LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
THE BAPTIST UNION AND NATIONAL EDUCATION.
[TO Ills EDITOR OF TRH “SPECTATOR:]
Siat,—Iu the last number of your able journal you noticed the resolutions on Education passed at the autumnal session of the Baptist Union, and I ask permission to offer a brief explanation of the principles which they involve. I have no pretensions to speak in the name of the Baptist Union, but as the mover of the resolu- tions I may he supposed to know my own views and the grounds on which they rest. Your space will only allow me to state those principles, I will not attempt to vindicate them.
I beg your readers to observe that the Baptist Union has been thoroughly consistent on this question. Whether its principles be right or wrong, they have been bong and consistently held. The Union is iu no sense chargeable with " caprices." Before the Elementary Education Act was passed, at the autumnal session of 1869, the Union solemnly declared that " no system of Government education can be regarded as satisfactory which is not coufined to secular teaching." There has been no change since that day. The 215th clause is only an expansion of the vicious principles against which we have ever protested. We have never so refined away our consciences as to suppose that payments out of Imperial taxes were right and payments from social rates were wrong. It is not the source of the money, but the application of the money, that we protest against. The rate brings the question within our grasp, and we can deal with it as we did with the Church-rate. " This really means secular education, and nothing else." As far as the Government is concerned, this is true. It is all that the Govern- ment ought to do, and all that the Government can do. We give to Cresar the work for which he is competent ; but in religious teaching, whether to children or to adults, we do not recognize his authority, and will not tolerate his interference. We claim the school absolutely for the State, in which the child of every citizen shall meet on equal terms, and in which the religion of no citizen shall be taught at the national expense. The " time-table conscience clause" does not in the least touch our principles. We resent the necessity of appealing to it as an indignity, and you ought not to speak of it as a protection. The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, and half the Bench of Bishops, have failed to re- strain the Ritualists ; and I leave it to any man's common-sense to say what protection a Dissenter's child will have in sectarian schools. The "time-table conscience clause" will only intensify and embitter sectarianism. From one end of the land to the other we hear the cry for teaching "distinctive Church principles." " Hest thou appealed to the law ? To the law thou shall go ; " and with a whole army of diocesan inspectors of religion springing up for these schools, we know what that means. We want to have our children trained up in a manly, self-respecting, truth-loving spirit, and we will not submit to have them treated as pariahs by parson or by squire.
One of these resolutions, to which you have not adverted, refers to the proceedings of the Endowed Schools' Commissioners. These are the schools in which many of the children of the members of our churches ought to be educated, and in which the graduates of our colleges, if they think proper to pursue the scholastic profes- sion, ought to be able to compete on equal terms with any in the land. I ask you to consider the proceedings of the Commissioners. The representative principle in the election of the governing body is ignored, is made indirect, or is reduced to a minimum ; the co-optative or self-elective element is large ; and I believe that in almost every scheme the incumbent of the parish is appointed ex officio a member of the governing body ! Are you surprised that we resent these appointments as a new insult and a new wrong, awl will the Spectator speak any more of the " strict equality of Dissenters with Churchmen?" The representative, and even the co-optative, members, may change, but this ex-ohricio member is immortal. There is no pretence of personal qualifications ; he is simply the representative of a favoured sect. And this body will have the appointment of masters, and the entire regulation of the religious instruction given in the schools I
There is another resolution to which you have not referred, that which relates to Irish education. And this will become the crucial test of the whole question. Of all the marvels of the last session of Parliament, none was so marvellous as Mr. Gladstone's in- capacity to express himself intelligibly on this question. We have sometimes thought he had a plethora of words which smothered the thought, but we never thought he could speak for a long while and no one be able to say what he meant. Bat what Mr. Gladstone could not express the Baptist Union has clearly ex- pressed. In England, Protestantism is in an overwhelming majority, and in Ireland Romauism ; but we ask nothing for Eng- land which we arc not prepared to give to Ireland. Not in the interests of Protestantism, but in the interests of mental, moral, and political freedom, we protest against handing over the educa- tion of a people to the control of any priesthood. The statesman who attempts to do that will be guilty of a crime against his country the like to which has not been committed in recent times. It may surprise you that a body of men like this Uniou should solemnly protest, with a depth of feeling and earuestucss which clearly foreshadows their coming action, against the teaching of
religion in our national schools. Here are ministers whose whole life is spent on teaching religion, here are laymen who give time,
personal service, and money to extend religion, and many of whom have spent years in teaching the young themselves, and yet they protest, not against any particular sect, but against all teach- ing of religion by the State or at the State's expense. Now, why is thiS? I fearlessly answer it is because they believe in religion and love it. They have not relegated religion to the ladies' boudoir or to the children's nursery. They have not reached that philosophical attitude, to which Gibbon says the Romans had attained, and towards which there seems so strong a tendency in our own day, to regard " every religion as equally true or equally false, and every useful." They have not reached that vanising-point in religion to which it seems the literary idea conducts " the eternal not ourselves which makes for righteous- ness" They have a passionate longing that religion should have one more chance in the world, unstrangled by priests or by kings. Is it a vain dream to cherish that the voice of the Divine Founder may yet praise its sepulchre and wake it from the dead, and that men will obey his command, " Loose him, and let him go free."
We are not ungrateful to the Spectator• for noble aid in securing for Dissenters sonic fragments of political and religious justice. You have " fought stoutly for the strict equality of Dissenters with Churchmen." The sentence should have passed over into the future tense. You cannot doff your armour yet. You are only at the very beginning of the campaign, and there is many a hard battle before you. But it seems that on this vital question of the province of the State in matters of religion, which is becoming, which I think is become in England, the question of questions, and which lies at the root of so many others, we are not only to part company with you, but you will " fight equally stoutly against us." We shall be sorry to miss you from our side, where, I venture to think, your proper place would be found, but we shall not "'bate a jot of heart or hope" in our conflicts. Nay, we will even welcome you into the fray, though as an opponent. We like honest, manly, " stout " antagonists. We have vanquished many a stout antagonist in days gone by. We have fought out the right to live. We have not a single right which we have not won by dint of sacrifice and suffering ; and we will never rest until every right which belongs to a citizen be ours, and this will never be until the word Dissenter is blotted out of the national vocabulary.
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