary is it for the ground to be prepared for the seed which the husbandman is about to lodge in it, than it is for the human mind to be fitted to receive the seeds of truth that are meant to take root and flourish there. How can religious instruction be communicated effectually by those who hold very loosely, if at all, the doctrines they profess to teach; and how can he impart a kindling of the spiritual life to any soul, in whose heart there is nothing of the living fire of Divine truth?

We plead for the separation of religious and secular education, not in the interests of secularism or of infidelity, but because we believe that it would be for the advantage both of education and religion, and especially of the latter. It is from the high value that we set upon religion

2

1"A word spoken (gnaloghnan) 'upon his wheels,' that is, with a due concurrence of all circumstances of time, place, and person, all which are as the wheels upon which our words and speeches should run: such a word is like apples of gold in pictures of silver."-(Rev. T. BROOKS.)

2"The department, then, of the teacher of religion, under a wiser system of education, is obvious, and it is the highest as well as the holiest behest of mortal man. When the secular teacher has, to the extent of his own attainments, read to his pupils from the book of God's works, and demonstrated the presence of God in them all; His power in their vastness; His wisdom in their harmonies; His goodness in their adaptation to the happiness of sentient beings, he sends them to their respected pastor, or religious teacher, who opens to them the Book of Life, with its glad tidings of great joy, its method of salvation, and its beautiful perceptive morality, applicable to both worlds; and with the book of nature also open before him, makes clear the powerful light which the one sheds upon the other."-(JAS. SIMPSON: Philosophy of Education.) The Rev. R. W. Dale, in speaking on the effect of a national system of education upon Sunday-schools, says, "The children who are taught in the day-schools will come to us on Sunday disciplined to decent moral habits, especially to habits of order and obedience, and redeemed from the miserable ignorance which has hitherto so greatly impeded our work. But our hope for their religious training-for all that we mean by their conversion to God rests

that we would see the teaching of it in other hands than those of the ordinary schoolmaster-in those, namely, from whom it would come in its most pure and attractive form, and by whom it would be presented under the most favourable circumstances.

On the parents, we believe, first and principally devolves the duty of the religious education of their offspring. Failing, and in addition to them, the duty, to our mind, rests with our churches and congregations of seeing to the religious teaching of the young. The first duty of our churches in regard to education is to urge frequently and earnestly upon parents the duty and necessity of doing everything in their power for the moral and religious upbringing of their children. This is a matter which in general is very much neglected by our churches at present, and which ought much more frequently to be urged from our pulpits, and in other ways, than it now is. In the second place, we believe that they should supplement and extend the religious teaching of the parents, and in this respect assume the position of parents to those who have none, or whose parents are unable or unqualified to take the duty upon themselves. In the third place, they ought to endeavour to bring in and to impart the benefits of religious instruction to those waifs and strays of humanity for whose souls at present there are none to care. Nor would it be a very hard or difficult task to effect all this. It only requires an extension of the Sunday-school system to, if necessary, certain days and hours of the week, by means of teachers, paid or unpaid, connected with our various congregations; and when we look at the great efforts made by our churches on behalf of their numerous Christian and benevolent objects, we cannot think that there would be found any great difficulty in effecting this, if they were once to see it to be their duty and set earnestly about it. The establishment of a national system of secular education could not fail to have the effect of bringing about this; and the result in a few years would

on the Sunday-school teacher, and not on the master of the day-school.' "We, at least, do not believe that it is either within the province or the power of the State to provide religious education for the children of the country."

undoubtedly be a much more vigorous Christian life and activity throughout all our churches.1

1

It is worthy of remark that the very persons with whom, in our opinion, rests the duty of seeing to the religious education of the young, those connected with our churches, and who profess the greatest regard for the interests of religion are those who are striving most earnestly to retain And in the teaching of religion in our ordinary schools. order to do this they will consent to make even the greatest sacrifices. They are willing to confine their religious teaching to a corner; they will give up their distinctive creeds; will depart from their catechisms; will even-many of them— be content with the Bible being read without note or comment, or will be satisfied simply with the reading of selections from that holy book. What, in the name of religion, is this? What possible virtue or power can there be in the mere reading of the Bible to reach the mind of a child, apart from everything calculated to carry it home to the understanding and the heart.2 Are the distinguishing beliefs which we profess to have, as members of different religious bodies, and for which our forefathers-many of themwere prepared to die, so lightly held that we are willing to assent to our children being brought up in ignorance of them? We believe that more harm than good will result from any blending together of Christian communities brought about by a disregard of sectarian differences. While much evil has frequently arisen from making too much of these differences, we fear that in the present

1 Mr. Dixon, M.P. for Birmingham, recently stated in a speech that he "read the other day two remarkable statements in juxtaposition-one by Mr. Buckmaster, to the effect that the career of 1,129 children educated in a Church of England school in Wandsworth had been traced, and it was found that only nine of them continued to attend church regularly, that 90 never attended church at all, except on formal occasions, such as baptisms, &c. A little further on he found the report of a speech of his hon. friend the member for Carlisle, who said it had been found in his secular school that nearly all the children in after life attached themselves to either a church, a chapel, or Sunday-school, and that the proportion so attached was very much larger than in denominational schools."

2 "Give us the Bible and it will do its own work' is the watchword of the religious, as if the book were God, and that to read were the whole function of the soul; as if God had concentrated himself in a book, and left the field of operation wholly in its hands."-(EDWARD IRVING.)