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Observer, Sept. 1, '72.

of the law." It thus appears that, although on a most important and cardinal point a clergyman's doctrine be different from the authoritative teaching of the Church, yet, if his doctrine be not expressly forbidden, he may teach it with impunity. The teaching in many English parishes has long been strangely like to that of Rome. In some we have had confession taught, in others, penance, absolution, unction, religious orders, a mitigated form of Mariolatry, the invocation of saints, and now there is added the sacrifice of the mass. Is it strange that such teaching should lead to Rome itself? In a lecture on Ritualism, recently delivered by Monsignor CAPEL, he stated that the number of Roman Catholic priests in the diocese of Westminster was 264, of whom 46 had been members of the Church of England. "No week," he said, "goes by without my receiving three, four or five persons of the Ritualistic party into our Church."

In the Towns, the effect of the Act has also been to increase "Denominationalism." Many towns of considerable size are still without School Boards. Where they have been formed, very little has been done in the erection of School Board schools. Meanwhile, the building grants have assisted the Denominations in the erection of new schools. The increased grant under the New Code has led to the opening of schools in rooms usually employed for Sunday School purposes. But if the School Boards have provided very few schools, they have, amidst great dissatisfaction, helped to fill the Denominational schools. They have passed bye-laws compelling the attendance of children at school. As they have not founded schools, the empty places in Denominational schools have been filled. But, seeing that many indigent parents are unable to pay the school fees, they have, under the 25th clause of the Act, paid them out of the local rate. You are aware of the fierce religious strife this has caused throughout the country. It is declared that by this arrangement the full cost of maintaining many schools will be met, the fees and the Government grant being sufficient for that purpose. Such schools, to support which a few pounds, or nothing at all, is raised by voluntary subscriptions, are in no way subject to the control of the Boards. It is not our purpose to enter now into the controversy it has provoked; we content ourselves with pointing out that this payment of fees is practically an endowment of the Churches of England and Rome.

The returns of the amount of school fees paid in Manchester, in six weeks, are as follows:

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It is such facts and convictions that stimulate the Central Nonconformist Committee to seek amendments in the English Education Act. The logic of events has driven them to the conclusion that the only effectual amendment which will remove the religious difficulty is the entire separation of the duties of the State and the Churches, leaving the former to employ State money in furnishing the secular Education to which none object, and the latter, at their own cost and at another time, to furnish the religious teaching. For this they will continue to struggle, and the past history of Nonconformity teaches us that, sooner or later, victory is sure to be theirs. The truth is that all Christian people are agreed that a merely secular Education is imperfect, that there must be a moral and religious training

Observer, Sept. 1, 72.

to fit for the duties of the present and the joys of the future life; and that the benign, cheering, purifying and elevating influences of religion are necessary for child and man alike. Moreover, the principle that the State should not interfere with religion, but limit itself to the secular work, is the principle of the Government. For this end, the religious teaching in all Public Elementary Schools is separated from the secular. That the separation should take place we are all agreed. We simply differ upon a question of time and persons. The Government says Religious Education must be given at the commencement or close of the school meeting. We say, "let it be given a little later or earlier." Surely to say that is not 66 Atheistical."

The Government say the teaching must be given by State-paid teachers, we say, "No, let it be given by unpaid men and women, the ministers and members of the churches." Is this a 66 godless" proposition?

The question of time and teacher is one of detail, and now that the principle of separate instruction is admitted, it may be thought that it might be readily granted by the Government. But behind this there are other grave considerations, and if you have been surprised at the tenacity with which we cling to this point of detail, you will possibly cease to be surprised when we place before you some of the reasons of our action. One of our reasons is that religious teaching given by the State is imperfect.

grace,"

The first requisite for a religious teacher is a heartfelt knowledge of religion. When selecting our ministers, we ask first if he has “ then if he has " gifts." God forbid that we should dishonour Him by setting up in the pulpit or in the school, teachers of religion who have no grace. If that is necessary, then apply the test of its possession to State-paid teachers. Are you satisfied that the Roman Catholic teachers will bear it? Are you satisfied that the great mass of teachers in Church National Schools will come up to the standard? What guarantee have you that a School Board teacher will be selected because he has "grace? Are not your own pupil teachers often selected because they are sharp boys and girls, and not because of their piety? If Church membership becomes necessary to their success in their profession, are they not subjected to a grievous temptation ?

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In School Board schools that which is called religious teaching must necessarily be very imperfect. The Act declares that no formularies or catechisms distinctive of any sect shall be used. The Bible may be used. Whether the Bible shall be read without note or comment, or with suitable explanation, is a point debated by those who insist upon the use of that sacred Book in day schools. All, however, appear to be agreed that if explanations are given they shall not be of a sectarian character. It is assumed that this is possible. The writer of an hysterical article in the Recorder of June 7th, declares that it is possible to convey a large amount of Catholic Christian truth without the slightest tinge of Denominationalism. We, as well as the writer, have been in many schools, but yet have never perceived how this is to be done. If the meaning of "unsectarian teaching" is the explanation of Biblical geography or history, then that is not religious teaching at all, as we understand it. The history of the Jewish people belongs to the domain of history, and the distance from Jerusalem to Damascus is as much within the province of geography as the distance from Calcutta to Bombay.

Unsectarian teaching of the Bible must mean the teaching of such truths

Observer, Sept. 1, '72.

as are held in common by the sects, and to which none of them object. What truths are these? Are the doctrines of the Divinity and Eternal Sonship of Christ truths accepted by Unitarians? No. Then they must be left out. Is justification by faith alone a doctrine to which the Romanist will give ready assent? Then it must not be mentioned. Is there perfect harmony in the views held as to original sin-the atonement-the witness of the Spirit-the duration of future punishments? All these must be ignored in an unsectarian teaching of religion. With such teaching, how much of Christian truth will be given? And are we to be called ungodly, when we protest against a national muzzling of the Bible, and demand that-if it can enter the schools only with an imperfect message, teaching only what a schoolmaster decides it can unsectarianly teach, it shall not be thus degraded, but taken where its teaching shall be free and unrestrained? The Bible is to us not a splendid literary work, a book of history or science; it is the voice of God; it denounces the sin to whose existence our sin stricken consciences bear witness; it tells of the matchless love of God in the gift of His Son; it gives us the weary and heavy laden, yearning for rest-the invitation, rich with the music of mercy; it teaches us to grapple with giant sins and gives us freedom to enjoy the blessedness of a pure and holy service; it visits us in the darkest night of human sorrow with Divinest consolations, and points our anxious gaze to the streaks of light that bar the clouds, and tells us that joy comes in the morning; and having led us till we have been begotten again to a lively hope, it fills our hearts with solemn visions of the valley trodden by departed and departing multitudes, but in whose gloom Christ shall be with us, and rapt views of the city with its jasper walls and streets of gold and gates of pearl, and of the multitude amid whose purity and gladness no sin or sorrow mingles.

God forbid that we should suffer this Book, so dear and so Divine, to be evilly entreated; and when good men sentimentally think they do it reverence, by putting it as a dumb book into our schools, we cry-let any call us ungodly for it if they will-" Hands off! Our fathers fought for a free open Bible, and we will not permit you to fetter it now!"

Again, religious teaching can be more effectually given by the Churches. Some of the most vigorous advocates of the present system speak as if the only opportunity to give religious teaching was in a day school and as if the only persons competent to give it were day school masters. They have forgotten or undervalued the great work done by voluntary effort.

The voluntary Educational work to which the Churches are called seems to us a Providential arrangement to aid them in attaining a higher standard of Christian excellency. God, who might have commissioned angels to preach, has employed men, that He might develop and strengthen their Christian graces; that He might by making the welfare of the race depend upon this holy toil, knit men together in the closest sympathy, and testify, by the disproportion between the instrument He uses and the success He bestows, that the excellency of the power is of God. The great Head of the Church honours men by making them the messengers of the Word of Life. No man can disregard the commission and reap the blessings of obedience. No Church can relegate to a State Department its own work. No Church can thus repudiate a Divine arrangement without suffering in a stunted, enfeebled religious life. Here is a call to voluntary effort. Let us answer it, and gird ourselves for the work; and it may be that this shall be that which shall quicken the spiritual life of the Churches, and bring down the showers of Divine blessing on the parched and thirsty world.

Observer, Sept. 1, '72.

DR. BROCK ON THE BIBLE AND ELEMENTARY

EDUCATION.

THE following letter from the Rev. Dr. Brock was read at the meeting held at Bloomsbury Chapel, London, to consider Mr. Forster's Education Act:

"I am rather afraid that my absence may, in certain quarters, be misapprehended. Such strange things have been said of late concerning those of us who object to the introduction of the Bible into State-supported schools, that I am not sure as to what may be said of my non-appearance on your platform to-morrow night.

If it should, perchance, be said that I am not hearty in making the objection; that on the whole, I was glad of an excuse for keeping aloof from the assertion and maintenance of the object before the public, I assure the men who may say this, either now or hereafter, that they are wholly and entirely wrong-wrong without any qualification and in every sense. Strangers to certain things which are a good deal in vogue, even in Nonconformist circles, will wonder, I dare say, at my earnestness of expression in such a matter; but there will be gentlemen on your platform by whom it will be understood at once.

I confess to it, that the absence of the Bible from the school-room is the occasion to me of great distress. I have come to consent to the absence of it, if not rather to insist on the absence of it, with great, great reluctance. If I believe anything at all about education, it is this—that it never can be proximately perfect, unless it be pervaded by the evangelic element. We may do a thousand things with a view to train up our juvenile population in the way in which they should go, and I, for one, would do them all. But not a child of all your population will learn the way in which he ought to go, if you leave out of your training the inculcation of Christian morals and Christian doctrine. I lay stress on the morals and doctrine, having no idea whatever of such dissociation between the two as I hear advocated on many sides. I greatly admire the Sermon on the Mount, but I also admiré the discourse with Nicodemus. I hold in reverence our Lord's teaching in regard to the love of our neighbour; but I hold in equal reverence our Lord's teaching in regard to the love of God with all our hearts. Utterly fallacious, in my judgment, is the cry for the beautiful morality of the Bible apart from any doctrines whatsoever! No. God has joined them both together, and, do what men will, they cannot put them asunder. They may get what they will designate morality, but it will be nothing worth. If it would work it would be good for nothing; but, cut off from the life with which God had connected it, it won't work at all. According to my notion, therefore, an attempt to educate the people must comprehend religious instruction in the fullest sense. And thus I feel that the men go very to near calumniating us who say that we are disowning the Gospel, and striking hands with the enemies of the Cross of Christ.

But here the question comes, why, with such belief in the indispensableness of Bible teaching for sound education, we are so resolutely insisting upon the exclusion of Bible teaching from our schools. My answer is, that we are insisting upon it only in respect to State-established and State-supported schools. As long as our schools were the voluntary schools, to which parents sent their children of their own accord, whose funds were supplied or supplemented by free gifts, and whose management was in the hands of the contributors or their representatives, so long were

Observer, Sept. 1, '72.

we amongst the foremost in teaching the Bible-morality, doctrine and all. But now, when the State takes the matter into its own hands, compelling some citizens, as citizens, to send their children to the schools, and requiring other citizens, as citizens, to pay rates for the maintenance of the schools, and authorizing any citizen, if intellectually qualified, to apply for the conduct and superintendence of the schools, we relinquish our former position, and say as plainly as we can- -No Bible teaching there!' The circumstances have altered the case essentially. The State may, perhaps, teach the secular; but with the spiritual it has no necessary acquaintance, and over the spiritual it has no legitimate control. The nature of the case is such that governments are bound to let religion alone; and the difficulties of the case are such that, at least in Great Britain and Ireland, they will find it to be their policy to let it alone. Why, in any school which may be set up, many of the children may be Roman Catholics, some of the ratepayers may be Swedenborgians, and the master may be a Jew! I know that we are to be provided with "a conscience clause;" but I have lived too long to be silenced by specious or even honest talk, about conscience clauses. If they are not a stigma and a brand, which is bad, they are a delusion and a snare, which is a great deal worse.

My conclusion touching the whole matter is this-seeing that the State will take the education of the people under its own direction and into its own power, let it take only those portions of the educational processes which are secular, and expend its solicitude and power on them; and then let the churches take the educational processes which are spiritual, and expend their solicitude and power on them. Bible teaching by all means, and in greater perfectness than ever. But no attempt at Bible teaching by the State."-I am, yours sincerely, WILLIAM BROCK.

ANNUAL MEETING IN SCOTLAND.

THE annual conference of brethren from churches in Scotland was held in Brown Street Chapel, Glasgow, on Monday, July 22. There were present brethren from Auchtermuchty, Armadale, Banff, Bathgate, Crofthead, Crossgates, Carluke, Dundee, Edinburgh, Falkirk, Grangemouth, Glasgow (Brown Street and Bridgeton), Pathhead, Perth, etc., numbering, with the sisters present, upwards of fifty.

After praise and prayer, Bro. Cameron, of Banff, was called to the Chair.

The first item of business was the Committee's Report and Financial Statement. The Report stated that Bro. Hurte had been unremittingly engaged in Evangelistic work during the past year, and that he had spent a considerable portion of his time among the churches in the north and west. The visit of Bren. Hindle and Evans was then referred to, and the Committee in England thanked for their kindness in this matter. The labours of Bro. Strang, in visiting several of the smaller churches during the course of the year, were mentioned, also the kind manner in which the brethren in Glasgow had foregone their claims upon his services that he might respond to those calls. It was also reported that Bro. Aitken had visited several of the churches during the year. The Report next referred to Bro. Murray (a young man from beyond Banff), who had manifested much zeal for the Lord, and who, on Bro. Hurte's recommendation, had spent five weeks with him in Evangelistic work in the district between

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