,<(S^ 'r0:K\ v 'l^,„*A I ^n^L. ^tr. Religious Instruction IN SCHOOL-BOARD SCHOOLS. " In the meantime we must, by all means, secure the foundation, and take care that religion may be conveyed in all its material parts, the same as it was, but by new and permitted instruments. For let us secure that our young be good Christians." — Bishop Jeremy Taylor. RIVINGTONS Hontron, (©jifortr, autr Cambvitrsc EATON & SON, ^!imcirccs"tcr 1871 Resolution of London Board, moved hy TF. H. Smithy M.P. " That in Schools provided by the Board the Bible shall ba read, and there shall be given therefrom such explanations and such instruction in the principles of religion and morality as are suited to the capacities of children, provided always, " That in such instruction the provisions of the Act in Section VII. and in Section XIV. (' No religious catechism or religious formulary which is distinctive of any particular denomination shall be taught in the school') be strictly observed, both in letter and spu-it, and that no attempt be made in any such schools to attach children to any particular denomination. " That in regard of any particular school, the Board shall con- sider and determine upon any application, by managers, parents, or ratepayers of the district, who may show special cause for exception of the school from the operation of this resolution, in whole or in part." I HAVE prefixed tliis extract to wliat I am about to say on religious instruction in School-Board or Rate- supported schools, because it contains : First, tbe restriction put by the Education Act on that instruc- tion. Secondly, the amount of iDractical conclusion, which, as yet, School Boards have brought forth for its attainment. Touching voluntary or denominational schools, I am. not going to speak. They may teach what they have ever taught, and as they have ever taught it, if they please, and can under the conditions by which the Act and the Code discourage the pursuit. What we have to face and consider, is the state of the case in that which we may call the National System. It pleased the Legislature not to prescribe, nor to proscribe religion, as a brancb of scliool teaching. No ! nor not even freely and fully to permit it. But to permit it with a difference ; to hinder it at least in one direction. " You may feed," it seems to say, " the religious instincts and cravings, but mind, the food must not be seasoned. "We will not say what food you may give — how much, or how little — or exactly of what kind, or that you need give any at all. We will, in fact, take no cognisance of the matter in any way, further than this : You must administer that food, if you do at all, at such and such times only ; and it must be very plain, without any seasoning ; and you must make out of these regu- lations just what you can! " No one of those who were prominent in the discussion in Parliament, and had the most to do in shaping and carrying clause 14, 2. have ever lent the least farther light as to what it definitely means, or will carry, or what, if it had any, was, and is, its positive scope and range. Yet this must be measured. The working of it can but have one issue, unless the theory of religious teaching it holds within itself be clearly gauged, and methods for its practical pursuit formally enunciated. Through the raore superficial objects which have engaged school boards, the urgency of this seems, now and then, to have forced itself into notice. A felt, if scarce conscious, sense of its real importance probably has underlain much of the wider and looser talk therein. The Metropolitan Board, which, doubt- less, will be the type to the rest in all weighty con- clusions, was evidently now and then feeling after some solution to this question, when it debated and carried Mr. Smith's proposition. But no t)ne can think that proposition is the solution in full. It is at best a wide and vague staking out of the ground to be occupied. But it is no more. It gives no dis- tinct idea of w^hat is to be done therein, much less ^^\ I u'uc ; how to do it. It just touclies, or declares an end, or certain ends as desirable to be attained ; but by what method, or process, or adaptation of means, this result may be arrived at, it is altogether mute. Perhaps School Boards are hardly the bodies from wliom such, work is to be expected. With. School Boards must rest, of course, the sanction of any scheme or method for religious instrubtion in their own schools ; the question is, whence is such scheme to be derived ? The Act revolutionizes the existing mode, but supplies nothing except a restriction in its place. School Boards, generally, have adopted this negative rule, as indeed they must, with just so much of a positive direction as it contained in the words ■*' Bible reading," and "the principles of religion and morality; " and it does not seem that they are likely, if, indeed, able, to proceed any further. What would seem to be wanted, is, a drawing out into more clear and distinct shape, the theory of reli- gious teaching which the conditions of the Act entail ; iind then some practical directions for its experiment within those limits which the Act enforces. Is this not the Church's duty ? Some men will say the Church has no duty towards that part of the Education Act which un- settles its own dogmatic teaching. What, then, did it mean by the acceptance of the Act, which certainly last year it manifested and advised. Others would even rejoice that its conditions of religious teachings should be left to that confusion which, except they are aided, will very likely attend their vague or negative character. But this is hardly, one would think, a dignified or right position for a National Church to assume towards a measure for National Education, against which it not only did not remonstrate, but which it did virtually adopt, and the direction of which it has been anxious everywhere to undertake. Others Avonld fear an influence on its own more distinct and formal teaching, should any countenance,, much more any aid, be rendered by the Church,, whereby form and substance will be given to an undogmatic system. But neither would this seem a worthy apprehen- sion. If the Church system cannot hold its own through its own merits, those merits can scarcely be- protected by enhancing the demerits of what it fears may become its rival. The child of the bondwoman has been laid at the door of the Church. To treat it as a foster-brother may even be wiser policy than to drive ifc forth into the wilderness to become a stalwart man with a powerful following. On the very face of it, it were not well to divide the country, through the Education Act, into two hostile camps, trying issues with each other through religious alienation, with all the difficulties, in gross and in tale, in the general acceptance and local regard of the Act, which would attend such mutual estrangement. An effort at agreement as to the true conception and the best method for religious instruction under the Act, might be the solvent to many other unevennesses. But the Church can hardly escape this duty if it would. The market for school teachers is an open market, and the training colleges are left to supply the market. Thou.gfh I have heard individual sug- gestions that no Church-trained teacher should hold a situation wherein the whole Catechism could not be taught, I have not heard of any Training College committee having concluded to admit students only on such terms ; and at a very general meeting of Church School teachers, held lately, the tone was much more of rejoicing at coming liberty, than deter- mination to run only in the past curriculum. We may feel sure, I think, that teachers may accept what situations they please on being certificated, and that the inducements, pecuniary and other, to join Rate Schools, will not be inferior to those Voluntary Schools will have to ojQfer. Is it not then a duty on Training Colleges to recognize such systems of religious in- struction as these Rate Schools necessitate ? And if so, can it at all adequately fulfil that duty without training their students to teach according to those conditions which the Act imposes on these Rate Schools ? Some would argue omne majtts continet minus. Teach and train according to the old dog- matic or formulary system, and the undogmatic will be involved necessarily. Not so ; as we shall see, I hope, when we treat more closely of that undogmatic mode. A man dees not swim of necessity when left alone, because he can swim in corks. The probability is, if his usual stays are suddenly withdrawn, that he will either sink like a log, at once, or after some wild confusion in the deep waters. A man turned adrift, without chart or compass, to teach " the principles of morality and religion ' ' out of the expanse of the Bible, would probably become narrowest sec- tarian, or diffusest nothingarian, according as he was religiously zealous or indifferent. It would seem a positive duty for all Training Colleges to protect religion and its teachers, if they can, from this experience. Other reasons might be urged why it is especially incumbent on Training Colleges to try and carry out the provisions of the Act as faithfully and soundly as may be. However denominational their origin and basis, they derive a great aid from the ISTational Exchequer, without which they scarcely could be maintained. They ought then, if possible, to reflect, and support the national system. If the efficiency of our Schools depends on the efficiency of our Training Colleges, their very existence may depend on their national usefulness. To be ready to train for the whole system, may be the very con- 8 dition on whiclr we shall continue, as now, to train for our especial section of it.^ The first thing to do is to measure, as accurately as may be, the conditions under which religious instruction is alone possible in Rate Schools. To catch, that is, and condense into some definite ex- pression, such amount of meaning as the Legislature may be presumed to have had in the provisions it enacted. This is not easy, and it is quite possible that the attempt may supply to the clauses them- selves that which is looked for in them in vain as their raison d'etre. Perhaps the truest rationale of the clauses which regulate the religious teaching, would be to say that they are a cross between the religious instincts of the country and the importunity of Parliamentary supporters, and mean, obviously, no more in themselves or in their authors, than that National education, independent of the State, may be religious if it pleases, but if it does please, it must not be outwardly and formally denominational. If religious teaching after this kind can begin and end the secular instruction, for which the State claims the main school-time uninterrupted, it may do so. The National School shall be as truly national in its religious element, if it has any, about which the State is indifferent, as in those other elements of its course, which the State will see to and secure. The problem then is — What theory of religious instruction can be evolved from this requirement of " undenominational religion " ? and by what methods can it be practically worked out ? Has it, or can it be made to have, a true standard and aim, and a sincere and direct system ? for if not — if it contains no principle, and admits of no practice, let it be con- ^ The British and Foreign Schools Society has lately circu- lated a paper, wherein it asks for means to extend considerably its Training Establishments, as alone exactly meeting the reli- gious rec[uirements of the Education Act. .sidered at once tliat it is all an empty delusion, and must eventuate, experimentally, either in dishonest denominationalism, or open secularism ; and it may he added, that any attempt at triumph through the first .alternative, could only bring about a speedy and sure settlement of the system, on the basis of the second. It is necessary to bear in mind the exact words of the Act which rule the religious teaching in Rate Schools. They are very rarely quoted aright on j)ublic platforms. Words of great significance are generally dropped by those who wish to exaggerate the stringency of the clause, either in reprobation or .approbation of its terms. Besides the Time and Conscience Clause regulations — whi(;h are applicable to all P. E. Schools alike — in Rate Schools " No religious catechism, or religious formulary, which is distinctive of any ijartlcular denomlnatmi, shall be taught." (14, 2.) The words in italics are those often omitted or misquoted. Of course on them a very considerable controversy might arise. The animus i7nponentis is hard to ascertain, because it is so very doubtful whether there ever distinctly and definitely was one. The plain language would seem to exclude those formu- laries, as means of instruction, which mark ofi* and distinguish separate denominations as such, and not to exclude anything which two or more sections of religious profession hold in common. The word " particular," inserted as v/ell as " distinctive," would seem to qualify the noun "denomination,"^ ^ This view is rendered the more probable when it is con- •sidered that this clause is but a rule of the British and Foreign School Society, altered in a way that must be significant. The rule runs exactly as the clause, except that the Society's rule was "peculiar to any denomination, which, in the clause of the Act, becomes "distinctive of any particular denomination." Why this change, except it were to mark it more strongly as .singly and separately, not generally or comprehensively, exceptive ? B lO so as to confinp it to eacli single and separate ex- ample, and not make it comprehend in itself any collective nnmber. The vote of Parliament which expressly rejected an amendment by which the clause would have had given to it an interpretation abso- lutely " unsectarian and undenominational," certainly favours this view, and is the nearest thing to an animus im/ponentis we have on the point ! It is necessary to bear these words and their possible meaning in mind, inasmuch as the whole treatment of them has inclined to the most lax interpretation. A leading member of the London Board at once attempted to fix upon them a deter- minate exclusion of everything except a sort of natural theology, in which the epithet was certainly more significant and emphatic than the noun — and vSchool Boards themselves seem incapable of press- ing them beyond a general admission of Bible reading with oral explanation, which the most au- thoritative speech -"^ in Parliament on the question, explicitly declared not to be the sum and substance of what the clause is meant to sanction. Still, whatever the verbal, or even legal, rendering might be, these positive leanings and tendencies must be taken into account; for what one has lately said of public opinion on religious topics, may be said no less truly of these questions which depend on it, that their real issues are to be augured " not from formulas of religious profession or worship, but rather from the practical attitude of men's minds, and the conclusions which this tacitly assumes." Weighing, then, fairly, text and commentary of whatever kind, we may at least conclude that just as Board Schools may not on their fore-front jDresent a denominational title, so neither may their religious teaching ; and that, whatever the clause impressing 1 Mr. Gladstone's Speech, June 16. II this will or will not carry, it determines tlie exclu- sion of all text books as instruments of teachinsr wliicli significantly belong to any denomination as such.. The very strongest evidence of this determination being, that positive declarations in obedience to it can get no further in the bodies concerned with its enforcement than "reading the Bible, and instruction in the principles of religion and morality." The Church Catechism, therefore, as a formal instrument of teaching, cannot find a place ; and something which shall give form and substance to the very hazy conclusion for " Bible reading " has to be substituted. Easy as the phrase " Bible reading " is, and attrac- tive in its seemingly simple appeal to the first principles of pure truth, every one who dares close practically with phrases, knows how unsubstantial, and even delusive, it is by itself. Who is to read ? Seemingly the teacher — with a running moral and religious exposition ! For all children between 3 and 13 — one may simply call that trying to fill narrow- necked bottles, all in a row, with the rose of a watering-pot. I do not suppose good people wish to reduce religious instruction alone of the subjects in the school to an empty pretence ; and yet, if not, and after all that may be said about the nature and sphere of things spiritual, teaching is teaching, and learning learning therein, as in other branches of knowledge, only the more carefully to be aided and anxiously secured, in proportion as the truths learnt touch every thing in this life, and reach on to every- thiuof in the next. The release from denominational formularies must not be the release from common- sense, and under a fancy of the freedom of the sjDirit, we must take care how we risk its entire evaporation. We shall have more to say just now of what, as a 12 kind of teacliing, these restrictions involve ; but, in limine, it niay*be 'vvell to impress tlie fact, as simply a matter of necessary prudence, tliat children who can read, cannot be taught, in any proper sense of the word, by being simply read to, or by simply themselves reading ; whilst those who cannot read, of which the bulk of a school consists, as they cannot exercise the process on the one side, so they cannot profit by its simple exercise on the other. Even an intelligent, and not at all a light or profane child, could but arrive, with thought and care, at some jumble of mind, like his who told me lately in a school, that the Holy Spirit descended in the form "of a pair of tongs" — whilst the mass would have not nearly so much of a definite idea about divine facts as even this. Let School Boards get into their minds as soon as they possibly can, and certainly before they launch schools in conformity with the express ivill of the natio'it for religious education, that method and process, and the stages and degrees which belong to method and process, must be means of any sound instruction whatever ; and the measure of soundness will mainly depend on the wisdon in which they are constructed, and the ability with which they are applied. It is a delusion to think that the necessity of these conditions of teaching depends on the nature of the subject to be taught. Nothing whatever can be- truly taught without them. The ordinary laws of learning must be observed in all learning alike — secular or sacred. With these preliminary remarks, let us turn •directly to our thesis. What is the conception or idea of teaching which underlies, or is necessitated by the conditions imposed by the Act on religious teaching, and by what process can it be practically secured. Perhaps, if all this is to be summed up in one word, 13 one would say that the idea and plan in pursuance of it, which struggles as it were within the ierms or conditions of the Act — is the Gatecheticcd. The Catechetical rightly and truly understood, not in the ordinary abuse of it, is the method which must receive a great impetus in the religious teaching of Board Schools — and whilst the recoil is now, and will be, from what I have just called its abuse on one side — the utmost care will be needed lest it swing over past recovery on the other. Teaching children catechetically is like budding wild stocks with germs of cultivation. It requires the nicest judgment and the tenderest hand, to draw the strong fresh juices into the implanted scion. To take a dry chip of the one, and put it with a rough ligament on to the vigorous shaft of the other, is neither to impart nor to derive life. Yet this has been, and now often is, all that so-called Catechetical teaching effects. Deceived by a verbal coincidence, to teach the Catechism, and to teach catechetically are held to be convertible, whereas, so far as to teach the Catechism means, as it often does, the asking a cut- and-dried question, and receiving an answer like in kind, it is the contradiction and not the fulfilment of the Catechetical idea. Teaching, even by direct interrogation, if the questions and answers are fixed and formal, may be a mere process by rote on both sides, and a hindrance instead of help to all under- standinsr of the thing^s tauo^ht. It cannot be denied that such has been very much the root of religious instruction, and we know it by its fruits. A mechanical cause has produced a mechanical effect. Religious teaching very often has not been intelligent, and therefore a want of intelli- gence marks very often the taught. The remedy for this may be found in a return to a more real catechetical method, which method the conditions of the Act would seem directly to provoke. 14 For whilst the Act forbids the catechism, it obviously necessitates catechizing, and in thus forcing on public attention the very great difference between a living process and stiff subject-matter, and how the one by itself is a deadly letter, the other a quick spirit, a real service may have been rendered to religious teaching altogether. Let us dwell on this distinction for a moment, for it is very momentous if what has been advanced is at all true. The educational mistake, which finds its illustration perhajDs most signally in teaching the Catechism as it is very often learnt and taught, is the radical mis- take of making amount of knowledge, instead of discipline of mind, the end of primary instruction. It cannot, from the nature of the patient, attain that end of large knowledge acquired, and so, with great detriment to agent and patient, it becomes communi- cation on one side, repetition on the other, without interest, and without real gain. Whereas, if the mind on both sides is fixed to a few elementary truths intelligently interpreted, and con- sciously received, though knowledge is not the point, knowledge is acquired through direct cultiva- tion of that inward energy, by which alone knowledge can be at all seized and assimilated. As things are, truths are offered to the grasp which cannot possibly he held ; as things might be, through a true Cate- chetical process, based on simplest fundamentals, the prehensile faculties would be progressively strengthened by the adaptation of the truths pro- posed to the powers which are practised upon them, and thus the energy and its end — intelligence and knowledge — advance together. It is not meant that all teaching of the Catechism has been unintelligent and an injury to the learner and his subject ; but wherever it has not been, it has been owing to the quickening of the form by the true 15 cateclietical spirit, and that there is inherently in such form, in proportion as it is definite and precise, a tendency to encourage that mere formal result ■which is the paralysis of intelligent energy. The more abstruse and difficult are the facts or principles with -which such formal machinery deals, the more sure and fatal is the merely mechanical consequence. The amount of knowledge imparted is compara- tively the least point of consideration in primary in- struction. The half, indeed, is herein as often greater than the whole. A simple element of truth, like a simple element of bodily food, on which the mental and moral powers may truly exercise themselves and thereby grow, leads to a strength and keenness of appetite, Avhereby larger acquisitions are possible. Nor in saying this do we at all diminish the amount of knowledge or faculty necessary in the teacher. Quite the reverse. To cut away mere machinery is to make greater, not less, demands on his active powers and resources. He must know more, not less — must know all he knew for the mechanical process — besides such store and adapta- tion of knowledge as may enable him to dispense with the machinery. Indeed, the more elementary are the truths which he has in hand to teach, the more ad- vanced must be his own knowledge. Especially is this true in religious knowledge, wherein the widest spheres of knowledge converge most palpably to simplest elements, and thus may be guiding lights to them. To have then to forego the more technical and pre- cise machinery whereby the Church has hitherto formulated its religious teaching need involve no diminution of the teacher's powers and knowledge, be no detriment to the subject matter taught, or to those under instruction. On the contrary, the teacher may become thereby elevated in his attain- ments by being thrown off formality on to responsibility, i6 the subject matter reverenced by its more intelligent appreciation, and tbe tanglit enlightened through the clear exercise, in however slight degree, of conscious faculty. In what has been just now advanced, the aim has been to reconcile feeling and opinion to that Catecheti- cal system of religious teaching, which the Act clearly necessitates, as being that system which com- mon sense and experience would dictate to be most useful and efficient in instructing and training the young mind. Incidently, but very pertinently, the term, expressing as it rightly does a peculiar mode of conveying instruction, has been rescued from the definite subject matter of instruction, with which through the word Gatecliism, and the use made of the instrument that word designates, it has been and is much confused. The root of the word catecJietkal [" sound"] sug- gests another subject of instruction which may illus- trate what is meant. To teach the young vocal music is much akin to instruction of them in religion. In both cases what you want is adaptation in the teacher, responsiveness in the taught. In neither will the incnlcation of rules and precepts and definitions avail for the end desired. However well furnished — and in neither case can he be too well furnished — the teacher may be in knowledge and skill, their use and success consists in applying them to the individual, in such appropri- ate degree and mode, that they impregnate the latent faculty with their own truth or power. There are' germs of religious intuition, as there are germs of vocal expression, in every child. Good religious, like good musical education, consists in drawing these forth, first in their simplest and most natural cha- racter, and then strengthening and advancing them, as the receptive faculty permits. But in either case,, the true measure of a sure and permanent cultivation^ 17 is the degree in which the voice or character under instruction has assimilated or made its own what is imparted to it. And that only can be done through that method which teaches the young mind and will through its own capacity, and Avhich we call the catechetical metliod. Thus only can religious truth become a part of the inner being of the recipient — that is, be to it really religious truth at all, as an educational result. In fact, of the two great advantages which belong to the Catechism as a formula of religious instruction — 1. That it is systematic ; 2, That whilst systematic it is personal — the last, if fully realized, would go far to neutralize any evils incident to the first. The danger, and very often the experience, is lest that which makes the great leading Christian verities the ground and reason of personal duty, as the initial part of the Catechism does, should, by being set in old and technical form, lose its living force, and so be the aid instead of the corrective of lifelessness. This must work all the more perniciously, as it would be in direct contradiction of its own obvious purpose. If that which should be the vital influence of each little living soul, becomes, in fact, destructive of the living power of divine truth personally to it, it is the light becoming darkness. The escaj)e from this very baneful consequence, would seem to lie in the Cate- chetical method taking the formula out of its bare and lifeless expression, and charging it with vital in- terest out of the abundance of fact and influence at its command. Yet in doing this we must guard against swinging over to the opposite extreme. As the Act leaves the question, the hardness and dryness of technical pre- cision may be corrected at the expense of substance and reality. Catechetical teaching does not mean a nebulous mirage. Because it vivifies dry bones, it need not lose definite form in phantasmagoria. This 1.8 were to cure one evil by anotlier, and the less, per- haps, by the greater. Every teacher can only teach well when he teaches by system. In substituting living influence for machinery it is not meant to fore- go method and arrangement, only not to cramp the cul- ture of the formative, and the sap of the recipient mind by the mere iteration of an external rule or pattern. How, then, may we get the play of living power without diffusiveness, or the backbone of method and system without rigidity ? Let us take a little child, and set it in the midst. It may be instructive, even on the point of its own instruction ! Surely a sound plan of religious, as of any other instruction, would consult the instincts and capacities of the nature to be instructed. I should say more especially so in the case of that teaching which appeals to the moral and spiritual as well as the mental powers. It would seem to involve the very success of all appeal to the moral and spiritual elements in the young that the order and degree of these in them should be especially regarded. The work may be rendered utterly vain by the neglect of this — may be wonderfully accelerated by its due consideration. 'Not merely the facts, but the influences, of religious truth may be idle, or strike deep and fructify, accord- ing as they are or are not sown on this principle. The point, then, to observe is, what are the facul- ties or instincts in the young which would guide us in fashioning religious teaching to meet their needs. Or, given the Bible and a religious teacher, how should the one use the other for the instruction of children from infancy to advanced intelligence ? that is to say, if he would be that wise instructor, drawing out of his treasury things new and old. The prime instinct in childhood is surely natural affection. This, then, would be the principle, or idea, which a teacher would make the leader in his earliest 19 lessons. To this, as an instinct, he would appeal, and tlirougli this, as a living force, he -would instruct the mind and character. But teaching, to be sound, must have a base of operations, — some form of sound words which may act as the centre of the system. The Lord's Prayer offers itself as the direct expression of the loving instinct, branching into so much duty and doctrine as shall give to the feeling reality, without drying up its living warmth. As the mind and character go on, the sense of duty expands through the growing relations of life. Love becomes more active, the passive impression losing itself in the ordeal of positive trial. Then ijvece^t grows into prominency. In proportion as the loving principle has been truly nurtured, the positive details of duty become less imperative ; but experience will force their recognition, and the Ten Commandments would ensue on the Lord's Prayer as the formal con- densation of Duty. With the growing intelligence. Understanding^ or the direct acknowledgment of objective truth, follows on Duty, in the order of natural demand, and there- fore of instruction. To love God — to obey God — to know God — would seem the educational order, look- ing to the youthful nature as a guide to its own instruc- tion, and the simplest Creed, or, if that is excluded by the terms of the Act, such Scriptural Summaries as that of Tim. ii. 16, Ephes. iv. 4, 5, 6, which par- take of the nature of a Creed, would suggest them- selves as the formal instruments whereby to shape and substantiate this desire of more definite insight into divine things. It is obvious how such a scheme, springing from natural affection, and advancing to enlightened faith, would conspire, as any scheme of practical religion should, with the growing experience of life. From the home to the world, religious instruction would 20 directly adopt and train the natural faculties for their actual probation. If this Avould be the order and method of the reli- gious teaching of the young, suggested by the nature and progress of their own spiritual instincts, it cer- tainly finds its corroboration in God's own dealing with the world, as declared in the Bible. If love — duty — faith — would be the rule or plan whereby to train human nature suggested by itself, it is because human nature reflects therein Grod's own method in the world's education. The Fatherhood of God — or that trust in and love of Him, as having a true personal relation to us, greater, and deeper, and before law, — is the very fount and life of religion. On this all else rests ; to it, after law, and its dis- cipline, and the very mysteries of grace have worked their full purpose, men can but return, and becoming thus again as little children, make the glory of the setting sun at one with that of the first dawn. On this earliest, simplest relationship ensued law, with all that for which law was required, either as a cor- rection or a discipline. And then followed the fuller revelation of truth, for the reception of which all previous processes had but been the preparation. These two monitors, then, in such harmony each with the other — God's way as revealed in that very Bible which is to be our sole text-book, and human nature — • for the benefit of which all this teaching and training, is — indicate plainly that (1) Love, (2) Law, (3) Faith, or formal belief, is the design or scheme by which the system of religious education should be fashioned. Thus, then, to the problem — under the conditions of the Act, how must, or can, systematic religious teach- ing be pursued ? — broadly it is answered — Take the Lord's Prayer, the Ten Commandments, and the outline of the Christian faith, becanse they are biblical exponents of the natural instincts, and there- fore aptitude in the young for progressive religious 21 faith — and remembering that these are taken because they express and appeal to the human and progressive elements of love, duty, and faith — make your supple- mentary teachings, in each stage of this system, derive light from and lend light to the central idea. Then Bible teaching need not be unsystematic, nor system be objectionably dogmatic. The spirit may irradiate the form — and not be lost for want of form. The learning, as well as the teaching, may be sub- stantial whilst genial ; and life and character be influenced by that which, designed to be moral and practical, is worse than idle if it is a mere thing of words, with no possible influence on life and cha- racter at all. The two great requirements in reli- gious teaching — methodical arrangement and per- sonal interest — would be secured. Our concern is entirely with what School Board teachers must do to make iheir religious teaching real whilst faithful. The condition which binds them does not bind Voluntary or Denominational Schools. Yet a word may be added to the bearing of the new on the old and more dogmatic method. There is no real antagonism between them. The ■difierence — to many, I know, an essential difference — between them is that the one is constructed, the other is not, on the sacramental theory. Some men would rather there were no religious teaching at all, if not on a sacramental base. The sole relationship of the Soul to Grod, with its outgrowing duties and hopes, being centred in the sacramental bond. Others, without necessarily maintaining this so absolutely, would desire all religious teaching to be the pastor's office, and would confine the lay teacher to the secular matter. To both I would say, surely that which is not against you is for you. To have the religious instinct quickened and informed by the sense of its relationship to God simply as a Father, listening as such to its simple prayer, must be doing 22 your work, wli^n you choose to superadd your doc- trine of covenanted grace. Such doctrine is not declared not to be true, by the soil being generally prepared wherein it may be sown, whilst it is a matter of common notoriety that such doctrine is practically worthless, often as a seed of life, through its being sown, as a matter of teaching, on utterly unprepared soil. I think nothing in childish un- meaningness is more dangerous to real religious growth, or more shocking to the deep mysteries involved, than the way in which sacramental defi- nitions are made matters of mere mindless repetition. I wonder how many children throughout England leave school with an idea, even of the least intelligible kind, attached to the words : — " As a oneans whereby we receive tJie same, and a pledge to assure us thereof.^' Whilst then there is no reason why this School Board basis should not be supplemented by more distinctive teaching — it itself can but be auxiliary and not obstructive to any such method. And perhaps if persons would but take the injunctions at the end of the Baptismal Service, and consider closely their terms, they would find that to reserve the second part, — added by Dean Overal in the time of James I., concerning the sacraments — for separate pastoral instruction in preparation for Confirmation, would be more faithful to their office, as well as more true and considerate to their flock, than to leave all to be ground in by a lay schoolmaster. Many will, I know, feel a sincere difficulty in not basing religious instruction on the baptismal vow. Clearly that cannot be done in Board Schools in the terms of the Catechism. Putting the whole sacra- mental teaching as a purely pastoral function, it can only be supplied by the clergyman, and by him aJ) extra. So it must be. To those in a Rate School, who belong to him, he must give it, if he pleases coincidently, if he pleases subsequently, to the 23 time of life -when the little cliild is under school teaching. The most, or the "worst, religious teach- ins: in School-Board Schools need involve is the separation between the teaching of the lay and pastoral teachers, which many desiderate and none need deplore. It would be a sad thing to secularize public school instruction. The opportunity got there may never otherwise be got. And the division be- tween so much of daily life as is spent in school, and what alone pretends to influence it beyond its present interests, had better not by any means be hastened. But it would not be a bad thing to define and quicken at once in the religious element of in- struction the interested intelligence of children, the educational work of the master in the school, and the pastoral ofB.ce of the clergyman out of it. And all this the prescribed conditions of the Edu- cation Act might entail. I would plead with the clergy and laity of the Church to give a fair and dispassionate mind to this momentous topic, as rightly considered a handmaid, not a hindrance, to their own views, however definite and dogmatic. But there is another aspect of the question which it would be most short-sighted to ignore. The national character of the Church should be maintained by all possible means as long as it possibly can be. The haste shown of late to merge the National in the Denominational has been, to my thinking, and is, a mistake. The extremity should be very clear and pressing indeed which should allow the Church to postpone its general to its sectarian character. We do very much to disestablish our- selves when we so speak and act. On no question is this so true as that of National Education. It behoves the Church, as a matter of duty as well as policy, to identify itself, as far as may be, with what- ever claims to be, or may grow into, a national sys- tem. To be so jealous of its own dogmatic distinc- tiveness, as to be content to narrow its educational 24 influence if that distinctivenes is not allowed to mark its efforts, will very probably secularize National Edu- cation, and contract its own sphere by one and the same stroke. The issue in the dense centres of population is not between Church and Dissent, but between a God and 110 Grod. The Church must come out of her secure rural retreats into manufacturing cities to measure aright what is at stake. There we should see com- fortable respectability at church and chapel perhaps, but the mass nowhere. Yes, somewhere ! — in the market places, thronging the harangues of secular, that is atheistic, lecturers. Now, what is the Church's duty to these masses ^nd their children ? They are not the Church's children in the strictest sense. It cannot address them as such. Never mind now how and why the Church has lost its hold on them. They are not formally even of her ; and the fear, with all its heritage of social and political disorder, is, lest they should be lost, not merely to the channels of cove- nanted grace, but to all religious influences whatever. That God's name may be known and honoured at all is the anxiety to those who gauge truly the pre- sent crisis. When men are starving, it is simple food, not luxuries, we strive to supply ; and when men, under disease, loathe the food which yet they will die if they do not take, the urgency of the case precludes all consideration except its supply. It is, then, because the national condition requires first elements, that the Church should address itself to meeting this demand, and rescue, by all and every means, that religious teaching in Board Schools which the Act allows and the country desires, from either not being at all, or being worthless. To require the teaching of full Christian privileges would be about as wise and availing as it would have been in the case of a Reformatory boy, in whom I had failed to get any sense of the obligation of the 25 eighth commandment. I knew he had a mother ; so I tried to find a basis in that human tie, when, after the most touching appeals, he looked up and said, " Lor', Sir 1 I have nothing of that sort in me." Now, the masses who own no ecclesiastical affini- ties belong to the Church as that boy belonged to the Church Reformatory, and their teaching has to be adapted as his had. The early inculcation of the highest rehgious truth, and holding before the young mind the great objects of faith, spring doubtless from a deep spiritual sense of their absorbing importance. It is not in disparage- ment, but in respect of their awful dignity, that a doubt is thrown on the wisdom of such proceeding. In the free grace of Gospel light, the benefits of tempering it to the visual organ is forgotten. Not only is it a mistake to lose sight of the diges- tive powers, spiritually, of " babes," but it is a mis- take to think that the whole world has an Evangelic digestion. Society still has those to whom even the law, in its strictness, has to be accommodated, be- cause of their own unpreparedness for its full recep- tion, much more those who, through it, must be dis- ciplined for what is beyond. If we do not take care, our veiy social condition just now will conspire with our educational enactments in promoting a most dangerous religious result. The result, I mean, of religious knowledge without corresponding religious duties. So-called Bible-teaching, acting on natures of a spiritually low tyjoe, without great care and caution, will be apt to induce Bible-knowledge without Bible-practice, and so seem to sanctify the most dangerous deceit. Bible teaching, in fact, should come in, if it is to bear its proper fruit, on soil dressed and tempered for its reception. If all religious instruction is to be confined to that ^' reading of the Bible without note or comment," for which some so stoutly do battle, what is to be done with children till they can read ? and if religiously 26 notlii-ng is to ^be done, what will be the value reli- giously to them of what they read when they can ? The art of printing would not have been of so late invention had reading been the great instrument in the world's instruction. And when it was invented, it did not supersede all other instruments, by the prominence it wrought for that one. The Ethiopian was reading the Bible as he sat in his chariot ; and we know with what profit. At a crisis, then, of singular anxiety as regards the mind and character of the people, a new proposi- tion of popular education, which is sure to obtain most where population is most dense, has to be worked out. Shall it be religious or irreligious ? For this, and not whether it shall be Denominational or otherwise, is the question. The action of the Conscience Clause may, of course, reduce any Denominational to a Secular School in any given case or cases, but that does not satisfy the need. What the Act invites, and the country is supposed to desire, is religious instruction which shall not be denominational. ]S"onconformists and Churchmen ought to prove their adoption of the Act to be sincere, by honestly trying if this can indeed be. It is no question of permitted withdrawal from disliked dogmatism, or the possible aid which a dominant Creed might receive from a poor child's weekly twopence. It is the question of the only real security for good citizenship on earth and for Heaven. Have we sufficient sense of this to make us esteem the possibility of maintaining it, on the only terms on which it is permitted to us under the law, before what we hate or what we love, it may be, more ? This is the demand made on the predilections and antipathies of all alike. It asks the jarring parties, offensive and defensive, on School Boards to forego that strife by which the provisions of the Education Act are made so many masked batteries, and to join their forces against a common foe. Let it be ever 27 borne in mind, tliis is no question of Ev'angelical conversion, or of the Church's full supernatural agency and ministry, but of the primary teaching of little children, and of the Church's moral and posi- tive duty to indoctrinate, as far as it may, that teaching with religious principle based on religious truth. There seems a sufficiently general assent "to go out quickly into the streets and lanes of the city, and to compel them to come in ;" but the previous condition should be : — " Come ! for all things are now ready." To make religious instruction in Rate Schools thus "ready " two things are especially needful. 1. Some scheme or system on which it may proceed. 2. Some authorized test of its proficiency. An ordered rule of teaching, and some means whereby from time to time its attainment may be tried and examined, are the driving-wheel and time-table on the permanent ■way of education. On the supply of the first, we have been dwelling. The second might easily be added. The two together would insure success. For if it is to be apprehended that existing machinery is hardly competent to carry out the method of teaching advocated, let the method be demanded, and competency will soon arise. The instruments of instruction would readily exemplify the laws of supply and demand. That mode, and those qualifications which School Boards require, it w^ill be worth teachers' while to attain and present. The point is, what system of teaching is wisest and best. School Boards have the opportunity of not only setting a type, but insuring its practical adoption. To the doubt which will arise whether after all this, oral or Catechetical teaching may not, and will not, be exactly as dogmatic and denominational as the old Catechism method, it can but be answered that this objection attaches to any and every incul- cation of religious truth whatever. The simplest element might, of course, be so used. But as 28 meclianical te^iching by set formulary is almost necessary to secure such results, so oral teaching which may not resort to these instruments, offers as much guarantee as can be against such possibility ; and as the whole theory and rule proceeds on a living power meeting and fulfilling a living instinct, the system will be as certain as such things can be to result in an easy and spontaneous conformity to these undenominational conditions. Every day would tend to fix a rule of Scripture interpretation agree- able to that simple recognition on which the whole scheme is based. Inspection is the sole external remedy to its abuse ; but it is a sufiicient one. And here let a word be said on the Apostles' Creed, as the best summary for the third basis of this course, and strictly within the Act in " letter and spirit." The Act does not forbid all Creeds as such, which it so clearly could have done, but only Creeds " dis- tinctive of any particular denomination." Can the Apostles' Creed be strictly, or, indeed, at all, so designated ? I have heard one eminent in position and public estimation, and especially for his educational intelli- gence and interest, urge that the interpretation of the Clause (14, 2.) which would carry the Apostles' Creed, would carry also the Athanasian, as being shared by the Roman Catholics together with the Church of England, But surely this pleading is more special than sound. Between the acceptance, and so the comprehensive use, of the one compared with the other, there is such a difference of degree as to constitute a difference of kind. And if rigid verbal and logical deduction might theoretically carry it, still the reasoning as a practical matter is idle. ISTo one wishes, that I know of, to make the Athanasian Creed a part of Elementary School teaching, and no School Board would ever admit it, even did anyone so wish. It is a pity then to involve the Apostles' Creed 29 in the invidiousness that attaches to a forniiilarj utterly dissimilar in form, general acceptance, and special use. Let us think of the Apostles' Creed, not as anyone's creed in particular — for who would dare to claim or disclaim it — bat as everyone's creed, as it is ; and then if it does merely tabulate those historical things about Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, in the simplest, best, and most Scriptural way, which can meet the young intelligence, and shape its dawning faith, why not vindicate it and ourselves from all denominational or sectarian character by its free and general use ? Churchmen cannot exclusively claim it, and I would say to Nonconformists they would do them- selves a great injury were they to fix on us entirely the entail of such an inestimable heritage. 'No one can really think that the ambiguity there- in of one word is a fatal objection to its use. All words to children have to be explained. Scripture itself — " Bible reading " — must involve the word and its explanation, Creed or no Creed. To think we can teach children religiously without faith, objectively and subjectively, that is, without an outward object for their inward reverence, were to imagine a vain thing indeed. And if this is true, the only question is, shall there be a School-Board Creed — which might be drawn — but which would still be a Creed, and more denominational possibly than that it sup- planted; or will School Boards adopt that form which, preceding all divisions of Christendom, and re- cognizing none, really expresses and proves that com- prehensive truth, which it is the especial function of School Boards to promote ? Where this would offend, the Conscience Clause is the remedy. For to reduce, as some advocate, religious teaching till there is nothing to which any one can object, would be to stultify the very provision of a Conscience Clause, by leaving no possible case for its exercise, to set up the exception in the jjlace of the rule, 30 and to turn the disinclination of tlie contingent few into a tyranny over the wants and wishes of the actual many. It is not intended that any guide or manual en- dorsing the idea here enforced, should be in the form of question and answer. That would be only to sub- stitute one Catechism for another. If this threefold course were taken as a progressive basis adapted to the natural capacity and the requirements of the young, the first — that which rests on the filial feeling, and finds its revealed counterpart in the Lord's Prayer — might include all between three and six years. The second — the dutiful instinct, con- firmed and preceptively detailed in the Decalogue,- — would be the addition till nine years, when more definite doctrine would ensue for the rest of the school period. These would not be marked by sharp, abrupt transition ; as that does in the child's nature, on which they are founded, each imperceptively would grow out of the other. " Thy will be done," has in it the germ of duty and the outline of precept. Even " Our Father " prepares the way for the Eternal Son through the universal adoption, and the teacher in the third stage would still enforce and elevate the regulative purpose of the second, exhibiting all com- mandments as fully kept in the Great Teacher's one great precept. (Matt. xxii. 36 — 9.) This may suffice to indicate what is proposed, and how it is proposed to work it. The classes would learn these foundation things, and the teachers would draw out their mean- ing, and hang upon their phrases definite Scriptural teaching — " Our Father," for instance, would be used to inculcate God's relationship to each and every one, and touching in the little child an interpretative chord, would go on through Scripture declarations and histories — orally conveyed — to make that chord vibrate with the various revelations in which God's Fatherhood, and thereby man's fellowship, each with the other, and all in Him, are made manifest. As has been already said, it is the practical 31 attitude of men's minds tliat noAv-a-days promptly decides public opinion. Anything, then, which would direct that attitude on any public question of general interest, must address practically the variety of thought and feeling which reflects, or is reflected in, the many facets of the public mind. In order to this it should catch the element of pure light common to all. The rainbow hues which those facets, each in its special angle, may refract, may be more brilliant, but the truth of all lies in that simple purity of which all else is but a broken, however attractive an expression. It is to this that what has been said appeals. It asks Educationalists to give a firm, yet simple, basis to the National System, and thereby to rescue the mere permission of the Act from its present uncertainty. It asks Nationalists to see that what is true and right for the individual case is true and right for the collective body, so far as their common instincts, faculties, interests, and destiny are concerned. It asks those Avho reverence the Bible, to evince that reverence by securing that the facts of truth may not wither and drop ofi' as cold, dry, proposi- tions, but be converted, through the human medium, into elements of living faith, which, besides and beyond the supreme literary and educational value of the Bible, is its one especial and singular province. It asks those who fear a Denominational or Sec- tarian interpretation, to take the best security against this by a comprehensive, whilst positive, outline ; for the freedom of individual teaching is no guarantee in itself, quite the reverse, against this danger. It asks those who desire a determinate religious in- struction, to see the limits within which the attainment of such is possible, and to promote it Avithin those limits for the National System by a sincere co-operation. It asks Churchmen to be willing that their claim of all in the country as belonging to themselves who do not determinately assign themselves elsewhere, 32 sliall not be a Merely titular claim, but be proved real in tlie only possible way. And it asks Nonconformists to regard sucli effort only with- a godly jealousy, and not as of the rivalry of sects, with, envyings and strife. And it asks this of each and all, that the future of our country, certainly so momentous, may offer the best earnest for the personal, social, and political well-being of its people. For who can measure the blessings which might result, or the evil which might be stayed, through a sincere common effort to elevate the National Schoolroom by a sound system of Divine Truth ? To promote the union of the rising and future generations in " One Lord — one Faith — one Baptism " — as simply taught in the great Prayer, and Precepts, and Creed of Christendom — must, at least, act back with the blessing of Chris- tian Unity on those who plant God's Truth on such pillar and ground. D. Melville. WiTLEY Eectory, Stourport, Juiie, 1871. That which has been recommended herein, as the basis of instruction, has been satisfactorily proved by the writer in the examination of Schools in Religious Knowledge, and examination is but instruction under anothei* guise. Every subject of education needs both for its sure progress, and both need a chart and compass to steer by. The Managers of School- Board Schools must, either by themselves or by deputy, test the religious teaching they prescribe, and that in order to find what is, as much or more than to find what is not, taught. For this some design or plan, common to the Teacher and Inspec- tor or Examiner, is necessary. J. OaDEN AND CO., PEIIfTEIlS, 172, ST. JOHN" STREET, E.C. fW .:^P> ■ ■■■' • ■.^ ^^ • V,. 7 ■ ^#«^ ^^- I