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CHAPTER I.

CHRISTIAN WORK IN PUBLIC

SCHOOLS,

BY

DR MONTAGU BUTLER.

THE subject on which I have been called to address you is "Some Aspects of Christian Work in the 19th Century." One aspect of such work will to-day engage our thoughts. It is the efforts of good men to bring not only healthy but distinctly Christian influences to bear on our great Public Schools.

It cannot, I fear, be questioned that during (we will say) the 18th Century and, roughly speaking, the first quarter of the 19th, such distinctly Christian efforts were conspicuous by their absence. There were indeed many earnest Christian schoolmasters between 1700 and the time of Arnold; but the conception of school life as a training in Christ both for boys and masters, and the ambition of serving Christ as part of a schoolboy's school ideal-these things were either no longer or not yet.

The evidence for this conclusion is to my mind as irresistible as it is painful. I can but touch upon it. I find one admirable man, with special opportunities of judging, writing in 1844, "The tone of young men at the University "—and

S. M. L.

I.

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