How can men be expected to be loyal subjects, and good citizens, unless they have been taught, what the Holy Spirit declares by St. Paul, that all Authority is from God; and that they who resist lawful Authority, in any not unlawful command, resist the ordinance of God, and will be condemned hereafter by Him? (Rom. xiii. 1-4). How can the rights of Property be maintained against the assaults of Socialism and Communism, and how can the strifes of Capital and Labour be appeased, without the aid of Christianity ? How can children be dutiful, loving, and obedient to Parents, how can servants be faithful to Mastersunless they have been taught that what they do is to be done as to the Lord, Who will reward them hereafter accordingly? (Eph. vi. 1, vi. 5-8; Col. iii. 22, 23). How can it be hoped, that men will be truthful, honest, and upright, unless they have learnt to believe that God is every where present, and sees all things, and reads the heart, and will bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil? (Eccl. xii. 14). How can it be expected, that young men and young women will be temperate and sober, chaste and pure, except they have been trained in the truths which are revealed in the Bible, that the bodies of Christians are members of Christ (1 Cor. vi. 15), and temples of the Holy Ghost, and that whatsover defileth the temple of God, him will God destroy (1 Cor. iii. 16, vi. 19); and that all will be raised hereafter from their graves, and, according to the deeds done in the body will receive

for Public and Private Happiness.

121

their future doom for eternal bliss or woe? (2 Cor. v. 10; Gal. vi. 8). How can it be hoped, that husbands and wives will be faithful to one another, and that those sins and miseries consequent on conjugal infidelity, which are now so common among us, will not become more and more rife, unless young men and young women have been taught that Marriage is a holy thing, instituted by God in Paradise, and beautified by Christ, and a figure of His mystical unity with the Church, and that whosoever violates Marriage is guilty of sacrilege against God? And even though they have been taught these things, how will they be able to resist the temptations of the world, the flesh, and the devil, and to do their duty to God and man, without the help of divine grace, and without those supernatural gifts of the Holy Ghost, which are to be obtained only in God's appointed ways, namely, by Prayer, private and public, and by the ministry of the Holy Sacraments, and Confirmation, in loving and faithful communion with Christ and His Church?

These are things which never can be had in systems of Instruction, like those of our Board Schools, which are not built on the doctrines of Christianity as their foundation. And if those systems are to prevail in England, and to supersede the schools of the Church, we may look with alarm to the future. Whenever a Nation has reared a generation in Schools not founded on a religious basis, her own work will recoil upon her; the generation so reared will rise up against her; and those persons who have supplanted the religious

teaching of the Church, and have sown to the wind in mere secular instruction, will one day reap the whirlwind in national confusion.

Let us remember also that political power is now passing more and more from the hands of the few into the hands of the many; and from the upper classes, to the middle and lower; and therefore the future welfare of England depends on the right solution of the question before us. The condition of other Countries, where the foundations of Christianity have been weakened, and where Secularism has almost supplanted Christianity in their Schools, may serve as a warning to convince us, that this question concerns us as Citizens, as well as Christians; and that it affects the Institutions of our Country, and our national peace and prosperity, and the relations of our domestic and social life, as well as the eternal interests of the immortal souls of those among whom we dwell.

In Board Schools the Pastor of the Parish has no status as such; he is not able to obey the command ̧ of Christ to feed the lambs of his flock; the Bible exists only on sufferance; there is no authorized place for the Creeds and Catechisms of the Church; and there is scarcely any recognition of the need of Divine help, and of the regenerating and sanctifying graces of the Holy Spirit, given in prayer and sacraments, for the successful performance of the work of Education; and much is done, by a large expenditure of money, in spacious and sumptuous buildings, for the perishable things of this world; but little heed is

and of England as a Nation.

123

given to the spiritual welfare of the immortal souls of the children gathered there, and for the great concerns of Eternity.

Such a system as this has no discipline of love. It sharpens the intellect, but it cannot soften the heart. It has no personal sympathies, no parental affection, for the children trained by it. And when a race of scholars shall have been trained in England by it, with mental faculties eagerly stimulated by emulation, and amply furnished with secular knowledge, and elated by their own sense of power, and ambitious of worldy pre-eminence, but with consciences not regulated by Divine guidance, and with wills not sanctified by Divine grace, and with little or no faith in the Divine attributes of Omnipresence and Omniscience, and in future Rewards and Punishments, then we may tremble for our Country.

Unless a great change for the better takes place in our School Boards, what will become of England twenty years hence, when those who are now children in her Board Schools will swell the masses of her population, and be, in a great measure, the arbiters of her destinies ?

Besides, this system not only affects our scholars, it will tend to demoralize our Teachers. A religious Teacher has a high and holy calling; he is labouring for God, and for Eternity, and has hopes full of immortality; and by his example as well as by his teaching, with the Bible and Prayer Book in his hands,

he trains his scholars not only for the duties of earth, but for the joys and glories of heaven. But a teacher in such a system as that which is now growing up among us, has no such aspirations as these; his work is of the earth, earthy. He can hardly feel reverence for the Bible; for if it is God's Word it ought to hold the first place in his teaching; he can have little veneration for the Church, and for its Faith, its Prayers, its Sacraments, which are disparaged by the system with which he is identified. His moral and spiritual being must suffer and be deteriorated by the position in which he is placed, with regard to holy things. He will have little relish for them. He will almost wish to banish them from his thoughts as unwelcome visitants. In a word, by the spread of Board Schools as now constituted, the teaching power of England is undergoing an organic change; it is in danger of being secularized. And who can foretell the results?

I observe, indeed, that in some few cases, in answer to the question in my " Visitation Queries," "Is there a School Board in your Parish? if so, what is its influence on your own position as Pastor of the Parish?" some of the Clergy reply that their position is improved by the Board School. But I observe also, that in such cases there was either no School at all before, or the Clergyman who gives the answer is himself the Chairman of the School Board, and has been able to secure the election of like-minded