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 ^NIAftlO 
 
"T""^ 
 
CHRISTIAN INSTRUCTION 
 
 IN THE 
 
 PUBLIC SCHOOLS OF ONTARIO 
 
 BY 
 
 JAMES MIDDLEMISS, D.D. 
 
 Mm$rUu$ MinbMr of CluliMn Chiircb, Elow, 
 
 TORONTO 
 
 WILLIAM BRIGGS 
 
 1901 
 
Obi 
 
 /V7 5"V 
 
 X 
 
 Kntend •ooording to Act of the Parliament of Canada, in the year one 
 thonaand nine hondrad and oae, by Jaxcb MiODLBifias, D.D., at 
 the Department of Agriooltole. 
 
TO 
 
 a»e fmmm eterge OP. ro$$, ccik. 
 
 Prime Minister of the Province of Onti 
 
 'arto. 
 
 To whose zeal, energy, and administrative ability our 
 Educational interests oTve so much, this volume, issued 
 in the hope that it may contribute to the furtherance 
 of the Christian interests of the Province, in which no 
 one can be more in sympathy with the writer than our 
 Honourable Premier, is with his hind and courteous 
 permission inscribed, with the highest respect, by 
 
 f\ 
 
 n 
 
 THE AUTHOR. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 It IS contended, m the>,. place, that Ontario being a 
 Chnst an province or state, and its people generally 
 recognmng the essential importance oV the Sous 
 ins ruction of their chUdi^n. its authorized teacheiT^^ 
 cer^cates of eligibility as Public School instr^l^^"^ 
 
 Mt^ 'I iT" ""'^ "" '^'" P«>^^'o» «^ - Christian 
 f«th should be qualified and required to instruct thdr 
 
 pup Is m the teachings of the common Christianity of t^e 
 Protestant population of the Province, if, as we [h.nk it 
 can be sufficiently shown, there is no objection Tthe r 
 S'lr r^r"'? principle or practically insuperaW 
 Tins mvolves the subonlinate contention that, wlSe the 
 educational authority of the Province professes Tilr 
 suasion tiiat " Christianity is the bas^ ofTur th^j 
 system and that therefore its principles should^VaTT 
 
 X^^tii'mirb'"^*^^"'"'^^^''^-'^-^^^^^ 
 
 ad^uately met by an arrangement which the experience 
 of many years has proved to be impracticable. We rZ 
 to the relegation, by the Education Department of C^! 
 
 Which suggests thenr dp g in the PubKc School room 
 
 
 
• PRIFACK. 
 
 what they, with their helper., we alway doing, and wiU 
 doubt e«. continue tc do, with more convenience of time 
 and place, while it ha* no regard to the Christian inHtruc 
 tion of those who are most in need of it, besides being, as 
 we shall see, objectionable in several other respects. 
 
 It 18 contended, in the m>cond place, that the hope, at 
 one tmie entertained, of securing the co^ucation of the 
 children of Roman Catholics and Protestants, by the 
 exclusion of positive religious instruction from the school 
 programme having been disappointed ; and our Roman 
 Catholic fellowcitirens, who strenuously objected to the 
 absence of religious instruction from the day school, having 
 aecured as a conftitutional right for all time to come, the 
 establishment of Separate Schools, in which their children 
 have instruction imparted to them, by legally qualified and 
 saUned teachers, not only in the doctrines which they 
 hold m common with Protestants, but in those in which 
 they differ from them, it is a matter of simple justice that 
 the Protestants of Ontario should have equal privilege, 
 by the introduction into its Public Schools of instruction 
 m their common Christianity-instruction, that is, in what 
 they believe in common to be the teaching of the Woixi of 
 God. 
 
 Leaving it entirely to the parties immediately concerned 
 to determine the character of the Christian instruction to 
 be imparted in Roman Catholic Separate Schools, let us 
 here say that we plead for no Protestant teaching in our 
 Public Schools except that which, while suiBciently posi- 
 tive and definite, shall be strictly non-controversial. We 
 would not, even though we could, allow of any reference 
 in text-books, or by teachers, that might be offensive to our 
 feUow-citizens of the Roman Catiiolic persuasion, or of any 
 
PREFACE. . 
 
 '«t.on of tk. I,<^„i„^ .^^y £ d^ieT J^k T"" 
 ""jorily, ^„ld „„t 4^, ^ j^ rJZrHt *^ 
 
 iiija.H« vere u „„, «„. ,,„ ."*'"'"^ " » "T gi»vo 
 lo » .;.„ •■ ° circoimtoBce. that hiive lerf 
 
 believe, to the b«,t in^ rfT "" """"^ " "« 
 oiti«„. <i^C^^Zr^ °"' "™" '^"'■olic fellow. 
 
 well that H iiTd i^trr^Mrr'- •- *^ ^ » 
 
 which Protestants «>-..•»! *"' "" """"'nM in . 
 
 »l».^., been weU oontnW^^^'"- ^°T^^' " ■"" 
 
 itj:2rtiro'"-"^'^-^rj= 
 
c„m,ton«« l„.ve resulted in the unprecedeZd «.1Z 
 
 a subject of instruction, properly soK^Ued. It is only « 
 ttt* "* wf "* ''^™*''"« '''^' *^«y receive certSte" 
 
 P^feTto ^ i ''' ""*^ T"' ''^** ^'' '^'"^ ^l"** they 
 ^rT- !? ' ^^ *^"°*** ^"* °»»J^« their teaching savour 
 of Christianity they will not be rebuked for so cdnrbu 
 rather commendecl. But to ^cA any distinctive do^ ri„e 
 ^Chnstianity. not only however important in the view of 
 Protestents, as. for example, Luther's article of theTtTnd 
 mg or falhng Church, but however important in the vfet 
 of I^man Catholics and Protestants aX. as. for eLr 
 
 His death ; or, m other words, to present any of theL 
 doctrines^ or the like, to their pupils as matted of fai^ 
 because divinely revealed, is absofutely forbidde" 
 
 nt^'J'T- """^"" '' '^'"^ "'' ^''-y -ho are not a 
 
 utoftwlT:.^' ''' ^"^'^*^"^ continuance of a 
 state of things which they cannot but regard as being i„ 
 
 a high degree, discreditable to a Christi^ pn>vinl L^d 
 especially to ite Proteste^t profession. The w^? ^t 
 w«, ahnost from the beginning of his long minS^y tm 
 after ^^ clo^ officially connected with the educalna 
 m txtutions of his locality, has. from time to time S 
 2TZ l*'^: --*,^f -^«-^ to, and endeavoiiS^S 
 meet the objections which some respected brethren offer 
 to his views on the subje t of Christian instruction inte 
 
PREFACE. ^ 
 
 made, though intermittently, for a „u '.1 * ' ^" 
 
 not know how he can so well emolovT i .^"* *»« ^«^« 
 retirement from the active 7nZ^\u^" '""'" «^ ^'« 
 putting into permanent form ! """"^'y' «" »" 
 
 unfr^quently in the pr^ L **", r* '> "'"^^^^ "«t 
 
 Hitical feeling mn h^i;!^ especially at a time when 
 the Education LZtS ',°""««*'«« ^^^h the action of 
 
 bemi withoTt^TiTr^^vr t^'rr^'^"'^'"- 
 
 were then pleading ho^fXf 1 ^"^ ''^ *^^ ^h« 
 tian instruction !ntnr^^L«S^^^^^ 
 however, renounce the hope thaf * », ". *'*""*'*' 
 
 have so long and earnesTv nl JL' ^"''"^^^ ^''''*'^ «««"« 
 marvellous ^rsistence ^^ ^ f ""''"'' ^^*"' *^^r 
 
 hope is to hS «^^rsuSn i;\:rrr^^ ^" 
 
 peraat in protesting aa.i„,t i. :„Z7 .. ^ *' ^""l 
 
 only to which he, .JZly^Z^'J''' °' ^''"''• 
 -Uch .e owe .„'„„ ,X^ »*•■» »' "». -^n pay the debt 
 
 of the inestimable pH^Z Id '.L ""'°°'* '""" "-™ 
 «.igio«.in.tn,otionrjXs°hoo?'T.°' ""' ""'«' 
 toon, ehiWren. "o^^il^^^^],^^," "7 """^ 
 remonstrance, and in the f,^ . "^f"""' ""d Mmcst 
 th.t «. eduction L .tch^lr™"""'' '"-i™™ 
 «pic«on, by its .b«noe,t no^™'^/""™"""" » ~n. 
 TI»t the writer is tLj^ ' possessor. 
 
 Ple^, as he purposes to do. for what hT u'" 
 
 ' "^ ^nat he cannot but 
 
10 
 
 PSIFACB. 
 
 ^1 
 
 regard ai simple justice to the Protestants of the Provinoe! 
 It can hardly as yet be entirely forgotten that when, some 
 years ago. unworthy attempts, as he regarded them, were 
 being made to prejudice the electorate against the Gov- 
 ernment, in connection with the action of the Minister 
 of Education, he was constrained to expose himself to 
 unfavourable notice, in the hope that his note of warning, 
 in reference to endeavours to allure electors from their 
 allegiance, might not be uttered in vain. 
 
 If the following contention shows that his views are, no 
 less than they have always been, diflTeicnt from or (let it 
 be admitted) opposed to the expressed views of the Min- 
 ister who now worthily occupies the place of Premier of 
 the Province, he is fully persuaded that his free handling 
 of the views and action of the educational authority of the 
 Province will not be regarded as inconsistent with loyalty 
 to his party. Its leaders do not claim infaUibility ; and 
 while they cannot but desire to know the mind of the 
 people, and may be expected to give practical effect to 
 popular conviction, in the interests of the community com- 
 mitted to their rule, he cannot but think that the pleadings 
 of one whose loyalty cannot be questioned will have more 
 weight with them than those of one who is less pronounced 
 in his political sentiments. 
 
 Jahks Miodlemiss. 
 
 Elora, aoth April, 1901. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Chaptkr I. 
 
 -^8chooI.-Ert.WW.«..„t of 8ep«.u. SohooU ^ 
 2^W.«fu'^ '^ ^'~*"'"»- • -P^W propriety SJ 
 
 Chaptbb II. 
 
 The g«at hir to the .„cce«of our oonfntion-The .p.thv of 
 in«y and the opposition of some ^ ^ 
 
 * ' • • • 
 
 Chaptbb III. 
 Opposition on the ground of Drincinli.— n^ii • 
 
 Chaptbb IV. 
 
 Pass 
 
 16 
 
 ») 
 
 38 
 
 60 
 
IS 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 Chaptir V. 
 
 Pmi 
 
 The JoHrnaTa inconristenoy further exhibited— Appeal to 
 Scripture in oppodtion to our contention— Referenoe to 
 the Congregational ohorohee 7g 
 
 Chaptkr VI. 
 
 State of the qneiition— Objections of ChriBtian brethren en- 
 dorsed by the etiucational authority— The one alternative 03 
 
 Chaptkr VII. 
 
 Relegation of Christian instruction in the Public Schools to 
 Protestants ministers an inadequate fulfilment of the obli- 
 gation of the civil ruler, and otherwise objectionable . 1 12 
 
 Chaptbr VIII. 
 
 IVaotical difficulties— I. Differences among Protestanta— High 
 
 order of their unity, and their differences a trifle . . 124 
 
 Chapter IX. 
 
 Practical difficulties-II. Charges of skepticism, defective 
 knowledge and want of sympathy— A great injustice to 
 teachers as a body-The Protestant Church is equal to 
 the fuU perennial supply of Christian teachers . lag 
 
 Chapter X. 
 Review and summary of previous argument . . . .151 
 
 Chapter XI. 
 
 Misapprehension of the action of Protestant ministers- 
 Charges of clerical agitation in the interest of sectarian- 
 ism repelled j^q 
 
CONTIMTH. J 8 
 
 Cbaptcr XII. 
 
 TIi« MMntUI importuiM of parenUl intorMt— PtirraUl neg- 
 lect an •rgnmeiit in favour of our oontention— Perma- 
 nent valne of Chrietian knowledge— The Apoetle Paul'e 
 valuation of ita diftiaion jgj, 
 
 Chaptkb XIII. 
 
 Specific objectiona to the uae of the Bible in the Public School 
 —I. Allied indelicacy of some of iU utteranoea— II 
 Destruction of the Canaanitea • .... 197 
 
 Chaptbb XIV. 
 Instruction in the evidenoea of Christianity . . 2II 
 
 Notes akd Addendum. 
 
 N»»- 227 
 
 Addendum on the memorizing of Scripture by the young 
 
CHRISTIAN INSTRUCTION IN THE PUBLIC 
 SCHOOLS OF ONTARIO. 
 
 CHAPTER L 
 
 ^"^SlllTiSI;? u "«8*««»'«-»«<*ion feom the Common 
 8ohool.-Brt.blMhmeiit of Sopamte Sohook to b« nganled 
 -^rjng to IW.nl*. "P^" P"P^«^y ^^ thTp^c 
 Schools, „d cUimto inrtruction in them of th. common 
 
 S T i ^ ^^"^-^^t^Jf" bJ^ne to b. . tached to 
 Rom«i Catholic; butth* PuKio H"hool* not jurtly chw- 
 
 Much as we may be dissatisfied with the present 
 edu<»tional situation of the Province of Ontario and 
 much as not a few cannot but feel that it is «Utly 
 to be deplored. chanicteri«Ml as it is by its Ltenw 
 
 > I^f^^T*"""^ '*u "!'^' «ecularity.. Separate Schools 
 excepted, no one who knows anything of the histonr 
 
 mg the blame of what we regard as its gr^t defect 
 
 ^mubUity for a state of things into which, we 
 beheve. the Province may be said to have drifted 
 
16 
 
 CHRISTIAN INSTRUCTION 
 
 unconsciously, and without due consideration of the 
 possible issues of a well-meant endeavour to secure 
 the co-education of the children of all denominations 
 of Christians, and especially of the children of L'oman 
 Catholics and Protestants. 
 
 Up to the time when, fifty years ago, the Govern- 
 ment of Canada West or Upper Canada (now Ontario) 
 introduced the system of public education, whose 
 steady development, especially in recent years, has 
 made the Province rank very high in the matter of 
 education, probably no one ever thought of the 
 exclusion of positive Christian instruction from the 
 day school. While the Bible was a class-book in 
 almost every school, in many cases the catechisms 
 of different churches were used in the instruction of 
 the pupils. And even after the time referred to, the 
 same instruction continued to be given, in accordance 
 with the general desire of parents, who are always, 
 with rare exceptions, more or less strongly in favour 
 of religious instruction in the day school. But besides 
 this, as many yet remember, the reading books that 
 were in use for some years after the introduction of 
 the present system, in 1850, contained a large amount 
 of Old and New Testament Scripture history, and 
 were not deficient in the presentation of the distinc- 
 tive teachings of Christian morality. It could not, 
 indeed, be otherwise than th Jhristian instruction 
 should be the reverse of conspicuously absent from 
 the Public School, as it is now, when the Regulations 
 issued at the time say, " As Christianity is recognized 
 
IN TBE PUBUC SCHOOLS OP ONTARIO. 17 
 
 by common consent throughout this Province m an 
 e»enf.l element of education, it ought to Z J„ 2 
 the regulation, for elementary instreeti™ ^ 
 
 to a nght apprehension of the meaning on the part o^ 
 the pupUs; and for "weekly instructbn by the detv 
 of each pernuasion.- These provisions were indef/ 
 no -^ru^ndator,. but reco^nmendatary, L tfe' 
 authonty to trustees to .rguire teache7to le E 
 instruction to their scholars, as well as to^ln and 
 
 century of the impracHcaf,uL of what tt '''P""*'°''« »' ^-^'f * 
 fbestowal on clerfflrmen of a .~J i ^ T" *" '"^S'"''' *« ^^e 
 
 (expecting them tfaTcent an i^V^" '"'^' P^vilege. per^^ i„ 
 ionewholbe;on1"th?r^ ZliLC"* ''"' '"''''"^"* «'-»>-»» 
 
 deprecating all severity of languaL an^^r"; '*'' '''"' ""**'•' 
 [the outset, to avoid it in tZ Tu '^ "« '* "?*"> ''•'»««'f. at 
 
 «ay that h; tr:erl'l;^„ ?;; "l^f. f^"*'""' "'" "''^ ""'^ 
 
 fitted by our rulers, in ttl re okZ„ ^^^^^^ 'T "•"'''''•' •'' ^'""- 
 I the day school to the members o/an^Z „r ^ '"■"'""''"" '" 
 
 that such relegation is a full ,l!-!». 7 Profowion. in the l«lief 
 
18 
 
 CHRISTIAN INSTRUCTION 
 
 exclude religious instruction from the Common 
 Schools, as the Public Schools were then called, 
 appears to have been made. But, step by step, the 
 great anomaly of the exclusion of Christian instruc- 
 tion from the day schools of the Province reached its 
 present height of entire absence. And now, for many 
 years past, the Public SI teacher may not give 
 Christian instruction to nis scholars, even to the 
 extent of explaining to them a sentence of Scripture 
 that he is permitted to read in their hearing; the 
 Government, it seems, believing that its acknowledged 
 obligation in relation to the Christian instruction of 
 the youth of the land is fully met by its allowing the 
 use of the school-room, once a week, to any minister 
 of religion who may choose to give a Christian lesson 
 to the children of his congregation, in addition to 
 the instructions he is giving them on Sabbath and 
 other days, as a dutiful Christian pastor. 
 
 After a while, objection was made to the use, in 
 Common Schools, of the Protestant Bible, the AutW- 
 ized version of the Scriptures being so described by 
 some, to whom it requires no little Christian charity 
 not to ascribe the evil purpose of trying to make 
 ignorant people believe that Protestant scholars are 
 unworthy of confidence, intellectually or morally, in 
 translating into the vernacular the Word of Divine 
 inspiration. To avoid offence to Roman Catholics, 
 priests and people, its use was discontinued. And 
 the reading books above referred to (the Irish 
 National) were superseded by others which, as many • 
 
 L 
 
I» THE PUBUO SOHOOIS OF ONTARIO. 19 
 
 to pup.l» between mm and fourteen years of L, .„rf 
 were certainly in marked contrast to the" nT^lv 
 m respect of their poverty of the general Tnf«J 
 wh^h eharacteri^ the snpe^d^ book JbuTmrr: 
 especally ,n respect of the absence of distinct"elv 
 
 i^tri-to-o^ryit^-t-^^^^^^^ 
 
 i=^:trt;:^:SrortP°' 
 
 t.onof thepupil. The result wr^aUndtthT^ 
 PtlttrredttTallt."?"--^' T" 
 
 f^nldy disavowed « being f^u^^ with 'T^: 
 
 Lcceededt^ thet ° ?t^^ T^"' '"" *^''«<''' ^est) 
 
 Aoe Act establishing them 
 
20 
 
 CHRISTIAN INSTRUCTION 
 
 declares, in its preamble, that " it is just and proper to 
 restore to Roman Catholics in Upper Canada certain 
 rights which they had formerly enjoyed,"— the refer- 
 ence being, of course, to their having their children 
 instructed day by day in the religious doctrines and 
 practices of the Roman Catholic Church, by teachers 
 authorized and salaried in accordance with legislative 
 enactment. But nothing was then done, or has t a 
 done since, to restore the same right to the Protest- 
 ants of the Province. On the contrary, the Protestant 
 contention f9r it has been continuously resisted. 
 That in the circumstances, there should be, in some 
 quarters, manifest indications of a persuasion, that the 
 proper way of rectifying what many not unreasonably 
 regard as a great wrong, is to renounce the hope of 
 a natvmal system in which instruction in the common 
 Christianity of the Province should be given its proper 
 (that is, a 'prominent) place, and to resort to a denomi- 
 national system, like that of the Voluntary Schools in 
 England, is only what might be expected.* But, if 
 we are not greatly mistaken, the general Protestant 
 mind of the Province is strongly averse to any such 
 system, and would, in accordance with the spirit of 
 the times, as manifested th ^^e last fifty or sixty years, 
 infinitely prefer, even at the cost of some sacrifice, a 
 national and non-sectarian system, under which only 
 the common Christianity of the great body of Pro- 
 testants would be taught, as it can be, without even 
 a suspicion of denominationalism, by any qualified 
 
 * Reference is had to t' action of Lawrence H. Balwin, Q.C., 
 and others. 
 
IN THE PDBLIC SCHOOLS OF ONTAMO. 21 
 
 teacher possessed of common sense, <«, .very teacher 
 « suppose! to be. In other words, we beUeve our 
 Protestant people generally would infinitely prefer 
 a system under which the civil authority a««me8 
 the resp„™,bd,ty, and asserts and exercise, the 
 control, of the daily education of its youth, to the 
 «rt«„a» system of the English VUnLry Schools 
 under wh.ch every chui^h or religious bodf has M 
 and all but exclusive control of the education given 
 n .ts own schools, the Government contributing to 
 their support as an obligation and a privilege. M 
 the same time, we cannot believe they a« r^dy to 
 submit to so great a s«=riflce as the entire exchfsion 
 of Chnsfan ,nstr,,ct,on from the Natio™.l Schools. 
 //«. , we are sure, they would regari as far too c«at 
 a pnce to pay for their pr^ferenrof a nalCJZl 
 <fc»o»,„a«™,„( system. Nor can they see tilt the 
 d fences -mong them, in .natter of comparativly 
 
 te-tents, and t,,e denial of which, they boliev^ Z 
 bo defended only by rea«>.i„g in Hrcllo. Za\Z 
 are, at the «ime lime, the occasion of .^ndering moZ 
 conspicuous a unity of a higher order than thaf which 
 cTtLt ""' '^ """' ^°""'" Catholic fello^ 
 That there is, on the part of the Protestants of the 
 
i 
 
 22 
 
 CHRISTIAN IKSTRUCnON 
 
 Pro^nnce. a general preference of a national system 
 of education; and that Protestants generally see no 
 reason why the system of their preference should be 
 mamtamed only at the cost of the exclusion of posi- 
 tive Christian instruction from their schools, is 
 sufficiently evident from the fact of the incessant 
 agitation of the subject by the three largest Protestant 
 churches— Anglican. Methodist, and Presbyterian- 
 with a view to the reintroduction of Bible or Chris- 
 tian instruction into the Public Schools of the 
 Province. These schools they reasonably regard as 
 having become the peculiar property of the Protestant 
 profession of the Province, in virtue of the legislative 
 action that has given to Roman Catholics Separate 
 Schools, in which their children are taught the dis- 
 tinctive tenets of their Church, by teachers whose 
 salaries are secured by legislative authority. Fully 
 persuaded that the agitation referred to needs no 
 vindication, we continue to take part in it, in the 
 hope of its eventual success. It may be we cannot 
 hope to rejoice in seeing the final extinction of what 
 we cannot but regard as a great anomaly; but we 
 cannot renounce the hope that the time will come 
 when our Roman Catholic fellow-citizens shall no 
 longer be alone in the civil recognition of a claim to 
 the religious instruction of their children in schools, 
 and by teachera, sustained and controlled by civil 
 authority. 
 
 No one, we think, can charge us with having given 
 an unfair statement (however imperfect), in explana- 
 
 k 
 
IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS OF ONTARIO. 23 
 
 tion of the present educational situation, much as we 
 may be dissatisfied with it. And we trust we shall 
 be credited with the entire absence of a disposition to 
 impose on any party the responsibility for what we 
 may regard as being open to objection and censure, in 
 a)nnection with the educational arrangements of the 
 Province. The present situation is manifestly one 
 into which, as has been said, the Province has uncon- 
 sciously drifted ; there having been no fixed purpose 
 to expel from our Public Schools the Christian instruc- 
 tion of earlier days, and no desire on the part of 
 parents that the instruction of the day school should 
 be exclusively secular. No one can say that the 
 co-education of the children of the diflTerent religious 
 denominations, and especially of Roman Catholics 
 and Protestants, is in itself undesirable. Nor can we 
 allow that the co-education of the children of Px)man 
 Catholics and Protestants, except by the total exclu- 
 sion of Christian instruction, is an impossibility For 
 leaving out all such religious teaching as would not 
 be acceptable equally to Protestant and to Roman 
 Catholic parents, we would have left to us, as part of 
 our school programme, "all things that pertain to life 
 and godliness, through the knowledge of him who 
 hath called us unto glory and virtue " (2 Peter i 3)— 
 all the lessons of Christian piety and good citizenship 
 Whatever may be their differences, the teaching of all 
 Scripture history, including the narratives of our 
 Lord s ministry on earth. His life. His miracles. His 
 moral teachings. His sacrificial death, His resurrection 
 
u 
 
 i 
 
 CHRISTIAN INSTRUCTION 
 
 Catholic, and S.t^e.r' A»d W " "°"»° 
 
 But trial has sufficiently J^ a^ ^^ '" °PP°*<'- 
 eduction oTproTiLT T» *'"' ■">«» »' "■» «>- 
 
 unwuiiugT-t'trer'r' """^ """ -- »<" 
 
 to be Th/ ^ '""' «='P«'tod it would prove 
 
 matterof reiLV p„l, '^' ". '" »»* "'together a 
 that tell iuTtr f " ""■"■"'""""^ •« not wanting 
 primary schtr In -T™.'" "'"°'"'"' '» *•"« 
 
 »hut our eyes to the f,^ .^ ^ '"'° "' "' "«"'"* 
 co-educat on of E„,„a„ CatS„,^ Jj C^w in* 
 
 That it is thu^ in ao„e obviou, aspects, not 
 
 I— 
 
IN THE PUBUC SCHOOLS OF ONTARIO. 26 
 
 undesirable that provision should be made for the 
 separate education of the children of Protestants and 
 Roman Catholics in the primary schools, or up to the 
 age of the development of the generous sentiments 
 of youth, should surely forbid the ascription to our 
 Roman Catholic fellow-Christians of a claim to be 
 so much aui generis in religion, that they cannot 
 allow their children to mingle in the school-room 
 with the children of Protestant Christians. But we 
 have not now to deal with the Separate School ques- 
 tion in the abstract. It is no longer a question 
 whether, by the exclusion of religious instruction 
 from the day school, the co-education of the different 
 religious denominations may be secured. That ques- 
 tion is permanently settled for Ontario. No one can 
 now contend for an exclusively secular education in 
 the Public Schools of the Province as a means of the 
 co-education of the children of Protestants and 
 Roman Catholics. The latter have succeeded in 
 securing all that they can reasonably contend for 
 mthe matter of the religious * education of their 
 children in the day school. But unhappily, as we 
 regard It, though, as is well known, Protestants 
 generally are no less interested in the Scripture in- 
 struction of their children than their Roman Catholic 
 fellow-citizens are, their right to identical privile..e 
 has, for many years, been practically denied, a variety 
 of plausible reasons being pleaded in vindication of 
 the distinction-reasons the insufficiency of which it 
 will be for us to show. This, we believe, can be done 
 
26 
 
 0HBI8TUN INSTBUOnoK 
 
 Without reflecting severely on those to whom some 
 may be disposed to ascribe the responsibility o! the 
 present strangely anomalous situation. 
 It is not for us to attach blame, as some do, to 
 
 f^lToMK ""." ^^°« """^^ responsible for the 
 failure of the endeavour to secure the co^ucation of 
 the children of all the Christian denominations of the 
 Province, sympathizing with them, as we do. in the 
 persuasion that to secure such co-education, by the 
 entire exclusion of Christian instruction, is to pay 
 too high a pnce for it. And yet we cannot shut our 
 eyes to the fact that the present actual educational 
 situation, that has resulted from their agitation, is a 
 
 Public School education exclusively secSar. and 
 having succeeded in their contention for the estab- 
 lishment of Separate Schools, in which instruction 
 m the doctrines and practices of their Church is 
 imparted by teachers whose salaries are provided for 
 K, r'*T'''* authority, does it not seem reason- 
 able that their condemnation and renunciation of the 
 Public Schools, and the setting up of a separate 
 establishment m their interest, should be regarded as 
 making the Public Schools the special and^usive 
 property of the Protestant profession of the Pro- 
 vince and fully open to instruction in its common 
 Chnstiamty J And yet. strange to say. Protestants 
 continue to be told, as they have been for more than 
 a long generation, that there are reasons why they 
 cannot be accorded the privilege granted by statute 
 
IN TBI PUBUC SCHOOLS OF ONTARia 
 
 «7 
 
 to Roman Catholies, and now seenred to them in the 
 constitution of the Dominion. 
 
 Bat while wo cannot attach blame to Roman Cath- 
 olics in connection with our unhappy and anomalous 
 educational situation in respect of religious instruc- 
 tion, neither can we but protest af|[ainst the use of 
 the strong language in which some have allowed 
 themselves to indulge in characterizing the education 
 given in our Public Schools. They are not "god- 
 less " schools. No one can justly deny that they are 
 really, and not in name only. Christian schoola The 
 teachers are required to be Christians, in a well 
 understood and not improper, if mitigated, sense of 
 the tenn. The Lord's Prayer, or some other Chris- 
 tian prayer, opens the school for the day, and a few 
 verses are read by the teacher, either from the Bible 
 or from the Lectionary which, after having been the 
 occasion of much unhappy criticism and controversy, 
 has been reissued in an amended and much improved 
 form. And we presume the teacher will not be 
 denied the liberty of explaining the Decalogue to his 
 pupils, so as to aid them in the application of its 
 precepts to their conduct in their rcla^-ion to God 
 and to one another. And thus, notwithstanding the 
 meagrenesa of anything that can with propriety be 
 called Christian teaching, not a little good Christian 
 influence is exerted by teachers who realize their 
 responsibility as Christian men and women, which, 
 we believe, most of them do. 
 Freely and gladly, however, as we acknowledge the 
 
28 
 
 CHRiamAK WSTRUCTION 
 
 Christian character of our nrimiM^ ^k i 
 constrained to ask Wl L « P""***^. *•»«>'«. ^e are 
 
 «o„, he will „rfl^d i„T S °H "«"'"';»"""«- 
 
 «ry, religion, iagtruotion i. imparted in tMnT 
 
 H t°' ''T•r""•'"'^'»»'^T™t?lX 
 ported «, winf rp;"eJ!^i'sru,r.''.:ui;';."- 
 r^'tS r'"" ^ "«'"« " o-tTel Unit;! 
 
 j^t™««ti:rdrtr^:^,';rp:2^^^^ 
 
 common Cl.ri,ti.nity „f L J^vW. °' "" 
 
 c.J::dt:iurr„r7br-T''*™--- ■ 
 
 from thfiPn., "le aosence of Christian instruction 
 irom cne Uonimon Tnow Pnl^Ii/.^ e«u i , "^wuu 
 
 --» .aii/i-tni r • r 'Xi^-L-rt 
 
IN THl PUBLIC SCHOOLS Of ONTARIO. 
 
 t9 
 
 Christiau reli|pon. according to their view» of it, by 
 teftchers whose salaries are secured by State authority, 
 it is surely becomo a reasonable contention on the 
 part of Protestants, in which Roman Catholics may 
 be expected to sympathize with them, that their 
 children who resort to the Public Schools should have 
 equal privilege in religious instruction accorded to 
 thom, now that it is seen that the exclusion of relig- 
 ious instruction has failed of its purpose. 
 
 We may bo reminded that Separate School legisla- 
 tion may be taken advantage of, in certain localities, 
 in the interest of Protestanta But no one will deny 
 that it was solely from a regard for the convictions and 
 claims of Roman Catholics that the Separate School 
 arrangement was introduced. This is sufficiently 
 evident from the fact that while there are in Ontario 
 three hundi-ed and forty Roman Catholic Separate 
 Schools, the number of Protestant Separate Schools 
 does not exceed half a score.* It may be that there 
 are yet some who cannot be reconciled to the exist- 
 ence of Separate Schools in Ontario, and would be 
 pleased to see them abolished. We believe, however, 
 that there is no longer a desire on the part of any 
 to deprive Roman Catholics of the privilege, which 
 they regard as a right, or to limit or curtail it in any 
 way. At least, it may be regarded as certain that no 
 attempt will be made in that direction, seeing that to 
 make such an attempt would be to assail the consti- 
 tution of the Dominion of Canada. 
 
 'See alao quotation from the preamble of the Act establishiuB 
 Separate Schools, p. 20. * 
 
il 
 
 V 
 
 CHAPTEK II. 
 
 Ontario, that while „L 2. ? f °°' "' Protestant 
 action forbid rel ImfSo*? ^"""P'- "' "-tional 
 institutions aidedCrbt " '" "" '"'"<"'""nal 
 
 «ont™l, there .^ a^f°":( »"'' ""^r national 
 instruction in JhZ,^^ . T !'" ™^' »' Christian 
 P^-teatants, ^.a^^lot^'^! *" ''^ "'"='-'W- of 
 -eek-day educati™ of 1'" ,T"="'™ "'"• «« 
 Catholics. We are not „ "''"''" "^ «<»■""> 
 
 difficulties. ButThile L TT "" "'««• ""''g-d 
 them, we cannot alS Z Z r^ "' '""^ ■*«"» 
 do. After many Zs j *° "'°'«'" "•»' «»»e 
 unprejudieed ooLiSo„ " a:d 7"°' "■"' *»'■"-=• 
 troversy, in which it has bl'e„ "1 .,°~"'™''' "»»- 
 with candour and courte,v . I '"deavour to deal 
 we differ, we cannot satlhaTret "^ '""" "''°- 
 thing fitted to .ft«t our stir^ ^"" '".'" ""* ""y 
 difficulties referred T at IHarT """.' "" 
 insuperable. -^ '*^ f">'n being 
 
 ao 
 
IN THE -rsuc SCHOOLS OF ONTARIO. 31 
 
 If. howey r, we cannot out attach little weight to 
 the objectu.Ks that arc the commonplace, in the 
 vrndication or the exclusion of Christian teaching 
 fron, our Public Schools, there are. we regret tf 
 say. hindrances of a serious kind to the success of 
 our contention-perhaps. we should say. the only 
 hmdrances which no merely human effort can avaU 
 iwTT "^ P'*^*^«"J«'''y to the want of 
 
 the part of a ew. In other words, to be more specific, 
 we refer to the aj^thy of many of our people who 
 
 the former due to the well-known inertm of ou; 
 nature relation to the exertion which the promo- 
 
 arisin. f^'"^ ^r^ ''"^ '^"•^"^«' ^^^ tJ^*^ latter 
 arising from what we believe to be, a mistaken 
 persuasion that infringement of general ly a^eptl 
 pnnciples of national action is essentially invo'ed h 
 
 inroad of being J ^ruIltX^^^^^ 
 Referring to the apathetic inertia whiXuir^" 
 
 necessity of the danrChn!.- -^T^ *"^ "'"^^"^ 
 children <?«! ^la'^y Chnstian instruction of our 
 tuuaren. bome may think fhaf ;« c^ , • 
 
 young people „we «, „„eh in the way of Christian 
 
32 
 
 CHRISTIAN INSTRUCTION 
 
 instruction. But those who think so are greatly 
 mistaken. For, though the Christian good of the 
 young people of the Province is largely promoted in 
 connection with the instructions of the different 
 branches of the Christian Church, none know so well 
 as the most devoted Christian workers do, that their 
 labours, being for the most part confined to a small 
 portion of the Lord's Day, are altogether insufficient 
 to reduce the prevailing poverty in Scripture know- 
 ledge, which is already grown to such an extent as to 
 occasion anxiety in many minds, in view of the 
 increasing' frequency of crime on the part of some 
 who are highly educated in everything except the 
 teachings of Christianity. None know so well as 
 they do that many parents allow their children to 
 spend their time in neglect of the provision made by 
 the Church in their interests, and that many more 
 leave the Christian instruction of their children to 
 the short and inadequate endeavour of the Sabbath 
 School teacher. And, therefore, they realize as others 
 do not, and cannot do, that their utmost endeavours 
 leave much to be done by other instrumentality than 
 theirs, if an adequate and influential acquaintance 
 with Christian truth, on the part of its population, is 
 to be, what nothing else can be, the glory and the 
 safety of the country. 
 
 And here let us say that we cannot but rejoice and 
 be encouraged in seeing, from time to time, indi- 
 cations of a growing conviction of the necessity of 
 giving to Christian instruction its former place in the 
 
•N THE PCBUC SCHOOLS OF ONTAmo. 33 
 
 onn.es .,L, tKuSr^rVtrf ""^ °' 
 
 population, in the United S^^ """^ '° 
 
 Great Britain is a^ri^ iT ' "* <=<"»P'"*<1 with 
 
 ' after n-aki^^'j;, dTa^^ L"^ oTh"""'""' ■"^"' 
 
 the aUsence of moral andAT. ' ™"'''' '» 
 
 ".e Puhiie sehooi3™:fia?r:r:r\'"'" 
 
 every one know,. „ho ia inter^ted 7nT^7 F-'' "" 
 elementary education, not ol^r^l^H-'t''' 
 d«t.ngni8hed for over three c^nturi^ wt ^" 
 fence given in it« schn„l.T '=!°™"<» by the promin- 
 in England while tTi^^ ^^""^ inatmetion; but 
 
 «on p™mTn»,t^'^„: '„t r tf ad™"'" ™'™"- 
 jtinge. as might he exZtV denominational 
 
 Ibee^ made to "elude r^n' *°^ '"'^"'P' "•»' h"« 
 
 V the Foster Act of 1 WO hThl !' "'"^""^ 
 
 ftrennous opposition ,/?' ■""' "'"> «»«'> 
 
 kd i, totaK^S Z "T .*'«'' "'<' ^g"* . 
 kon. Leta^n;;n?r^/^/^"'f.-|y-«»lar!d„. 
 
 State of Education irT 1 ?^^"" '^P"'' °^ tho 
 
 ^Jeport of theTatM llf^^/^Pr*^ ^^ "' ""^ 
 kbove), and he will W ?„^;;f7 -/-'d to 
 
34 
 
 CHRISTIAN INSTRUCTION 
 
 Ontario, and by its showing that the practical English 
 mind is (to avoid the charge of disrespect, let us say 
 not above but) incapable of being affected by what it 
 would doubtless regard as the needless apprehensions 
 that sway the minds of some respected Ontario Pro- 
 testants, lay and clerical, in opposition to the allow- 
 ance of Christian instruction by teachers whose 
 salaries are secured by the action of civil authority. 
 But while ourselves humiliated, in no small degree, by 
 the contrast between England and the Ontario of the 
 last and the present generation, we cannot but be 
 equally pleased and encouraged in seeing the deter- 
 mination of England to give Scripture instruction a 
 prominent place in its National Schools, while com- 
 pelling none to receive it, and strjctly prohibiting even 
 the least approach to denominational teaching. And 
 in this connection, we shall surely do well to remind 
 our readers of the striking testimony to the value of 
 the Bible in public instruction of an eminent scientist, 
 who could not be charged with being prejudiced in his 
 testimony. We refer to the late Professor Huxley, 
 who, speaking some years ago, as a member of the 
 * London School Board, did not hesitate to express his 
 conviction that the exclusion of that great " English 
 Epic," as he described it, the English Bible, from the 
 Public Schools, would be a great national calamity. 
 In view of these and the like favourable testimonies, 
 we cannot but be very hopeful in relation to the place 
 that Christian instruction shall ere long occupy in the 
 schools of the Province. Regretting that the popular 
 
IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS OF ONTARIO. 36 
 
 mind is opening so slowly to the conviction that there 
 18 a very serious defect-the most serious conceivable 
 -mour educational system, we cannot but believe 
 that It 18 opening. Nor can we but believe that the 
 unammity of the three largest Protestant churches 
 of the Province~a unanimity which cannot but 
 compel the attention of our rulers-is of itself suffi- 
 cient to warrant even now a forward movement, on 
 their part in the direction of the introduction of 
 distinctive Christian teaching into the Public Schools 
 I of the Province. One thing is certain that the more 
 Iprotrwted the delay in supplying the great defect of 
 I our educational system, the more will the welfare of 
 = the rising generation and of the generations following 
 be imperilled. * 
 
 In referring more particularly to the other hin- 
 drance to the success of our contention, that, namely 
 arising from the belief that the contravention of 
 limportant principles is involved in the communica- 
 tion of religious instruction by teachera. whose 
 Uaries are secured by legislative enactment, we be- 
 ieve we cannot be wrong in saying that it is perhaps, 
 f not probably, the greatest of the hindrances that 
 IV the way to the restoration of Christian instruc- 
 
 or at all. that there is. to our mind, any difficulty in 
 Jhowing that this belief is a mistaken one. It is 
 Ihat the opposition of those who hold it so greatly 
 Muces the weight and weakens the force of Protest- 
 ant public opinion, which, were it unanimous, or 
 
1 1 .1 
 
 36 
 
 CHRISTIAN INSTRUCTION 
 
 inclusive of all the leading Protestant bodies, as it is 
 of the three just referred to, could not fail to con- 
 strain our rulers to yield to our contention. Speaking 
 frankly, our reference is to the Congregational 
 churches, Fedobaptist and Antipedobaptist, whose 
 ministers, we have reason to believe, if they were 
 polled, would be found to be, with few exceptions, if 
 any, strongly persuaded that the communication of 
 Christian instruction by teachers, whose salaries are 
 provided for by legislative authority, involves an 
 infringement of our settled principles of national 
 action— an infringement of the principle of religious 
 toleration, which is held universally by us, and of 
 the voluntary principle, which, though not univer- 
 sally assented to in theory, is understood to have full 
 sway among Protestants on this side of the Atlantic. 
 Well aware, as we may be, that we can entertain 
 only a very slender hope of changing the attitude of 
 brethren who have fully and publicly committed 
 themselves in opposition to religious instruction in 
 the day school, on the ground, as they believe, of 
 great principles, we are not without hope that we 
 may be able to satisfy the minds of some interested 
 parents that those are in error who would exclude 
 Scripture instruction from the day school on the 
 alleged ground of the contravention of principle, and 
 that the position hel' in these pages is the only one 
 that is sound and safe— sound in principle, and safe 
 in contrast with our present educational situation, 
 which we can never cease to reclaim against as 
 
IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS OP ONTARIO. 37 
 
 fmught with danger in relation to the beat interests 
 of our people. And may we not expect that if it 
 can be shown, as we believe it can. that there is no 
 insuperable difficulty in the way of the introduction 
 of positive Christian instruction into what are now 
 called the Public Schools, our Roman Catholic fellow- 
 citizens. who objected to them and renounced and 
 abdicated them, on the ground of the absence of such 
 instruction, will, after having had accorded to them 
 a privilege which they highly prize, sympathize with 
 us and aid us. in our continued agitation for a privi- 
 j^e m the interest of our children, which the great 
 jbody of Protestants value not less than they do 
 Itnemselvesi' 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 Opposition on the ground of principle-ReHgious instruction 
 m the National Schools not to be identified with the 
 national endowment of reliffon- Red^ictio ad ab»,irdmn- 
 Righta of majority and its generous regard to minority- 
 An inconsistency of opponents. ■ 
 
 We have referred to indications of the growth of a 
 conviction that the absence of Christian instruction 
 from the Public Schools of Ontario is the great defect 
 of Its otherwise excellent and exemplary system of 
 elementary education. These indications, endorsed 
 as they are. for the most part, by the press in pre ' 
 sentmg them, are no small encouragement to us in 
 resuming our contention of former years, when 'we 
 were called to defend the position that the objection 
 made to Christian instruction in our schools, on the 
 ground of Its contravening generally accepted prin- 
 ciples of national action, is invalid_a position in 
 which, we believe, the great majority of the Christian 
 people of the Province are in agreement with u& 
 
 Reference, however, has been made to the fact that 
 there are some who are opposed to religious instruction 
 in the National School, on the alleged ground that the 
 
 38 
 
 ■It 
 
 L 
 
IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS OF ONTARIO. 39 
 
 communication of such instruction by teachers whose 
 salaries are pair^ by money raised by the ejtion of 
 civil authority, is equivalent to the endowment of 
 religion. We have for many years been accustomed 
 to hear that to require the giving of Christian instruc- 
 tion by the qualified teachers of the Provincial Schools 
 involves a breach of the principle of religious tolera- 
 Hon; and that the payment by legislative authority 
 of teachers who impart religious instruction is an 
 infringement of the voluntary principle, and practi- 
 cally equivalent to the national endowment of 
 religion. And we are confidently warned that in 
 rcjuiring, or even permitting or not disallowing, our 
 teachers to give a Scripture lesson. howevcF short, to 
 their pupils we ara paying them in the interest of 
 rdxgim., and introducing the thin end of the wedge 
 of Slate churchism, and of Ecclesiastical drnnina- 
 Jimi, under the wgis of the State. Believing, as we do 
 that respected brethren, who charge us with pleading 
 for the contravention of our established principles of 
 national action, when we contend for the introduction 
 or rather, the reintroduction. of distinctively Chris- 
 tian instruction into our schools, are entirely in error 
 we are called, in the first instance, to show that those 
 are under a serious misapprehension of the question 
 at issue, who think that any contravention of accepted 
 principle is involved in our contention 
 
 There is such a general agreement among us on the 
 subject of religious toleration that no one will plead 
 for anything that he believes to be. even by the 
 
40 
 
 CHRISTIAN IN8THUCTION 
 
 remotest implication, inconaistent with it* And, 
 though we are not all agreed in reference to the 
 voluntary principle, we are, all of us, practically 
 a unit in our opposition to anything of the nature of 
 State endowment of religion in this Province. It 
 may not be entirely out of place to say that the 
 writer was, in his early days, strongly in favour of 
 the voluntai'y principle, when, over sixty years ago, 
 it was the subject of earnest discussion in Scotland — 
 the country, above all others, of the discussion of 
 ecclesiastical questions. But later consideration has 
 led hirr. to believe, as many others do, that, as there 
 were titncd in the history of Christendom, when the 
 civil authorities of its several States could not do 
 otherwise than interest themselves in the religion of 
 their subjects, or feel otherwise than bound to see to 
 the maintenance of the arrangements that were neces- 
 sary, in existing circumstances, for their people's 
 Christian welfare ; so there are even now conceivable 
 circumstances in which the civil ruler may with pro- 
 priety, while recoiling from the endowment of relig- 
 ious institutions, give of the money under his 
 control, with a view to the promotion of the success 
 of Christian effort. But there is no need to debate 
 the voluntary principle in connection with the ques- 
 tion that is really at issue in our present contention. 
 The simple statement of it should, we believe, go far 
 to show that, while the communication of Christian 
 instruction by the teachers of our Public Schools is 
 
 *See next chapter, for charges of contravention of principles. 
 
IN THE PUBLIC HCHOOIJ4 OF ONTARIO. 
 
 41 
 
 in no way inconsistent with the most complete relig- 
 ious toleration,* it cannot properly be identified 
 with the national endowment of religion. Familiar 
 as we are conl|ivMled to be, by constant reiteration, 
 with the assertioakthat there is no difference in prin- 
 ciple between the >%yment, by civil enactment, of 
 teachers who give a pb^ion of their time to Christian 
 instruction, and the supj^t of the ministers of relig- 
 ion from the public trei^y, we cannot but think 
 that the assertion is, to say thp least, an ill-considered 
 one. For, assuming the soundaess of the voluntary 
 principle— assuming, that is, not oi^ly as we all do, that 
 the Christian religion has no need'^f help from the 
 civil authorities, but also, as some do^l^t their inter- 
 ference, avowedly in the interest of religion is alvxtya 
 unwarrantable, and fitted to be only injurious to the 
 interests of religion, as, all must admit, it has often 
 been— admitting all this, is it not carrying the volun- 
 tary principle too far, when it is held to debar a 
 ChriMian nation, as such, /nnn making vse of its 
 own religion Jor its oivn benefit 1 For this, let it be 
 observed, is the real question at issue. If it is really 
 so that the voluntary principle forbids the Christian 
 people of Ontario, or, what amounts to the same 
 thing, the great majm-ity of them, to employ their 
 common Christianity in a way which, they believe, is 
 not only desirable but necessary, in the interests of 
 its youth, 80 much the worse, we say, for the prin- 
 ciple. But let us frankly and calmly argue the 
 
 * See pp. 51, 67. 
 
4S 
 
 CHRISTIAN INSTRUCTION 
 
 matter with brethren, with whom, to our great roirret 
 we are compelled to be at variance. ^ 
 
 mI!'Tll'° T'' *" """ ***^" ^^^' *»»« ™«r« «tato. 
 ment of the real question at issue will be sufficient to 
 
 Hhow that no accepted principle of national action is 
 
 con ravene. ,n the giving to our common Christianity 
 
 a place m the da.ly lessons of our schools, there are 
 
 others who having, as we believe, an exclmive regard 
 
 to the fact that our teachers are paid by what is 
 
 called public money-money, that is. wised by tarn- 
 
 hon-can, as wo have said, hardly be persuaded that 
 
 there ,8 any difference in principle between securing 
 
 by evil action a .decent maintenance to the teacher 
 
 who gives a Christian lesson to his scholars and the 
 
 maintenance of the Christian ministry from the 
 
 treasures that, are u-.der civil control, or the endow- 
 
 ment of religion Though to us. and probably to 
 
 most others, the identification of the two things, is a 
 
 manifest error, it should not excite surprise or oLsion 
 
 discouragement to those who are seeking to further 
 
 what they regard as an important interest, to find 
 
 that there are others who are slow to yield to their 
 
 pleadings If we confess to some disappointment in 
 
 finding that our best efforts fail to further the design 
 
 of them, and are, as it appears to us. quietly ignored 
 
 by some, we cannot allow ourselves to be discouraged 
 
 Rather must we persevere in our efforts, in the hope 
 
 that eventually the reasonableness of our claims will 
 
 be acknowledged. In this hope, we now repeat what 
 
 we liave, from time to time, insisted on for many 
 
IN THE PUBLIC 8CH0OL8 OF ONTARIO. 
 
 48 
 
 yea«, but have not seen fairly met by those who 
 have opposed us, ou the allegetl ground of the incon- 
 sisteacyTour views with the voluntary principle. 
 
 It is then, we cannot but admit, a simple matter of 
 fact that, in the communication of Christian instruc- 
 tion by qualified teachers, whose salaries are, as a 
 matter of expediency, secured by legislative enact- 
 ment, national hcrmage is done to Him whom we 
 should and, we believe, do with few exceptions «„- 
 cerely adore as the God and Father of our Ix)rd Jesus 
 Christ. That, however, will not be regarded as an 
 objection against it; neither do we plead for it on 
 that ground. What is more to the question at issue 
 between our brethren and us is. what is equally true 
 as a matter of fact, that by such instruction, the hoM 
 that Christianity has upon the community is greatly 
 strengtiiened. This must, of course, be the result of 
 the good effects of Christian teaching by sympathetic 
 instructors. But if it appears to some that because 
 Christianity is thus strengthened in its hold on the 
 community, the payment by taxation of those who 
 impart its lessons as a pari; of their work, is identical 
 with or equivalent to, ita endowment from the 
 national treasury, we can only marvel at, what seems 
 to us, a conspicuous instance of the " turning of things 
 upside down," or the confounding of things which 
 caanot properly be identified. For does it not con- 
 stitute even a radical and essential difference between 
 the two things affirmed to be identical, that the 
 support, or the maintenance and promotion of the 
 
44 
 
 CHRISTIAN INSTRUCTION 
 
 Chnshan rel,(non ,, not th object tlud i, aim«l at in 
 
 part of the work of the Public School teacher ! The 
 
 ..dmR of rehgion, but the pmmotion of the moml 
 well-being of the youth of the community, by the 
 
 le«>n8 which he « expected to impart to hi, pupila 
 The interest of the Chrirtian religion cannot but be 
 
 a."^' "'^, ■""•■" "«'-'™™enb.l in pmmoting 
 the public welfare. But the fact that the Chrirtia^ 
 religion i, u,cuUntaUy strengthene,! in its hold on 
 
 justly pleaded «, a reason why the community should 
 not employ It as an instrument in the promotion of 
 
 any other instrumentality. We cannot allow ourselves 
 to believe that our people generally, with the views 
 they have of the design of Divine Revelation, and " 
 th vaue of .t in relation to national as wdl as to 
 m, .vidua interests, will permit themselves to be 
 detemd from a use of it that is nothing short of 
 
 dread of rendering an improper aid to religion. Thev 
 have „„ thought of seeking to aid religion which Z 
 U.ey very well know, has no need of aid f™m ih" 
 S^e. and which, they may also believe, will TiZl 
 better without it. They are seeking n<;t to a^Z 
 to religion but to receive benefit from it-the benefit 
 which, they are persuaded, is essential to the national . 
 
IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS OF ONTARIO. 
 
 45 
 
 I well-being, and which is not to be had from any other 
 I source. And no one in this land of perfect religious 
 lequality, who is unhappily opposed to its common 
 jChristianity, and does not wish his children to learn 
 jits lessons, need have any fear of their being com- 
 Ipelled to learn what he does not regard as desirable 
 Tin their interests. But more than this no one 
 »rho is opposed to Christianity can reasonably 
 lemand ; for more the principle of religious toleration 
 iocs not require. No one can reasonably expect that 
 majority— in this case, a very large majority— shall 
 Drego what they regard as an important benefit, 
 ecause a few think the majority are mistaken in 
 leir appreciation of Scripture. To yield to such a 
 equirement were to consent to the setting up of a 
 Practical oligarchy— to make the few, even the 
 Imallest few, the rulers of the many. 
 Some who have been accustomed, without due 
 insideration, as we think, to identify the payment by 
 pivil action of teachers who give a few minutes daily 
 k it may be, only weekly to Christian instruction, 
 irith what is called State churchism, will probably 
 |iere object that the advocacy of religious establish- 
 buent and en.lowment by the civil authorities has 
 Uways h'en grounded on the alleged easential de- 
 pendence of the welfare of the nation on the religious 
 character and practice of its people. And this, they may 
 think, is sufficient to obviate our distinction between 
 the aiding of religion and our receiving from religion 
 ithe benefit that is essential to our well-being as a 
 
46 
 
 CHRISTIAN INSTRUCTION 
 
 nation. To this, we apprehend, it may be enough tc 
 say in reply that, if the civil authorities had netei 
 concerned themselves with religion beyond the em- 
 ployment of it for the promotion of the welfare of the 
 community, there could have been no reasonable 
 objection to their actioa On the contrary, it would 
 have been worthy of highest commendation. But 
 unhappily, sometimes even for themselves, as was 
 proved in the fate of the infatuated Stuart dynasty 
 whose assertion of the divine right of kings " in all 
 causes civil and ecclesiastical." after bringing one 
 kmg to the block, drove another from his throne, 
 rulers have l^een prone to go far beyond the legiti- 
 mate and laudable endeavour to promote the welfare 
 of their subjects by caring for their enlightenment, 
 by mstruction in the principles of Christianity. Nay. 
 rather we might say, indifferent or opposed to the 
 Christian enlightenment of their people, they have 
 baen prone, in the hope of making them submissive 
 and subservient, to arrogute to themselves the rule of 
 the Church of God, and cannot even yet be persuaded 
 to renounce their claim. Following the traditions 
 inherited from our heathen ancestors, tkey have 
 demanded, under pains and penalties, submission and 
 conformity on the part of their subjects. 
 
 But shall we, while reclaiming as our fathers did 
 even unto death, against the assumptions of "the 
 princes of this world," the successors of those who "cru- 
 cified the Lord of glory," disclaim and cast away our 
 nght, as the Christian citizens of a Christian Province 
 
IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS OP ONTARIO. 
 
 47 
 
 Ito employ for our children's good the religion to the 
 ession of which we owe all our most valued privi- 
 leges ? Should we not rather rejoice that our rulers, 
 iisclaiming all right to interfere in what we regard as 
 Christ's own arrangements for the government of His 
 kingdom in the world, are ready to carry out our 
 Irishes, in the giving of Christian instruction its proper 
 place in our schools, if only we agree among ourselves 
 knd make our wishes known to them-? What need is 
 
 Ihere to he keeping up an incessant cry of alarm of 
 incroachment on our religious liberties ^y a personifi- 
 ition named Ccesar t Not objecting to the figure, we 
 ive surely abundant reason to be continually thank- 
 al to God that our Ceesar is a fairly good Christian 
 psBsar, who, while he knows that he has no place, as 
 Paesar, in the administration of the affairs of Christ's 
 kingdom, knows also that Christianity is the safety 
 
 ^nd glory of his country, and that the surest way to 
 aake his subjects good citizens is to make them good 
 !7hristians. 
 
 To those, then, who appear to think that the ob- 
 ection under consideration is based upon a principle 
 rhich has all the force of an axiom, our reply is, 
 iat in pleading for the introduction of Christian 
 struction into our schools, we are not asking our 
 ilers to give aid to the Christian religion, which, we 
 
 ^re fully persuaded, needs no such aid as the volun- 
 iry principle objects to. We are not asking our 
 alers to give a dollar in aid of religion, which not 
 
 bnly does not need what is called State aid, but can 
 
CHRISTIAN INSTRUCTION 
 
 flourish and prosper in spite of the State's enmi< 
 and opposition. We are" pleading with the sLte' 
 
 religion of its people the aid which it proposes t 
 Son i "'-t '' '^^^"^ ^"^ ^^- '^^^ Sa 
 truly, but as we often sing, 
 
 " It gives a light to every ape, 
 It gives but borrows none." 
 
 of Christ lanity by public money, but the promotior 
 telity which ,8 believed to be. beyond all othe« 
 
 e^nt^lJ^- 5"'^'"°P'"P^^ '^ ^ °°t^i"g «hort of 
 essential to individual and national well-being. 
 
 We are all agreed that the education of ite youth 
 
 Llt^:'"''" *'^ «P*^«- °^ *»^« action of tie 
 Stete. and that the civil ruler is guilty of a L^ 
 
 PmL n^ ^^""^ '"^j^*'^' ^">"^ ^»»t Of 
 
 fnX. ^ "°°' ^^ "P *o be men wanting i„ 
 indulgence or immoral in character. But if our 
 rulers cannot, as some aver, discharge their duty in 
 
 olTchrTf t n^t"^ ^™"^' ^- -^-^^^e 
 common Christianity of their people, it becomes a 
 
 senous question, in the judgmentTth;«e who rluz! 
 
 a co3 '' 1 ^"°^ *'^ '«««^^ '' Christiani" 
 a conspicuous place in the daily education of their 
 
IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS OF ONTARIO. 49 
 
 children, whether it would not be well that our rulers 
 should consider themselves incompetent to char^ 
 themselves with the education of our children and 
 leave it, as it was left till recently in England, to the 
 voluntary efforts of the churches and their wealthy 
 members.* But we must insist that there is no need 
 of such action on the part of our rulers on any 
 generally accepted ground of national action. That 
 the credit of religion is advanced, and the hold that 
 it has on the community strengthened by the gooi- 
 that it does, beyond what anything else can do, can- 
 not, we must insist, be reasonably pleaded as an 
 objection to its being employed in promoting the 
 good which it is the only sr y effective agency in 
 the promotion of. The civil .uority (or the State), 
 in assuring by legislation a uecent maintenance to 
 tht ' 3acher who, besides educating his pupils in the 
 ordinary secular subjects, gives them lessons in the 
 facts and principles of the Christian Scriptures, is 
 not, in so doing, seeking to rendei id toward the 
 maintenance and diffusion of Christianity, although, 
 doubtless, that should be the desire and aim of every 
 one of us, in whatever position we may be placed in 
 the Providence of God. If the interests and the 
 influence of the Christian religion are greatly ad- 
 vanced, as they cannot but be, by its doing the good 
 which nothing else can do, no one can reasonably 
 connect this result with the payment of the ttacher 
 by legislative enactment. If the credit of the Chris- 
 
 4 •Seepp.21, 30. 
 
50 
 
 CHBISTIAN INSTRUCTION 
 
 tian religion, its hold upon the community, and its 
 influence are even mightily increased by its being a 
 power for good, in the presenting of its lessons by 
 our teachers to their pupils, it cannot reasonably be 
 said that we are, in our national capacity, guilty of 
 the great enormity of giving aid to religion, by 
 assuring a generally miserable pittance of salary 
 to the men and women who are engaged in the 
 work, which is in its importance second to none, 
 that, namely, of the education of our children. 
 The brethren who, we believe, should be with us in 
 our contention, will credit us with the entire absence 
 of a desire and purpose to introduce State churchism 
 into the Province. ' But we fear they regard us as 
 blind to the fact that we are pleading for its equiva- 
 lent, when we contend for religious instruction by 
 teachers whose salaries are ensured by State action. 
 If so, we must be allowed to retort the charge of 
 blindness, that, namely, which prevents their seeing 
 that what we plead for is not to be identified with 
 what they condemn whether justly or unjustly. For 
 knowing, as we do, that the common Christianity of 
 the Protestants of Ontario needs no State aid, we are 
 actuated solely by the conviction of the State's 
 essential need of the religious element in the educa- 
 tion of its youth, and animated by a conviction, no 
 less strong, of the inherent power of the Christian 
 religion to promote, by God's promised blessing, the 
 national warfare. We cannot but see that, while the 
 religion which our people profess can dispense with 
 
IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS OF ONTARIO. 61 
 
 the aid of the State, and can even prosper in the 
 face of the State's opposition, the State cannot dis- 
 pense with the aid of 'religimi. Be it so that religion 
 needs nothing from the State, the State needs cvei^. 
 thing from religion, without which its very existence 
 is imperilled. 
 
 None of us can deny, what has been already re- 
 ferred to, that civil rulers— "the princes of this 
 world "—have, in times past, been prone to arrogate 
 to themselves the rule of the Church of Christ, 'iind 
 the right to enter into the domain of conscience, 
 and to deny to their subjects the right of private 
 judgment But that surely is no reason why the 
 Christian rulers of Ontario, none of whom would 
 claim any place in the Church of God, except that 
 of subjection, as members or office bearers, to its 
 divinely constituted arrangements, should be for- 
 bidden to promote the welfare of the community, by 
 giving the teachings of their people's common Christi- 
 anity a prominent place in the schools of the Province. 
 If the Christian religion is a peculiar power for good 
 to individuals and to communities, must its employ- 
 ment for good be forbidden, simply because by its 
 doing good, its interests are incidentally and indirect- 
 ly strengthened in public estimation ? Were not this 
 to affirm that because of its divinely-given inherent 
 power to promote the highest human interests, and 
 by doing so to increase its own influence, it should be 
 allowed no place in the National Schools ? And does 
 not this involve the further impUcation that if the 
 
51 
 
 CHBISTIAN INSTRUCnOir 
 
 Christian religion were a morally colouriess thing, 
 destitute of all power, like arithmetic, ete, to aflfept 
 beneficially the best and highest, that is, the moral 
 and spiritual interests of our children, there would be 
 no objection to its having a place in our Provincial 
 Schools ? And does it not seem like a reductio ad 
 abmirduvi against our opponents, when it is made to 
 appear that their opposition is not properly based 
 upon the rendering of State aid to religion by the 
 imposition of a moderate tax to keep the teacher 
 alive, but upon the simple fact that Christianity can- 
 not but establish itself more and more as a power in 
 the community, by the good that it does as an ele- 
 ment in the instruction of our children ? 
 
 It will, of course, be understood that we assume the 
 Christianity of the people of Ontario— an assumption 
 which, we believe, will be readily allowed. It may 
 *^^, indeed, that very many of us are conspicuously 
 wanting in conformity to an ideal Christian standard. 
 But no one will question our right to be classed 
 among Christian nations. The great majority of us, 
 whether more or less intelligently or " by tradition 
 from our fathers" (and we thank God for both), 
 accept the Christian Scriptures— Old and New Testa- 
 ment-^as God's own revelation of His mind and will in 
 relation to us, for our good. We believe, or at least we 
 profess to believe, and our profession is not insincere, 
 that our possession of the Scriptures is the outcome of 
 His good- will, designed, as they are, to be our guide in 
 the way of Christian righteousness, which, we film 
 
IN THE PUBLIC BCBOOLS OF ONTARIO. 
 
 58 
 
 belieye, is the only way of national prosperity, as well 
 as of individual happiness. And it is perhaps at this 
 point that we may most appropriately ask our readers 
 to bear in mind that we owe it to the Scriptures that 
 we have a system of government under which, while 
 the interests of the people are supreme, it is a fixed 
 principle that the majority sluill rule, but shall do so 
 under obligation to God not to rule oppressively, but 
 with a just and even generous regard to the rights 
 and to the convictions and the feeling<} of the min- 
 ority. It is reasonable, as it is necessary, that the 
 minority submit to the majority : for otherwise, as 
 we have said, legislation and government would be 
 impossible. The majority may be in the wrong, as 
 majorities often are. But the responsibility is theirs ; 
 and sooner or kter the Providence of God will make 
 the wrong apparent, the minority in the meantime 
 dutifully submitting and using all proper means to 
 persuade the majority of their error or their sin. 
 
 In reference to what we have just now said of the 
 rights and duti^ of majorities and minorities, we 
 think we may justly claim on behalf of the Protestant 
 majority of Ontario that, whatever may be the educa- 
 tional difiiculties with which we are confronted, they 
 have not been wanting in a regard for the views and 
 feelings of the Roman Catholic minority. Owing to 
 circumstances already referred to, while in the 
 Separate Schools Christian instruction is given to 
 the young, in accordance with the views of our 
 Roman Catholic fellow-citizens, no distinctively 
 
r 
 
 64 
 
 CHRISTIAN IirSTBUOnolf 
 
 li 
 
 Christian, not to say Protestant, instruction is allowed 
 to be given in the Public Schools of the Province by 
 Its duly qualified teachers, although these schools 
 have, by the establishment of Separate Schools, 
 become the peculiar pn^rty of the Protestant 
 majority. Being condemned, renounced, and forsaken 
 by Roman Catholics, they are now open to the relig- 
 ious instruction, which they never would have been 
 closed against but for the vain attempt at co-educa- 
 tion, the failure of which is, in the estimation of 
 many not entirely, and, in that of others, not at all 
 regrettable, considering the immense sacrifice at which 
 it was made, and other objections.* And, strange to 
 say, while we have ceased to hear of any charge 
 against our rulers, on ihe ground of, what some would 
 call, the endowment of the Christian religion in its 
 Roman Catholic form, by taxing the supporters of 
 Separate Schools, we are called to contend with our 
 own brethren, in pleading for identical privilege as the 
 right of Protestants. Silent in what they should, as 
 a matter of consistency, regard as the endowment of 
 what they may call Popery, and ignoring the action 
 of our rulers in the establishment and maintenance 
 of Separate Schools, they reserve their artillery for 
 us, and launch against us the charge of urging our 
 rulers to renounce their attitude of religious neu- 
 trality, and to introduce State churchism, Cwsarism. 
 and what-not into the Province. Of course, we are' 
 
 • See pp. 21-24. 
 
 i 
 
j 
 
 IN THI PUBUO SCHOOLS OF OMTABIO. 
 
 only calling our attention 
 
 56 
 
 I an tncoTisistency. 
 For we trust it har been already sufficiently shown 
 that the payment, by the action of the civil power, of 
 the teacher who gives a Christian lesson to his 
 scholars, is not to be regarded as the giving of State 
 aid to religion, or to be identified with the national 
 endowment of religion, whether Roman Catholic or 
 Protestant 
 
 That we have greatly erred in allowing the pro- 
 gramme of Public School instruction to become, and to 
 continue for more than a generation, so intensely and 
 exclusively secular is, we have reason to believe, 
 becoming generally more and more manifest in the 
 judgment of competent observers. Reminding our 
 readers of references already made,* we quote now 
 from an article in the Toronto Olobe at a time when 
 circumstances compelled attention to a condition of 
 things not creditable to our boasted civilization. Re- 
 ferring to these circumstances, an unprejudiced public 
 journalist bears testimony in the following words to 
 what appears to have been, at the time, a growing 
 persuasion, accompanied with growing anxiety, in 
 relation to the absence (by authority, be it remem- 
 bered) of Christian instruction from the National 
 Schools, the Separate, or, as we may without impro- 
 priety call them, the Roman Catholic, Schools alone 
 excepted : " The thoughtful both in the United States 
 and in Canada seem of late to have awaked somewhat 
 
 * See pp. 33, 34. 
 
CHRISnAir INSTKUCnON 
 
 suddenly to the coMciousne« of a very grave defeet 
 in their hitherto much vaunted Public School ays- 
 tern ; -the "grave defect " referred to being no other 
 than the absence, by authoriUtive exclusion, of 
 Chnatian instruction. We cannot but rejoice and be 
 encouraged. ,n believing that the gr^t majority of 
 the people of thU Christian Province, while they 
 cannot see any force in the objection that has been 
 dealt with are becoming more and more uneasy, in 
 view of the evil results which "thoughtful" men 
 a«nbe to the defect referred to in the last quotation, 
 and in the weighty pronouncements to which atten- 
 tion was called in Qur last chapter. 
 
 What,- we often aak ourselves, can it be that pre- 
 vents our rulers from seeing that it is only by their 
 making instruction in the common Christianity of Pro- 
 testants by properly qualified teachers, a constituent 
 part of the work of the Public School, that they can 
 adequately meet their obligation in relation to the 
 education of their young subjects? Hitherto our 
 contention has been unsuccessful, except in so far as 
 It may have contributed to supposed improvement of 
 the arrangement which originally permitted ministers 
 of religion to give an hour's Christian instruction, 
 once a week, within the walls of the school-room, to 
 the children of their own congregations. This 
 arrangement, however much there may be. in the 
 opinion of some, to recommend it and to oblige Pro- 
 testant ministers to accept it 08 a boon and a privilege, 
 will, we believe, be shown in the proper plL. to be 
 
IM TBI PUBUO SCHOOLS OP ONTARIU 67 
 
 essentUUy anreMonable and genenlly impraetieable, 
 and beyond the puawbility of being rendered oiher- 
 wiae ty any auppoeed improvement After years of 
 diacttflsion among ministers themselves, and of re- 
 peated endeavour in various places to take advantage 
 of the arrangement and to make the best of it, there 
 can now be but few who regard it as anything but 
 an etKuion of responaihUity, instead of the meeting 
 of an obligation which, as we shall see, is freely and 
 in the strongest terms acknowledged by the late head 
 of the Education Department (now Provincial Pre- 
 mier), as it was by his predecessors in office. It can 
 hardly be doubted that the relegation (hy permisnon) 
 of religions instruction in the Public Schools to Pro- 
 testant clergymen, was thought to be an unexception- 
 able way in which an acknowledged obligation might 
 be met, without contravention of any accepted 
 principle of national action. But could not an ordi- 
 narily subtle-minded voluntary object to the arrange- 
 ment on the very same ground on which religious 
 insti-uction by the teacher is objected to? For, if 
 religious instruction by the teacher is objected to on 
 the ground that his salary is secured by State action, 
 t.«., by taxation, it may, with equal reason be objected 
 against religious instruction in the school-room that 
 it is built and maintained by the same State action, 
 or by taxation. 
 
 In reference to the fact that, notwitli standing his 
 party attachment, the writer is conHtrained to differ 
 very seriously from the late Ministt. of Education, as 
 
58 
 
 oHBiraiiK msTBtrcnoN 
 
 wUl appear in the course of hi, pleading for Chriatian 
 
 My that he behevea it will be generally aereed th.t 
 
 aide the ephere of politic, and that nothing eonld Z 
 n.or. to be deprecated than that any in,po^Ted«! 
 c. bona mtereet ,l.onld become a party queTon 7r . 
 pohfcal ,M„e. And while he ca^ot think tU ^ 
 mere change of Government wonld «Ivancru.e 
 c.«« he ..trying to plead, he c«,not reno»" Z 
 hope that the time will come when both pa^rsw! 
 ^ually acknowledge the jnetioe of hie'conltb^ 
 
 demed to a majohty. Reference hae indeed been 
 made* to a time when the advocate, of Christian in 
 .tmcfon by duly qualified Christian teache™ Td to 
 deplore the almost daily utterances of the e=ri~^i« 
 
 wh^fhe': L ?,r "T-^ ^*^ 'o -j"- 'he c^r" 
 
 wh,ch they had been hopefully labouring. That time 
 h»a paased away, a, we hope, never to return. Zd 
 toeaynothmgof thehard worts applied to us »d 
 others when we sought peace in a Time of tr^uWe 
 p..y we not hope that, in view of tho impTtant 
 interests mvolved, we shall see .11 parties unK 
 
 tual d,fficnlt,e. which confessedly stand in the ™v 
 
 t.vely Chnshan, really «, well a, nominally ? There 
 
 'l^^y^uchjomake^^ Now that Roml 
 
 • See pp. 64, M, 133. 
 
IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS OF ONTARIO. 59 
 
 Catholic Separate Schools are regarded as Provincial 
 institutions not to be meddled with, the difficulties 
 referred to are, we hope to show, neither numerous 
 nor formidable. If, as a Protestant nation, we give 
 to our Roman Catholic fellow-citizens beyond what 
 our co-religionists look for, and are content to receive 
 in Roman Catholic countries, let none indulge in 
 vain regrets, or in worse than vain recriminations. 
 For, if anything is Christian, it is a generous regard 
 for the weaker party— such a regard that they cannot 
 doubt that tlieir interests are as safe in our hands as 
 they cf M be in their own. But believing as, we are 
 fully persuaded, the great body of our Protestant 
 people do, that while our common Christianity needs 
 no State patronage and no help from the public 
 purse, the welfare of our country demands that all 
 our children be early well instructed in its essential 
 principles, let us both as Protestants, and as Christian 
 patriots, calmly and patiently persist in pressing our 
 reasonable demands. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 *'''"?1k' '^" ^"^^^^ ^<«*".«i-I„co„si8tencj-The 
 question m«apprehended-Unr««on.ble apprehension. 
 
 Some may think that enough has been said in refer- 
 ence to the error, as we regard it. of identifying with 
 Stote churchism the communication of Christian 
 instruction by tea9hers whose salaries are raised by 
 
 d!!l ^^^wv" ^ ' *°^ *^** ""^ -"'g^* °«^ proceed to 
 dea with the practical difficulties that are understood 
 to stand in the way of its introduction ir/o the Public 
 Schools of the Province. But we must be p.tientTwe 
 would hope to convince or convict of errir those who 
 have been, perhaps long, accustomed to regard their 
 conviction as being based on the impregnable vock of 
 auimportent principle which, while it is to them 
 axiomatic, others who do not so regard it are nS 
 
 should be a warning to us lest we ourselves be guilty 
 of the same tenacity of error which we condemn i^ 
 others, if we find that while we need no argument in 
 favour of a conviction which we have long held, with- 
 
 are others who adhere to the opposite conviction with 
 
 to 
 
IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS OF ONTABIO. 
 
 61 
 
 a tenacity which cannot be easily overcome, especially 
 if the conviction is believed to be based on the rock 
 of axiomatic principles. We trust vm shall be par- 
 doned if we say we can hardly but think that such is 
 the mental attitude of some with whom we are in 
 conflict, in relation to the subject now under discus- 
 sion; so that we cannot expect that they should, 
 without great difficulty, be led to divest themselves 
 of a persuasion which they have very long cherished, 
 and perhaps been accustomed to vindicate by voice or 
 pen. We must therefore be borne with in prolonging 
 our argument, adapting it, however, to particular 
 styles of representing our contention by its assailants. 
 In doing so, without being sanguine in the hope of con- 
 vincing of error those who have been long accustomed 
 to vindicate the exclusion from the Public School, of 
 Christian instruction by its salaried teachers, we may 
 at least entertain the hope that we may quiet appre- 
 hensions that can hardly fail to be awakened by 
 representations that are being made from time to time, 
 as they have been for the last five-and-twenty years 
 or more, of the tremendous evils which may be the 
 result of allowing Christian instruction to be com- 
 municated by Christian teachers, whose salaries 
 
 generally very inadequate— are secured by moderate 
 taxation, instead of being left to the uncertainty of 
 school fees. 
 
 Before proceeding, however, we cannot but refer to 
 the unpleasant fact that there are some whose utter- 
 ances upon the subject do not, we are grieved to say. 
 
r 
 
 i li 
 
 62 
 
 CHRISTIAN INSTRUCTION 
 
 call for serious treatment, except, it may be. some 
 will thmk. m the way of stern rebuke. For. when 
 we are charged, as we have been by teachers, at meet- 
 ings of the Provincial Association, with "proposing 
 with ruthless hands to lay sacrilegious hold upon the 
 sacred ark of our liberties." and being « the clerical 
 representetives of the stake and fagot." etc.. etc.. it 
 18 evident that the utteren, of charges so extremdy 
 foolish are. for the time being, outside the pale of 
 reason, and not open to conviction, by any reading. 
 They may pride themselves, as probably they do. on 
 their gemus in the fine art of vituperation, which 
 occupies a place in some of the older logical treatises 
 under the caption of De Vituperando, but has not 
 for a century or two. been regarded as a proper sub- 
 ject of scientific instruction, though the pracZe of it 
 has not fallen into desuetude, and is not likely soon 
 to do so. because of its convenience and value as a 
 substitute for fair argument. But so long as they 
 allow themselves in the use of such improprieties of 
 language aa we have quoted, they must be regarded 
 
 fnends to administer to them appropriate reproof 
 and counsel, we would confine ourselves to giving 
 
 whTll'^'^i^ "^'''''' ^y '^'^""g ^^'^ that thosf 
 who. hke them, are doubly entrenched in conceit of 
 
 themselves, and in contempt of their eldew-especially 
 clencs-cannot be reasoned with till they haTe un- 
 learned the evil habit of composition by sound with- 
 out regard to sense, and have learned that the use of 
 
IN TH« PUBLIC SCHOOLS OF ONTARIO. 
 
 63 
 
 "great swelling words," whose sound is their only 
 recommendation, is not only outside of logic proper, 
 but very bad rhetoric. Their vituperation, like the 
 abuse of the counsel who finds he has " no case," can 
 influence the mind only of those who have no mind ; 
 it cannot fail to discredit its utterer in the estimation 
 of all whose judgment is of any value. 
 
 There are others, however, whose utterances de- 
 mand serious consideration: because they are the 
 expression of the convictions of those who stand 
 deservedly high in the estimation, not only of their 
 own denominations, but of all Christian people who 
 know them. We have already referred to the min- 
 isters of the churches of the Congregational order as 
 being, many of them, if not generally, opposed to 
 the views in which, we believe, the great majority of 
 the Protestant Christians of the Province, as well as 
 our Roman Catholic fellow-citizens, are at one with 
 us. Indeed it is, with rare exceptions, only from 
 brethren of position and name in those churches that 
 utterances have come from time to time strongly 
 vindicating* the exclusion of Christian instruction 
 from all schools under Government control. Some 
 years have now elapsed since, towards the close of 
 our ministry, we took our part in the public vindica- 
 tion of the right of instruction in the common Chris- 
 
 * We moan, on the ground that, as they believe, great principles 
 demand it. There are those who would exclude Christian instruc- 
 tion from the day school because of their aversion to Christianity. 
 But our present contention is not with non-Christians. It assumes 
 the Chriatiauity of the Province. 
 
64 
 
 CHRlsnAN INSTRUCTION 
 
 defect „, Z °L:^tZ sy 'Z-a d^f ? Tt 
 
 tian P^vinee, and L^Tll^'l"? t^ 1^™; 
 .nteresu The j;o„™„,*h„ ^J*^' ^^ ''» ^^ 
 
 thfu2„f"f •' ''"' •"""'■«• *l>»tever maV Ibe 
 A iriul l'».';fP'r°'««<'h »f our contention. '^ 
 
 .fter e,p^' ^ ^^L^^ 74"-"" «.e waiter, 
 opinion tha, whl^.t";,t,t'f ™ " °"' " "" 
 
IN THE PUBUC SfBOOlS OF ONTARIO. 68 
 
 ••syly surprised and perplexed," His surprise and 
 perpl«,ty are not to be wondered .t. wher^s^e 
 tels h.s r^ers. he believes we .re -adv^T> 
 
 e««ts .-T /"^"''^ --^pul«^ devotional 
 exercises, compulm»y use of the Bible," " <»m»„Z 
 ««•* rel-gious inetruction " ; and we are thus p1S„t 
 for the contravention of the principle oTreS 
 toleration in ffeneral anH «f *k i . *«"giou8 
 
 exmeasinn «f * K / ^''^ "^^^^ **» inadequate 
 
 It fsTr. K T'*^'"''^'"'^ «^ «"r contention 
 
 ot Ussa on Pelion. we are. in an unholy war, crowninf 
 
 wK;«k u . ^ ^'° ^'^ ^^® ^squipeiialia verba 
 
 which we have already referred f-. L .^. '. ^' ,'^'' 
 
 th«. Who indul, J,erre':^rttT- 
 
 wp^uot^iTuVa'vC^;;;'"^^:^' 
 
 Christian gentleman Tho* u ^ respected 
 
 allowed to'prevent L d^ S wUhT "^ 
 w^bwere,^^,,, ,,«^™^^-;^oW^ 
 
 rewonable The proprieties of controverey forbid 
 that we should characterize them in ter^ Ztt 
 -«.e unght regard appropriate. But thereli Wo 
 
66 
 
 CHSI8TIAN INSTRUCTION 
 
 impropriety in the retorting of the expression of sur- 
 prise that brethren who are justly held in the highest 
 respect should be so terrorized by the bogey of State 
 churchism and its mate. Ecdesiastical domination ; 
 especially when we are pleading for the use of the 
 very best means of rendering our experience of these 
 things impossible. But the charges referred to, being 
 not a mere tirade of senseless vituperation, but the 
 calm and not uncourteous expression of sincere con- 
 viction, call for respectful treatment, and shall, we 
 trust, be dealt with by us not otherwise than in the 
 way of fair argument. For this, we think, we are 
 now sufficiently prepared. 
 
 Courtesy doe^ not forbid, and candour requires, 
 that we should, at the outset of our reply to charges 
 such as those of the Journal, frankly say that they 
 are based upon a total misapprehension of the ques- 
 tion at issue, as indeed may be already sufficiently 
 apparent to the considerate and candid reader of the 
 previous pages. 
 
 The Journal, from which we have quoted, as repre- 
 senting in words big, bold, and brave, the views of 
 respected brethren, who believe that the success of 
 our contention carries with it the most tremendous 
 public evils, and involves violence to individual con- 
 science, quietly assumes the question between us to 
 be, " Is it right or is it wrong, that our rulers should 
 compel a teacher who may be conscientiously an imfidel 
 in relation to Christianity — an agnostic or an atheist 
 — publicly to offer up Christian prayer, and to impart 
 
1» THE WTBUC 8CH0018 Or ONIiKIft 67 
 
 OirirtUo instruction to his pupil, and «*,,( »i. 
 th. minisfr" (i». „f Eduction) "Ivte SL7f 
 
 wy Willi ail emphasis, That it i^ nnf ♦!,« ^ x- 
 -d that it is nothingness thJ^.^ve^J^ ^eT^T' 
 etur, of the i.™,„ involved in our Zn^^ Td' 
 
 r,;";':r^'di^r;:frtir^^^ 
 
 -.r^^inCsrireitor?'"^ 
 
 S^eeted-tfrth-r^^^^^^^ 
 
68 
 
 CHBI8T1AN INSTRUCTION 
 
 careful to appoint only genuine ChnHtians. It would 
 seem, therefore, that it is only the civil ruler that 
 niubt have a delicately tender and supreme regard for 
 the interests of the agnostic or atheistic teacher. He 
 must, on no account, as he would not infringe the 
 most important principles of national action, require 
 a religious profession (Roman Catholic or Protestant) 
 as a qualification fur appointment as a Public School 
 teacher ; but no legal eligibility is to l)e had respect 
 to by parents or trustees in the appointment of the 
 teacher, unless he is, besides being neither an agnostic 
 nor an atheist, "a broad-minded and true-hearted 
 Christian." 
 
 We cannot, of course, but admit that, if men and 
 women were compelled by coTiscription to be teachers, 
 as men are, in almost all countries except firitain, 
 compelled to be soldiers, such a question as that of 
 the Journal might reasonably be propounded. But 
 so long as a man is at liberty to choose his own voca- 
 tion, he cannot reasonably reclaim against the con- 
 ditions which, according to the mind of the community, 
 qualify him or unfit him for any special calling in its 
 interest To propound, therefore, the question that 
 the Journal does, is simply to set up the proverbial 
 man of straw. The question with which we have to 
 deal is an entirely different one, as we shall endeavour 
 to show, believing that we may do so without unduly 
 trespassing on the patience of our readers, who will, 
 we believe, see that the adaptation of our argu- 
 ment to the charges of the Journal is far from being 
 unnecessary. 
 
IK THi: PUBLIC SCHOOLS OF ONTARIO. 69 
 
 rJZ^'^''' ***^"; ****** •*"'"« "»^^ '»»« Ro"*" 
 Catholic mmonty. for whom, in deference to their 
 
 determmation to be no parties to a system of educa- 
 tion exclusively secular, separate provision has been 
 made, and constitutionally and permanently secured 
 the remaining majority of four-Ji/ihs of the popula-' 
 tion of the Ph>vince are properly classed as Chris- 
 tians according to a well-known and not improper, 
 f mitigated, use of the term. That is. they'acTpt 
 the Christian Scriptures as the divinely given guide 
 m the way of righteousness for man in all his 
 relatione To an extent that some will regard as 
 surprising, they are at one in their views of the 
 ^hmgs of Scripture, the commm Christianity of 
 5J^c«n/ of the Protestant profession being that 
 of the well-known Presbyterian catechism, which 
 conUins over four hundred sUtements of Scripture 
 truth and duty, all of which, with the exception o" 
 three or four, are the expression of the views of 
 faith and duty held by the larger Protestant churehes 
 -the Anglican Methodist. Presbyterian and Congre- 
 gational (Pedobaptist and Antipedobaptist). These 
 all. we may further assume, believe that practical 
 conformity to the teachings of Scripture is"e 
 the elevHion of the individual and the exaltation of 
 the nation, and that want of conformity to tJ. m 
 whether from ignorance or aversion, is the sure road 
 to individual and national degradation and ruin. If 
 ^e Protestant people of Onterio actually stood related 
 to the Scriptures otherwise than we assume they do 
 
70 
 
 CHRISTIAN INNTRUOTION 
 
 we could not. of oouwe, expect them to desire the 
 ChriHtian education of their children, either in the 
 day Bchool, or in the Sabbath School, or anywhere 
 elee. In such a case they would have to be left to 
 the consequences of ignorance of Christian truth or 
 of aversion to it, whatever these consequences may 
 be. But our assumptions being granted, the question 
 between us and our respected brethren is. On what 
 ground can it be regarded as wrong in principle that 
 the lessons of Christianity should be imparted under 
 the authority of the Christian Government of a 
 Christian people who, with a view to the moral wel- 
 fare of their children, would see to their advancement 
 in Christian kAowledgo by skilled and sympathetic 
 Christian teachers ? Or, more briefly, on what 
 ground or principle is a Christian nation like Ontario 
 forbidden to promote the best interests of its youth, 
 by the teaching of its own religion, in its own 
 schools, by properly qualified teachers ? The reply, 
 in the first instance, according to the Journal, is that 
 when we plead for Christian instruction in the schools 
 of the nation by its legally qualified teachers, we are 
 asking a government whose Minister of Education, the 
 Jov/mal supposes, may be an agnostic or an aiheint, 
 to compel a teacher, who may be also an agnostic or 
 an atheist, to teach in opposition to his own personal 
 beliefs or convictions. We cannot, of course, deny 
 the possibilities affirmed in this reply. For we can- 
 not draw the line beyond which it is impossible for 
 the depravity of our fallen nature to cany a man. 
 
/ 
 
 tN Till PUBLIC 80H(X>L8 or ONTARIO. 
 
 71 
 
 be he a minister of His Majesty the King of Enj;- 
 land, or a minister of the Gospel, or an instructor of 
 onr children. Nevertheless, the reasoning of the 
 reply must be regarded as unsound. If the Oovem- 
 luent of a Christian country is anti-Christian, it is 
 what it ought not to >\ mid what we trust the 
 Government of Ontari > n. .-'i .\!!i he. And were a 
 Christian Govemme*)t to a^n ,>int \q ii, ;del a6 head 
 administrator of its K.]iici>tiou Depart: ■ it, it would 
 do what it ought not U lo Ai\o ihn hi ae is true of 
 the selection ami appoi'ai'i-.'tit :>^ our teacher.^ not 
 less being the impiicHlio'>, \vl))n the Journal, before 
 the ink is dry in the pen tiiut ch; ^os us with plead- 
 ing for compv4aory prr^v i compulaory religious 
 instruction, and other grusu improprieties, counsels 
 Christian ministers and parents, and trustees as repre- 
 senting parents (by legislative authority) to use their 
 best endeavours to prevent the appointment of any 
 teacher who is not a " broad-minded and true-hearted 
 Christian." With all due respect to brethren who 
 are in our judgment seriously in error, we submit 
 that the question under discussion cannot depend for 
 its settlement on the mere poaaibility of the Govern- 
 ment, or its Minister of Education, or the public 
 teacher, being what none of them ought to he. Surely 
 we are not to forego the employment of an instrumen- 
 tality that is in itself replete with nothing but good, 
 merely because of a possibility of some unworthy 
 hand taking hold of it for an evil purpose. Cannot 
 we protect ourselves against such a possibility ? Is 
 
72 
 
 OBMSTIAN INSTRUCTION 
 
 ii ! 
 
 >t not the duty of a Christiai, people who u in 
 Ont.no have the appointment of tS™le» inThdr 
 own liande to »ee that the national adminiatr.^ . 
 Chnefan baeed, that is, „„ Christian principled 
 conducted m accordance with then, f If our 'Hl^r 
 ahem' forbid, our laying it down aa a rule that a 
 tTn?^" "■"">' honestly exp«« Chriet™„ c^n. «! 
 tone should not, however otherwise quali8ed he 
 allowed a place in the legislative body\f theP™^ 
 v,n.» or should not, at the least, be e«lud^ f„" 
 
 with our political sentiments in the expression of our 
 conviction that, the gr«.t body of our peopklLr 
 Christian, Hs Government should, as a wMe be Z 
 tinctively Christian. No one, we think, c^n rZn 
 ably dispute the assertion that it, ruC a^te 
 teachers as well, should represent and ^fl^t Z 
 
 ing^ti^::itr rt i^^- r^ <>' '^'»- 
 
 upon our rights and privileges must be guarded 
 
 place and its dutie^ Or^f ,T ^"T *"' P""^' 
 Wing in this res;ct.l;jL"reS\iXt 
 
IN THE PUBtlKKfiQJOOLS or ONTAlflO. 73 
 
 rule is a service in their intere^thMsif he will not 
 be admonished, they can replace him by*^»»ther who 
 will promise to conduct himself with proprSb^ 
 their faithful and devoted servant-the servant Tf 
 the Christian peopla For it belongs to them, under 
 our Scriptural form of government, to see that their 
 nilers. whose service is. or ought to be, a ministry in 
 their interests, are men whose public action is regu- 
 lated by the principles of Christianity. And not less 
 18 It their part to see that the education of their 
 children is committed to men and women who frankly 
 accept the Christian Scriptures as a Divine revelation 
 for man 8 welfare, individual and national. This is 
 not only admitted but strongly urged by the J<yumal, 
 m fi» far as the appoiiHment of teachers is concerned 
 And we may presume that objection will not be made 
 to what we have said respecting rulers. For surely 
 no Christian will now say that the State, as such 
 should heatlieistic, and should have no respect to the 
 coming of Christ into the worid. or to Kis teaching, 
 or to His investment with all power in heave- -nd 
 on earth. We have long ago-sixty years ag^-i,, 
 the days of heated controversy, heard assertions to 
 that effect: but we do not expect ever to hear them 
 again. 
 
 With the Jam-nal'a admissions and counsels its 
 charges of c(ytnpiU»ion and of the invasion of the ter- 
 ritory of conscience vanish as a vapour. There is no 
 comp^ds^Mn in our people's requiring, whether directly 
 or by their trustees, or by their rulers, that the 
 
74 
 
 CHRISTIAN INSTIll'cnoH 
 
 twehew of their children shall be qu.li«e.l. by know- 
 
 •ny more than there i, compulsion in the reoui^' 
 ment that aChristian mini, Jshall teaeh an/XTh 
 m accordance with the d«,trinea of the ChureHn 
 whose teachings he has professed his belief ^Vh^ 
 condition of his «ception into itsmfnis^;'' Tsl 
 one .s compelled to enter the ministry of a^y chLT 
 «. no one is under compulsion to be . tealer l^d 
 our |»«pe»"rely have the right to dete^tae what 
 quahacaions are indispensable in the instructors of 
 the.r children^ Beyond all absurdities wouldTthe 
 ^kwng of the teacher to determine his own q^Kfl! 
 cations. He may, of course, teach on his own IZ. 
 «b.hy,„„ one forbidding him or requiring ^ 
 the shght^t recognition of Christianity either W 
 prayer or by instruction. But our content on hi 
 
 bility, but to his occupancy of a portion in which 
 the nation m responsible for his teaching. Thi, bdne 
 well understood, we cannot but think th5 the /ouZl 
 expresses the general sentiment of our oppZX 
 when It even strengly insists that it is thed^tyS 
 parents and of tmstees, as their representativi^ to 
 see that none but a "true-hearted Christian" te 
 
 lnd"if h. i"' ""■' °' ""'' «"'''''*■''» '■«'™«tio^ 
 And If, besides seeing that the teacher of their 
 
 require what it is equally their right to require, that 
 he shall give them Christian instruction, Uiere is to 
 
IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS OF ONTARIO. 
 
 75 
 
 express it mildly, no propriety in saying that a 
 teaeher is, or may be, compelled, by that require- 
 ment, to teach what he does not believe, and tempted 
 to act the hypocrite. Either requirement, by whom- 
 soever imposed — whether by the Government as re- 
 presenting the people, or more directly by the people 
 themselves, through their trustees, who.9e authority is 
 conferred by the civil ruler — does nothing more tlian 
 shut out the unbeliever from the occupancy of a 
 position for which he is not qualified, in the judg- 
 ment of the Christian people, whose property the 
 schools are, and who have the chief interest in them. 
 The exclusion from eligibility as teachers in our 
 Provincial Schools of those who are opposed to the 
 common Christianity of the Province, or out of 
 sympathy with it, may be reclaimed against by some 
 as a hardship to honest skeptics. And some may 
 raise a cry of intolerance, and denounce us, as pro- 
 posing to bann and prosecute men on account of 
 their sincere religious convictions. But a charge of 
 intolerance is equally baseless with that of compulsory 
 Christian teaching and compulsory Christian prayer. 
 For, as we have said, the interests of our children, 
 whatever these may be in the convictions of their 
 parents, are supreme in this discussion, and not the 
 interests of those who think to make a livelihood, for 
 the time being, by teaching, or who, for any reason, 
 desire to enter the profession. The law, as it stands, 
 licenses only Christian men and women. The Journal 
 and, we presume, those whose views it represents, 
 
76 
 
 CHBISTIAN INSTRUCrriON 
 
 would, as a matter of course, or rather of consistency 
 h«ve the law altered in this respect, so as to admit 
 of the heensinif of the agnostic and the atheist But 
 such a change would only aggravate the greater incon- 
 sistency to which we have already referred. For while 
 it la pleaded that the door should be opened wide to 
 agnoatict and atheists, parents and trustees are 
 earnestly counselled to exclude them, in spite of their 
 legal qualification, and to be careful to appoint "only 
 broad-minded and true-hearted Christian teachers" 
 We uphold the law as it is, believing that it needs 
 no vindication. And we contend for the removal of 
 the inconsistency which we cannot but regard as 
 being the great blot of our otherwise admirable educa- 
 tional system. Our reference is, of course, to the fact 
 that notwithstariding the homage that is done to 
 Christ in the requirement that only those who profess 
 to be Christian men and women shall be regarded as 
 qualified to teach in our Public Schools, Christian 
 instruction is not allowed in them, except in so far as 
 a limited permission is given to others than the 
 legally qualified Christian teachere to do what the 
 experience of many years has shown to be impracti- 
 cable. And, what will not unreasonably be regarded 
 by some as the most glaring incongruity of all the 
 Protestant Province of Ontario is, in this disallowance 
 of Christian instruction in its schools, denied a right 
 that IS freely accorded to its Roman Catholic minority 
 and permanently secured in the constitution of the 
 Dominion. 
 
IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS OF ONTARIO. 
 
 77 
 
 The views maintained by the Journal and others, 
 including the unreasonable representations, as we 
 cannot but regard them, of the evils to be appre- 
 hended from the civil ruler's practical recognition of 
 his responsibility for the religious education of the 
 youth of the Province, cannot, considering the 
 interests involved, be dealt with too relentlessly. 
 We, therefore, devote another chapter to an endeav- 
 our to show how untenable these views are. And we 
 shall close our argument in relation to the objection 
 to Christian instruction in our schools ou the alleged 
 ground of principle, by dealing particularly with the 
 expressed views of Congregational brethren, with 
 which the late Minister of Education appears to be 
 largely, if not entirely, in sympathy. We trust, in 
 so doing, to combine entire frankness with Chris- 
 tian propriety of expression, believing, as we do, that 
 we have to deal with the sincere convictions of those 
 who are, in our judgment, dominated in this instance 
 by Beanom error, fraught with evil to the community. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 The Jin,ma/'« inconsistency further exhibited-Appeal to 
 Scripture m opposition to our contention-Refewnce to 
 the Congregational churches. 
 
 If we could not but greatly regret that the 
 Educational Journal was editorially committed to 
 the exclusion from our schools of Christian instruc- 
 tion by the authorized teachers of the Province; and 
 If we have still to regret that the weight of some 
 greatly respected names is cast against our conten- 
 tion, we cannot but be pleased and encouraged, not 
 only by the sympathy that is accorded to us. but by 
 the highly important admissions that are made in 
 ieference to the character ^nd qualifications of the 
 public teacher. Not only is it admitted that the 
 teacher of our children should be a Christian, in the 
 highest sense of the term; but all parties concerned 
 m the education of the young, with the sole exception 
 of our rulers, are counselled to exercise the utmost 
 carefulness m the appointment of teachers. Chris- 
 ^ n^misters are counselled to impress upon their 
 people the great, the incalculable value of religious 
 Character in the teacher." Parents are counselled to 
 
 78 
 
IN THE PUBUC SCHOOLS OF ONTARIO. 
 
 79 
 
 "see to it that trustees are selected who rightly 
 appreciate this first and highest of all qualifications." 
 And trustees, who represent the parents, by the 
 authority of the civil ruler, are counselled " to show 
 the same appreciation in their appointment of 
 teachers." They are told that they are "not only at 
 liberty, but in duty bound, to seek teachers of the 
 highest moral and religious, as well as intellectual 
 qualifications." As to the character of the teaching, 
 all concerned, we are assured, may "trust broad- 
 minded and true-hearted Christian teachers, when 
 appointed, to build freely upon the deep foundations 
 of Christian morality." Without offering any stric- 
 tures on what some would call the high-sounding, 
 but which we would prefer to call the high-tmied, 
 character of the requisitions of our quotations, and 
 without retorting charges of intellectual error, or 
 expressions of surprise and perplexity, let us deal 
 soberly and patiently with the inconsistency of 
 demanding of the civil ruler that he shall not disallow 
 the eligibility of the agnostic or the atheist as the 
 teacher of our children, and of requiring at the same 
 time that all the other parties concerned, Christian 
 ministers, parents, and trustees, shall on no account 
 allow the appointment of a teacher who is not a 
 Christian in the most unmitigated sense of the term. 
 We may assume that one so Christian in his senti- 
 ments as the writer whose views we have placed 
 before our readers fairly and with suflScient fulness, 
 is persuaded that all to whom the Gospel is preached 
 
I 
 
 80 
 
 CHRIMTIAN INtiTRUCTION 
 
 ought to be Christians ; and that God, who knows, 
 ttnd has provided for, all difficulties that may be in 
 the way of the acceptance of Christ by those to whom 
 He is preached, will hold no man excused, who in the 
 midst of such light as we have, rejects Him, or fails 
 to receive Him. He believes, that is, as we assume 
 he cannot but do, that all our people without excep- 
 tion ought to be Christians, in the highest sense of 
 the term. At the same time, we can hardly doubt 
 that, with the views he has of the essential elements 
 of personal Christianity, he may feel constrained to 
 think that comparatively few of our people are what 
 they ought to be — genuine Christians. Be that us it 
 may, however, <pr judge as he or we may, one thing 
 will be freely allowed, namely, that if we ore not a 
 nation of genuine or " true-hearted Christians," we 
 are entitled to be regarded as a Christian nation, the 
 great majority of us accepting the Christian Scrip- 
 tures as a divinely given revelation of the mind and 
 will of God for our welfare as individuals and as a 
 national community. 
 
 In view of all the admissions referred to — that is, 
 we being, though many of us far from being the 
 Christians we ought to be, at least a Christian nation, 
 the great majority of us accepting the Scriptures as a 
 revelation given to guide us in the way of righteous- 
 ness, and of individual happiness and national pros- 
 perity ; and being all of us under obligation to see to 
 it that the instruction of our children is committed 
 to none but "true-hearted Christian teachers" — as 
 
IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS OF ONTARIO. 81 
 
 parents caring that Christian trustees are selected 
 beoiuse "such only can rightly apprehend the first 
 and highest of all qualifications." and, as trustees 
 carrying out the views of those whom they represent 
 -in view, we say, and in the face of all these admis- 
 
 will think that only unusual subtlety of mind is 
 equal to the task of reconciling all this with the 
 insistence that our rulers, who equally represent us 
 and whose ministry is a service in our interests in 
 accordance with our convictions and wishes, must do 
 no less than forbid the communication of Christian 
 instruction by teachers qualified in accordance with 
 their regulations. They may, we presume, see that 
 the teacher is addicted to no immoral practice ; but 
 beyond that they may not go. That they may not see 
 
 u 'i^ i^" ""^^'^''^ ^^* **^*» * ««°"inc or "true- 
 hearted Chnstian." no one will dispute. For that 
 clearly were to go beyond their province, and to 
 trespass on that of the Church. Defence, however 
 of the apparent inconsistency is not wanting It is 
 contended that, while Christian ministers, parents 
 and school trustees are bound to use their utmost 
 endeavours to prevent the appointment of a teacher 
 who 18 not a "true-hearted Christian," the civil ruler 
 may not, m his control of the education of the youth 
 of the nation, concern himself in the religious senfci- 
 mente of the teacher. That he is an agnostic or an 
 atheist, it IS contended, should be no bar to his 
 receiving government sanction as a qualified teacher 
 
 6 ' 
 
p 
 
 82 
 
 OHBISTIAM INSTRUCTION 
 
 eligible for appointment to a Provincial School. It ia 
 insisted that it is a contravention of our accepted 
 principles of national action, that the teacher's 
 reli^otts sentiments should be taken into considera- 
 tion by the civil ruler. And seeing that the civil 
 ruler may not refuse to make the skeptic or the 
 infidel eligible for appointment to a National School, 
 and that notwithstanding all the carefulness that 
 ministers, parents and trustees may exercise to pre- 
 vent his appointment, he may succeed in obtoiniug 
 an appointment — in such a case, it is contended, it 
 would be nothing short of oppression of the poor 
 skeptic or atheist, who is supposed still to have a 
 conscience, to require of him to impart Christian 
 instruction and to ofier up Christian prayer, and 
 " e<ym,pd conscience, interfere with the solemn rela- 
 tions between Qod and the individual soul, and put a 
 premium upon formalism and hypocrisy." 
 
 However great a hardship to the agnostic or the 
 atheist may seem, in the judgment of some, to be 
 implied in our contention for the introduction of 
 Christian instruction into the Public School, there 
 must surely be some great misapprehension underly- 
 ing the flagrant inconsistency of denying the right of 
 the supreme educational authority to refuse to license 
 a man whom all other parties concerned are told they 
 mur^t. on no account, allow the appointment of as a 
 teachor of our children. To say nothing of the 
 obvious fact that it is the agnostic or the atheist 
 himself that is guilty of the nprnov fevdos, in 
 
IN THE PCBUC SCHOOLS OF ONTARIO. 88 
 
 representing himtelf to be » Chrwtian when he knows 
 nir ."°*';* r"» "wonable that if. m our oppo- 
 nenU insist, the instruction of our children should be 
 ««nmitted only to " true-hearted Christian teachoi,." 
 we should beg^n at t}^ b.jinning, by using appi^. 
 priate means to keep all others out of the piSes- 
 8.on. Surely it is reasonable that. inst«»d of li<i„sing 
 th^ whom parents and trustees are counselled tS 
 reject, and thus increasing the difficulty of a proper 
 selection, the chief authority should withhold liceSIe 
 from tho^ whom, it is said, trustees should re! 
 gard as disqualified, and should therefore decline 
 to appoint, of course, sh we have said, not pi^! 
 Burning to pass judgment upon the Christianity of 
 the candidate or license, but accepting as since^ 
 his p«, ession of a Christian faith. Andft is owZ 
 that while according to our views, were they carri^ 
 out there would be no c<m.puUi<.^ to teach'^Zrl 
 to a man's beliefs, but simply the limitation of Ws 
 choice of a profession, the temptation to "form^ism 
 and hypocrisy." with which our contention is Zg^d 
 would be equally st«>ng. so long as parenrfnd 
 trustees act as the Joumai in the stro^ge^t ter^ 
 
 ^T^l^r *"^ ^'^ responsibility w^ouldtnT^. 
 be shifted from the Government to the parents and 
 trustees, whose refusal to appoint any but o^e whom 
 they regarded as a "true-hearted Christian" wo^ld^ 
 no less a temptation to formalism and hypocrisy ban 
 he requirement of the Christian ruler tl^TthfpubHc 
 ^her shall be a Christian and impart the I^ns of ' 
 Chnstianity to his scholars. ^^ 
 
MICIOCOPY RBOlUTiON TKT CHART 
 
 (ANSI and ISO TEST CHART No. 2) 
 
 /1PPLIED l^^<3E Inc 
 
 1SS] Eott Main Strtct 
 
 RochMttr, Nm York 14609 USA 
 
 (716) 482 - 0300 - Phon* 
 
 (716) 288 -5989 -Fan 
 
84 CHRISTIAN INSTRUCTION 
 
 But. it i8 argued, the civil ruler goes beyond his 
 province in requiring that the national teacher shall 
 Z\ Christiai and impart Christ a„ mstruct.on. 
 Parents, it is said, have a right, and it '« their ^ify. 
 to see to it that none but a Christian teacher shall be 
 in charge of the education of their children ; and 
 trustees, as the immediate representatives of parents 
 are bound to carry out their wishes But the cm 
 ruler may not interfere with the religious views of 
 his subjects, in tl,e wiy of disqualifying them for 
 any official position, or for any position of which he 
 hi control. Although he represents the Christian 
 people as much as the trustee does, and is as much 
 bound to carry out their wishes a« is the trustee who, 
 be it remembered, represents the parents only by 
 authirt-ity of the civU rvier, yet an appea is made to 
 Slripture' in the belief that it authoritatively set les 
 the question under discussion. That the civil ruler, 
 or the Government, whether legislative or executive, 
 may not do what parents or trustees not only may 
 do. but are bound to do; or that he may not con- 
 cern himself about the religious character of the 
 teacher, while to parents and trustees hat shouW 
 be the "first and highest consideration, is said to 
 be expressly forbidden by our Lord, both when He 
 says " My kingdom is not of this world." and when 
 He 'says. "Render unto C»sar the things that are 
 Cwsar's. and unto God the things that are Gods 
 And we are reminded that history proves what eviU 
 have invariably resulted from C»sar's meddling witt 
 
IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS OF ONTARIO. 
 
 85 
 
 the things of God, or, as it is explained, with the 
 religion of his subjects. 
 
 We must be permitted to say frankly that it is 
 entirely beyond us to see the bearing of those inter- 
 esting and important sayings on the matter of our 
 present contention. We presume that, when our Lord 
 says, "My kingdom is not of this world," adding 
 immediately, "If my kingdom were of this world, 
 then would my servants fight," etc.. He means that 
 His kingdom, which is, as the apostle says, " right- 
 eousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost," is not 
 established or maintained and extended by force of 
 arms, and that its aims are of such a character, that 
 so far from interfering with the exercise of legitimate 
 earthly authority, it recognizes it as " ordained of 
 God," for important ends, which, as we know, cannot 
 be so effectually promoted by any action of the 
 civil authority, other than that which is based on the 
 recognition of the principles of the Christian religion. 
 And when our Lord says, " Render unto C^sar the 
 things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that 
 are God's," He cannot, in view of the circumstances 
 in which he replied in these words to His hypocritical 
 tempters, be supposed to have meant anything but 
 that they should submit to Caesar and yield him a 
 willing service in all his legitimate demands— i«., in 
 all requirements not contrary to the commands of 
 God, or obedience to which would be sin. To pay 
 tribute to Caesar were no sin on their part : for Caesar 
 had the power to enforce his demands ; and if his 
 
^^^ 
 
 I I 
 
 fz 
 
 86 
 
 CHRISTIAN INSTRUCTION 
 
 demands were unrighteous, the responsibility wouk 
 be his and not theirs. But if Csesar should demanc 
 their denial of Christ, or disobedience to His conimanc 
 in anything. His disciples must die rather than obey 
 We can therefore see nothing in our Lord's words, at 
 an argument against Christian rulers taking upor 
 themselves the responsibility of Christian instructior 
 m the schools of a Christian nation and in accordance 
 with the wishes of its people. 
 
 It is, we must bp allowed to say, very inconsider- 
 ately assuHjed, and by implication charged against 
 us, that we are proposing that the things of God 
 should be rendered unto Csesar. For are we not 
 rather proposing that Caesar himself, having learned 
 his place of subjection to the God and Father of our 
 Lord Jesus Christ, should render to Him the things 
 that are His ? For when Caesar says, as in effect he 
 does say, when he indicates his determination that all 
 his young subjects shall have full opportunity of 
 being instructed in the principles of Christianity by 
 well-informed and sympathetic teachers, it cannot 
 reasonably be said that the carrying out of that deter- 
 mination, in accordance with wishes of Christian 
 parents, involves the great enormity of rendering to 
 Cfesar the things that are God's. Is it not rather, 
 we repeat, that Caesar himself, being Christian, ha^ 
 learned dutifully and cordially to render to God the 
 things that are God's ? And why may he not do so ? 
 Is there any necessary opposition between the king- 
 dom of Christ and the kingdoms of this worid ? Are 
 
m THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS OP ONTARIO. 87 
 
 the latter essentially departments of the devil's kinc- 
 dom of darkness and sin ? It cannot be. for are we 
 not praying continually that "the kingdoms of this 
 world may become the kingdoms of our Lord and of 
 his Christ"? And do we thus pray without believing 
 that the promise will be fulfilled in actual experience^ 
 Do we not already see its partial fulfilment, however 
 slow, we may think, the advance towards actual ful- 
 filment has been ? Surely we are. at least, warranted 
 to believe that there is no essential antagonism 
 between God and Caesar. Do we not believe, and do 
 we not actually see, that Cfesar himself may be. as he 
 ought to be, a faithful subject of God, making God's 
 Word the law of his rule as well as of his life ? Is it 
 to be no concern of his that his subjects should have 
 their consciences informed and enlightened, and their 
 ives regulated, by the inspired rule of righteousness, 
 the Word of God ? May he not be-ought he not to 
 be— wise enough to know that, while Christ's king- 
 dom in the worid does not allow the exercise of his 
 authority in its afiairs, and does not need his official 
 support or assistance, the knowledge of the Christian 
 Scriptures and practical conformity to their teachings 
 are essential to the welfare of his own kingdom ? If 
 these questions are their own answer, on what prin- 
 ciple, we must persist in asking, is he forbidden to see 
 to It that his young subjects, with the exception of 
 the very few whose parents may be opposed to it 
 shall receive the instruction which, he believes, will 
 more than anything else secure their growing up to 
 

 CHRISTIAN INSTRUCTION 
 
 be good citizens, though he may not look toanythin 
 
 higher ? Or, in other words, casting away the pe: 
 
 Bonification once for all.on what principle is a Christia 
 
 nation, like Ontario, debarred as such, ie., in actio 
 
 through its chosen rulers, from the exercise of i< 
 
 inalienable right of self-preservation, in so far as th 
 
 knowledge of Christian truth may contribute to it 
 
 Let it be granted as indisputable, and as a principl 
 
 of essential importance, that the kingdom of Go« 
 
 in the world— His visible Church— and the civi 
 
 authority, the divinely appointed order for ih 
 
 protection and promotion of men's temporal irter 
 
 ests, has each its own distinctive province, an '. tha 
 
 each must keep within its own sphere anr/ prose 
 
 cute its own objects. That principle caniot justij 
 
 be said to be infringed, when a nation as sue! 
 
 —acting, that is, by its chosen rulera— sees U. 
 
 the promotion of its own well-being in the train 
 
 ing of its youth in the principles that exall 
 
 nations. The interests of Christ's kingdom may be in- 
 
 cidentaUy or indirectly promoted, as no doubt they 
 
 will be, by the daily or stated instruction of oui 
 
 youth in the lessons of His religion. But we cannot 
 
 see that such instruction by the accredited teachera 
 
 of the nation, or by the authority of the civil ruler, 
 
 can reasonably be objected to as involving any 
 
 encroachment on the province or privileges of the 
 
 Christian Church, or any interference with its aims; 
 
 a* we have seen it involves nothing compulsory in 
 
 connection with the religious convictions of any one. 
 
IN THE PUBUC SCHOOLS OF OMTAtttO. 
 
 89 
 
 If any objection is made, it cannot reasonably be 
 made on the ground of the rendering of an improper 
 aid to religion. It can only be made, as has been 
 already shown, on the ground of the inherent power 
 of the Christian religion to increase its credit and 
 influence, by doing the good which nothing else can 
 do, the implication being, as we shall see more fully 
 in the sequel, that but for this inherent power for 
 good — the highest good— no objection could be made 
 against its being taught in our schools. 
 
 In closing this chapter dealing with the views of 
 the Educational Journal, which are still the expres- 
 sion of the mind of some Christian ministers and 
 people in relation to the introduction of Christian 
 instruction into our Public Schools, we cannot yet 
 close our argument against the error of those who 
 hold that Christian instruction cannot be communi- 
 cated in our Provincial Schools by legally qualified . 
 teachers, without contravention of acknowledged 
 important principles of national action. If there 
 are readers who believe, as we cannot but think many 
 do, that enough has been said on the subject, and that 
 we might now, without further delay, proceed to the 
 consideration of the practical difficulties that stand, 
 or are believed by some to stand, in the way of the 
 introduction of Christian instruction into the schools 
 of the Province, we trust they will have patience 
 with us in our dealing, in a separate chapter, with 
 the views on the subject under discussion, as they 
 appear to be largely, if not generally, held by the 
 
r 
 
 i I 
 
 I 
 
 i ' 
 
 90 
 
 CHRISTIAN INSTRUCTION 
 
 ZTlTf-I .^"S^K*"™*! churches of Onterio - 
 ^on If „„ opposition to thcso views is exDr3 
 
 Cr"*r'"^ '" »'-«'-s,;is7„^ 
 
 rTold Tr W^""* °f "•' ''«'■ "««" » which 
 e noia the brethren from whom we differ and 
 
 . m,mster of .Imost un.ppreach.ble eaer^ ™d 
 par ^yaity. TJie present stote of th ing, is to us 
 
 views m^'ntained hv f h« n ■ ^"""^'"S expressions of the 
 
 B.P« (Ant^MoS; .."S3"nr '"^'■"•"' *"" -' '- 
 
 ized to state in Sv t J«f km ^^'^^ ' *"** *'"*' *»« »^ •"thor- 
 ali-ts in th^ir Sde forTh^ -. •y'npathize with the n.ea.ori- 
 
 we decline to ^ttl ^l^f^ ^^^7 °' *'^ ^°""^ 
 Ist. By the present lawMTh/nKT-* ? **"" Allowing reasons: 
 Schools. and^^J^™ iis Lf V"'*'^ '° "•"^'•'^''» our Common 
 school building fo;T""«"™ ^ '"""^*«" °^ *he Gospel to use 
 of those allottS to 1„W ? °' ""«""' *™*'» '" •»«"" outside 
 
 -w-o, re^io"sr:;j:rr;Th: L^tire; r r^*" 
 
 II. The C««arfr^:S/ref;ri'«?oT. °' Church and State. » 
 prescribing such religion., exerZsl. 1 .V"''"'* "' '^«'^'*''«° 
 
 ^or;.£-^r~-^^ 
 
 - legis^tionTn rSeitrt^^jt:; ^^.^ Ji/;:;- 
 
IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS OP ONTARIO. 91 
 
 galling in the extreme, especially when we think that 
 to those who regard it from without, it must appear 
 to be in a high degree discretlitable to us as a Chris- 
 tian nation. It may be that there is a casuistry that 
 will not quail before the glaring incongruity more 
 than once referred to, that, namely, of denying to a 
 Protestant people what is freely accorded, and con- 
 stitutionally secured, to a comparatively small Roman 
 Catholic minority. And it may be that the circum- 
 stances in which it originated forbid our appropria- 
 tion of responsibility for the unprecedented anomaly. 
 
 igaimi it, gives what we may regard as the prevailing view of the 
 Baptist churches in the following words : " We deny that it is any 
 part of the duty of the Sute to teach religion. It is unquestion- 
 ably its duty to secure the best possible moral training for its 
 future citizens. But the two things, moral training and religious 
 instruction or observance, are clearly distinct. We do not doubt, 
 nay, we hold most strongly, that the Christian religion affords the 
 only reliable basis of morality. If the grand facts and principles of 
 religion arc not known by the pupils, the teacher has no fulcrum 
 on which he can rest an effective moral lever. But surely both 
 the teacher and the Slate have the right to asmnu. that the parentx, 
 the Sabbath School and tht Church have done their duty." Unhap- 
 pily such an assumption is contrary to facts, so far as many parents 
 are concerned, who disregard the provision made by the Church for 
 themselves and their children. But of this we hope to treat in its 
 proper place. Meantime, may we not ask what difference there 
 18, in principle, between ffiring Christian instruction and hnilding 
 upon It, on the assumption that it has been given ? And if it is the 
 duty of the State, through the teacher, to lalwur in the erection of 
 the superstructure, how can it but be its duty to see (not merely to 
 amitne) that the foundation is mfficiem, i.e , neither entirely want- 
 ing nor essentially defective ? The obligation to erect the super- 
 structure surely involves the obligation to lay the only foundation 
 
9S 
 
 CHRISTIAN INSTRUCnOK 
 
 But ihore is one thing that can hardly be questions 
 
 and that w, that the Government could not resist th 
 
 force of public opinion against the indefensibi 
 
 anomaly, were it not that its weight i., so seriousl 
 
 reduced by the opposition of some excellent Christiai 
 
 people, whose opposition is mainly founded on wha 
 
 we regard as an unreasonable dread that, to intro 
 
 duce into our schools instruction in our commoi 
 
 Christianity would be to plant in Ontario the gem 
 
 of State churchism, and to bring us back to ecclesi 
 
 astical dominaiion. We say mainly, because. a< 
 
 will be seen, their opposition is fortified by theii 
 
 sympathy with one or two minor practical objections 
 
 which, we hope to show, are far from being of a 
 
 formidable character. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 State of tho «iue8t!..n-Objectioiw of Christian brethren en- 
 dorwd by the eduoatiunal authority— rhe one alternative. 
 
 It will be aeeu from previous references to the views 
 of ministers of the Congregational churches of Ontario, 
 that we regard their opposition to the authoritative 
 introduction of Christian instruction into the Provin- 
 cial Schools as being a great hindrance to the success 
 of our contention in favour of it. And if we consider 
 the fact that the views of the educational authorities 
 appear to be largely those of the Congregational breth- 
 ren, we are probably not far wrong in regarding this 
 united opposition as the greatest of all the hindrances 
 with which we have to contend, and perhaps the least 
 likely to yield to any endeavour to show that it is not 
 justifiable on any reasonable ground. For it is an 
 opposition which is avowedly grounded mainly on 
 principle ; and although, we believe, it can be shown 
 that no accepted principle would be infringv>d in the 
 success of our contention, it is, as we have said, well 
 known that, when we have been accustomed to regard 
 ourselves as impregnably entrenched against ail- 
 ment, on the ground of a great principle unquestioned 
 
 93 
 
•• OHBI'iTIAN nVSTRUCnOK 
 
 if not unquestionable, one neta himself to the hardc 
 of all tasks, who would endeavour to persuade us th 
 we are in error. 
 
 But however much we may regret the opposition . 
 our respected breth«„. endorsed as it ap^ to 
 by the educational authorities ; and however unhop< 
 ful any attempt to convince of error either the on 
 or the other may be regarded, we who believe tha 
 they are in error, and that their error is a very seriou 
 
 Z;^^"^ '"^l'^ ^'^*^ *^" ^ *»»« community 
 cannot but persist m our testimony against it, and i 
 our endeavour to expose it And we believe w. 
 have the full sympathy, not only of the minister, 
 of what „ay be called the largest P,x>testant chun^hes 
 but of the great body of the ProtesUnt population ol 
 Ontano. whose convictions, if we are not greatly mis- 
 taken are strongly in favour of stated Christian in- 
 
 The discussions of some years ago, which have been 
 ah^dy referred to. though not altogether finiitless of 
 good results, failed to issue in thf success of the 
 strenuous contention of the time for the introduction 
 of religious instruction by the national teachers 
 mainly, the writer believes, because they happened to 
 be contemporaneous with the approach of a general 
 election when unhappily, as in war. everything being 
 supposed to be justifiable that may contribute tf 
 party success, the Minister of Education was made 
 the butt of aspersions that had no ground except in 
 
IN THE PUBWC SCHOOLS *0F ONTARIO. 95 
 
 the estimation of the heated spirit of political parti- 
 zanship. Those discussions, however, placed in a 
 sufficiently clear h>ht the position occupied by the 
 advocates of Christian instruction in our schools by 
 qua . lied and sympathetic Christian teachers-their 
 ready admission of the difficulties alleged as standing 
 in the way of the success of their contention; and 
 the grounds on which they persist in the hope that 
 the time will come when the acceptance of their views 
 will be considered essential to the welfare of every 
 Province in the Dominion. Those discussions showed 
 m particular, that we have no call to vindicate the 
 essential importance of the Christian instruction of the 
 youth of Ontario. With rare exceptions-with the 
 exception, that is. of the few who are anti-Christian 
 m sentiment-all are persuaded that early instruction 
 m the facts and principles of Christianity is essential 
 to the well-being of the individual and of the com- 
 
 urgently demanding an early and conclusive settle- 
 men has respect to the responsibility of the Govern- 
 
 '^i K-i^ ^^^T^'^^on of religious instruction 
 to the children of the Province. Assumirg not only 
 the obligation of the Christian Church and of ite 
 parents in the matter of religious instruction of the 
 young, but also, what is freely admitted, that « Chris- 
 tianity being the basis of our school system, its 
 pnnciples should pervade it throughout." the ques- 
 ^on 18 whether Christian instruction in theory 
 school shall be imparted by Protestant ministers, in 
 
96 
 
 CHRISTIAN INSTRUCTION 
 
 'I ^ 
 
 ' i 
 
 accordance with the regulations framed by the 
 Education Department of the Government, which 
 thus assumes no responsibility for the religious in- 
 struction of the young, beyond the granting of the 
 use of the school-room for the purpose ; or, shall 
 Christian or Bible instruction be regarded as a con- 
 stituent part of the regular Rchool programme, and 
 be imparted b}' the authorized and salaried teachers 
 of the Province, the educational authority thus 
 assuming the full responsibility* of the religious 
 instruction of the children of the Protestant majority, 
 in what we may call the common Christianity of 
 Protestants, as it is already responsible for that of the 
 children of the Homan Catholic minority, as well in 
 the distinctive teachings of the Roman Catholic 
 Church, as in the doctrines common to Roman Catho- 
 lics and Protestants — a privilege or right, let it not 
 be forgotten, secured to Roman Catholics in the 
 Constitution of the Dominion. 
 
 We cannot conceive of the possibility of any one 
 objecting to the teaching of Christianity in' the day 
 
 * It will surely not be charged against us that we plead for such 
 a responsibility as is assumed by the State, when it gives pecuniary 
 aid to the clergy of a particular denomination, or, as in France, to 
 Roman Catholic and Protestant clergy alike. We simply plead 
 that the particular character of the religious instruction being that 
 of the determination of the parents, the civil ruler shall assume 
 the responsibility of insisting that our children shall be rdigimidy 
 educated, and of providing, as a matter of expediency and pro- 
 priety, oy mwlerate taxation, for the decent maintenance of the 
 teacher, instead of leaving him to the uncertainty of school fees. 
 
 \i\ 
 
IB THE PUBUC SCHOOIS OF OOTARlo. ffj 
 
 Khool M » matter and an important part of Ai./»r« 
 
 -4.n/.no„'Corre t™:^rrt:,» 
 
 cmirof 1 "•".•'.ghost deg„» to a P™test„„t 
 
 «nde„LdT«," to .?; "''•"^':''? " """I"' «» ^^ 
 t/,ri,..i t . "•'X'''" the mere statement of the hii 
 toncal facts of the Christian Scriotures U,t 7 . 
 teai>)iin» ftf *i. J- .. . o^-ripmres, but to tlie 
 
 teaching of the distinctive doctrines of Protestant 
 Chnstianity, with the view of earlv insfHir ? 
 the .id of our chi,d.n the V^iT^^^ 
 their safety against the evils that make for 7h a 
 
 .nteresta It ,s argoed that l^canse this is the work 
 of parente and of the Chnreh, it is a work in w Jch 
 
 b^ rrtfo^ ^'f Tz tz ttrr-^ 
 rtohr^^tro ■ f Therui*" ri-"" ^-p"- 
 
 — that\isat'otl":Uln1trdtrof 
 
 well « to th.' T " !'''" ' ""^"^ »» ""e m„ra( Z 
 well « to the matenal interests of his people, and « 
 
98 
 
 CHRISTIAN INSTRUCTION 
 
 M I 
 
 their chosen representative to care that his young 
 subjects do not grow up in ignorance of the religion, 
 the knowledge of which is essential to the welfare of 
 the nation under his rule. For let it be granted as 
 unquestionable, that the sphere of the civil ruler has 
 distinctive respect to temporal interests — the protec- 
 tion oi' the person, the property, and the good name 
 of his subjects — the security of these interests depends 
 very largely on the information and enlightenment of 
 the consciences of , his people, or, in other words, on 
 their moral susceptibility ; which again, as is admit- 
 ted on all hands, is most effectually promoted and 
 secured by being based and built on the principles of 
 Christianity, as they are understood and accepted by 
 the people of Ontario, with comparatively few ex- 
 ceptions. While, therefore, it pertains to the Chris- 
 tian Church and its parents to instruct the young for 
 the higher end of spiritual edification, it cannot rea- 
 sonably be denied that it is the duty of the ruler of a 
 Christian nation to promote and secure the inferior 
 interests committed to him, by employing, with a 
 view to that end, the most effective of all means — the 
 knowledge, namely; of the common Christianity of 
 the nation — not therein, be it remembered, having 
 any thought of aiding religion, which, as he ought to 
 know, needs not his aid (though some may not repu- 
 diate it), and can even dare and despise his opposition, 
 but whose aid in the promotion of the ends of his own 
 rule he cannot afford to dispense with. 
 
 In all the discussions of the past, on the subject of 
 
 In 
 
™ THE PU...0 «,BOOlS or ONT«.0. 99 
 
 ted to the Toronto Mini!, • , / ' ' '"P" «"''■»!*- 
 
 wh„™ du4 the .«rL» x™;j:rr^ " 
 
 strained our hitrhesf .«* ""^ "ve years, has eon- 
 0.ng«gati„„., "oir hatll^" J»™t" "' ""^ 
 
 tian instruct In tyZ !^ ."f f""""* °«'"»'" ChnV 
 of the Province. CrnTend "'r'*"'^ '««''- 
 -ferred to, that s„cT ^^0^ " '°""'' **"« P^l-' 
 eiple-contnuy that i, t ^ ■" ""^"f ■» P"-- 
 
 eiple, which, if aTt held bvi an ' ""'r"'^ ?"- 
 Ontario. It is aeserW that , ' " " ''''"' '^°« '" 
 struction by teadT^ t ^ ""•"" ""gio"' i"- 
 
 'a..«on,i/^'z:r4::„thtb,"" -""'«' "^ 
 
 give it national or state .iT . ^ ° """"y- •>' *» 
 of the New Teet:n,:„? I 'r^^ *° "l" '*"'°'""« 
 «cept secular in the day schl "r/"^,'!"'™*™ 
 o' may be, compelling JmTCLT T' " "° '"«"«^' 
 -t of a rehgio^ in IS ^e^do t't 'Lr'^ '■"'''■ 
 «>Sument that would iustifv „L •." "^'^^-an 
 tion, some portion of wh^VK ^ "PP^'fon to all ta,«. 
 
 aud Its parents. This nf ^ ' '^ ^^^'^ ^^ the Chur . 
 -^ utterly „pu2«n,1hru,X:tf-^p.^^^^^^ 
 
100 
 
 CHRISTIAN INSTRUCTION 
 
 I I 
 
 ^i ! 
 
 which, whether expressed or not, is improperly 
 assumed, viz., that it is Twt the concern of the civil 
 ruler. We cannot allow it to be assumed that, though 
 the teacher is, during school hours, in loco parentis, 
 the one thing in which he must not assist the parent 
 is the religious instruction of the child, because, as is 
 asserted, his doing so would be the same thing as the 
 endowing of religion with public money, seeing his 
 salary is secured by taxation. The identity of the 
 two thingL a we* have said, we cannot see. And 
 willing as we are, though not voluntai'iea in the 
 abstract, to admit that the Church is not, in the 
 Dominion, to look to the civil ruler for help in its 
 work, but to depend exclusively on what "individuals 
 may give of their own free will," we cannot but insist 
 that; in urging our rulers with all earnestness to 
 assume the full responsibility of Christian instruction 
 in the schools of the Province, we are not asking 
 them to aid the Church or help religion. We must 
 insist that we are not pleading with the State to aid the 
 Christian religion, and that it is not doing so in assuring 
 a pittance to keep alive teachers whom it requires to 
 devote a small portion of school time to the Christian 
 interests of their pupils. Rather we are reminding 
 the State that, while the Church, or the Christian 
 religion, is more than independent of its aid, the State 
 is not independent of the aid which the Christian 
 religion can give and proposes to give it ; yea more, 
 that it cannot dispense with it. In other words, we 
 plead with the State, or the civil ruler, not to aid the 
 
'" "" """" «"•«<>" OP ONTABIO. 101 
 
 •" it. power to extS t butt"?'"!; "" "*^ 
 penty and exaltation ^ *'* P'^^" 
 
 with Ihem that th »„!. • .^ " **"' *« "^''eve 
 
 P«.vi«ei.l Soh»,X?™'jo-~» ■■■' "■« 
 certified and ^„red iTT'^ ?^"°- ^^ *^^'" 
 of the civil powr^,! '"■ "'""'^ ''J' "" «tion 
 voluntary „S; I '"^ <»nt»vention of the 
 
 spicuonatherille!^!/.'"'"'' "»"« it rende™ con- 
 --.»nnotr:^,---;--».ed 
 
102 
 
 CHRISTIAN INSTRUCTION 
 
 ' M 
 
 of any Church as well-grounded. It is to the effect 
 that, should the Protestant majority of Ontario insist 
 successfully in their contention for the introduction 
 of instruction in its common Christianity, another 
 majority elsewhere, or at another time, holding dif- 
 ferent or opposite religious views, having equal rights 
 with our present local majority, will be "justified" 
 — so it id pleaded — in the exercise of those rights. Of 
 course, they will exercise them, even if not justified, 
 which they cannot be, if they are in the wrong ; and 
 they will exercise them, too, whether we exercise 
 ours or not. It were vain to expect that, by refrain- 
 ing from the exercise of our majority right, we shall 
 induce other majorities to refrain from the exercise of 
 theirs. Apart from this, is it not unreasonable to ask 
 a majority to denude itself of its right and privilege, 
 and to throw off its obligation to do what it believes 
 to be essential to the welfare jf the community, 
 because another majority may, in the exercise of its 
 right, as a majority, introduce erroneous teaching or 
 do othe; wrong, thereby bringing evil on the com- 
 munity ? Under our system of Government the 
 majority mtiat rule according to its convictions, 
 while, as we have said, being careful not to rule 
 oppressively, but with a generous regard to the con- 
 victions and feelings of the minority, both parties 
 leaving it to the Providence of God to justiiy the 
 action of the majority, or to show that it is wrong and 
 of evil effect. 
 
 Again, contrary to what may be expected in a 
 
» THE PBBUO SCHOOL O, ONTARIO. 103 
 
 body not behind othere in libenilitv „t .• 
 brethren appear to be of h, • ^ "fnt'ment, our 
 ti.n in,tn,«ion Z^Jl't T'°" """' " '^*'"'- 
 
 commend to their dud«. .h!T.- '*""■ P"'"'"" *° 
 «ve™l den„mi»«^r tuh ttf^^u T"' "^ ""■' 
 .nt, differing ve.^ mn^fa "ir'' ""'• "*""«"■ 
 wives, the la^d would "S fl^J r."' """"« "'™- 
 In this obieotionT •^""^ "'"'sectarian strife.- 
 
 Dcpartmenra^rdLrr""""""' "" ^•■»«'»' 
 
 dacid., term,T;^'°«Lt;rfZ'rj'ir' 
 
 bwie of our school .,..,!„ j.""""y " ">« 
 Principlee ehou^d ' r^a^t"; T "",.*' '!''"'°" "' 
 that he is himeeif'^.lt^nlt 7'^•' ■ "^ '^^' 
 the promotion of Phi .^ • ^ ''P'^ ""««8tcd in 
 
 P^m'ote it rthe u^m"o:t rm;:^^''- T' '^^ '» 
 But he goes on to ^thTu • "^""^ «°thority." 
 
 -Ponsibiiit, of S:n?.4 dtSver^Ch""' 
 
 their rep^^^L'^ XZ^'Z" f ■jr"^"" " 
 "serious obieotions tn r.r • ^' *" *"' ■»■"<', 
 
104 
 
 CHRISTIAN INSTRUCTION 
 
 objection on that ground, some may think, is implied 
 in his reference to " the limits of official authority," 
 But he objects, in . particular, that " it would be 
 impossille for a teacher to give Christian instruction 
 without more or less frequently giving his remarks 
 a denominational tinge." 
 
 Referring now specially to the views of the Min- 
 ister, we must admit that there is, on the part of a 
 small percentage off the Protestant or non-Catholic 
 profession of the Province, such a wide divergence 
 from the common Christianity of Protestants that 
 the teachers' instructions could not but seriously con- 
 flict with views which Protestants generally regard 
 as very erroneous. We cannot suppose, however, 
 that it is to this that the Minister refers. In other 
 words, we cau at suppose that he argues that the 
 great majority of the Protestant profession are to be 
 denied what they regard as a most important benefit 
 to their children and, as they believe, to the com- 
 munity at large, on the simple ground that there is a 
 small minority, as wo shall see — not more than one in 
 twenty — whose views are abnormally divergent from 
 the common Christianity of Protestants, and whose 
 children no one will think of compelling to receive 
 the teachers' religious instructions. We suppose, 
 t \erefore, that he can only mean that it is " impos- 
 sible " for a teacher who belongs to one of the five 
 great Protestant churches of Ontario, which together 
 include 93 per cent of the Protestant profession of 
 the Province, to give instruction in its common 
 
W THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS OF ONTARIO. 106 
 Christianity, without "tmeintr" nr a • . 
 
 i^tructi.™ with ft, dJnXf .«:h,i':rhL^ '" 
 opiuioa .h.?tLrcr -Tot r""'"i "■• 
 
 with the tMchiiu? of fhrw V ° owordMCe 
 Methodirt ChS 1h ru ?^"*»"'«'t; that*, 
 
 Cho«h. there are i^ ?""'•" '""^<'<' <" «>« 
 
 ASSESS?- 
 
 h« been found t rewU tL're^"^ "' •"° '""'°"'*y 
 
 o.a.. with thel^rl^ree^intuT rXS'; 
 .™n«en.ente in ,871, n.neh Ie« .houMthtt ^y 
 
106 
 
 CBRIStlAN iNSTRUCnojl 
 
 difficulty in the introduction into the Public Schools 
 of Ontario, not only of the religions teaching of the 
 English Board Schools, but of a religious teaching 
 embracing the whole of the common Christianity of 
 93 per cent, of the Protestants of the Province. 
 
 Referring to the danger of tilling the land with 
 " sectarian strife," by the introduction into the Public 
 Schools of religion^ instruction, we propose, further 
 on, to deal somewhat fully with the matter of sec- 
 tarianism, and with the difficulty supposed by some 
 to be involved in the differences among Protestant 
 Christians.* Meantime let us remind our brethren 
 of the significant fact which is patent to every one, 
 and which we all gratefully acknowledge, that, with 
 the exception of a small percentage, the Protestants 
 of the Province are homogeneous in their Christian 
 beliefs and sentiments to such an extent that the 
 ministers of the different churches not only co-operate 
 in Christian effort, but occupy each others' pulpits 
 without exciting a suspicion of the denomination to 
 which they belong, so far as difference of doctrine is 
 concerned. What then can there be to hinder a 
 teacher, however firmly attached he may be to the 
 church of his conviction, from imparting instruction 
 in the common Christianity of Ontario, without being 
 guilty of the folly of even flavouring his instructions 
 with his denominational peculiarities ? 
 
 Once more it is objected by our brethren, and it 
 may be that the late Minister sympathizes with them in 
 
 ' See Chapter VIII. 
 
I» TBI PDBLIC SCHOOtS OF ONTAIIIO. 107 
 
 the objection „ we know «»,« other, do ; th.t the« 
 "e tho« m the r.nk. of the p«,fe«ion who " ann^ 
 ^on"^-^",- "" ''-f^''l"""'mn^i'»iZ 
 
 Proynml te«her. who. if not oppc«d to Chri" 
 t»n.ty.«, jgnor^tof ite tewhing^'^^ «, f„™ 
 they know them. a« .keptici or o^ of .y,„p,thy " 
 «l.ho„ to them An objection of thi, kind C^ Z 
 
 ^mSke'liS.?*? 'r'- ""r '""' *• '"^ ""P-"'"" 
 to make light of it, or to underestimate it. a. will 
 
 2Z17-' ™""' "" ™P»t»~. we come to 
 d«l,^th ,t ,n a separate chapter. But me«,time. 
 
 tt^!?* "' °l"""™ " '»«<''''"y' ">« evil i. one 
 
 ^ 1 JL"" ** "^''^^ '«■' »"«'>' *o be reme- 
 ied, altogether apart from the int«>duction of 
 
 SctrChlSr"™.'"'""' "■=*"*^ '^"'o school 
 tiTtL S\""T'™'™«"<"'<»»oCa.ri8tian inetruc- 
 
 .trongly masted on by those with whom we are now 
 at .ssue. « no ph«e for the .gnostic or the atheist.I 
 
 theideal of the Journal, is not at least an honest 
 behever m Christianity. If. as cannot be doul^ 
 eome of our legally qualified teachers an, not in 
 aympathy with the common Christiamty of the P,^ 
 vince or are. in plain terms, infidels in relation to 
 Chrafanity. their position ia an itt^i one. By^ 
 cealmg their sentiments, they hZ, under a fX 
 
108 
 
 (THRIHTIAN INSTRUCTION 
 
 avowal of » Christiftn faith, crept into the profewion 
 or entered it surreptitiously. For it is only as avowing 
 a Christian faith— Roman Catholic or ProtesUnt— a 
 faith which includes nothing less than a frank and 
 honest acoeptonce of the divine origin of the Chris- 
 tian religion, that they are licensed to teach in th< 
 National Schools. We are not called to enter, ir 
 these pages, on a formal defence of the law on thii 
 point, believing, as we do, that it needs no defence oi 
 the part of -Iny one. And besides it is held by tho8< 
 with whom we are now at issue. " that Christianitj 
 being the baws of our school system, its principle 
 should pervade it throughout" But accepting th 
 law as It stands, we cannot overlook the existenc 
 of an evil which ought to be firmly dealt with unti 
 if it canno*. be entirely suppressed (as what evil can ' 
 it should be reduced to a minimum, and, when s 
 reduced, kept down by constant watchfulness on th 
 part of all concerned, not by the action of pareni 
 and trustees only, but by that of the Educatic 
 Department As to the charge of intolerance an 
 persecution, grounded on the exclusion from the pp 
 fession of those who do not accept the Christii 
 religion, or are hostile to it. refutation of it is supe 
 fluous. Our people, as we have said, surely have tl 
 right to determine what qualifications are essenti 
 in those to whom the education of their children 
 committed ; and no one is justified in raising a c 
 of intolerance on the ground of what is simply t 
 limitation of the choice of a profession, by the dema 
 
«f TBI PUBLIC SCHOOLS OF ONTARIO. 109 
 
 Of a qualification which, in the judgment of p»,^„te 
 .. e«ent,al in the intere,t. of S chihlr^ A 
 
 TZ r. "l^' * "^*"*'*^ * '^^^^^^ other ways 
 than by teaching. Nor i, ho hindered from doing lo 
 by teaching, if. believing that teaching is his voZ 
 
 J^lZJtl' \ •" • "^"^ ^"^*^^-"' « - <^o^t 
 
 bihty^^ thousands have done before, who ha!re. on 
 
 Ztlu" "tr V ^""^'' ^*" ^"•''^^'^d disc,u«litied 
 to teach in the National Schools. 
 
 It is more than likely that some will regard the 
 
 ZaTl 1 '^:J^'-« P^ - unnatisfactoo^' 
 It may be that there are those who can by no anZ 
 ment be persuaded that Christian instruction, suchas 
 we contend for is not w«,ng in principle. But w^ 
 «hall not have laboured in vain, if we succeed in con! 
 firmng some m the persuasion that no accepted prin- 
 ciple of na lonal action forbids our rule.^ Jo assume 
 the responsibility of the Christian instruction of thi 
 
 ati ' h''' ir'"" -' '"' ""^^ - ^^^ «>»t-ry. i •: 
 
 at once their duty and their wisdom to make suitable 
 and adequate provision for such instruction by quali- 
 fied teachers ; and that their delaying to do so involves 
 the continuance of a great anomaly, which is far from 
 creditable^ us as a Christian nation, and whicH 
 
 Catholics, who are not a large fraction of the popula- 
 tion, are constitutionally and permanently secured in 
 
 I T'i"^ w ''^ """^ °°* ^"'P^^^^^ continue 
 to be denied to us, so long us not a few of us 
 
! ! 
 
 Ill i; 
 
 110 CHRISTIAN INSTRUCTION 
 
 are only half-hearted in our contention, and some 
 
 even opposed to it. 
 
 We have yet to consider, First, whether the obliga- 
 tion resting on our rulers and. as we have seen 
 acknowledged by them, in relation to the religion, 
 instruction of the children of the Protestant popula 
 tion of the Province is adequately discharged by th( 
 permisdon which, under certain regulations, relegate 
 to clergymen the Christian instiuction of the youn] 
 in the Public Schools; or whether the arrangemen 
 referred to is not essentially unreasonable and unwisi 
 as being generally impracticable and, as we shall sei 
 seriously inadequate, because of its making no pre 
 vi ion for the religious instruction of those who ai 
 most in need of it: and. Second, Whether the pract 
 cal difficulties which, it is admitted, stand in the wa 
 of the communication of religious instruction by tl 
 accredited teachers of the Province are such as to 
 insuperable, or whether they are only such as may 1 
 more or less easily and sufficiently obviated by re 
 sonable endeavour on the part of those who have « 
 interest in the education of the young. If it can 
 shown as we believe it can, that to expect Christi. 
 ministers to undertake the work of religious instri 
 tion in the day school permanently or otherwise th; 
 provisional^, is to expect what is unreasonable a 
 impracticable, and that there are no m upera 
 obstacles in the way of its communication by t 
 qualified and salaried teachers of the Province, c 
 alternative only is before our rulers. Either th 
 
IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS OF ONTARIO. HI 
 
 must assume the direct responsibility of the religious 
 m. ruction of the children of the ProWnce wTtn 
 
 isters of religion by simply asking them to do n.ore 
 for their own children than they are already doinj 
 or they must resolve that, so far as they are con^Zd 
 
 ionl'n'r "' ''^ ^""" '' *^« PrLstant p^lt: 
 «u3n shall be. as it is now. conclusively secular^d 
 
 sibi .ty of the instruction of the children of Roman 
 Catliohc parents in the distinctive teachings of Sr 
 
 Jf Protestant ministers cannot accept as a favour 
 from our rulers, the permission to teach UieTrchuZ 
 once a week in the Public School «,om they tui 
 doubless continue to do their dnf^ i ' ^^^^ 7»^' 
 With ».„. eonvenienee oft: at^p,^, 7X'2 
 
 llTl'f "o ,'««'«' 'heir instnacUonJ A^ 
 «ithtt^e,rhdpe«,„ the work of Christian inatrac 
 
 the moral degeneracy which only the knowLt of 
 Chnafan truth can effectnally ^^tmin. But'' o»1 
 
 l^lZltT"' "T ^'^'^"■'^y <" the continued 
 Ignorance of many whose parents, prejudiced aa tl,»u 
 
 ■nsCufn f : "'!"• "=''''^™ ^e^ei'e Christian 
 
 UvelTforbidd™'. ""^ "'"• "" ■""" "thorita. 
 lively torbidden to impart it.* 
 
 See Chap. VIL, pp. 117,119. 
 
rr== 
 
 I h 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 ^™trL oivU r»l«, .-d «.her,i» „b,,ct,on.l.l.. 
 
 We propose in thU chapter to deal frankly »ith t 
 
 SLnt which give, to Christ,a„ «.n«U 
 
 under'' certain regulations a Perm«»v«. t^ .»p 
 
 religious instruction in the Pubhc Schools of I 
 
 SK-vtoce. This is a subject in regard to «h 
 
 iU^usidered statement, have, from ''■»» ^ *" 
 
 aoneared in print, being perhaps for the most p 
 
 ^rrTteachers- meetings a„d by the younger m. 
 
 C of the profession. Speaking generally, we 
 
 ^o^s^ how ft can. after due oonsideraUon te q, 
 
 L„«l that the arrangement .a an unhappy^ 
 
 Instead of conferring a pnvdege on a minister 
 
 J'r^him an opportunity of doing good wh.c 
 
 Cnot alread/orotherwise VO^-^^^J 
 
 his doing what he not only can do. but is proo 
 
 n^w a^tLly doing, at a more seasonable hme 
 
 :"«. W' convenience in other -P^t^. ^o' 
 
 Timif and toothers. The more wet^n„kot.t^ 
 
 our own point of view, the more closely .t appea 
 
 112 
 
IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS OP ONTARIO. 113 
 
 US that we have, in the relegation of Christian 
 "»truet,oninthe.lay school to the mi^te™™ " 
 
 n;::prirrr "'"^'""^"''' "•» "-^^otz 
 
 d^termine the duties !l it^rXts ""^'"""^ '» 
 The subject is one in regard to which a difference 
 of opjn,on could hardly fail to manifest itseirZrt 
 » to be regretted that utterances should tei^tW 
 on either side fitted to excite, if not to jusWyTrrita 
 
 mfai,? K °*r- ^"^ ""'"S''' - ">» -rite be r,t 
 ministers have been more sinned acainst t\ZZ 
 
 have sinned, in the strife of wordsTh C Wn J • 
 
 ^jed by their pi^tically ignoring tht a™„» 
 
 ment, instead of cordially and gratefully «.eenti^"Tt 
 
 «. aome msist they ought to do it would "Tmaftlr 
 
 of wonder if none of them had even .^ken l^t 
 
 Regretting .ny unguaried expressions Thich he mal 
 
 wmt hf td"^ "''' "»""'' -' •» 4 «-,'« 
 
 wui be his endeavour now, while protesting against 
 
 iderarrr""' r' ™"''™»« ^'■»' 'h«^»n. 
 .■derate condemnation of hie brethren, to say nothintr 
 inconsistent with the respect that is due ^iTZl 
 cannot see things in the light in which he Werth™ 
 
 that has for years been given to the ministers 7l 
 
 tions have recently been in a h.rge me^ure wHh- 
 drawn. m the hope of making it lesf objection:bir::;fd 
 
114 CHRISTIAN INSTRUCTION 
 
 unacceptable. But if we do.it is chiefly, if not< 
 
 tfrely.Lause we regard it as an official and authc 
 
 tative testimony to the great importance of jom, 
 
 ChriBtian instruction with the other lessons ^f | 
 
 school, and as an acknowledgment by the a 
 
 authorities, of their obligation to see to it that W 
 
 youthful subjects are well informed in the pnnci] 
 
 of Christianity. And could they be persuaded 
 
 make Christian instruction a constituent part of 
 
 work of the school, ministers would probably be s 
 
 willing to give their services /or a tvme, in vie. 
 
 the fa^t that some time must elapse before teac 
 
 • generally could be expected to be fully qua hfied f 
 
 work that has not hitherto been required of them 
 
 is against the permanent-not a provi8imal--vel 
 
 tion of religious instruction in the Public Schoo 
 
 the ministers of religion that we are constraint 
 
 protest. Apart from its essential unreasonablenei 
 
 being the occasion of inconvenience which is n 
 
 be measured by the amount of time required, sue 
 
 arrangement is. as we shall see. very objectional 
 
 other important respects. A little consideration si 
 
 suffice to show that any permission that the law 
 
 gives to ministers is not of a kind fitted to pre 
 
 the end that our contention has in view. It over 
 
 the evil that we are seeking the abatement of. 
 
 pleading for the introduction of Christian instrv 
 
 into our Public Schools, we are told that we mii] 
 
 are at liberty, not only to instruct our ^n ch 
 
 out of school hours as formerly. I..- to wai 
 
IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS OP ONTARIO. II5 
 
 arrangement with the trustees which will nr^.- „ 
 give us a portion of th« r«„.!i 7- T Practically 
 that even 1 TnislL of ^^^^ ^A^ ' *^"^« ' '^^^ 
 ^re now permittedtl t tl'tnt^^^^^^ 
 among themselves, that each of them ^1^"" 
 instruct the children of fh« «*i, ^ ^" *"™ 
 
 own. the ,,.at obj^ ^'ht ^^wT, 7™ "-f '/ 
 and nothing is sugcrested in ♦hi r i , '^^* °^' 
 chief „.4 orTreCtl "ri ^^fj?-""^- 
 than any other makes i,« -rT u • ^"'**' "'^^^ 
 
 ofthe/™vi„e;"^r„; rz:t/^^"r 
 
 Public Sohc^l't^Cinst^nf 1" """■ f' 0" 
 
 All be avowedly leaCd with rh •?—.'" """'' 
 «re not unaware of thl t . , Clinstianity. We 
 
 nent pl«,e in the loof or Walbwln^ "f- " '?"""■ 
 common Protestant ChrsCitv of th.p'''' " "" 
 made a part of th, «.l.™r ^ ° Province to be 
 
 of all th^ TOib c«ep7 o^T"""":' "'■ "- ^«"=«« 
 pressly objL'to ■ X '„ ^-J-^- ^'^^ e.- 
 
 of the povertv in f ho i, i / *"® increase 
 
 poverty m the knowledge of Biblp fnnfo j 
 
 principles which is already prevail^ fn k 
 
 senous and alarming extent. ^^^^'^'''^ ^ «««h * 
 
n— ~ 
 
 . ' 
 
 i ! 
 
 lie CHRISTIAN INSTRUCTION 
 
 When, therefore, we are reminded that we may i 
 
 each of us, into the school-room once a week, and th. 
 
 and then give a Christian lesson to our young peoj 
 
 and when we do not manifest a cordial appreciat 
 
 of the supposed privilege, it should save us fr 
 
 reproach, that it is not about our own children t 
 
 we are ma=nly, if at all, concerned m our pres 
 
 argument, ^here is no propriety in our educatic 
 
 authority saying to us, as in effect it does. If ; 
 
 think the children of your congregation are 
 
 receiving sufficient instruction in Christian kn 
 
 ledge from their parents and their Sunday Scl 
 
 teafhers, you may have the Public School roon 
 
 which to give them another lesson once a week. 
 
 our Christian rulers persuade themselves that 
 
 should content us. as proving that they are j=ea 
 
 for the Christian education of our youth, they 
 
 very much mistaken. It does not content us bp 
 
 ing freely, as we ought to do, but yet with all 
 
 respect that is due to our present rulers, not 
 
 officially but personally, we ^»«°t^"\.'^g«;^. 
 
 relegating to the ministers of religion the Chn 
 
 instruction of the Public School, as the evasion 
 
 responsibUity, and not the dischirge of an ol 
 
 tion, which is cordially admitted i^ string term. 
 
 viously quoted. When we are told that the s( 
 
 room is open to us for an hour's instruction o 
 
 own children every week, it is forgotten tha 
 
 great concern dees not respect our own chi 
 
 They, of course, are our special charge and care. 
 
 E i 
 
IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS OF ONTARIO. 117 
 
 as • matter of fact, thei, religious instruction is com- 
 
 and with much greater convenience of time and place 
 
 hours. W e know, mdeed. from the experience of our 
 own early years an the parish school of our native 
 
 da^ Christ" '• '^:'"'"^^' ^^^'"'^^ School, that the 
 daily Chnstian instruction of the Public School would 
 he. great benefit even to them, but only as an addi- 
 
 rZ/l „% '°'^''7^'*^^ they already possess. 
 Tliey are not in need of it and dependent on it as 
 many others are. and to send us to the Public School 
 t«givea«,,.aZinstruction to those who are le^ 
 in need of instruction, and that. too. at the very time 
 when those who are most in need of it. but are denied 
 It. are perhaps amusing themselves in the play- 
 ground, would, to say the least, very possibly only 
 
 our own young people might join cordially, or not 
 
 benefited by ,t. they would not improbably if not 
 veiy certainly, yield themselves to unpleaint feel- 
 It a Lr°Jf ' ?k''"^ '"^^'"^ '"^^^ »P«" them, 
 their ^^dom^" ''''' ''''^'-''''^-' -- -J^^W 
 We have refemd in a passing way to an arrange- 
 ment m which Christian ministers could cordially 
 acquiesce, and m accordance with which they could 
 
 believe, they are as willing, at least, as any ither 
 
118 
 
 CHillSTIAN INSTRUCTION 
 
 i ijll 
 
 class to serve, and that without any thought of pec 
 
 niary compensation. Were restrictions withdrawn, 
 
 perhaps let us rather say, were our rulers, recognizi 
 
 their obligation to care for the education of th 
 
 young subjects in Christian principles— Protestant 
 
 well as Roman Catholic— to determine on maki 
 
 Christian instruction, such as has been indicated, a o 
 
 stituent part of the daily or stated work oC the sch< 
 
 Christian nrinisters would, we have no doubt, regi 
 
 it as their duty and their privilege to engage ii 
 
 jyroviaionaUy and temporarily, to the full exteni 
 
 the requirements of the public interest For al 
 
 the exclusion of Christian instruction from 
 
 schools for more than a generation, it could hai 
 
 but be expected that seme time must elapse he 
 
 teachers generally could effectively imparii instruc 
 
 on a subject, an acquaintance with which has n< 
 
 been required as a qualification for their office. 
 
 present arrangement, we have seen, is not fitte< 
 
 promote the end which is our chief concern, in 
 
 tending for Christian instruction in our Public Sch 
 
 It makes no provision for the religious instructic 
 
 those wlio are most in need of it. It contemp 
 
 only the further instruction of those whose oj 
 
 tunities of instruction arc already, for the most 
 
 more or less sufficient. While these would douV 
 
 receive important benefit from a general exerci 
 
 religious instruction in the day school, they coul 
 
 we have said, hardly be expected to take well i 
 
 exercise exceptionally and, as they might t 
 
IK THB PltBLlC SCHOOLS OP ONTARIO. 119 
 
 unnecessarily curtailing their freedom. And add to 
 this, that we speak from knowledge when we say 
 that there are parents who either cannot or will not 
 give their children Christian instruction, and who 
 will not place them under the influences of the 
 Church, but who would willingly, or not unwillingly, 
 hare them receive such instruction in the day school 
 where it is now denied them, though they are above' 
 all others in need of it. A great inconsistency ! it may 
 be said. But our nature is full of the most flagrant 
 inconsistencies, and most of all in relation to matters 
 of religion. Ministers would gladly instruct all who 
 are willing to receive their instructions. But, unhap- 
 pily, there are those who are prejudiced against min- 
 isters and churches. This probably goes far to explain 
 the inconsistency referred to. and suggests another 
 argument in favour of committing the religious 
 instruction of the day school to the qualified Chris- 
 tian teacher. 
 
 Upon the whole, we cannot but think that to one 
 who will take a careful'and candid view of the matter 
 in all Its bearings, the arrangement now under con- 
 sideration should appear, even on its merits alone, to 
 be an unhappy endeavour to meet a felt and acknow- 
 ledged obligation. Even if it did not impose on 
 ministers of religion a duty which is to a great extent 
 or in many cases impracticable, the arrangement we 
 must be permitted to say, is essentially unwise, how- 
 ever well intend .d it may have been. Some, no doubt, 
 will be disposed to maintain the contrary opinion. It 
 
m 
 
 120 
 
 CHRISTIAN INSTRUCTION 
 
 may be well therefore briefly to show how much it 
 would, in many cases, be entirely beyond the power of 
 the most zealous of ministers to do what the arranjj^e- 
 ment contemplates. 
 
 While Christian ministers are, as a class, not 
 unready for service in the public interest, we are well 
 aware that there are those who think otherwise. 
 There are some who are not able to understand how 
 ministers can get their time disposed of, having so 
 little to do, six whole days of the week, or how they 
 can ever be at a loss to find time for anything. Con- 
 siderate people, however, see that this is a very great 
 mistake, easily accounted for, indeed, on the well- 
 known and largely accepted principle that, as those 
 who have no children know best how to train them, 
 so those who are outside of a profession or occupation 
 know best what its duties are and how to fulfil them. 
 The writer's own case may be referred to as not an 
 uncommon one. It has always, for near half a cen- 
 tury, been a pleasure to him to be engaged in public 
 service, and before his retirement from the active 
 duties of the pastorate, he had, for over thirty years, 
 not a little to do in connection with the local schools, 
 his interest in them involving a considerable expendi- 
 ture of time. But, however willing he might have 
 been to add to his other duties that of giving stated 
 religious instruction in the day schools attended by 
 the children of his congregation, he could not have 
 done so without serious encroachment on the time 
 required for the proper discharge of his duties as a 
 
them Unit h^^^^T ' "'' """ *" ■"" ™« »' 
 
 •irangement ia ne th.t „• • . "" P'**"' 
 
 only feo- parSi^ly .^^dwT" ~"" ""^ »"' 
 w highly. ""y »PPn>»e of it ever 
 
 t.kt tato 1^ »" 'IB^n-ent in relation to . n.i,. 
 
 .n instructive il J,ll"n "f ^,^i ««'™>*r«I « 
 of even Christian r^.. onhappy tendency 
 
 to act aalf Cte™t:,„lrr' """"^'""^ -^ 
 
 wt:h^nri£=r--— ^ 
 rt hC^ S^'^^^^^^^^^^^ 
 
 "cijopem the sequel to oonieirla.. *u' \ 
 
 more fully Rut m^o«*- consider this charge 
 
 *""^. cut meantime we aslr To ;* „,- ^ 
 
 O'Terence, are in o„ eati„„tion of a trio^'tu^l 
 
lit 
 
 CHRISTIAN iNnrRucnoK 
 
 If ;!ii 
 
 II !ll' 
 
 
 For when ministers are asked to go into the school- 
 room and to teach their own children and them only, 
 is it not implied that they may be expected, as they 
 are given the full liberty, to teach the (liatinctive 
 views of their several (Unominationn f And what is 
 this but the introduction of seetai'ian instruction into 
 our schools ? And can any one say that it is any- 
 thing but unwise ? Is it not unwise to begin so early 
 to teach our childiten to say, " One, I am of Paul, and 
 another, lam of Apollos"? While we are charged 
 with agitating for the introduction of controversial 
 and sectarian teaching, the least consideration will 
 show that our aim is the reverse of sectarian. Surely 
 no one can justly describe as sectarianism the giving 
 of lessons in the common Christianity of 95 per cent 
 of the Protestant profession of the Province. On the 
 contrary, it would be a striking testimony against 
 sectarianism: whereas the arrangement which we are 
 denounced for regarding as unwise and impracticable 
 is essentially sectarian. 
 
 It may be said that this sectarian aspect of the 
 present arrangement would disappear wpre ministers 
 of the different denominations to agree among them- 
 selves to teach in turn every one the other's children 
 together with their own. In reference to this, we 
 can only repeat that if, on the understanding that 
 Christian instruction is to become a rerognized por- 
 tion of the school programme, ministers are asked to 
 engage in it provisionally and temporarily until 
 teachers shall have become generally qualified to be 
 
 
m TBE ro,uc 8CBOOU or ommo. 123 
 •ntnuted with it, they will we iir.«.~ i- t , 
 
 wi'H„K to «>„.piy with'whJ- t:;'rr± j"::,"^ 
 
 «»~n.blera.,„e.ti„ the intercfof the^rll 
 Bi .four educational «uthoritie», believin. rrhlfr 
 «t.«. .how. they do. th.t their young .„,S^'^2 
 he wen ,n.t™et«J in Chri,ti.„ principlei^hou^St 
 
 Xch2.y- r'!"' • ~"'P«"«ncy tocommuni. 
 
 prp::^;rtrh:::re:r,ri:irj;^^^ 
 3n:,it-i:rwt£r-4- 
 
 cnnot but think that te Zk the^ ^iet^for : 
 
 :nrwrnKfl':sru;:-r;i;:t^^^^ 
 
 oj„:iirto^;"f;'Eu-!s:irnr:h7 
 
 P"P.1». Already the n,o,t of then, ™ e h^lil""'" 
 « made a necessary qualification. ^ '* 
 
■ i ! 
 
 'u: 
 
 ',1 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 Practical difficulties— I. Differences among Protestants— High 
 order of their unity, and their differences a trifle. 
 
 In taking up, as we now propose to do, the fuller 
 consideration of the practical difficultien that stand in 
 the way of the introduction into our schools of in- 
 struction in the common Christianity of the Protest- 
 ants of Ontario, we are, as will appear, not disposed 
 to belittle them, unless the pointing out of the error 
 of those who inconsiderately magnify them be 
 regarded as a belittling of them. These difficulties 
 are chiefly two, and have already been referred to. 
 But in view of the fact that some speak of them as if 
 they were insuperable, and as if a simple appeal to 
 them ought to constrain us to drop our contention, a 
 fuller examination of them is necessary. One of 
 them, which will fall to be considered in our next 
 chapter, appears, at first sight, we freely admit, to be 
 of a very serious nature. But there are some who 
 certainly attach undue weight to both of them, and 
 who appear to be indisposed to deal with them in a 
 hopeful spirit, though, as we believe, neither of them 
 can reasonably be regarded as unsurmountable. 
 
 124 
 
IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS OP ONTAkiO 125 
 
 closely. S„.h . difficulty ifSTrr" 77 
 jn the. Wew. of t ee'LlV^X^lrX ll^?: 
 
 of the ivoLtaCrjL^r P^:ri!rr 
 
 the wild human intellect. restrain 
 
 The difl5culty arising from divergence of nn.n,- • 
 
 them and equally re^ardpH Kv fi, 7 , ^^ 
 But should anv fh^nffi! ^^™ "^ fundamental 
 ^^^_*«3^ *hink otherwise, we need not dispute 
 
 "Cardinal Newman: " Apologia pro Sua viu." 
 
 tSeep. 23. 
 

 il^^i 
 
 126 
 
 CHRISTIAN INSTRUCTION 
 
 the matter with them. The Roman Catholics have 
 succeeded in their contention for the establishment of 
 national or government schools in which their children 
 are daily instructed in the distinctive teachings of 
 their religion. It may be that we cannot say that the 
 establishment of the Separate School system entirely 
 removes the difficulty arising from diversity of view 
 in relation to the teaching of Scripture. But we do 
 say that it reduces it immensely and, as we shall see, 
 goes far to remove it entirely. The utmost that they 
 can reasonably desire, in the matter of the Christian 
 education of their children, has been permanently 
 secured to our Roman Catholic fellow-citizens by 
 legislative enactment. Provincial and Imperial. And 
 it can be shown, as we shall see, that the differences 
 among Protestants— that is, the great body of them — 
 are really nothing in view of their higher unity. For 
 such they regard their all but unanimous cordial 
 acceptance of the great truths of the peculiar gospel 
 of our salvation. If so, as no one can reasonably 
 question, is it not a grave injustice to the Protestant 
 profession of the Province that, on the ground of their 
 not being at one by what they would regard as a 
 renunciation of their manhood, they should be 
 denied the instruction of their children in their com- 
 mon Christianity by Christian teachers, the payment 
 of whose salaries is laid upon them ? 
 
 That in addition to the few who may be opposed 
 to Christian instruction, wherever or by whomsoever 
 imparted, there may be a small remnant of Roman 
 
IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS OP ONTARIO. 127 
 
 Catholics whose children, as a matter of convenience 
 or of parental preference, resort to the Public School 
 cannot reasonably be pleaded in justiBcation of the 
 denial to Protestants of a privilege cordially granted 
 to Roman Catholics, and secured to them in the con- 
 stitution of the Dominion. For can anything be more 
 unreasonable, not to say unjust, than that after cor- 
 dially yielding to a minority a privilege which they 
 regard as valuable, the majority should be required to 
 forego equal privilege-the privilege of Scripture 
 instruction, which, it is well understood, Protestants 
 value not less highly than Roman Catholics do ? We 
 are far from attaching to the Roman Catholic minor- 
 ity the responsibility of the unprecedented anomaly 
 against which we reclaim. We have no reason t« 
 think that the Roman Catholics of Ontario are un- 
 wilhng to submit to the disadvantage common to all 
 minorities— that, namely, of not having the rule of 
 the majority. Having had accorded to them by the 
 Protestant majority a reasonable respect for their 
 convictions and feelings, we have no reason to think 
 that they would have the majority to denude them- 
 selves of their right to rule. If the responsibility of 
 the continued denial of Christian instruction in the 
 Public Schools of the Province is to be appropriated, 
 unwilling as we are to appropriate it, we cannot but 
 ascribe it largely to those who allow themselves to be 
 dominated by the groundless and false persuasion, or 
 rather let us say, imagination, that while Roman 
 Cathohcs are one in doctrine under their spiritual 
 
128 
 
 CHRISTIAN INSTRUCTION 
 
 sovereign, Protestants are, like the early Christian 
 community in which every one was saying, " I am of 
 Paul, and I of Apollos, and I of Peter, and I of 
 Christ," so divided among themselves that the children 
 of one Protestant church cannot be given religious 
 instruction that will not be in conflict with the teach- 
 ings of others. And let us say that candour forbids 
 our acquitting our rulers of participation in a per- 
 suasion which, one, would think, cannot well be enter- 
 tained by any person of good understanding and 
 intelligence. Let us therefore see how much, or 
 rather Itow little, the difficulty before us amounts to. 
 We look upon it as beyond all question that far too 
 much has been and is being made of the differences 
 among Protestants, as being a bar to the religious 
 instruction of their children in the day school, which 
 does not exist in connection with the Separate School. 
 When duly considered, these differences are a very 
 nothing, or, as it is sometimes expressed, a bagatelle, in 
 comparison with the extent to which, as Christians, 
 Protestants are at one. We speak, of course, of the 
 great majority of Protestanta There are professing 
 Protestants, whose religious views differ very widely 
 from those held by the great body of Protestants. 
 While of these we would not say an unkind word, we 
 must be permitted to say that we cannot divest our- 
 selves of the persuasion that it is barely possible for 
 a man frankly and cordially to accept the Scriptures 
 as the divinely inspired record of God's revelation of 
 His mind for our good, without coming, on a careful 
 
IK THE PUBUO SCHOOU or ONTiBIO. 129 
 
 and unprejudiood study of then., to coDclusioas !„ th. 
 main, at one with those held hv tk. "='"™";'. "> the 
 the P^testant profeTon if n ''''.«■«' ""'Jority of 
 There are inLT ... "*""" """^ elsewhere. 
 
 ^ their^wrdek™ tit^' ZITXT' ^^ 
 t»re to ascribe to its ».!»««, ":Cu;^ Tn.^: 
 
 of^r:tLf::i:f:i!:tt'Sintrt 
 
 ».s are, hyV^e ^^^ItioTfri^^^ ! tt 
 n operabon to lead astn.y fro„ tb. wa/of Truth "nd 
 righteousness, we cannot but reioiee thJ™ T. 
 favoured l,in,1 ti.„ "joice tJiat, in this 
 
 ofehe^pj^t^fp-.,— xrtt^i: 
 
 tenan and two Congregational-.nd the,; S 
 
 : 1 rt:i'rpir •'"°" f r^™ ^^^ ■=" 
 
 »c irrocesiant profession of the Prnvinoo ti 
 ""i-'^'^fi^'-efi^rentchu^ 
 
180 
 
 CHRISTIAN INSTRUCTION 
 
 do, with a single exception, occasioned, it is under- 
 stood, by legal obstruction) occupy each other's pulpits 
 without any feeling c5 restraint or fear of giving 
 offence, in declaring what they believe to be " all the 
 counsel of God " in relation to man's salvation. If so, 
 there cannot surely be any great difficulty in finding 
 a place in our schools for all the fulness of Christian 
 instruction that can reasonably be desired. 
 
 But though no one can but accept our reference to 
 what is now a common practice among ministers of 
 the different Protestant churches, as sufficiently justi- 
 fying our assertion that the differences among Pro- 
 testants are a mere nothing in comparison with the 
 extent to which they are at one, perhaps the strongest 
 and most striking and impressive illustration of the 
 extent to which Protestant Christians are agreed in 
 their views of Christian doctrine, and of the compara- 
 tive insignificance of their differences, may be seen 
 in the fact, already adve-ted to, that the churches 
 referred to, comprising, be it remembered, ninety-five 
 per cent of the whole Protestant profession of the 
 Province, would all of them cordially accept as the 
 expression of their views of Scripture teaching, the 
 Westminster Shorter Catechism in use among Presby- 
 terians, if only a very few clauses were omitted from 
 it. And many would be satisfied with only the mod. • 
 fication of one or two expressions. That catechism is 
 understood to be a very complete and comprehensive 
 system of Scripture teaching, expressed in terms 
 directly contradictory of the principal errors that 
 
™ THE PUBUO SCHOOLS rr ONTARIO. ,3, 
 
 the fulness of itete^h,^ f ^"' ""'"'""tanding 
 i. »ot held t eo^l^ t"rS° '"^ '''"' "«'' 
 —>y anything, InTed'^',^:: "J^Tf '"- 
 respecting infant baptism and tl^*^ lu "»'*■"<'»' 
 eions ,..hich characteS ^ ? ""^' <"'P"'«- 
 vinistio composition ByL^p^ l^'""''"' » ^al- 
 than five or six „„t of moreZn ^"'^'^""^ """^ 
 ments of Christian trut^d'te^Te mi tl "'"'*■ 
 catechism that would be ac-centabfe ,?„ * V" ' 
 of Pmtestants, and that w^d «lt Jr^Tl'"'^ 
 invaluable air) in .t ■ T text-book, be an 
 
 Not thaw* would '"''™°'T °' ""='' ">"''■•-• 
 
 formulation of the LroTSfr '•'""''■■ '" "'« 
 testants of Ontario for Th *^''"*"»»"y of the Pro- 
 
 Public Schc^h ait'h™, i ■. P""^ "' "struction in 
 -ay, thettiim "ialLTu''"'^;:'' "^ "■" 
 
 Schools of the Meth:^r'Si:„r:nVo:h'"''"''' 
 
 of the Shorter L!^h .""u ^^'"-^oW edition 
 
 theological and ^l""'"' "'""h, Wng an English 
 
 EnglisSbi:l:"S ^rr ""V""' """*'■' 
 ingofwhat is beTtTn tl^.T"'*^"" "'«""''<- 
 generations, sho^d nevfr o^l'*""""^' '■" ■""^ 
 
132 
 
 CHRISTIAN INSTRUCTION 
 
 Presbyterian, to have their common Christianity 
 formulated anew, for the purpose of instruction in the 
 Public Schools; as the common Christianity of the 
 Free Evangelical churches in England has been re- 
 cently formulated in a new catechism which appears 
 to be acceptable to them all. 
 
 It has long been our hope that, if our children 
 could, by any suitable arrangement, be secured in the 
 privilege of daily or stated (at the very least, semi- 
 weekly) instruction in our common Christianity, with 
 the addition, as they are becoming qualified for 
 entrance into the High School, of instruction in the 
 Evidences of Christianity, those of us who are not 
 greatly advanced in years might live to see unmis- 
 takable indications of the happiest results. We cannot 
 but believe that such instruction, especially if im- 
 parted by skilled and sympathetic teachers, could not 
 fail to prove to many a security against the unbelief 
 and the delusions of our time, and a means of saving 
 them from the ruin which numbers of our young 
 people heedlessly bring upon themselves. The writer 
 was, for over thirty years, officially connected with 
 the schools of his locality, first, as Local Superintend- 
 ent of Common Schools, and, when that office was 
 abolished, in 1871, as chairman of the High School 
 Trustees, till the infirmities of age compelled his 
 retirement from public duty. He has, for many 
 years, maintained publicly his present contention, as 
 he had opportunity. And now, notwithstanding the 
 continued exclusion of Christian instruction from the 
 
>» THE PUBUC SCHOOLS OF 0«TAR,o. 133 
 
 Public Schools, he amnot rive wav .., Hi 
 not «ei„g any i„,„pen.b,f ^jS"^ ''«°"".B«n.ent. 
 thercslizationof hiThn™ "™™"y "> the way of 
 » kis day. While he ^^i ., *^'' " ""^ »"» '»"«' 
 oomp.«tLly WeL'r ^r""^"" ">«'• "!"> 
 Pn.vincede.i^treS"'!'' ""t ^■«'«"«n'» of the 
 tion into our «ho^| ' Tl"'''"°" f •^''""*'-' ™trHc. 
 
 tHe™ are -I-lttd Sl'lTr "T "' 
 quite inconsistent, both wIthTh ^ ^'«'''" """ « 
 -bj«t and with tt inw I'tT'*"" T' """ 
 Iwve in it. But »ll tiJ '^"y ?«>'<«» to 
 
 -led, .ga^i:!" t x^-'of 1 '^r- ■'"' - 
 
 to be dealt with in due ti„,„ T °' *"«•* "gilati.m, 
 an active and ontaMen a^r^'™" *« stir np 
 "train even an nnw^li„„f ' ""'' " "ay ""n- 
 
 the wishes of ^^^27"'^*, *" ^" '"^' ^ 
 has been attach^ TT. o "^ ■*"?'"• »'»"•« 
 
 »« the hte S^r of M-'^"""'""' '"'' "'•^'■""^ 
 »he„ some, who LVd ^Tt'?l ""'' "■« "«" »" 
 him in reeren^ to th' "* »' ™"ance with 
 
 Christian inst^tio*: toV^t^tfc,""^*"'™ »' 
 ta^Ives constrained, at fc n^k'^'T"""' '"' 
 csm, puWicly to defend hL • """^ "="»■'■ 
 believed to be nnbstiS ."^'"" "*'" 'hey 
 
 a»we believrnX tt th"''rT''"". ^'''^ believed 
 »>ay be fnlly Ti^it^ It^ .f''""='«™ Department 
 
 'be Wishes of t'^^^" ^''t'' f" ""^ "•" 
 place of ChriWJor. • "unpeople m relation to the 
 
 Were the .^'f tCll" d"° t ^'"'•' «"■««'- 
 
 «tionof the fe^ww^^^tro •■*"'""' "P""- 
 
 ifuarawn, no Government could 
 
134 
 
 CHRISTIAN msniUCTIOM 
 
 resist the earnest pressure of a united Christian 
 people, OS, we believe, no Government, Liberal or Con- 
 servative, could entertain a thought of resisting it. 
 It is in this persuas on that we now renew the con- 
 tention that, with others, we niaintaine<l in the press 
 some years ago. This we do by putting before the 
 public, in permanent form, the views which, for many 
 years, we have striven to mainuiin, in the face of not 
 a little opposition. H we cannot now hope to see 
 what we have long laboured for, wi' cannot renounce 
 the hope that the Christian Government of Ontario 
 will sooner or later give effect to the claim of its 
 Christian people, to have Christian instruction 
 statedly given to their children bj teachers who are 
 not merely nominal Christians, but in full sympa- 
 thy with the religion which they profess. 
 
 But to close by returning to the practical difficulty 
 proposed for consideration in this chapter. We trust 
 it has been sufficiently shown that, so far from being 
 insuperable, there is really nothing serious in it. 
 Our Roman Catholic fellow-citizens have, as a body, 
 been fully and firmly secured in their po-saession of a 
 privilege, or as they themselves would rather say, a 
 right which, we assume, Protestants generally value 
 as Roman Catholics do. It cannot be questioned that 
 the intelligent and consistent Protestant values the 
 Word of God and its teachings not less than the 
 intelligent and sinceroly pious Roman Catholic does. 
 It is true there are reasons why we cannot expect the 
 same unanimity among Protestants in regard to 
 
>N THI PUBUO SCH00L8 OF OKT«,a 131! 
 
 right, but felt by bin, Tt . , '" I-"*!'""'"' 
 "trance to sav aomA ™.„ r .... ™' nimaelf, as, 
 
 Pn.te.tontwie^e hZ„ J T '"''* ^•" "I"" 
 
 ("X"rjttetf"'"'v'»'^--^^ 
 
 ^-ge^ytheyareag^. Wby.tKolTh^t: 
 
 ra;xrrtbr;wiSe:':r^^^^ 
 
 tianity ? Why ahS p*^ -^ T °°'"'"°'' Chris- 
 
 exclusive privilege and ^.^7^17^^^'''' 
 •■^truotion of tbeir cbildren by te«he« "ir 
 
 of judgment "„^°'™' '"'"'^ '■y 'he submission 
 _i;fg::f;i^;;d_ o°nse.ence to their «iknow ledged 
 
136 
 
 CHRIilTIikN INSTRUCTION 
 
 head, the Roman Pontiff, and which cannot otherwlM 
 be secured ? Such a thought we can repel only with 
 the apostolic Mrf yirotrn, Qod forbid! Speaking 
 frankly, as we are called to do, our rulers ought to 
 know that, as Protestants, wo claim a far higher 
 harmony and infinitely more voliiahle, secured not by 
 our renunciation of the attributes of our humanity, 
 but by Divine guidance promised to the sincere and 
 earnest seeker, who " has an unction from the Holy 
 One, and knows all things" "that pertain to the life of 
 godliness." Contrary to what some may aver, there are 
 no previotis questions to be settled, wViether questions 
 which occupy the learned, or questions aboi t funda- 
 mentals. Happily our Christian people are not 
 dependent upon a priesthood of learned critics, or 
 upcp ,'\ny other priesthood. They have the Bible 
 in I... r hands, and have no suspicion, as they need 
 have none, that it has lost its inspiration of Qod by 
 being translated into their vernacular. And there- 
 fore they can nourish themselves on the "sincere 
 milk of the Word," and feed on " the bread of life " 
 without having to wait till the critics are unanimous; 
 and, while no one can draw a strict line between 
 fundamental and non-fundamental in Christian doc- 
 trine, the general agreement among Protestants makes 
 any attempt to do so altogether unnecessary. Let 
 the common Christianity of the great body of Pro- 
 testants, which can be formulated without any diffi- 
 culty, as it was in the birthtiue of our present British 
 liberty — civil and religious — be taught in our schools 
 
"-"try d«n,„d. it 2d u«i*t "'"""of o„, 
 •«cl.e« whom o«r «h«i it? ' ""^ ""' ""•"•<' 
 
 »1>V generally .re, rtWu„ Jf "" """" ^ •'<"""' 
 
 of the leru, Let thlTi "" ""y ''Wh^-t «n« 
 
 -ent of the wTo "the ct T .'T"*"* ''"P'rt- 
 in.i8ted on. For no'wn" t?'"" '""''" ■='"« t" ^ 
 « more oon.pic«o„, .^5' ."t •«""•<'«'. «>uld be 
 
 ,«j^on.ofo„~t" ™ Crtr I' "" 
 ledgmenfc of the error of th.i " "'® ^"*nk acknow- 
 
 ■n. that the ..WrroaKTuL'tfT""/" ^ - 
 one hour in the week t„ „ T° ««''Ool-rooin, 
 
 »l.o„ldbe«s.riedr.;t, ^^'"" '='"^"'«» 
 obligation in StTontthe^K''""'*' ^""'»"'» »' ">eir 
 young subjects- °°'°""'' '«''«'o»« instruction of their 
 
 «-n,f„ itJlTnn^In'Z'^T"' T""'"'"' "' •■»" 
 
 P-i,yin,p„„rbZ -rw:":;^''^ 
 
 f^m the respect due to our te«he J v!'- >•=">«««"« 
 >ng authoritative decIai^L ^T.^' "^ ^'"«» ""»<'- 
 Christian instructirnT t- "■ """"'"»« to give 
 '-jno^nce or wtf sym-lZa'"" ""'"''' '~"' 
 o/o»«««. .««. manifSgiSe^inTh"? '" " T"' 
 able to give Christian t..»k- *""■■"" being 
 
 *i'b it tfeirseve^rnora'tla";!"' -■-'''■■'•'■' 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 Practical difficulties-II. ChargeB of skepticiam, defective 
 knowledge and want of symimthy-A great injustice to 
 teachers as a body-The Protestant Church is eijual to 
 the full perennial supply of Christian teachers. 
 
 Referring to what has been said in our last chapter, 
 we trust we may proceed in our argument, on the 
 assumption that, while there are differences among 
 Protestants, and while a small percentage of profess- 
 ing Protestants hold views that are widely divergent 
 from those of the majority, there is a common Chris- 
 tianity, embracing a wide range of Christian teaching 
 easily formulated, which is the valued possession of 
 the great body of the Protestants of Ontario. And, 
 considering that Protestants so largely outnumber 
 the Roman Catholic element of the population, we 
 may even speak of it as the common Christianity of 
 the Province. Instructiop in this common Chris- 
 tianity with the addition, as has been suggested, of 
 simple lessons in the evidences of Christianity to 
 more advanced pupils, ought, we cannot but insist, to 
 be introduced into our schools, as a matter of even- 
 handed justice to the Protestant population of the 
 
 138 
 
m THE PDBIIO SOHOOIS OF OHTAIUO. 139 
 
 ftovince; but, apart from this, and above all .^h.in„ 
 
 ne^ry to the welfa,* „f tke co.,™„„Hy " 
 
 taUy appreciating, as we do, the difflcultiee of the 
 
 TTT^L "' r """^"'^ "'»°"«l fo' every indiea! 
 t.on of the advance of public opinion in favour ofTn 
 .rrangement, who«, int^IncUon cannotrr^flj 
 
 «sues of Its absence, which are already Bs^ra^t 
 And If, m our contention, we are giving expZbn 
 a. we behave we are, to the convictfon IdZZZ 
 of the great body of the Protestant profession TZ 
 Prnvmce we cannot but feel that a Lo^ lust t 
 « being done to them, in the continued exc!u,i,rftm 
 tt..r schools of the instruction which, they M^" 
 the r children's good, in common with he welltZ' 
 of the community, requires. There is, .s wV^v! 
 -e^ no need to settle any question tha irof"nte«^; 
 to Scnpture cntics. And as little is there any n?^ 
 to wa,t for the determination of what is ^ZmZ 
 fundamenu.1 in Christian teaching Our 3 ^n 
 e»Uy accept the Scriptures as the^trustwoS tS 
 
I 
 
 i 
 
 140 
 
 CHRISTIAN INSTRUCTION 
 
 minority, whose convictions and feelings shall be 
 treated with all due respect, is at some disadvantage, 
 as a minority must almost always be. 
 
 But, if the more we consider the differences among 
 Protestants as constituting a difficulty in the way 
 of the introduction of Christian instruction into our 
 schools the less formidable it appears, there is another 
 difficulty of a much more serious nature, and in view 
 of which the differences among Protestants cannot, 
 however magnified by some eyes, be regarded as 
 worthy of consideration. We refer now to what, we 
 apprehend, is regarded by some, and not without 
 apparent ground, as the greatest of all objections, if 
 it is not their only objection, to Christian instruction 
 by our Public School teachers— the difficulty of 
 making sure that the lessons of Christianity will be 
 taught by those who are in sympathy with them. 
 But even admitting the impossibility of our securing, 
 by any means, that the instruction of our children 
 shall, in no case, be committed to a teacher who is 
 not a genuine or (as the Edibcatwnal Journal has 
 phrased it) "true-hearted Christian," we think it 
 can be shown, as we hope to show, that the difficulty, 
 great as it is, may be largely obviated, or reduced to a 
 very small minimum, by the concurrent action of all 
 parties concerned in the religious instruction of the 
 youth of our country. 
 
 In the first place, we beg that it may be borne in 
 mind that the school law of the Province assumes 
 that our teachers are Christian men and women. 
 
W im PUBLIC SOBOOIS or OKTABIO. i« 
 f^h!"? '*'"; '?''^' "« «'"' " «^d by other, 
 
 atheistic sentiments Rnf *u^ 4. u . "6no»"C or 
 *i,^ n ""'"enw- iiut the teacher's contract wi*h 
 
 of theR„„a„ Ctholio or of the P,„tesU«t faith f 
 My tether magine, th.t the e;ipreesion •- Protestent 
 
 tae rerord of Divme revelation, we apprehend that 
 in fldr,f : I ^ r''' "■ ■'<•"«" Profiion of h^B 
 law tak«, the expression (Protestant faith) in itxt 
 *«^W meaning of thr« hundred and Z "« 
 
 ^t'r:::;r "*"' "-^ "^-'^ *» -"^ » '■-"-^ 
 
 tia^^''I"""™''« ""' '" <«"• teaehers are Chris- 
 t ans, ,n the «,nse and to the extent above indicatd 
 
 11 "A ' Z1^ "' ~°*''»'=y that all part™ »n 
 
 acceptance oTtentf ^t i^le^-''-''^ 
 ScHooIb Wk *k "* *"® Provincial 
 
 W^ •• rJ w" °' °°' *'"'' '"= 8»">"e °' "true- 
 ^carted Chnsbans is, of courae, not within the 
 
 mine, although .t „ a competency which ministers. 
 
142 CHBIOTIAN INSTRUOnOM 
 
 parente and tr«8t«» »re, .» we have "»• "O""*"^ 
 Car oppononte, « represented by «>« •{»'"^f ' *" 
 
 extreme topropriety of these Pf' » ^'f K*^-^., 
 selves up » judges of the j«ahty «'*«". 
 Christian profession, one thing may be very safely 
 « namely, that a teacher's derided ^tU^hmen^ 
 to a particular denomination may well be ^^'^f'^ 
 » r^Lmendation of more value than a «ore of eer- 
 tiS We ne'ed not, in these days, trouble onr- 
 s^rJTtith the fear that he will take advantage o 
 Tta ITtion to te«=h anything that is not a part o^ 
 t^^mmon Christianity of «» P~f «* "' ""{X ' 
 „hen such teaching is committed to "«»• ^f J' 
 Trust the time is not far distant when f'J. ' ''^; 
 teachers will be wanting in the recommendaUon .m 
 Slna man's intelligent and sincere "tt^h-nent Jo 
 th7ch»«h of his convictions. As to the ent.re and 
 u'u? exdusion from the profession <>' *- "^^^ 
 out of sympathy with the common Ch™t.amty of 
 the P™vh>ce, we have already referred to the mis- 
 taken Jotion of those who fancy that .t mvolves a 
 c^nt^entionof the principle of religious tolerat.on. 
 A In'! religious convictions are not interfered w, h 
 areTs held-to be disqualified tor "-e pos'*-."'^' 
 National School te«!her on the ground "-at he is an 
 Lostic or an atheist, or otherw»e opposed to the 
 agnosuc o country. To say nothing of 
 
 common religion ot nis couuvrj. j 
 
 the fact that such a man's «ceptance <^ the Uga^ 
 certificate, by which he professes him«,lf to be a 
 
IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS OF ONTARIO. 143 
 
 Chnsban p„renta, that are the suprel and deter- 
 
 MMher. If ,t ,„ believed to be in the interest of n„r 
 
 Chr«t,an,ty should be taught in our sehook »^nta 
 
 mparted to their children by teachers both „.n 
 .nfomied in them and in fulUymX wth t^et 
 
 V. K've unristian instruction to their nunils Tf +», 
 
1^ 
 
 144 CHRISTIAN INSTRUCTION 
 
 But. however serious may bo the difficulty tlmt is 
 
 now before us. we cannot regard it as be.ng .nsu^.r. 
 
 able. Even, if we should with some regard it as being 
 
 the greatest of all the practical difficulties which at 
 
 the pr^ent time, stand in the way of the introduction 
 
 of Christian instruction into our schools, we cannot 
 
 believe that the Protestants of Ontario are less cap- 
 
 able of dealing with religious difficulties, or any other 
 
 difficulties, than the ProtesUnts of the home lands 
 
 from whom we' are sprung, and whose endowment^^ 
 
 including force of character and power to grapple 
 
 with difficulties, we inherit We admit the serious. 
 
 * ness of the difficulty now confronting us^ But i< 
 
 cannot be insuperable to those who would, by propei 
 
 means, take it out of the way of the accomphshmen 
 
 of a groat and good purpose. 
 
 If as son.e appear to believe and do not hesitate t 
 
 aver the evil referred to is not very rare and excoF 
 
 tional. but so prevalent as to warrant their i^gardin^ 
 
 it as a bar to the permittingof our toachers to imp« 
 
 Christian lessons to their pupils, there must he son 
 
 cat^ to which we owe the e^stence of an evil th^ 
 
 in creatly to be deplored, as being m a high degn 
 
 diSTdiUble to the character of a profession which 
 
 second to none in its bearing upon the interests of tl 
 
 :_ity. It cannot but I. the effect of ^ 
 
 cause. And surely no one will say that it i? owi 
 
 to the fact that the young men and women of Onto 
 
 who enter the profession, are excephonaUy unpri 
 
 cipUd in the matter of religion, or that they are m< 
 
'" "' -"»"'' «»•«>« OF „NT*n,o. U5 
 
 it 1« »i<i that our tZC „ tl>o ^. p '?'; ^'« «'" 
 are low coranoteiit thr„ .T , . '^™'<»''»'>' faith " 
 
 we h.vo no h':^L«iTrjw r'°"- .°"' '»"'-• 
 « »o,t «„j„»t imputation w2'r ""^' ""^ ''"" "' 
 • Wy, in co„„«,tio„ with The ' r^ "° "P"^' "» 
 evil, for tho o,i.to„L o irt"" "",'"' '"'««' 
 are responsible in H... ourselves alone 
 
 'e»..y ^nJ:!"*;^" "^,- -J-^'". --.ve heed- 
 religions instruction Tf our .hiu ^"""^ "' "'<' 
 School. A refer-nM tf ""*" '" ""o ^"Wic 
 
 ..ou.h^h^^rrnZzSehr'"-"'^ 
 
 to our want of vigilance thJZlT u '" '''^'"*f 
 of an important privHel «. ^'' *^'" ^^^'f"^"'^ 
 are finding to be amlH "'^/^^^^'•y «f which we 
 
 But if hitLl pL":^td It "*r"' ''^'^''y- 
 
 ee^Hful. we cannoTa ^w o„«f ^e^^^ "T. ^^r""^- 
 lost privilege is irrecovlmbr T ^7" ""*' °"' 
 not allow oui^lvesTThink that'^thr u" "f "^"■ 
 proposed for considemtion n *K u *"^*^^^ *^"' 
 dimensions as s^me 1 ,U k "^'^P^"' '« ^^ «»«h 
 
 scholastic P^fTron^t'a e%X ^ /^'^^ 
 
 personal knowledcrp ;„ . ^ persuaded from 
 
 leading bLcCof tho «\^P*'«»«'"' *nd the five 
 the Pi^virceln f urnih ^'^**/«>t««^nt Church of 
 
 ply of teXrwtit a;:f,r^p^"""^^^-p- 
 
 «fen«e of the temT ^^'^ *" °° "^^*^g»<*<l 
 
 10 
 
146 CHRISTIAN INSTRUCTION 
 
 of C«38ariHm. State c*^""'^^^"^; f^' ' "^'^^^eording to 
 U„g results which at ^T^^^:^ riuowing 
 logic, oiujht to be the ^timate i^ue ^^^^^ 
 
 Christian lessons to be given by a 
 
 salary is secured by '^^f'^'^^'l^Z'^^;:^^^^^^^ 
 this dread dispelled, as it may well ^. »"J ^ ,, 
 
 of us, resolved to -t-e the steps t^^^^^^^^^ 
 
 as into our unhappy P^^*^«";^':P„''T^tUe Provinc 
 
 ♦1,0 Ur^e Protestant bodies of the rruv. 
 were the large rrutc absenc 
 
 •♦^ ;« thpir call to have an end put w \>m » 
 
 our contention could not be for off^ „ 
 
 be needed to f»"r:'"f '"p^tiu^ But the oth 
 common Chrietiamty of the ^"""^ . " hap. tl 
 
 tianity, which we - 'UPP-J ^ J^ „ 
 cannot but «.met.me. betray 't ^^ 
 
 serious, even apart from the qu 
 
 the ammntmmt of teachers should be careful 
 X^Ce-hearted CbHstians" be ap^-Ud.^^^ 
 ♦here are those who speak as i£ it were »"F^ 
 s^lTsupply of BUCh teachers-teachers, th. 
 
«ith any o„n,f„rt of oS IT, °^ '"'"''' "»' ""»k 
 
 th»t our t««=he™ »ro 1 it^n • TP"""'™ ""'"S 
 i»g in sympathy ^m, tlTT .u"^ "' """"• « "-"^ 
 
 «ivin, then. ChS'n tt etT Vh """" '" 
 when pleading with breth»„ 7 . ' '""°' «»<"' 
 in favour of „„r contentt?! .'"'"'*" *'''»'«''«> 
 «hort by the »„„rtZt r' '"^ ""■• ""B-n-^nt cut 
 
 fooli.h eimpliar^Z^nrtt ?'' '''»"'«' »" 
 are. we are assured « ♦ ? T ^^ cornea, who 
 -^^.nin.Crofli^p^pr'^ """ "'» 
 
 general insinuation, aret^de"f th .'^^;'"'» "'»«' 
 entrusted with the r^Ii^„t • . """"'"=* *" *« 
 schoh.™. Whil-iti.r?, -netruction of their 
 
 l«.'oany^te*tenf?'^'^"'''"«"""'y»hould 
 arietian d*^le tt^'T «°^ ky i«no»nce of 
 that their p^.f^t^-f 'T^-My be doubted 
 of Ood, is, ;ith ^S, "'° ^'"^ " «>« Wort 
 'he« ar. exception? TC"' °"""'^ "'"«««■ " 
 of the „r^ of'^aluC for IZ T *"""' " " O"' 
 *^ of h« solemn comp«,t with the 
 
148 
 
 CHRISTIAN INSTRUCTION 
 
 I i 
 
 II 
 
 edacational authority of the Province, as to endeavour, 
 either directly or by insinuation, to discredit the 
 Bible and its teachings in the minds of his scholars. 
 But even supposing it be admitted as an undoubted 
 matter of fact that, while some of our teachers are 
 insufficiently informed as Christian instructors, there 
 are also others who cannot be trusted to refrain from 
 endeavouring to insinuate anti-Christian sentiment* 
 into the minds of their pupils; teachers fully quali- 
 fied in respect 'both of Christian knowledge and ol 
 sympathy with the teachings of Christianity, will ii 
 time, perhaps not a long time, be found in sufficiem 
 number, when such qualification is looked for an( 
 required by legitimate authority. Distinctively 
 Christian teaching has now no place in our schools 
 and even the place of the Bible in them is scarcel; 
 more than nominal. Our people, therefore, whei 
 choosing a teacher, have ceased to concern themselve 
 about his knowledge of Christian truth, and about hi 
 religious Hcntiments. When, for more than a genera 
 tion it has been no part of tl.e teacher's work t 
 present to his pupils distinctively Christian views c 
 God and our relations to Him. of the person, th 
 mission, and the work of Christ, and of His Spiri 
 and of the responsibility lying upon us, because < 
 "our possession of the knowledge of Christian trutl 
 the wonder is that our teachers should be so genei 
 ally more or less well qualified, as we believe they ar 
 to impart Christian instruction. If, under the lonj 
 existing state of things, our teachers are generally i 
 
 UL 
 
" TH. rn,uo «Hoou or okt«,o. ,49 
 
 w. not „p«rt when Chr. ''*™"«»"y. "hat »..y 
 when the ability t„ i^JTrt ?» Jii ??"' *"'■''• "»'' 
 
 .Wemtion would .fe > ''t""^ "■"'" ">»■ 
 
 ;t. enti« e^ti-ct'ior Buu/IKh'T"^ ">-' 
 t'on shall have been n,nV Chnstian instmc 
 
 work, it would be ill^r J '*^ "' ""» '<«<=''«"» 
 '■"o the p«f«d„n ST. .P"™"' "■« «■"»■'«> 
 
 .y^path/with^Tri^ j;° J^° -"^Ot »»' •» » 
 
 profewon of it, there „Z iL ''"■*"* " ""«■■ 
 
 « lack of te«ehe™Tf„,|1,LTK "PP"''™'™ " to 
 •» fihriatian inrtruo^™ /hXf 7'"" '^"^ ""^ 
 
 '".eP^vince, whichT* no . .T^t:!: "'"'""'" °' 
 tions would lead mod1« J ^r P*^^* «pi«enta- 
 opposed to one LS i .^ '°™' ''"^-eilably 
 Christian doctrinrbnt "" *" "'""*' '""y 
 
 «' one in thdr vlw r*! "^ •""" «"■• «'«rely 
 «Won to two irr^^Slt?."""'""'"' ''""P' '" 
 ""tter of forbe««n« C h! ""^ "•"' "^ '""''« 
 fn>n.year toyear T'J. ^ '"^"^ '" '"™'"'' 
 ""™ and won-eH'^" ^"J""** '"PP'^ "^ «>««„ 
 work of in.part^^to^!!'".''"™'* ""emaelves to the 
 tion leaven^ wHn ^hn^'.? ^"'~«-»« " «>"<=«- 
 
 ^ «.".!«« whel l^'dtS;"-:^- /" '-' ''" "■"" 
 
 uignity of the school teacher's 
 
I II! 
 
 ii! ! ^ !! 
 
 160 
 
 CHRISTIAN IlfSTRUCnON. 
 
 profession RtutU be recognized, and his work remuner- 
 ated in accordance with its value and importance. 
 He will then, as he should do, Uke rank with the 
 members of what are called the learned professions ; 
 for it will then be seen, as it is not seen now, that the 
 man or woman to whom the community entrusts the 
 education of its youth should, intellectually and 
 morally, be second to the member of no other 
 profession. 
 
 Al 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 K^-d of principle « C on^ • -""'r "» "" 
 th. qu«tion at inae .„T^ . """PP"!""™™ of 
 
 rule™ to «»u„e th. I"" ~^«""«''«n«l, were our 
 
 •bility to imnart it „ . '»''on»l teacher an 
 
 ««atthechie"p,«,t J H^ ^^ "»«°™"y P«.ved 
 ted, stand in theTatt "' 'f "'''''''• " « "d-it- 
 
 «on in our ech^rr^rjfThe'"''?'^'"" »"™'=- 
 ™te«l of relegatiLTto Th ?* "' ""' '^''"' 
 •fer allowing «e telt t^'^T" °"'""''"- "-*• 
 
i 
 
 ii 
 
 m 
 
 Ii 1 
 
 MM 
 
 ti! 
 
 152 
 
 CHRlStlAN INStRUCTlOK 
 
 of those who have the control of our educational 
 interests and arrangements. 
 
 Though there are other misapprehensions in con- 
 nection with our contention that call for considera- 
 tion, and which we propose to deal with, it may bt 
 well, before doing so, to review the ground we hav( 
 already travelled over, thus submitting to our readen 
 a summary of our argument up to this point. 
 
 It will be remembered that we set out with a refer 
 
 ence to the circumstances which, near half a eenturj 
 
 ago, led to the exclusion of religious instruction fron 
 
 the Provincial Schools, and to the establishment o 
 
 Separate Schools, in the interest of the Roman Catho 
 
 lies of the Province ; who, taking their stand agains 
 
 an exclusively secular education, have had such sue 
 
 cess in their contention, that their children have acces 
 
 to schools in which Christian instruction, according fc 
 
 their views of it, occupies a prominent place. In yie^ 
 
 of the fact that our Roman Catholic fellow-citizen 
 
 have won for themselves the secure possession c 
 
 what they and we alike regard as being an arrange 
 
 ment in the interest of our children not to be dit 
 
 pensed with, we have not hesitate 1 to insist that th 
 
 Protestant profession of the Province ask no moi 
 
 than simple and equal justice, when they contend fc 
 
 the religious instruction of their children by con 
 
 petent teachers. Admitting that there are difficulti* 
 
 in the way of securing for the Protestant portion ( 
 
 the community the advantage of daily religious ii 
 
 struction, which do not occur in connection with tl 
 
™ THE PUBUO SOHOOIS OF ONTARIO. 153 
 
 education of Roman Catholic children, it ha been onr 
 
 from being .nsuperable. A«,«,ning that the^ 
 body of the Protestant profeeaion of Ontorifare 
 
 tZT- t\ '■''™1"«"™ of religion, inst^ctf™ 
 nto their achoola, becanse it ia ncceaaary, as they I^ 
 
 oomman.ty, there ,8. so far as we can see. no good and 
 
 C"Mur" V"'^ ""^"'''-^ shonSt d" 
 layed. Much as has been made of ..hem, the differ- 
 ences among Protestants may. as we ha;e seoriL 
 well r^ed as of little or no acconnt. There a« 
 « we have alsc. pointed „«t-.be«.use it is overLkS 
 by «,me-g«Kf reasons why we cannot expcTt^ 
 «me unanimity among Protestants, in regard to 
 Scripture teaching, as among Roman CatholS^ As 
 
 from differences among oui-selves is far more that 
 compensated for. by the invalnable reaul of '^ 
 exe„iseo the God-»nfer™l right of private judg! 
 men , to denude ourselves of which, at the call ot 
 pnnce, pnest, or pope, under whatever claim or pre' 
 fence were, we believe, to nn,nan ourselves It may 
 be that there is a small pereentage whose viW^ 
 diveilje more or less widely from those of the g^It 
 majonty o Protestants; and of these we ».y „oSZ 
 uncharitable or unkind. That the peiJuCr" 
 
 ctlibk ^ ^f'V-'ioned our statement of it a. in! 
 credible. But to us who accept the assurance given 
 
I 
 
 I I 
 
 154 
 
 CHRlSHAN INSTRUCTIOIJ 
 
 by Christ, John vii. 17, and who believe that the care- 
 ful and prayerful study of the Word of God, by the 
 man who " is willing to do the will of Qod," will issxu 
 in the attainment of a right apprehension of saving 
 truth, it should be no surprise to find, as we have said 
 that ninety -Jive per cent, of the Protestant professiot 
 of the Province agree in accepting, with two or thret 
 exceptions, the whole teaching of the smaller West 
 minster Catechism. And we believe that were th( 
 larger catechism, formerly referred to, not fallen oJ 
 recent years into general desuetude, it would be founc 
 that, with the same two or three exceptions, its whole 
 teaching would be cordially accepted by the greal 
 majority of Protestants. 
 
 In view of the fact that the Protestants of Ontario 
 who constitute four-fifths at least of the whole popu 
 lation, are agreed to such an extent in relation to th( 
 teaching of Scripture, we ought to hear no more ol 
 our differences as being a hindrance to the introdue 
 tion of definite religious instruction into our schools 
 And if, in our pleadings, we have been giving expres 
 sion, as we believe we have been doing, to the grow 
 ing conviction and desire of our co-religionists of th( 
 Protestant faith, is it any wonder that we cannoi 
 help feeling that a grave injustice is done to us, ii 
 the continued exclusion of Christian instruction fron 
 the day school ? To say to us, as our Educatioi 
 Department has long been practically saying, " W< 
 are nut excluding Christian instruction from th< 
 Public Schools ; for, if you wish, we give you accesi 
 
IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS OF ONTARIO. 155 
 
 I-" amply den,o„at™tei. We Ld not 1T""T 
 of taking U upon\htS^^%7~'„r;;' ™'««'' 
 
 :^;rir^Lre.rpe-r:tt'r„i 
 
 weari JTC ^- ^ *^ P"*""" '''>» have no 
 wgard to the religious interests of their children -n^ 
 
 wh«e unhappy prejudice shuts them "„ ,"„, a,t 
 reasons mstniction, except such as may bTlt" 
 "" *' ™« P'«« "here it is authorilafively C 
 
; ! 
 
 156 
 
 CHRISTIAN INSTRUCTION 
 
 bidden to be given by those from whom it would V 
 received.* 
 
 Again, we have seen that the school law of th 
 Province assumes that all our teachers are Christian! 
 and that in the case of teachers of the Protestant pw 
 fession, it will not be satisfied with mere negation 
 or with anything short of a faith that accepts th 
 Christian Scriptures as the record of Divine revela 
 tion ; or, in other words, will not recognize as bein 
 of the Protestant faith, one who is merely not 
 Roman Catholic, and is an infidel in relation t 
 Christianity. And notwithstanding assertions an 
 insinuations to the contrary, we have, as has bee 
 said, good reason to believe that our teachers an 
 with rare exceptions, Christian in their sentimenti 
 and generally anything but "poorly qualified," a 
 some say, to give instruction in the facts and prin 
 ciples of the Christian religion. We need therefor 
 liave no hesitation in being fully assured that, whei 
 Christian instruction shall have been made a con 
 stituent part of the work of the school, our churche 
 will be able to furnish an adequate supply of teacher 
 fully qualified to give instruction in the commoi 
 Christianity of Protestants, free from all taint o 
 denominationalism. 
 
 We need hardly repeat that, all things considered 
 we cannot but regard the present educational situa 
 tion as altt^ether anomalous and indefensible. That i 
 profession of Christian faith should be required of al 
 
 • See page 116 and next chapter. 
 
»«.« tin... the te^hetZr r.!""' """• ■" ""e 
 Jf pupil, Ch„X\tt™etr^*''°""' '"«''• 
 them to rei^l the ScriBta^ * ' '"'■ '"'" '" ''"h 
 
 •tiding the PtaibHiti^ b;thior •r^'.r"''''- 
 
 the anomaly be.W all H,„ i ' " defended; 
 
 ">e f«t that R-micaT >""«»"''»"■«''»' 
 teaohe™ are under „„™^"""'".*l»™«» School 
 
 priesthood, as they 'J^ "L '^T''"^ '' to the 
 in«troction to Prol^tZt^^- ^""^^"t Christian 
 •uomaly, aa we hT™ ^„' ^Z T ■"*"• '^''■' 
 » history which explZ 'it °°^ '"f P'"*'''''- » has 
 «pe.t But our t^'- ^j"';''*, »« »«rf not 
 having p^tested ^ZZ,y S^t " '*>'-«-» 
 ane«lusively secular day ih3 1. T^ P^'*" <» 
 •Its will have themselZ 7u! '^"«"""'. Protest- 
 anomalous state of th,^^a l^T. ■■' "" P"«nt 
 ■»ther, the blame w U Xl T^ *" ""'"'""• «' 
 hold themselves J„f f^*" ."f """* »"«' "PPose, or 
 Protestants, which, ^w^ have iT""' ''™'"«' »' 
 could resist, were t nol forTh ""• "''■ "•""""■ant 
 "ud the apathy of oth°™ °PP<«'t.on of some 
 
 .*a'"thr^':^,X':r;?r'':'""^'«-^^ 
 
 i» f«vour of the mawl!. 7 """^tion is strongly 
 -.Ohr.tian,r^-f-:--n.^£ 
 
i li 
 
 ! i 
 
 158 
 
 CHRISTIAN INSTRUCTION 
 
 on the part of not a few, no inconsiderable degree 
 apathy, and on the part of others, a readiness 
 magnify obstacles in vindication of their pronouno 
 opposition. As we have seen, there are Christii 
 ministers, and no doubt, people also, who seem to 
 unable to divest themselves of certain suspicions 
 fears which, they believe, are warranted by the we 
 known meddlesomeness, present as well as past, 
 the " princes of this world " in the religion of the 
 subjects; and who cannot think without a measu 
 of serious alarm of the possible or probable evil co 
 sequences to our civil and religious liberties, shou 
 our rulers impose a tax upon us for the decent mai 
 tenance of the teachers of our children, except < 
 the condition that they be forbidden to give distin 
 tively Christian lessons to their pupil& And th 
 they cannot believe that, from what they say thi 
 know, our teachers can, as a class, be trusted with t 
 religious instruction of the young ; some of them, 
 is alleged, having no sympathy with Christian trul 
 if not being even skeptical or inRdel in relation to 
 and those of them who have Christian convictio 
 being so much under the power of their sevei 
 denominationalisms, that their teaching caimot 
 Christian without being, at the same time, denomi 
 ational or sectarian. We humbly think that the 
 apprehensions have been sufficiently disposed of. \ 
 think it has been shown that the dread of "Sta 
 churchism and Ecclesiastical domination" is entire 
 groundless, and that the fear of denomination 
 
of derive knowS^i:!™'- 7'«»«™ "''^""^ 
 
 -e Wievo that, in Ccttah : r""?'^^'"'""'^' 
 synpathy, they are to L^ 7, ,"'"''"'«'"'°'' "f 
 <l"alified to imBarr.t ,^ "'° '»""'• W^y well 
 their pupil. 'Ztut ZT "' '"'™'--^'^ '^ 
 '» «)"«1 to that of ZJ^ZrST 'l"»''«<atio.. 
 nots„perior,.,iteertai„lH,T* *"''"' '*'°'"'™' 'f 
 after forty yea«. excl„l„ of T^, 1 "'•^'^ That, 
 P-blic School, of Ontar ° °* '•'~'™ '«>■» the 
 
 "ell qualified tohuZ. tl?" ^'"" "'""'''' ^e » 
 ■•» at oace a matter^? thaoT/ T "" '*""" "-"y «■•». 
 ex-und for expecting thaT t^-'rt '"' ' '"««■»' 
 Province will be f^nd a„ ^ Christianity of the 
 
 "We", a pe«nnial rp,y"'oft''"''' ""-^ '«>". 
 
 ■Mtructow may be drawn „b """Petent Christian 
 ■nspin-tion shall hav^I^/t^" ! Book of Divine 
 °">- »ch«,ls. A„d J^ ^° «■;» -ts proper place in 
 
 fo«aibleen,phasis,_we^' ftt-.lT?.' ""^ '""' »" 
 have been fed to firraofTh. t "" ""' »"™ate we 
 
 allow ou^elves toXli :« tha^T' "' ""'"'"-■ 
 for attaching such a suspUn to ^ " '"" «'^°"<' 
 the permanent relemtionnf i*"."'™ «« to justify 
 
 ""« Public Schooirt til *^T '™'™"«™ ■•» 
 Professioa ^ "■» '"'"'bers of another 
 
iili 
 
 
 ii i 
 
 I 1 :;!•;• 1 
 ii 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 MiMpprehendon of the action of Protestant mumtera-Charg 
 of clerical agitation in the interest of sectarianism repeUed. 
 
 Thoooh we believe that what has been ftlrea< 
 
 said* sufficiently shows that our rulers are at fai 
 
 in thinking that the obligation which they recogni: 
 
 as lying upon them, in relation to the Chnsti 
 
 education of the youth of the Province, is adequa.tt 
 
 met by their giving permission to Protestant mm 
 
 ters to give a weekly religious lesson in the Put 
 
 School room to the children of their congregatio 
 
 in additum to instruction which they are alrea 
 
 receiving, there exists so much misapprehension 
 
 the minds of many in relation to the views a 
 
 actions of ministers that further consideration 
 
 them is far from being unnecessary. Blame is attacl 
 
 to them because they do not gratefully and cage 
 
 accept the permission to teaia in the day school i 
 
 precious boon conferred upon them by a genei 
 
 government; and very ungenerous insinuations 
 
 made respecting their motives an d aims in seet 
 
 *See Chapter VIL 
 160 
 
"" '"""O SCHOOLS OR omwo. Ig, 
 
 time as an aDoIoffv fnn ^ !. "™*'® ^ean- 
 
 endowed in comm„„i,^„;;' IT. „ """t""*^ ''°' 
 that very false i,„„Z^ ° P"*"' "'"«'> 'how 
 
 -i«tinV»rai:r:r",i":r'''*'''""' '^ ■»'"^- 
 
 their ge„en.I n«n-^pu,^rrf l" ~"°'*""° "'"' 
 ferred to and th.i- ™. . ^ ? "" P«™"'Mion re- 
 
 Putting an end to Z pr^nl 1''"*^ "'""'"'y "' 
 'hinge, by .naking JZ^Zl forT "" '""* "' 
 lion of instruction in ,."^""""' '" 'he communica- 
 Province by rie^aSvt°?^7" Christianity of the 
 
 tliat we can be actn»tJ^ k ^ '''''' *" conceive 
 
 t«befreed,„„ ir^,,>,ry''''ng t"' the de,i„ 
 
 onr own b^ZyZJ^ ^T **"°'' " ""'"sively 
 
 othe™. to- ItTiJ :T^'^'"t r^ »° 
 
 allowance for the inaMitv of th *' ^""« "" -"uo 
 of our p^feseion rdefite''ort:u J i^Tr'""'" 
 beheve that we can satisfy . » Ti ''"*™' "« 
 
 «te«, in taking ^„ti" T "^ "''°'' """ ""'- 
 
162 
 
 CHRISTIAN INSTRUCTION 
 
 to them — are doing nothing to warrant the ascri 
 tion to them of anything except a sincere regard f 
 the welfare of the coinniunity. 
 
 To state the issue briefly and definitely, the prese 
 school regulations forbid, if not directly and e 
 plicitly, at least by clear implication, the commui 
 cation of Christian instruction by the teachers of o 
 National Schools, the late Minister of Educati 
 c ipressing himself as being strongly of the opini 
 that they " cannot with tafety or prop ne^y be charg 
 with the resf^nsibility of communicating distil 
 tively Christian instruction to their pupils." B 
 Christian ministers are permitted and given facilit 
 to instruct in the teachings of their several church 
 the children of their own congregations, wh( 
 attendance they may secure for the purpose, in t 
 school-room once a week, out of school hours, accoi 
 ing to the original permission. By a more rec< 
 permission, ministers of different denominations 
 the same locality may enter into an arrangeme 
 according to which the children of each congregati 
 may have the benefit of the instructions of the otl 
 ministers as well as of their own minister. A 
 farther, also by a recent regulation, trustees may n 
 shorten the regular school time, with a view to \ 
 communication of religious instruction by ministc 
 without unduly burdening the scholars. But notal 
 all responsibility, on the part of the educatio 
 authorities, in relation to such instruction is ca 
 fully guarded against. They decline to exercise tl 
 
'"'•"' ""x-'o ^cou or osr,„o. ,63 
 autliurUy in the w. t 
 
 fe^iTO wlioge work i, „... V """"'«"" "f u pro- 
 
 leswn to their own children W. I ,*'""*•' •""""•• 
 "o ".ore th.„ the «c„b,™1 / '"'' '"»" »•".• ™le™ 
 tl.ey .re „„,,,, . iSL^T "' ':™P""«'"«'y which 
 C.»h„lic», bnthitL^ tt™ '" "" *=»" "' ««"•«» 
 «l'ow identicj priW?e,^cl T ""^ "■"'■• ""y '» 
 Pn>t.«t«.,t, in the^ „I3 of »^'""" ^'*"'°"" ""J 
 the Primary School" «"•"» i^tniction in 
 
 P-t-tant, to the n"i"lt ^Tre."?""^ "«»"'«' " 
 "that it diould be c^™^?;^'^°'''°""»"'«ntion 
 »>«ried te«=he« of X P^ ^ *■"= '"»'"'«' -"d 
 •«ai-MtitebeinKDenL.„ .,,"'*• ^^ "^Jlain. 
 >-» of .nothef r~~ ir^'^' «» fe „e™ 
 r '• »" the time ^ Sr dil^" Tf' '"' ""^ ■»<«' 
 "o™ «,d efficient di»ch^'*;?r '"' "" ~°«i«°- 
 ^ "e have «id, wc do ^t „h 'TT" ""'^'^ ''"«»»■ 
 of provisional a,^d IZ^Tr. T^ *° ""^ """ieriag 
 'Je authorities, haWng^T^ f.'!'^ *?y"-. »"'" 
 ?he iaterest of the com^'ij' t '^ ^'' ''■"^' '» 
 ■nstruction a constituenr^rt P T''' *^''™«'"' 
 «~ran.e, the teachers .K iiT °' "" "^hool pro- 
 
 I«W to bo,afterX loL . "*" '""">' »« «' 
 
 " ''"'S-Pn'»n«>ted exclusion of 
 
'Ill 
 
 1^4 CHRISTIAN INSTRUCTION 
 
 wriUr U not rione or .ingolor in h»».ng hi^ f«H«en 
 
 S^liev. that .ny of hU brethren «,uld feel o^« 
 lerwi« in the --'--^t na^S 
 
 rrwmnTii-«-T'^--rtr^: 
 
 • ^hlmatter of Christian instruction in the d. 
 
 live Christian inBtruction even to the met ad,an< 
 
 "' CSne «. we cannot bnt do, the chajK. tl 
 
 Repndiat.nK^^« insinuation, is brought agai 
 
 perhaps generally by insm j,„ti„u, b; 
 
 Lr:rHgrc^^w^^-:rjL^r 
 ^'•'«^-""ron:sr^^-.^"-««-' 
 
 * '^'""f thXlTarTeaihers' As««i»«on,« 
 "'"''"''ulS r Utendanee «as very r 
 
 ::i::d :~tassub.itted,anda^^^^^^^^^^ 
 during whieh foolishly and pamtully wild lang 
 
'» THE rUBUO «H.H>U „, „„„,^ ,jj 
 
 <««*«« to give «^,'-, . ""'"'«>»''«« to require 
 mini...™ K '^r VtrS^ rt. ""'^»'" 
 mi-ion .hove ref.ril^?^^"'^ "•en.wlve.of theper- 
 for . ch«^ rouiTt i"^ T"""" ™ 'heir p.. t 
 
 mo^ri'r^'t 'rr^t •"■"^ "■■«" ">i. 
 
 mind of ».„y 2e™ " t ,?•" '"P-^-e »f 'h« 
 
 gene™, „i„d^„, IXl^o^ ««P.--ive „, the 
 Wieve. But whether ,J . ^'°"- This we do not 
 able to d.ow tM he%t,ruer' t ' "' '™" »» >« 
 examin.UoB.'^ ''«™""»"""'' ""natruction, hear 
 
 »'«ady e«,wded p™Xre ™f T "^"'^ "^ "" 
 »'n.chon, it can haXT . ""'^ *■"»' in- 
 
 exclusion of ChriWJ«« • ' . ® ^ong-continued 
 
 'f only as layL a„ Jjr ^J*^ '"Production 
 We would ceLlnlAe^f r 'r'^^" °" *^-- 
 fore glad to have Jon STurJ^;,"" T '^^ *'^«^- 
 occasion referred to d"dTnT *' ''^^ ^°^ «° *h« 
 
 "^'^ "^* ^^Pr^™ the sentiments 
 
 
166 
 
 CHRISTIAN INSTRUCTION 
 
 I I-. 
 
 nil 
 
 I! I 
 
 li 
 
 iii ! 
 
 of the majority of the teachers of the Provinc< 
 
 ami that the resolution would not have been carriei 
 
 if the attendance had been full. We cannot, howevei 
 
 trust to such assurances. Nor can they hinder ou 
 
 expressing our extreme surprise and regret that a 
 
 association of intelligent Christian gentlemen shouh 
 
 even when reduced to a small remnant, commit itsel 
 
 not to the preference of one arrangement to anothe 
 
 in connection with Christian instruction in the da 
 
 school, but to insinuations and implications in refe 
 
 ence to clergymen, that are at once ungenerous an 
 
 unjustifiable except to a mind splenetically perverte 
 
 And what shall we say of those to whom ungeneroi 
 
 reference to the members of another profession wl 
 
 take the deepest interest in them, has become 
 
 second nature ; so that they can hardly let an oppo 
 
 tunity pass without indulging themselves in unwortl 
 
 insinuations against the clergy, simply because th( 
 
 differ from them, and as they believe, not withoi 
 
 sufficient reason ? 
 
 Referring to the charge of unreaaonahleneaa in tl 
 resolutirn above quoted, we have no hesitation 
 saying that there is not the slightest ground for su 
 a charge so far as we, i.e., ministers, are concem( 
 It is not we who are unreasonable, when we contei 
 that the lessons of the common Christianity of t 
 Province should, if acquaintance with them is believ 
 to be essential to its welfare, be imparted by 
 accredited Christian teachers ; but those who, wh 
 admitting the essential importance of Christian 
 
ecome a 
 
 >» THE P„„UC .>«„«„^ o, ONTARIO. ,«? 
 
 struction, would relesato it tn Pl.„- .• 
 ■f it were their excCvlK^?™'"" """'"»"'• " 
 to do with inHtnactfolTthr""™ ^''»^<' '"y"-"'*? 
 O-Iy let it be ,r.„tZ. I t T;!; fl °l '*«'^'"'- 
 ciently proved that « • , '"'^' ^^en suffi- 
 
 -tru^tiL ir^'theirs'": 'zt ^"™«'"' 
 
 -odemte toxatiou of L7.2 i "''""' '»''' ^^ 
 ■»n.e of re«o„. should^rnot I^' '"" '"'• '» "" 
 -kUled in^truct^r, tTro L thteT'"';''^,,'" ''"'' 
 young people nam in =„ • ^*"^» »" our 
 
 ceptibCiiaT^he"; wrwhv"""? "!• "■<«' '- 
 
 of reason, should our L»!t u ^' '**'"• '" "'« """e 
 the eye, of thrp„p H^*";" *« »"«■ 'o subn.it, in 
 
 ".d.^p^^ch of inr;t ;,^srua;""''"'''"T 
 
 to ■■"part the most important „7., ^ '°°"''' 
 And, once more in the nX r "" "nstraction ! 
 
 highest !r.oatCjtLHt"oitT ^^T "^ "•» 
 coramunieation of the 1^1° '^ '""''■ """ ■" ">« 
 
 •nity of the Province ^ ° """""o" <^''>Ati- 
 
 trusied to ref«^"?2,'^ """!"' "'^t'> »fety be 
 
 t-eir p„pi,3 ttitrr r^f t"'' ™"f °^ 
 
 nominations; tosaynothingofre/ntic'T"'' *" 
 timents which some nf ti, fnti-Chnatian sen- 
 
 view of the f«rtT.. .^ "* "''' *" ™'"^i° ' In 
 -n^wer, we may ^khtT Tf"' -"^ ">«'> "^ 
 instruction shaH Cve W • n*"""^"-' '">» C'»-M»n 
 and all our teXZ^^uT"'^'^'"'^y '''^"'<i<^. 
 "o inipart it, TZ hfnl oTL^""' '""^ '>"'''""' 
 theira to secure Tb». • ^ "^""^ "o Htted as 
 secure that ynoranoe of the facts «„d 
 
168 
 
 CHRISTIAN INSTRUCTION 
 
 ■m ill 
 
 principles of Christianity shall be exceptional, ineteac 
 of being generally characteristic of the people o 
 Ontario— the inevitable result of the error (or wha 
 some would call the infatuation) of the entire exclu 
 sion of religious instruction from the schools of tb 
 great majority of our Christian Province. 
 
 There are, however, two special implications of th 
 resolution quoted that call for more particuia 
 consideration : 
 
 I. The supporters of the resolution are not alone ii 
 
 the insinuation that the endeavour to secure fo 
 
 Christian instruction the place in the day schoc 
 
 which, we believe, the national welfare demands, i 
 
 confined very largely, if not exclusively, to the minii 
 
 ters of religion. Not unfrequently our contention 
 
 stigmatized as clerical agitation. While it is vain i 
 
 expect that this style of dealing with a subject wi 
 
 ever be renounced by those who, knowing its powe 
 
 have become habituated to it, one cannot but regr( 
 
 that a respectable body of gentlemen should, in tl 
 
 name of one of the most honourable of professior 
 
 allow itself to be responsible for the insinuation th 
 
 the ministers of religion are worthy of censure, 
 
 being the chief, if not the only, peace-breakers und 
 
 a present happy state of things. Admitting o 
 
 prominence in the discussion of the subject, that is i 
 
 reason why the agitation should be referred to snee 
 
 ingly, or disparaged in any way. The judgment 
 
 the minister- of religion in relation to a matter th 
 
 concerns the religious interests of the community, 
 
contempt mrteadTwith W . "" '"»«™K« »' 
 
 government j«™,a„ us the ^ of tl. k ".S^"'""' 
 
 «"ay« giving „ot only ZLj^ wh.ehwe.^ 
 other days, we are beWn! , , ^^^^ '"'* "» 
 not accepting the ^^SoHta" if isT" f ^ 
 »p.«ng a privilege and neglecting .il W t" 
 this censure is for th. ™ » * ^- "° doubt, 
 «clerati«.. But ht are tW 'T '" """' °' «"- 
 not care, or are notTblet' l'"" ""'"'PP''^ ^o 
 
 treat Christian profio„ anr**"' ' '""I^"-™ to 
 meaeure of gene'r.: ^ Jn ttr"''" *'"• " **»' 
 should surely have thriib^rty'^^'Tj"'"»f«. we 
 '"Kout the unreasonablene^Tu^ °' P°"'- 
 
 obhgation, in connection w^ t'T"? "^'' "' » 
 tion of our children thTt !?„» i^™""" ™'™-=- 
 Kenemlly imprecticab e Ih r^l'?' "'^'*^' " " « 
 '^'.done toal^te th^ev^r^' ^Tst? ' ""'^'^ *" 
 
 ^- wh<« Ats in^rx/nr-r -;t 
 
:! 
 
 'I 
 
 ill 
 
 li 
 
 I'liii 
 
 Mil 
 
 170 
 
 CHRISTIAX INSTRUCTION 
 
 Christian instruction, and who will not subject then 
 to the influences of the arrangements of the Church 
 but would not object to their religious instruction ii 
 
 the day school. 
 
 But, secondly, the subject of the religious instruc 
 
 tion of the community is one in reletion to which bot 
 
 our knowledge and our interest are such that w 
 
 may be reasonably expected to take a lead in urgin 
 
 the employment of every legitimate agency that he 
 
 in view the reducing to a minimum of the presei 
 
 prevailing and increasing poverty in the knowledg 
 
 of Bible facts 'and principles. The efficiency of oi 
 
 public ministrations depends very largely upon oi 
 
 hearers' knowledge of Christian truth; and tl 
 
 special design of them, namely, Christian edificati< 
 
 in its highest sense, would be far more extensive! 
 
 accomplished were it not for the prevailing and groi 
 
 ing ignorance of Scripture truth. We cannot but s 
 
 that other agencies in acklition to those that are nc 
 
 in operation, are necessary, if our people generally 
 
 • all classes are to be distinguished by an adequs 
 
 acquaintance with the religion which they profess 
 
 such an acquaintance as may qualify them to val 
 
 the ministrations of the sanctuary, and to be profit 
 
 by them. But it is not to be lost sight of that, wh 
 
 we know, from our own early experience, that c 
 
 own young people would be greatly advanced 
 
 Christian knowledge by the daily lessons of i 
 
 Christian teacher in the Public School-even far mc 
 
 in many cases, tha2 by the half-hour weekly lesson 
 
, are now 
 
 '" ™^ """" »«H<>0.^ OF OVTAKIO. 17, 
 
 the Sabbath School—it i. „„f « • . 
 
 »o».e«tion ha. chieSyia .tJ Z^"""' "«" °" 
 
 one knows ali«i.H„ ~, ^ '^^ "«■ "» every 
 
 oialiy for tbow whose d«™„1 i P'""' »"?«■ 
 
 instruction, but ..T^JT^ ,r^^"* *'''''■ ''«gi<"« 
 "ceivo religions w"t,""".'"'"5 ""•* ""^y "I'onld 
 have r^nTlZT^T '^ '"^ *'"«'■ *^ 
 in the fact, which w J 1' at" " ''°"''°'f ^g"'-' 
 that in the Loudon Bo^ Si ' /""P"* '" """y. 
 the children in attend!^ f^ ' P™'=««'"y «« 
 
 tion that is givl " ll'Tf^' ™»-^« ">« Bible iuatruc 
 of thousaucb of child^n ''*^' '^""""-i' and tens 
 
 elements of Chri^ttn'^uJ:^!."" '""""="»» *» '•>« 
 wi»e<nj,w„piu"hXt i;::lt.'^''° -Id other- 
 
 ".^-s of the gr^t bTXTe: """r .'° "' "-' 
 «'e, as we have said mTn England. But there 
 
 do not themselves^' "™? ?^".'' "^ 0°«*rio, who 
 children, and who wretrelT"' ""'""'"" '» ">»- 
 ference. do not dL fh f" P'*J"'*''» <»• 'ndif- 
 
 Ohurch, but wil?'„Tt ^Z:tT t""™*^ "' ">« 
 Christian instructions of »,. ^ T ^'°« "»*'■ ">» 
 -oh paints wilfrC'ltat'd ^•'"'?^^''»^ 
 " '8, we believe a r«l tt" 1? ^^'^ "• ^or 
 
 P»«nt Wishes his" hiid™: L^'^JltC '""'""^ 
 
 grow up m Ignorance of 
 
172 
 
 CHRISTIAN INSTRUCTION 
 
 i 'V 
 
 religion. Our authorities (we say it with all respec 
 and deference) would do well to listen to us, when w 
 remind them that there are many of their youthft 
 subjects, especially in the cities of the Province, whot 
 we would gladly benefit if we could— if, that is, the; 
 would receive from us and our helpers what we ar 
 ready to give them; but who will certainly live an( 
 die deplorably ignorant of everything Christian, un 
 less their religious instruction shall be secured by ai 
 agency which our Christian rulers have the full con 
 trol of, and which, as we have seen, no principle o 
 national action) forbids the employment of. The; 
 know well that our work in the instruction of thei 
 people is promotive of the public well-being. Am 
 they ought to consider that we should be presumed t< 
 be competent beyond others to judge correctly ii 
 reference to our own methods of dealing with thoS( 
 who place themselves, or are placed by their parents 
 under our care and that of our helpers. If instead 
 they listen to the counsels of spleneticism, prescribin| 
 our methods, and representing us as agitators, actuatec 
 by a desire to lay upon others a burden which w( 
 ought to carry ourselves, the results can be nothinj 
 but disastrous. It ought to be known to all that W( 
 have no desire to do less than we do, and that, for th< 
 most part, our work, with all its cares, anxieties an( 
 disappointments, is a pleasure to us and to many ever 
 a delight. But we see clearly that another availabh 
 agency in addition to ours is necessary, if Ontario ii 
 to claim the honourable distinction of being a com 
 
munity whose ne l 
 
 'he Prindplea otZl^LTT"" "'"■'"'o^^ in 
 
 "hioh « coMpicuoMlv r I f^ P">'<»»-» religion 
 
 «>•' no prinoipie Sd» H *^'*"'* *'«' ««nK 
 
 «n>s misunderstood "ndl,,, *r°* "^ """''^ «"d 
 be regarded « doingrnaMr'^'^"'"'' "' ""Sht to 
 ^ obviate the practLl d^ffi t.tl^T;""- »» -k 
 by some to make it all h,,/; 5 "' *■* supposed 
 
 >'"e.«l teacher shouW ^ '^'.'''' "■•' "•» P™. 
 "•e work Of Christ::!' X:«r '"'"*--''- in 
 
 If some, however n~ j- j 
 '••den.telyand nnkindr^tn '"u""'"'' ■''«'■'■ 
 o»r position, there are we .r2 *''' *" "■"«™'e 
 understand us and svmZth^ """."^ "'""' "I"' will 
 the language of the g3 t" T"" ""' "''«"• "»■« 
 "ight of a great hlrvr J T r' "° "y ««" ""! 
 '"■BelypeHsT-ingCu^'- 7*?^ f"-- the sickle, and 
 "ouree of .nuch*^ ™ Z^"'^'^' «»'*»-'. '" • 
 though no one in this rh^.^ , " " •" that. 
 f"".I«kof knowledge. ittt:" '?"" "-^ "Pe™h 
 heeause they will not rece'vl ,t^ '"^'" """ """y ''o. 
 Christ fre„ th<«, who woaM *""* ''-""'edge ot 
 ;«1 they allow their cTi^dlrr""" """»■ "o- 
 from thc«e who are not a ,„we. t """^ "• '■=«=?' 
 "•e .«.y. •■ Then let them ^rilt ^h '"'1,''' "■ ^'""' 
 'he.r ehildren with them^f si n "'"""""^ »■"' 
 deavonr by every lemtim., "° '">' ""her en. 
 
 -.-vietims^fTi:r:;rSyn:r:/r 
 
Xf^ 
 
 174 
 
 CHRI8TIAN INSTRUCTION 
 
 1:1 '^ii- 
 
 i! 
 
 ! 
 
 ■ 1 I 
 
 I ! 
 
 rather, in the language of the parable, compel them 
 
 (the word, of course, being UHed figuratively) to accept 
 
 what they most of all need ? Shall we not. that is 
 
 still pursue their children's welfare, and seek, by othei 
 
 agency than ours, to save them from the ignoranc* 
 
 that is fatal to it ? And what can possibly be th< 
 
 hindrance that is efTcctually barring the employmen 
 
 of that agency— an agency that has been notorioush 
 
 efficient for good, as is proved abundantly by the ex 
 
 perience of over three centuries in countries tha 
 
 have been wise to employ it? It is not surely tha 
 
 the exclusion 'of Christian instruction from ou 
 
 Protestant Schools has become, as we fervently hop 
 
 it never can become, a political isswe. And yet. i 
 
 the Government, convinced, as it is. of the impoi 
 
 tance of the Christian education of its youth— a coi 
 
 viction that is, we are sure, equally held by the part 
 
 in opposition-continues to shrink from the respons 
 
 bility of introducing the only arrangement that is ; 
 
 full consistency with its conviction and obligation, < 
 
 that can be expected to reduce to a minimum the pr 
 
 vailing ignorance of Scripture, which is sappmg tl 
 
 morality of the community, how is this hesitation 
 
 be accounted for ? We cannot think of any explar 
 
 tion, except what has been more than once alrea< 
 
 suggested, namely, that the Government, besides 8< 
 
 ing opposition on the part of some— ministers a 
 
 people-cannot be blind to the fact that Protestar 
 
 notwithstanding their general desire to see Chnsti 
 
 instruction introduced into our schools, fail largely 
 
 ■t 
 
IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS OP ONTARIO. Hfi 
 
 evince such determination in battlin«. f»r th • • u 
 
 convictions, it hesitates to carry tliem™^. • ?* 
 
 lative or official action an^t L„ Tl '" *"" 
 
 general «... decided pubiirpiLor "'" '""•"" "' 
 
 .nothefch^Il'l:::!"'? """'«' ■"»'« ^--te. 
 
 ^^ r '■^'^oot'tert^^ 
 
 versv" I, -^ V "^ '"^^ '""■ ««<«»•»«« contro- 
 
 "ork of the te^h^r T P™?""""ie "nd of the 
 Hon of >^^ZZ" '"^."«"i''« for the introduc 
 
 ;xt.oTr^^^"'-f"t- 
 
176 
 
 CHRISTIAN INSTRUCnOll 
 
 in our opinion, an aasumption bo gratuitou* and 
 
 unreasonable can hardly be conceived. Of this, al 
 
 the risk of the charge of a little repetition, we hop< 
 
 to satisfy the candid reader. Wo have already hat 
 
 occasion to show that the "present system" »i 
 
 Msentiidiy sectarian* There is, indeed, a sense ii 
 
 which it may be said to be non- sectarian. It is non 
 
 sectarian in the sense that Christianity is practicuU] 
 
 nowhere in it, though it may be nomivally Christiar 
 
 Our rulers decline to take the responsibility of admil 
 
 ting definite phristian instruction into the scho( 
 
 programme. Rather, they authoritatively exclud 
 
 it; flattering themselves that they have fully du 
 
 charged their obligation when they give pennissio 
 
 to the ministers of religion to give a weekly lesso 
 
 within the walls of the school-room. And thus tt 
 
 " present system " is non-sectarian simply by bew 
 
 non-Christian, ministers, meanwhile, and the 
 
 helpers, instructing their children at a more coi 
 
 venient time and in a more suitable place. An 
 
 while our teachers are, for reasons already referr( 
 
 to, declared to bo incompetent and not to he truste 
 
 there are some, as is well known, who assume, as i 
 
 unquestionable principle, thnt instruction cannot 
 
 Christian— we may even .say. religious-witho 
 
 being sectarian, and that therefore we cannot be ft 
 
 from sectarian teaching, except by the exclusion 
 
 all teaching; distinctively Christian or religious. Th 
 
 however, is not the view of our r ulers, if we m 
 
 •8«e Chap. VII., pp. 121, 122. 
 
»- TH. PUBUO aCHOOU o, OHT.„o. ,„ 
 
 our yooth. thoOKh we h.lif„ i . "" """""'on of 
 
 »^»i«» with whicro„ " " !?'"""" '" "■. «o. 
 
 Pven to cl.,»,„en to t<Ih J' T^ P»™i«io« 
 
 ' '-P'ie. the peiS^^";- "^' "^ '«»<'.ncy , 
 the <iw(i,«,(.w views of hi.ZZ ^'"'"' '"'^h 
 -« it „ot that the .tw. in'r""- ^'x' 
 -me, h« been amply pO'tn J •'''^"" "» 
 our «hool. might preint th„ ^ ^. "npreoticable, 
 
 o'ericl zeal e/pen/eTCX in""'?"'''' "'«'='«'' »' 
 prejudice oar y™„„ 'S • !»''~™"™ fitted to 
 alienate them '^trol' ^t^l ««"• »">«■ "d to 
 "■oet import«.t of human int^'" ""T"" "'* 
 »ny considerate person Ih- » v ^° """ ""ind of 
 'f yield to the Sin iT^r '' ^ '^ '"'«'y 
 For. apart f„m thellTtSrh. """' "" «'<"®'"'<» 
 « being at least no m"«,^' ' .""^ "'" *« *"»»«<» 
 iter, is there not allluT.!? T^""" "»■" ""« min- 
 '"ia- teaching, by th" i^S^" .T"'^ '«*'■»' ««■ 
 it. in thecse ff Z ^he" w°M T """'""'"' »' 
 i no Undrance tominist^,!' T '* ^" '» "iMolutely 
 to their hearts' c^nU^tf ^ '"* *»'' ^''arianisni 
 
MKKKOrr MKXUnON TBT CNAIT 
 
 (ANSI and ISO TEST CHART No. 2) 
 
 Itt 
 lit 
 
 1.1 
 
 123 
 
 lU 
 
 IM 
 
 140 
 
 123 
 
 2.2 
 
 
 A 
 
 /1PPLED IM/GE I 
 
 t6S3 East Mom StrMt 
 RochMtar, Nm Yorti t4609 USA 
 (716) 403 - 0300 - Phorw 
 (718) 288 - 5989 - Fox 
 
m 
 
 178 CHRISTIAN INSTRUCTION 
 
 of the law, judgment, mercy and faith," it would 
 not the teachers but the clergymen. 
 
 Referring farther to the assumption that we t 
 
 seeking to introduce sectarian teaching, we think 
 
 has been sufficiently proved that instruction may 
 
 Christian without being sectarian. Far too much, 
 
 repeat, is made of the differences among Protestan 
 
 because in reality they are hardly worthy of not 
 
 in view of their general agreement m all the ess 
 
 tials of Christian teaching. That the great majoi 
 
 of Protestant Christians are so largely at one as tl 
 
 actually are. is at once what might be expected fi 
 
 an unprejudiced study of the Word of God. an 
 
 matter of great thankfulness in so far as it is ind 
 
 tive of such study. We need not repeat what 
 
 have said, in a former chapter, in reference to 
 
 sufficiency of the Divine provision for our being 
 
 to a general agreement in relation to the substanc 
 
 the teaching of the Christian Scriptures. In ^ 
 
 of the many misleading influences which ope 
 
 by Divine permission, for important ends, we 
 
 not be greatly surprised when we see men, eve 
 
 high intellect, committing themselves to egrej 
 
 follies in religion-even preferring Buddhisi 
 
 Mohammedanism to the teachings of Chnst or pu 
 
 singular constructions on the teachings of Chri 
 
 not « wresting the Scripturea" But if, having r( 
 
 to the promise of Divine guidance, the marvell 
 
 general agreement among Protestants in relati 
 
 the teachings of Scripture should not surpns 
 
'" "•"= ""■"^ ^H«»" or ONT.H,o. ,r» 
 
 ■"atter of surprise vJ. t ' '*«»•"''" was a 
 
 then, can it be oha^^ ^ ^/^^ '° « •»"• How. 
 to make sectarian tou-hT ' "' "° "™ ^^k'ng 
 
 Public Scho^, X^w L' ""^ ?' ""^ "-"^ "f ">e 
 teache™ shall be ^uZZ """ ^ ■"'""^ '*"" <>•«• 
 
 common Christian.^/rfi-nHfJv'e"""™"""" '» "" 
 "ho have a peculiar n!^,!.!.. P"' ''"^ of tho«, 
 
 of the PmviC-lS''^ "■ "" ''"''"'= S'"-""' 
 setting up of a J^ . • "° ""*»• '" "irtue of the 
 
 'hat our unity in^wtrjl™ "'^'' "' *«««" 
 Christianity i, a „X""^.'^^ S""' «sential. „f 
 
 our Rom«. CathX Cow J'? °'^"' "«'■' """ °' 
 -Oive^nee intm^H^rC ~"*-'?"« 
 Pos-ng too heavy a tax unonTh j " **" '"■■ 
 
 feel we possess h, our hiT" ^'"."^'"""^ "hieh we 
 
 can be accordwi th^ • i ^"^<'*' before our unity 
 
 'heRomrCalh^rtleT "'"" '' *«=°«'«' '^ 
 time to come. It L suL t T^ " * "«'" " »» 
 
 differ seriously t: Z Ztl "r "" '«" ""<> 
 PfUed to receive the lesCtrr'^ ""'^ '^ '»™- 
 t'anity of the Und. """"«"' Chris- 
 
I I' 
 
 180 
 
 CHRISTIAN INSTRUCTION 
 
 There is, then, no propriety, or rather there is a 
 great impropriety, in meeting our contention, as some 
 do, by asking, Shall the teaching be Calvinistic or 
 Arminian ? High Church or Low Church ? Baptist 
 or Pedobaptist ? or by ridiculing the idea of making 
 the Public School teacher a theological tutor. Such 
 questions are, spe tking mildly, the reverse of perti- 
 nent to our discussion ; and we no more desire the 
 teacher to be a theological tutor than the pious parent 
 is, who faithfully instructs his children— with this 
 difference, however, that while the parent has the 
 right to indoctrinate his children in the distinctive 
 tenets of his own Church, the teacher is to be abso- 
 lutely forbidden to utter a word outside of the gen- 
 erally accepted, well understood, and easily formulated 
 common Christianity of the Protestants of Ontario. 
 Nor is there an intelligent and judicious teacher, be- 
 longing to any one of the churches which comprise 
 nearly the whole Protestant profession of the Pro- 
 vince, who would find it in the least difficult to give 
 instruction in all essential Christian principles, doc- 
 trinal and practical, without introducing into his 
 teaching the peculiar tenets of his own denomination 
 His intelligent attachment to his own Church, be i\ 
 ever so strong, will be no reason for distrusting him 
 Rather, it will be the best of guarantees of his trust- 
 worthiness as a Christian instructor. 
 
 It may be we cannot yet say that sectarianism ii 
 an evil entirely of the past. But we may safelj 
 venture to say that, when all our teachers " of th( 
 
IN THE PDBUC SCHOOLS OP ONTARIO. 181 
 
 i~°I; '■""■""" I"""""' "<' -I"!--' to give 
 ™ rachon ,„ our co,„mo„ Christianity there wilTu 
 little occaaon to restniin excess of denominstiiri 7r 
 -c^.n «al on their part Free of alU^p^^Len, o„ 
 on that head, under the system for whoi Im^' " 
 
 X:: Tit' T"'i ""' ''"' i^ -^P^^^^'n 
 
 ?orrn^r;i:tt,--t.:::-^ 
 
 us when „e hear of any of them being chargeTwith 
 tahng ^vantage of his position to .fve a -Menli 
 
 ZX^' "^ 1;'' '-•''■'«• O" 'He eontrr; 
 th«r faithful and honourable abstention from M 
 
 emphatic demonstration of the truth that . higW 
 
 -mty .s attainable in the independent and «vere,!t 
 
 h f :L iT°t^ °' ""^ "•^" '' attainable il,?:;' 
 
 di^ZT'.u ?""""' '■«'' "te""* »»d of great 
 dmlecfcal subtlety, think otherwise and prefSto 
 
I Ij 
 
 ■I 
 
 m 
 
 CHRISTIAN INSTRUCTION. 
 
 entrench themselves in another unity, which they 
 regard as a safe stronghold against the temble 
 vagaries of the wild human intellect, while we are 
 far from envying them, we do not judge them, but 
 leave them, as we commit ourselves, to the judgment 
 of Him who alone cannot err in judgment 
 
 ii'iii 
 
 1 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 Ihe essential importance of parental interest—Parental neg- 
 lect an argument in favour of our contention— Per- 
 man-mt value of ChrietUn knowledge— The AposUe Paul's 
 valuation of its diffusion. 
 
 We propose in this chapter to deal frankly with the 
 error of those who. on the ground that the Christian 
 instruction of the young is unquestionably binding on 
 certain parties, argue that it should not be committed 
 to the teachers of the Public Schools; and also to 
 consider the serious failure in duty on the part of 
 many parents, as constituting an additional and very 
 strong argument in favour of the contention of these 
 pagea 
 
 We are being continually reminded, as we need not 
 be, that the communication of religious instruction is 
 the duty of the Church, its ministers, its parents, 
 and its Sabbath School teachers. We do not object 
 however, to our being kindly and faithfully reminded 
 of our duty. We are sure, at least, that ministers do 
 not. It does us no harm. What we seriously object 
 to is the implication that is intended to be conveyed 
 in these reminders, which is nothing less than that, 
 
 18S 
 
184 
 
 CHRISTIAN INSTRUCTION 
 
 I ' I 
 
 becaiute the Christian instruction of the young is the 
 duty of the Church, its ministers, parents and Sabbath 
 School teachers, it is not tlie duty of others besides 
 them. To say nothing of the breach of the elemen* 
 tary laws of reason, involved in such an implication, 
 the duty of these parties is not in question. The 
 question is, whether besides these, there are not others 
 who ought, in the best interests of the community, to 
 be engaged in the work of Christian instruction. It 
 is not a question of the transference of work from one 
 party to another. Far less is it, as some represent it, 
 a question of the transference of a burden from the 
 shoulders of those who ought to bear it, to the 
 shoulders of those who ought not to have it laid upon 
 them. The question is, we repeat. Do not the interests 
 of the community— the State, the Province, the 
 Nation, for the name is a matter of indifference — 
 require that in addition to the agencies referred to, 
 anoilier agency shall be employed, to the employment 
 of which, as we humbly submit, it has been shown there 
 can be no legitimate objection, or to the employment 
 of which by the civil ruler there is no let on the 
 ground of any Scripture principle ? 
 
 It is a grief to us to see that there are those who 
 seriously misapprehend our motives and our purpose 
 and aim, in pleading for the authoritative introduc- 
 tion of religious instruction into the Protestant 
 schools of Ontario— the Public Schools. Speaking 
 in the name of the Protestant ministers of the Pro- 
 vince, who, we believe, with the exception more 
 than once referred to, are almost universally in 
 
IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS OP ONTARIO. 185 
 
 sympathy with us. our contention does not look as 
 acme inconsiderately and ungenerously insinuate.' to 
 the transference oi an obligation or. as they prefe; to 
 phrase .t. a hnrd^ from themselves to another class 
 of instructom We do not need to be told that it is 
 the duties of mmisters. parents and Sabbath School 
 teacher to instruct the young. For minister^ w 
 can safely say that there is no class of men. taken as 
 a whole who have more pleasure in the work of 
 their calling than ministers have in the instruction 
 
 thooH u ^^'.'^'^' "^^y ^ ««'d «f Sabbath 
 .choo teachers, as is sufficiently manifest f«,m the 
 fact alone that their labour are gratuitous We 
 
 ^Id f"f .'''"^*" *" "^^ ^'^'^ '"^-^ -"-y 
 
 parents fail to realize their responsibility, and are 
 
 theT 1-M ''' 'n'^ °' *'^ ^«''^«- insLction ; 
 their children. But all the more do we. for this very 
 
 reason, eaniestly contend for Christian instruction by 
 
 the qualified Christian teachers of this Provincf 
 
 were It only as a means, urgently required, of mitigat-' 
 
 mg the evilissues of parental neglect. We have no 
 
 Idea that Sab^th School t.ache« and dutiful parents 
 
 will, when Christian instruction is imparted in our 
 
 schools, do any less than they have been doing 
 
 we shall see before we close this chapter, that they 
 wi 1 be under the necessity of doing much more, but 
 not without the hope of ample reward for their 
 increased labour.* 
 
 * See also last chapter. 
 
186 
 
 CBRISTtAN INSTRUCTIOK 
 
 Ready as we may be to labour in our mm.. • y to 
 the utmost extent of our ability and oppoi inity, 
 we cannot but believe that there is another class 
 of instructors, whose agency in the communication 
 of Christian knowledge, if it could be made avail- 
 able, would be of immense value, as an addition 
 to the agencies that are now in operation. While 
 it would be a great benefit to those who are now 
 receiving a modicum of Christian instruction from 
 the workeis of the Church, it io nothing short of a 
 necessity to many of the young people of the Pro- 
 vince. We cannot but see that there are many whom, 
 from whatever cause, the present agencies fail to 
 reach ; and the sorrowful fact cannot be denied that 
 the employment of what is, in some important respects, 
 the chief of these agencies, viz., the parental, is far from 
 being the power for good that it ought to be, and that 
 it would be, but for parental neglect of Christian duty. 
 Even with the present agencies at their best — that is, 
 generally as well as faithfully employed — the daily 
 communication of Christian instruction by skilled 
 Christian teachers would be an unspeakable benefit 
 to our children of all classes, as witness the results of 
 it, in making Scotland what it has been for more 
 than three centuries, placed in the van of nations in 
 the intelligence and energy of its people, and in their 
 love of freedom, civil and religious, conscientiously 
 loyal to the infatuated dynasty that persecuted them, 
 and by their " resistance unto blood," a prime factor 
 in the securing of British liberty. 
 
IN THl PUBUO SCHOOLS OF OKTARIO. 187 
 
 The writer may be allowed to refer to his own 
 case, m illustration of the value of the religious 
 lessen, of the day school. Looking back more than 
 «xty years, to the time when the Sabbath School 
 was in Its infancy in Scotland, and when there was 
 yet no Sabbath School in connection with the conirre. 
 gation to which his family belonged, he believes that, 
 notwithstanding home teaching, he would have been 
 anything but an adept in Scripture knowledge but 
 for the daily Scriptare and catechism exereise with 
 which every day began in the day school. Saturday 
 forenoon being sometimes wholly spent in the revisai 
 of the week's religious lessona And though, as has 
 been said the master of the school at which he 
 received his early classical education, was at that 
 time required to be a member of the National Church 
 a whisper was never heard of sectarian Uachfna' 
 though the children of three dissenting congregai ^ 
 attended the school, two of those congregations b^mg 
 of the Jirst secession, and the other of the sfcv»fi -h- 
 Relief aeceaaiou, to which the family of the » .«• 
 belonged. No doubt there was a full accorda* , 
 the part of all those congregations in relatit* 
 Scripture doctrine. But we have shown that, if w. ^ 
 accordance of the great Protestant bodies of Ontari. 
 18 not absolutely entire, there differences are of m. 
 a«x>u„t. in view of their unity in all the essentials of 
 christian teaching. Bnt the writer has further to 
 say. that when later he attende<l the Etlinburgh 
 Normal School, which was at the time practically 
 
188 
 
 CHRISTIAN INHTRUCnON 
 
 I; 
 
 under the rule of a then diHtinguished amateur 
 enthusiastic educationist — a Scottish barrister and 
 county judge* — who was a member of the Scottish 
 Episcopal Church, with a decided leaning to Armin- 
 ianism (which did not prevent the Kirk Sessions of 
 Edinburgh, under whose control the school was placed, 
 from accepting his valuable gratuitous services), 
 there was the same freedom from all suspicion of 
 sectarianism ; and, though the Scripture lessons were 
 felt by many to be unduly onerous, many others 
 besides the writer, had they "remained until this 
 present " 'time, would freely acknowledge that with- 
 out those daily Christian lessons, which occupied a 
 prominent place in the work of the school, their 
 Scripture knowledge would have been comparatively 
 very slender. And who can seriously think of the 
 entire absence of Bible and definite Christian teaching 
 from the schools of Ontario, without being so impressed 
 with the inadequacy of the present agencies, as to 
 fear that an increasing ignorance of Christian truth 
 will characterize our otherwise highly educated 
 classes, unless a prominent place shall without delay 
 be given to it in the lessons of the day school ? 
 
 Referring more especially to the parental agency, 
 so far are we from thinking that the instructions of 
 the day school can be an adequate substitute for those 
 of the home, that, on the contrary, we are, in our 
 pulpit ministrations, continually reminding parents 
 that, however helpful any other agency may be, no 
 
 • In Scotland, Advocate and Sherif-Ihpute. 
 
IN TH« PUBLIC SCHOOLS OF ONTARIO. 189 
 
 agency, however helpful, can be expected to neutralize 
 or compensate for the evils of pare^l neglect Thai 
 good «.ulta of the highent kind should I the frutt 
 of the Chnstian instruction of children whose parents 
 are md.fferent to their religious or spiritual welK 
 
 be.^ barred by the paints' unbelieving dL«^^ 
 of Scripture promise, which assures the ChrisS 
 l^hever of the success of his endeavor to bring ^r,^ 
 chid "n the nurture and admonition of the Lord " 
 But yet much may be done to compensate for the 
 
 ZJS r"!?'""' '^ P"^"^' •» '^' ^«y o^ storing 
 the mmds of the young with Christian knowlecjge 
 
 i^^ZT' ""t *^'"''' "*" ^"P"^ ^^^ ««««r«on that 
 the add, ion of stated day school Christian instruc 
 
 ChrisTu "'°'' '^^'"*"^ '^^'^ ^"^y °f ^he other 
 
 Christian agencies m reducing the present appalling 
 
 unacquaintance with Scripture truth, and in inking 
 
 an adequate measure of sound Christian knowledge 
 
 Uje general, and all but universal, possession of the 
 
 peopleof Ontario. And in view of the possible and 
 
 such knowledge, who can overestimate its value ^ 
 Not to speak of its value as an intellectual endow" 
 ment. the Christian instructor who has been grieved 
 to see all his endeavours neutralized by Averse 
 home influences, has. from time to time, reason to 
 rejoice m the changed life of one who has. perhaps for 
 a long time, followed the evil example of the home. 
 While we labour to counteract the evil effects of 
 
II' 
 
 ll 
 
 I I 
 
 190 
 
 CHRISTIAN INSTRUCTION 
 
 parental nej^lect, which its prevalency requires us to 
 do incessantly, it is because we can never forget that 
 the parental agency in the religious training of chil- 
 dren is so indispensable that no other agency can 
 compensate, in the interests of children, for parental 
 indifference, to say nothing of evil example. Other 
 agencies may store the minds of our young people 
 with Christian knowledge, an inestimable possession 
 which, through the plenteous mercy of Qod, may re- 
 sult eventually in the rescuing of their souls from 
 death. Put if our children generally are to devote 
 themselves early to Christ and to lead Christian lives, 
 we must above all things, direct our attention to 
 parents, in the hope of rendering their Christian 
 interest in their children less exceptional than it is «t 
 the present time. We are mourning over the slender 
 results, moral and spiritual, of the much earnest en- 
 deavour that is being put forth, in the interest of our 
 young people, by ministers and other Christian wor!v- 
 ers ; but probably we do not at all sufficiently realize 
 the fact that all our endeavours must be compara- 
 tively fruitless in this respect, when parental influence 
 is adverse or unfavourable. We complain that so very 
 few of our young people are giving indications of a 
 disposition to lead a Christian life ; but that, on the 
 contrary, very many of them, and of our young men 
 especially, make us fear that an evil future is before 
 them, even in respect of the present life ; inasmuch as 
 they are manifestly averse to that godliness that has 
 attached to it the promise of the life that now is, as 
 
IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS OF ONTARIO. 191 
 
 well as of the life that is to come. But are we suffi- 
 ciently alive to the fact that, in the multitude of 
 instances, the great hindrance to the present and 
 immediate efficacy of the influences brought to bear 
 upon our young people, is the spiritual torpor and in- 
 difference to divine things which characterize their 
 parents ? We may have all the machinery of Chris- 
 tian instruction in active and ceaseless operation • but 
 all will be of little avail in awakening a genuine and 
 effective interest in the minds of the children, while 
 their parents are not acting in such a way as to com- 
 pel the belief that they are actuated by a supreme 
 regard to religious interests— deceiving themselves it 
 may be. but not their children. If parents give oc^- 
 sion to their children to suspect the genuineness of 
 their religion, by their lukewarmness in relation to 
 the great realities of the unseen and eternal world 
 while they are all life and earnestness in relation t<i 
 the interests of sense and time, there may indeed be 
 an occasional conversion, thus keeping up the «uc- 
 cession of true piety in the church, without affecting 
 to any appreciable degree the general reign of spiritual 
 death. But not until parents generally manifest a 
 type of piety and concern for their children's spiritual 
 welfare that are now comparatively rare, can we 
 reasonably expect a general movement toward Christ 
 on the part of our young people. 
 
 In referring, as we have done with some warmth, 
 to the essential importance of the parental agency, 
 and to prevailing parental indifference and neglect,' 
 
192 
 
 CHRISTIAN INSTRUCTION 
 
 we may possibly be reminded that we have forgotten 
 that we are not preaching. If we have erred in this 
 respect, we trust that some leniency may be extended 
 to us, on the ground that, with the views we have, it 
 is hardly possible that our spirit should not be stirred 
 within us, when we not only have to deplore the 
 partial or entire neglect of many parents, but must 
 perforce submit to a system of public education char- 
 acterized by the idolatry of the material and the 
 secular, with no room in it for intelligent Scripture 
 teaching; our rulers declining to acknowledge re- 
 sponsibility for the Christian instruction of the 
 children of Protestants, beyond telling their ministers 
 that, if they think their children are not receiving 
 enough of religious instruction, they may go into the 
 school-room and there give them another lesson once 
 a week. 
 
 Our reference, however, to the parental agency has 
 respect to the fact that our expectations, as well as 
 our motives and aims, are so much misunderstood. 
 Enough, we trust, has been said to satisfy the candid 
 mind that there is no ground for ascribing anything 
 to Christian ministers, except the desire and the hope 
 of doing more work, and of working with more suc- 
 cess as the community advances in Christian know- 
 ledge ; and especially no reason to think that we are 
 so foolish as to indulge in unreasonable expectations 
 in reference to the results of daily or stated Scripture 
 instruction in the Public School. But while, as has 
 been said, we have slender hope of results of the 
 
» THE PUBUC SCBOOZ. or OKT.B,0. ,93 
 
 v.l«e of the «ri/3,^',r; ™»"ot.ove«,sti,„«te the 
 not only in resoL^r « *^''™"»" knowledge, 
 
 Chnstjan comforter access fT/h ^''^ ^° *^« 
 
 the day of distress and r it t ^"l '^"^ ""'^^ '» 
 could not have in the cTe !f on^ f ^'"''' ^'^^'^^ ''^ 
 the eJemente of ChristiaTll "' " " " '^^^'''^"^ «^ 
 
 One word more at this noinf in * 
 strange notion of our deLT . ''^''^"'" *° ^^^^ 
 imposed on others It ? ?"' ^^''^ «^°»'^ »>« 
 
 desi. is ascribed to us' h^r^X^r ^"^^ '^ 
 wters,and that the more in^.ir T ^"^'^'^^^ min- 
 
 'nore careful we rZ^e tot^'"' ""^ ^^^^^ '»^«' the 
 the pulpit. And tho, 1 ^^^ Preparation for 
 
 "the laying on of the S T *'^^ "'^ ""'« ^-'"^ to 
 feel as Lu^re of our « A^^^^^ f Presbytery." and 
 Roman Catholic pr^st t^^"^l «"«^«««'°«" as the 
 Anglicans can do'^^t ^rell f ''^"^^ ^^^"^^ 
 
 with our people hat dc^s noT fol^T ^^ ^"^"^°^« 
 the instrumentality ofT,./^^/ "" ^''"^^ *^«>»«»» 
 
 »nd as much as ours *^l'"*^^^^^-theirs as well 
 
 advantage of treiri^„. ' °° ^^«'^« *« take 
 
 reading and kindrl^ ^® ^^® attention to 
 

 V I 
 
 n. i 
 
 194 
 
 CHRISTIAN INSTRUCTION 
 
 profiting may appear to all," we believe we cannot 
 acceptably serve our Master and His cause by " that 
 which costs us nothing," The time indeed was when, 
 having completed our college studies to enter on the 
 work of the ministry, we assumed the general 
 possession, on the part of the people, of a fair 
 measure of Scripture knowledge. But after a while 
 we found that there were not a few, not children in 
 years, to edify whom it was necessary to descend to 
 the commonplace. When it is considered that this 
 necessity is largely owing to the little attention that 
 is now paid to religious instruction, compared with 
 what was given to it in ther days, and especially to 
 its absence from the day school, it cannot be thought 
 that ordinary candour will ascribe to us any but a 
 reasonable motive in agitating for the reduction, by 
 all legitimate agencies, of the prevailing poverty in 
 Christian knowledge. 
 
 But to bring to a close the discussion of the im- 
 portant subject of the present chapter. Surely when 
 in addition to the present means of instruction, 
 " Holiness to the Lord " is written on the doors of 
 our National Schools, and the fathers and the mothers 
 of the rising generation are generally interested in 
 the religious welfare of their children, the hope that 
 our land will become a "garden of the Loi*d " among 
 nations is no vain one. There is indeed not a little 
 to discourage us ; and, as we have said, not our least 
 discouragement is that there are Christian brethren 
 who, under an unreafjflable apprehension, as we 
 
"■ '■" ""«•'« «'"»0" OP OKTAmo. ,9S 
 
 which the greaUpoatlervI^fi Jl'.T^''"' <" 
 but rejoice in it. diffl„iore»en ^„f ' ' """ "°* 
 Not that he rejoiced in e°'vt L ,Lf '\'"'? ""'«•" 
 he could not but, with Til rt • .• ' "''"''' '"'l'"' 
 B"t he rejoiced, « wf dot ttT^-' ""^'^^ ■""•»■•• 
 '«Ige, the P«»e«iorof which *f''°''°''''°''»°''- 
 ■"ore likely object "f Twnl '? P<««»«.r. 
 
 whoieig„„„„t^f^^»;;°« «™« "«» 'he „.n 
 
 ■•".-ipne th.t « th?c»r:fhf j"t""""' ■="> -« 
 
 Chrietian in^trucX^^^r^lll »"^»«'- »' 
 erapiro. without makinTif! "'\«''ool8 of the 
 th«o who objectern TjTK"^ ""*"« »» 
 would h.vep^testedlli'^t i 'r,^ °' "•'"""""S' 
 being . eontreventionTj^! 1?" . «"""<" "' ''» 
 of My othe.- principk of „L- ■'"'"^ P"""'"''''- or 
 be «id th.t the ™f„„, "!"•" ,""™ ' " -y 
 cepted principlee. dH™ . .tSSt^ T'' "^ 
 Ml a comp«»tively recent time a,. , . ^'^'oP-e-' 
 bered, we are fully aauriL; f "V '"* ""»<"»- 
 in oar LoH's teichfaT^ ""^ '' »" ^e-m 
 
 q«oted.a.„id tol»°f'„°JT^ "•»' have been 
 though... w. Uve «idT '""f °"~"'^-''"'"'; 
 blindne*. .ee why TcZl^^' ^"^f '" "ur 
 -— ^[V_a^Chnrtmn Qeaar ahould not 
 
196 ' CHRISTIAN INSTRUCnOH. 
 
 hinwelf " render to God the things that are God's." or 
 why he should not use his power and the money he 
 receives from his people, to promote the Christian 
 welfare of his subjects. We cannot think that Paul 
 would have protested against such action, though he 
 would surely have objected to coercion. And we 
 think even that we cannot be quite sure that he 
 would have objected to the Emperor's doing some- 
 thing, in his official capacity, for the support and 
 comfort of the Christian ministers of his day, so 
 that they might not have to labour night and day for 
 their own support, at tent-making and other occupa- 
 tions. But those, it may be said, were the times of 
 the morning twilight of some great principles, and 
 some may think that, if Paul had been living now, 
 he would have objected not only to the.pubhc endow- 
 ment of religion, but to the allowance of Chnstian 
 instruction in the schools whose teachers are secured 
 in a decent maintenance by the action of the civil 
 ruler From this, however, we must dissent. We 
 cannot but humbly think that, while the great 
 apostle seems not to have highly relished the receiv- 
 ing of money from those to whom he was preaching 
 the Word, although his doing so was in accordance 
 with a Divine ordinance of both Testaments, we may 
 be very sure that he would have rejoiced m seeing 
 all Christians cordially united in the desire and 
 determination to give Christian instruction a promin- 
 ent place in our National Schools. 
 
CHAPTER XItt 
 
 "■e proper woA^IL ?^''.°' "" ''«>"-». •» 
 knowledge of (bTfZ. T^^ ""! ' '"'■'*' ""'" «>« 
 
 ■eholws a retreat .nH i • "'° "'»<'« »f k'' 
 
 « the Worf S Q^ '°"°« "^"^ 'o-- the Bible, 
 
 their «.n«ien«, iL WuT " *^ «'"■»«» "t 
 may be exnected t^ T?T P^e'P'ea And he 
 eei^iallyTe^ ^r^^' '»V«'™e«on, to bear 
 
 thi. connection e'tZ t if'i°""*' '^"'"'- '" 
 there a« those whoX TJ- '^ 'P'**'" t" «»»«, 
 the nee of thTBTw! inlTT'^,"T^^' "'«««''■" '» 
 which, were they vl id tin " **«"-ebjectione 
 
198 
 
 CHRISTIAN INSTRUCnoN 
 
 reprobation. Two of these objections especially call 
 for particular consideration, on account of their 
 plausibility, appealing;, as they do, to the best and 
 finest feelinfp of our nature— the one to the senti- 
 ment of pudieity, and the other to that of compos- 
 sum, which includes in its kindly sweep and embrace 
 even those whose criminality requires their suffering, 
 it may be, even unto death, as a protection to the 
 interests of the community. 
 
 I. While there are many other sins afrainst which 
 our young peojAe need to be constantly and solemnly 
 warned, such as profanity, dishonesty, untruthfulness, 
 intemperance and unfilial conduct, there is perhaps 
 no class of sins, the deadly nature of which they more 
 need to have deeply impressed upon them than that 
 of sins against purity, the Bible references to which 
 some profess to consider so indelicate as to make the 
 Bible, as a whole, an improper book for use in the 
 school. Now, we cannot but hasten to say with all 
 possible emphasis that, if anything in our present 
 controversy calls for outspoken dealing and flat con- 
 tradiction, it is this objection to the Word of God, 
 which, as we have said, applies to the use of the 
 Bible in the Sabbath School, including the Bible- 
 class, as well as to its use in the day school. In 
 dealing frankly with it, therefore, as we are called to 
 do, we do not hesitate to say at . the outset, that we 
 take the ground that, not only are the references 
 objected to no reason why the Bible should be denied 
 a place in the school and concealed from our young 
 
n' THE PtTBUO 8CHOOUI or OKTAHIO. ,9» 
 Pwple. but the absence of the«e r«f. 
 our judgment, be a seriL T? "^f""^ ^ould, i„ 
 Pwfeases to inform us o7Z • *?' i" * *^^ ^^'^h 
 *o our duty, and to the dVirT** ^^ ^°^ »» "^•"on 
 which prci;ed f^j^L^r^'^'ir •"'^ d««»quencie8 
 our fallen naturl"! ^her Z^^i fn^ ^^^^ ^^ of 
 •" • proof, amonir manv «!I .u ' ^^^ w^erencea 
 uttemnce <^f Q^? ZZ t "' *^** **^« »»>^« « the 
 convincing uaorlur I ,^"'' ''^'^ *^« <^««'^ of 
 
 '^ AndV^rer^';:^^^^^^^ 
 
 •rgumente/or and agal^ltTtul T?? ^»*o ^^e 
 without objecting to T^tLf . ^^'^^^> and 
 dr«n. we must protest^i*^ ? .f "^ '°' ^^^unger chil- 
 Bible by a Lect^n^ X^ch VT "^''°^ «^ *»»« 
 be the omission of The vi^,' ?'^ ^"''^"^^^O" would 
 that are objected to 1 Z^^ ;"*^'^"' "^^'^nces 
 «y that we^earth^eThe^t^^^^^^ "^ ^"^'^ 
 part of many, altoirether ^ • ^delicacy is. on the 
 
 q-stionedthluhe^at CXdi l'.^ T^' ^ 
 because its 'teachin;. is of l»T u ^^'^^ *^® ^ible. 
 
 them tremble in the c^l "'^* '^*«*^^' «" ^o make 
 would pe^uade thems^r^'" "' T "'^^'^' *^«^ 
 while the ve^ menS^*: D:::^^''^' ^"^^ 
 of them is an intolerable bre^h S nl^'^,^'"'^*''"" 
 
 No one will hesitate to ^thJ^''^*'^' 
 estimate the value of thl ^ . """ **°»ot over- 
 relation to the purity oMhr "'"* '' P"^'*'^*^ - 
 indeed say that itl thl .K r^"™""'^^- ^e may 
 PJ;^5^i^^ of social 
 
 — — :::i____j^nwmch the power of 
 
 o^^z::^ ir^t^- ^^«-^- 
 
soo 
 
 CHRISTIAN INSTRUCTION 
 
 oonacienoe is so slender a restraint against the indul- 
 gence of irregular desires. It is therefore important 
 in the highest degree that we should, not only care- 
 fully avoid everything that might tend to weaken, 
 but do all we can to foster, a sentiment apart from 
 whose powerful influence, wide as is the prevalence of 
 what is called the " social evil," the condition of the 
 community would be infinitely worse than it unhap- 
 pily is. But we shall be guilty of a tremendous 
 folly if we imagine that the sentiment of pudicity 
 can be a substitute for conscience ; and we shall be 
 justly reckoned Its the worst enemies of those who 
 come after us if, under the plea of respect for it, we 
 decline to use our best endeavours to enlist the youth- 
 ful conscience on the side of " purity in heart, speech 
 and behaviour." Granting that the matter is one that 
 requires delicate handling, a person is not fit to be 
 entrusted with the education of the young, who 
 cannot deal with it in such a way as shall tend at 
 once to promote tenderness of conscience in relation 
 to sins against purity, and to strengthen the senti- 
 ment which is the only safety of many, and which is 
 a defence which perhaps not very many can afford 
 altogether to depreciate or despise. We are surely 
 not mistaken in believing that even Joseph was 
 dominated as much as any man ever was, by the 
 divinely strengthened modesty of his nature, when 
 the mighty and irresistible power of the tenderest 
 of consciences constrained him to exclaim: "How 
 shall I do this great wickedness and sin against 
 
IN THE PUBUO SCHOOLS OP oOTABIO. fOl 
 
 dcf^uioTSlS Tthr r*^' ''""«' ""■" 
 taw view, in rl^Tr " !" •n'oreement of Scrip- 
 
 S.bb.th School • "^y *■"«' " ■■' "'• 
 
 Ood. ind L^t^l'^''' "■" »««*'»« 0* "» Wo«f of 
 th. «il re.^1. ^f ^^ "T "»"" "" *«"<'er mmd 
 
 t^e -.^;~.lt^ro:"o?^'Tj:i:'r,i 
 
 to enforce tL^^ ^fi^"''; '" «■«" <«««"» th„ 
 
 It« undeniable that muX^ thf ,1te« „w ^l"'' 
 current nnder the name of phyefofo^v „ ^' " 
 pernicious influence n„ .1,. '. ^'""'"B'' e»reise« a 
 
 H is, whether d^^^'j''' "',::,»•»' "T' ^"^ « 
 meat of h„.„an cj^ ^IiJLIT "T" ''P"*- 
 foster the belief that tL f T "'""»«'«'■. "nd to 
 
 «8»in,t in — ^'witCiaXh'''"*-'',"'"' 
 t™nq;re«,ion of the mom h.t „f tJtjl °' "'" 
 Of fo,«ettin« that eWI rJi:' „^- 'Z^^-'Z 
 
fOS 
 
 CBRUiTlAlf INSTRUCTION 
 
 physiological laws, be the natanl penalty of anire- 
 •trained indalgence of natural appeteneiea. Though 
 we might subject ourselves to scorn in properly 
 characterising the teaching to which the literary 
 power of some men of name gives currency and popu- 
 larity in our day. all the more does such teaching 
 need, as an indispensable counteractive, the plain 
 home-speaking of Scripture, where the needful and 
 only effective counteractive is to be found. Men will 
 range the encyclopaedia of human knowledge in vain 
 for a moral power, fitted to appal the transgressor of 
 the law of punty, such as is contained in a single 
 utterance of Scripture ; and that because it is instinct 
 with the breath of the living Qod and pervaded with 
 the power of Him who is the Lord of conscience, and 
 " is of purer eyes than to behold evil, and cannot look 
 on iniquity." To say nothing of the direct and dire 
 denunciations of the Divine displeasure against im- 
 purity, not only of life, but of heart, where, in the 
 whole compass of human literature, shall we find a 
 sentence weighted with such a power to affect the 
 conscience, as that which closes the simple and faith- 
 ful record of a great king's violation of the Divine 
 law of purity, and his criminal attempt to conceal it., 
 " The thing that David had done displeased the Lord" ? 
 But for Scripture, and having regard only to standard 
 works of profane history, we can with difficulty avoid 
 the impression that princes and other great men, their 
 associates, are reasonably to be regarded as exempt 
 from the obligation of the Divine law of purity. But 
 
« nw TOBuo 8CH0OU or oin»mo. ms 
 
 "0*1 » no nqwter of p,»on„" ud while dl 
 """f" 1. <1« to th. virtoJL pri^ who fa mJrf 
 
 W nm b.w« of „t.ni«g in . fooIi.h . J aipZ^ 
 w.y to the „n of D.yid, in.»«ul of trembhW K 
 
 gnmion of the law of God. or of rejoicinir with tram 
 bl.j« g»t.t„d. for th. «^ ««» hi. Wepl ;t t™ 
 
 th.'^iS'- """"■ 'r^^ "'»■«*'<» to the a« of 
 «» BiWe in o«r whool.. which ells for bmZ.1., 
 
 Itraehtes to exterminate the Canaanit«. ««^ ♦« 
 ^«rUnd. which Ood P«,n.S3T ^^.^^3 
 
 MiVM ppactiM the idoUtricB and the wiekad .iv,-,: 
 "tioo. ««ci.W th,«with th. nc^t^""!" 
 
 »u needful, it is because some time a«) we haH rv.^« 
 
 !:!!_!lf!!i!!^!!^^^ of four wtrst 
 
 •n'riz'r^ rCacitthr''" j^^i^i^ii;^^^^ 
 
 th«t of David's fallandiUU^KU °'''***P'" «"»* victory. «„d 
 «ii.ple«u™. And i^l „?J^^ conjequence-the fruitof God'. 
 
204 
 
 CHRISTIAN INSTRUCTION 
 
 a local newspaper, in reply to attacks made by a 
 teacher against the use of the Bible in our schools, 
 on that special ground. 
 
 The objection, while it is plausible, as seeming to 
 appeal to the best feelings of our nature, is really 
 based upon a very erroneous impression respecting 
 the guilt of heathen men in the sight of God — an 
 impression contrary to the teaching of Scripture and 
 entirely inconsistent with right views of sin ; and an 
 impression which, we may also say, by the way, 
 largely accounts for the apathy of many nominal 
 Christians in relation to the great work of the 
 Christian Church — the evangelization of the heathen 
 world. We trust, therefore, it may serve a good pur- 
 pose to endeavour to dispel this evil impression, by 
 an appeal not only to Scripture, but to the axiomatic 
 utterances of the human conscience, in relation to 
 sin. 
 
 God's thoughts of the guilt of men as sinners, like 
 His thoughts of other things, are very different from 
 those which, owing to human depravity, men them- 
 selves are apt to entertain. Men are apt to be greatly 
 mistaken in their thoughts both of their own sin and 
 of the sin of others, and do in fact often err egregi- 
 ously in their estimate both of others' character and 
 of their own. There are those who are " clean in 
 ''■■ ir own eyes," but are "abomination in the sight 
 of God " ; and there are those whom some may regard 
 as hardly to be charged with the gnilt of sin — to be 
 pitied and not blamed — but who are deeply guilty 
 
lO TH. PCBUO SCHOOLS OF ONTARIO. 206 
 
 tte r;St^'' r^"\»' «"■■ ««"^ think 
 
 heathen m^ who^Tn! r'"''"'^' "■•« «tt«ch to 
 
 the i.«ht of C:.7,::j::'"^a m:' •"■ -'•■•"" 
 
 if not ineffahlfl u,;.^ ° *"®'^ superior, 
 
 better tr.Uh";i^,74ri:"' f,'^""" " '- 
 instead „f havL onT^i t .w' 'f '''"' '~°°™'''- 
 i-p.rt.ng ««.pef Cht^W t eTtjr .","""• "^ 
 And yet it may be t™ly said o^.h .^*^ f'"™" ' 
 i. nothing eom^^a "1 he 1 T^ ' .""' u"" 
 "Ood hath spoken by hi, sL" ^ ?" *" "'""" 
 tinne impeniU But ikethe ' " ", ^.''' ~- 
 Sodon,. they may be « 4ked and °{ ,'"'"'"' 
 
 I-rf exceedingfy... anllt t "e"" ^7 ""' 
 «"evou8," aa „aa the wiekedni thTl ""^ 
 hundred ye«, before, called f^rth.' .^.■°'" '"^ 
 universally cornmt h., •/ extinction of 
 
 excepted. "^ ''"'"'"'"y' "■» f-n'i'y only 
 
 of Ood isa^ing tor^rr-'":' .^'j-'^-"™' 
 
 like the men of 8:?„m.'™Nt isTdiffl "T """ ™" 
 ground of 0«J. righteous jud^n It ft" 't™T, ""^ 
 are questions in relation d sir^hich « K '"! 
 
 =:;.Xro:-i/£rr-- 
 
 of 0«i. whether^htthe:" .'chS'lf T 
 pendent of all questions ^apectingte ..S^'n^tf 
 
206 
 
 CHRISTIAN INSTRUCTION 
 
 sin and God's penniasiou of it— its origin and diffu- 
 sion, the long-continuance of it, and the wide extent 
 of its prevalence, and of the fact that, reasoning of 
 these and of kindred subjects. 
 
 Of Providence, foreknowledge, will, and fate ; 
 Fixed fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute. 
 We find no end, in wandering m m lost : 
 
 independent, we say of all this, heathen, not less than 
 Christian men, in all their sin, are and do or leave 
 undone what they know, or otight to know, they 
 should not be and do or leave undone. The men of 
 Sodom ought not to have been the wicked men they 
 were. They were wicked not by any physical neces- 
 sity, but solely because they preferred and chose to 
 be wicked : and they did wicked things, because they 
 had pleasure in the doing of them. If it be said 
 they were wicked because their fathers were wicked, 
 and all their surroundings tended to make them 
 wicked, so that they could not but be wicked, we 
 must repel the attempt to excuse them. To allow it 
 were to allow the contradiction that they were wot 
 wicked in being wicked. We must therefore hold 
 and affirm— what needs no argument to sustain it — 
 that they ought not to have been wicked because 
 their fathers were wicked, or because they were 
 tempted by their environment to be wicked. The 
 very fact that presumably they were not all equally 
 wicked, as men never are anywhere, is of itself 
 sufficient proof that they were wicked, not because 
 

 IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS OP ONTARIO. 207 
 
 they could not but be wicked, but because they cho^ 
 
 no^^l^X V°"'' "^™ -^-<^ thatThfu^ 
 not all equally wicked, all the inhabitants of the cify 
 were more or less on the side of wickedne^ w tt 
 the one exception of Lot. who "vexed his rigCus 
 aoul from day to day with their lawless deeds." Cer- 
 
 tto"u5h Arr^'u""' '''' "«'^'^°"« «^ «»«* kicked, 
 though Abraham began his intercession on behalf o 
 
 AndTfi^ V^ '"PP^'"^ '^''' ™'^»^^ ^ fifty. 
 And If fafty. why not five hundred or five thousand . 
 
 Nay. why not aU of them ? Only because th^v 
 
 chose, and that freely, to be wicked ^ ^ 
 
 We need not quote the terrible indictment of the 
 
 aix.tlePaul(Rom.i.21-ii.li)againstthemosth^^^^ 
 civilized peoples of the ancient heathen world We 
 
 oZ Tp'' '"*"'^ ^' ^^^P^' A-y"a. PeJa 
 Greece and Rome, that his arraignment; which wiU 
 
 It IS simply necessary to remind those whose objec- 
 tion we are now called to meet, that the apostle 
 without any hesitation, affirms that those whoThe' 
 
 ness. How could they be otherwise than inexcusable 
 when, knowing what was right, they preferred ddng 
 the wrong-the very wrong which, the apostle says 
 they condemned in others ? And then, as all know 
 
 wh? rr 5^".' ^"' '■""«*"-« ex'ceptions--men 
 who abhorred the prevailing wickedne^^. and who 
 
 were e„,,„ent examples of what other, ought to be 
 ^nd to do. but freely chose not te be afd tTdo 
 
208 
 
 CHRISTIAN INSTRUCTION 
 
 There have been discussions, sometimes very warm, 
 respecting the final destiny of those illustrious men. 
 But that is a matter which we are not called to con- 
 cern ourselves with. It is enough for us to know 
 that, in relation to them, as to all others, the " Judge 
 of all the earth will do right," and that " he delight- 
 eth in mercy," the mercy-seat being His " dwelling 
 place," 
 
 We have not bei as yet called to be at variance 
 with any one who (questioned the justice of God in 
 the destruction of Sodom and its neighbour cities, 
 when, their inhabitants being past reclamation, they 
 were, we may well say, in mei-cy to others, as well as 
 in righteous judgment, blotted out of existence by 
 fire from heaven. When, three Ox four centuries 
 later, " the iniquity of the Canaanites was full," their 
 extermination by the sword was committed by 
 Divine injunction to the children of that same Abra- 
 ham who had pleaded so earnestly against the 
 destruction of " the cities of the plain "; the injunction 
 being accompanied with the solemn warning, again 
 and again repeated, that, if they defiled the land, as 
 the doomed nations had done, with their abomina- 
 tions, it would surely "also spue them out, as its 
 spued out the nations that were before them,'' as it 
 possessors. This injunction is now objected to, as 
 making the Bible an improper book for the instruc- 
 tion of our children attending the schools of the 
 Province. The implication involved in the objection 
 is that such an injunction is not within the Diving 
 
'» THE PUBUO SCHOOLS OF OHT.,,0. 209 
 
 « relation to ,m. whetl, J » ? •""■gement 
 
 >»«" or the paX of U "i^T^,,,"" ?'«'».*- 
 
 puniahW and in Si. T"*' "■"J""' '«"' ■" »» 
 
 the Divine eon,~Lv L -. .T'^ ■"" '»»» ""«» 
 
 Can the civil n.lerX^i^ttll'^r '"" '""^-■ 
 to remove an enemv „f • . '^•"**««'«'«l 
 
 Hin«.f employee Lm!^^^' ""■ '="""°» ««<i 
 
 n"i«nceandacu«e? N^r^ te^ u*^' "^" " 
 «> fitted to in.pr^ n, I'SoT w S^° "'^^'''"« 
 .wful wickedne^ of tho^^l^Ss^^", ",°* ° ''"^ 
 
 ance of their own rn;« • . ® **'®°»° assur- 
 
 o^theaWe':hj^„l;r:^-^»^-;^e»^^^^ 
 be regarded as out or place or nnn '" ""^^ 
 
 oo.. add that the. a^z;;,rs:^:-^' 
 
210 
 
 CHRISTIAN INSTRUCTION. 
 
 l! 
 
 antagonist, some others, as we know there are, 
 thoigh very few, unless we are greatly mistaken, 
 who .Save the same views, and whose confident and 
 flippant utterances indicate their persuasion that 
 they could rule more wisely, justly and beneficently 
 than the Christian believer's God— the God of the 
 Bible. If some regard our discussion as out of place 
 or uncalled for, we are not without hope that it may 
 tend to confirm the conviction that the teacher who 
 does not see that the Bible record of the Divine pro- 
 cedure, whether in the Old Testament or in the New, 
 is fitted, as it ii# designed, to be the most effective 
 deterrent from errors and aina which are the ruin 
 equally of the indivicual and of the community, is to 
 be regarded as not qualified to be entrusted with the 
 instruction of the children of a Christian community. 
 
CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 '°"''"*° '»"■•»'*"«. of Chri«i„,,^. 
 
 impressed with TZv^ ^'^H ^™"' '*°" "° <'«Ply 
 inatruction of the yZ. t th' "T'^'* »' «■• 
 ««.ity, that he h Jr«r" Z"'*^" °' Chris- 
 tnnity. to „^ iuTm^Zr::''; ",'■» l"" '^'■ 
 n»n»try, ^d on other Chrtn '*"'"'' '» "" 
 
 «»• of the fl„t, if not „"""? "»'">■>»»". And 
 ""e-pt. in Oh^tln ItCr^ "" "^^ "' k" 
 J"". -Ko. under the tiUe of ^a" Z ^ I "'"'^ 
 Instruction in the Evidence of nK ™- " ^"P"'*' 
 «»not doubt that tm^ • '^'"«'«'ity" He 
 I«.Xely owing to the flo l^'T '"I"^ ^^ "« 
 ".e older pupi,, Zll ^L '""° ■" "«« »« of 
 -pecimen of 1 ScottLh p.^fc'"!"^" "" » ■»«'»1 
 was formed for the study^^he p ^'•"'"''"•' " <*« 
 b°ok being Bishop Cby pt^^'I'T' *'"'«'■ 
 Pale/s work on the suWe^t „ "' adaptation of 
 WRher schools of Cwl/?'*?^ '"' "" » "-e 
 1»' ha. long been oT^C^^'^^'^X '"^' '^k- 
 aince been pr^nared t^JT' ""'"«'' o*'" have 
 America fo?th^„ -^l^^'^/^e » Bntain and 
 
 pu^, we have not met with 
 
212 
 
 OHBISTIAN INSTRUCTION 
 
 !m 
 
 one that is not wanting in the simplicity that is 
 desirable, and in adaptation to the purpose of 
 properly fyreoccupying the minds of our young 
 people, ill view of their having soon to confront the 
 objections to Christianity that are involved in the 
 issues raised by infidelity. These issues, while 
 immensely important, are much less numerous and 
 far more simple than is perhaps generally supposed. 
 And as will, we believe, be apparent in the sequel, 
 they involve mainly, if not entirely, assumptions 
 which foreclose the adduction of the proof of the 
 facts of Christianity, and which practically imply 
 the unmaking of history. 
 
 In view of the importance of the issues referred to, 
 no one who realizes it can say that our young people 
 should be left to hear, for the first time, from the lips 
 of the infidel the objections involved in them. Surely, 
 instead of first hearing of them from those who would 
 dispossess them of the simple faith of their early 
 years, it were infinitely better that they should hear 
 them from the lips of the intelligent Christian 
 teacher, who will, at the same time, show them how 
 they are to be met. Left, as for the most part they 
 are now, to get their first knowledge of them from 
 those who would lead them astray, they are, some of 
 them, more than likely to think that they have been 
 imposed upon with fables, and to resolve that, being 
 no longer children, they will assert independence of 
 mind by casting away the faith of their childhood. 
 Surely then it is, to say the least, in a high degree 
 
itr THi TOMjc scaoou or ontaeio. sis 
 
 beyond «.»ve,yt"th: sj'j^re'^r.rr.:^ 
 
 of «|, co„«iene, .„d the .ymp.th,„ of ™'^ 
 
 TOP men is the time when, in relatinn *^ *k • 
 referred to, their mind, miy bo^ ° uir !. "*"" 
 pomessed on the side of oL .• """«"««''% P»«- 
 
 -ot,«inJ.Ho„V'JL°t!a%"m' L^'^hTh 
 ".any suceumb «,me falling Lver H^^f^n '""'"' 
 
 »a\^™p;:rreitrj:„^rire""f"'^^^ 
 
 »d irresUtihie evideneeTllriitU"^^^^^^ 
 Chn t,»n.ty « whati, called the in^'er^, evdcnce 
 Bot the force of it, in the experience of the indiWdnal' 
 depends ewentially on his m<^ condition while the 
 
 UMerstanding, Reason may compel a man to admit 
 
I! ' I 
 i "li 
 
 !' 
 
 J: 11 
 
 214 
 
 CBRISTIAN INSTRUCTION 
 
 conclusions which are his condemnation, and which 
 therefore he would gladly reject if he could. It is 
 in reference to the internal evidence that our Lord 
 speaks, when He says that if a man " is willing to do 
 the will of God," he shall know that His teaching is 
 of God, or shall recognize it as the voice of God. And 
 without any disparagement of the external evidence, 
 we cannot but regard it as a conspicuous illustration 
 of the wisdom and goodness of God, that a full con- 
 viction of the Divine origin of the teaching of Christ 
 is attainable otherwise than by the careful study of 
 the external evid^ucea For, in the first place, this 
 way of the attainment of a full conviction is a way 
 that is open to all; and, in the second place, the con- 
 dition of its attainment ct not justly be said to be 
 anything but reasonable, for, if there is any one 
 thing which is more than all others binding on a man, 
 it is a willingness to do the will of God. Nothing of 
 all this can be said in relation to the external evidence. 
 However sufficient it may \e to produce in an un- 
 prejudiced mind a rational conviction that Jesus Christ 
 was a teacher sent from God, its force can be appre- 
 hended only by one who has a competent knowledge 
 of history, and is more or less familiar with the prin- 
 ciples that determine historical questions. 
 
 This is not the place to go into details on the large 
 subject of the Christian evidences. It may be enougli 
 to say that the Christian teacher should be qualified 
 to give his pupils such instruction as shall make them 
 understand the subject in both departments referred 
 
tn THl PCBLIC SCHOOLS Ot ONTARIO. UB 
 
 to. We cannot think of anv brariAk «r ou • a- . 
 jJ^Hioo «^ h« been UiZl'^tl'^^Z 
 
 only „ary p«„|i„ t^^^ ^ ^ a»Sal^Z .1 
 eveo; d.-.«„cUv.,y Chri.t,«. dn7rd;^'.^-t 
 pUoMblo r«»oninp, but the mort anwarmlhu 
 
 would rob It of the wpernatuml element which ii,.k» 
 .t .t«.d .lone « the religion which i. "■ the ^wer «1 
 God anto «lv.tion." Th.t there h« beenTverv 
 «r,oa8 neglect in thi. department of ChStL 17 
 
 .truction cannot, w. think, be denied. It m^^thtt" 
 n.tract,„n n the evidence, require, a clo^r Vpit 
 
 than he ordinary Chrietian inatrucUon. That, how 
 
 aixument in it. favour, inamiuch a^ apart from i^ 
 intr.n«c importance, it could not fail L bT. vZbk 
 exerci* of mind, .uitabi. to the mo«adv.nXlih 
 m the Sabbath and the Public School,, and^S 
 School pupil,. I, „„, comparatively few could be 
 expected to make a thorough ,tudy of the eutrect it 
 » not only po^iible but, we thint'Lot at .1 difflcul 
 to convey to our young people generally of twelve or 
 
 bo of great and permanent value to them ' It cannot 
 ^y be difficult for an intelligent and eympaThet^ 
 te«her to convey to the mind, of pupil, „f twelve or 
 thirteen year, a distinct appreheneion, firrt. of thI 
 
216 
 
 CHRISTIAN IKSTRVCnoN 
 
 way in which the facto of Gospel history are proved 
 in common with other historical facto, and that by an 
 amount of evidence far exceeding that which can be 
 adduced in proof of other universally accepted facto 
 of ancient history; and, secondly, of the way in 
 which objections of various kinds, whether inherited 
 from former times, or peculiar to moderr. times, can 
 be met to the satisfaction of a mind that is not preju- 
 diced by invincible disaffection towanls the author of 
 Christianity. 
 
 Referring to the issues raised by the current infi- 
 delity, to mention only the more importont, and to 
 say nothing of objections in detail that have been 
 sufficiently met hundreds of times, and that would 
 have little or no power to unsettle or perplex the 
 mind oi f r:e who has, in some good menaure, appre- 
 hended the force of the Christian evidences, we cannot 
 see why an intelligent teacher who has. by previous 
 training, made himself at home in that department of 
 Christian instruction, should find it at all difficult, or 
 should not find it one of the most genial of all the 
 lessons with which he is charged, to make his pupils 
 see clearly the right and the wrong in connection with 
 those issuea For example, he should not find it diffi- 
 cult to show that, if we can at first glance recognize 
 the authorship of a writing of human composition, it 
 M no more than reasonable that there should be on 
 the part of some, though not of all. a capacity to 
 recognize the voice of God, when He speaks to us. as 
 we believe He does in. the Scriptures. We say same 
 
Ill THl PUBLIC SCHOOLS OF OMTARia Il7 
 
 «id not aU ,• becau«.«a it ui«,me only-tho*,, namely, 
 who are familiar with the style of an author-who can 
 at once recognize it, while others cannot ; so it in mme 
 only who can recogniase the voice of God whon He 
 speaks to us by His Son-those, namely, who as Christ 
 says, are " wjlhng to do the will of God." If a man 
 
 "; n . » *!^ "**" **"«^^* ^ ^' " ^»"'°« ^ do the will 
 of God then, notwithstanding present slender know- 
 ledge of It and shortcomings in practice, his willing- 
 ness, shown m his endeavour to practice according to 
 his present light and to obtain the increase of light 
 constitutes the moral condition which is the one esin-' 
 tiai to his recognition of the voice of God in the teach- 
 ing of Jesus Christ And could anything be a more 
 powerful incentive to carefulness in moral practice 
 on the part of ingenuous youth, on the eve of the 
 development of youthful passions, than the divinely 
 given assurance that such carefulness will be their 
 security against the temptations which they are soon 
 to encounter, and which, if not met by a fixed desire 
 and determination to do the will of God. may lead to 
 the shipwreck of faith." and of all the virtues which 
 It sustains-the inevitable issue of not « holding a 
 good conscience." or, in other words, of not being 
 willing to do the will of God. 
 
 Again, referring to the external or historical evi- 
 dence, and assuming that, in dealing with the super- 
 natural or miraculous .. testation of the Divine origin 
 of Christianity, attention should be largely concen- 
 trated on our Lord's resurrection, as of itself suffi- 
 
218 
 
 CHRISTIAK INSTEUCTIOK 
 
 ciently proving the Divine authority of His tea* aing. 
 it should not be difficult for an intelligent Chr Jti in 
 teacher to make it plain to his more advanced pnpils 
 that while our Lord's resurrection is of the essence of 
 the Gospel— so much so that apart from it there is no 
 Gospel and no salvation— it is a fact not only whose 
 acceptance carries with it the acceptance of all that is 
 distinctive in Christianity, but on which the light of 
 historical evidence shines more fully than it does on 
 any other fact, whether ordinary or miraculous, of 
 the Gospel history, or on any fact of the history of 
 ancient times. 
 
 Nor can it be clifficult to make it plain to the more 
 advanced pupils of ordinary intelligence, whether in 
 the High School or in the Sabbath School, that the 
 famous argument of David Hume, which, strange to 
 say, continues to be implicity relied upon by almost 
 every assailant of Christianity, is based upon the 
 false assumption— silently, if we dare not say con- 
 sciously, sophistical— that all kinds of testimony are 
 of eqwd value ; or, in other words, it attaches to the 
 very highest testimony the suspicion that belongs 
 only to the lowest. No respect is had to the fact 
 that our confidence in the testimony of a man, even 
 should we know nothing else respecting him, is in- 
 versely in proportion as we see that his own interests 
 nre promoted or imperilled by the testimony which 
 he gives. That is to say, in reference to the testi- 
 mony of the apostles and the other early martyrs, 
 thou(!h their testimony, being not only disinterested. 
 
IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS OP ONTARIO. 219 
 
 but given at the peril of every interest of a temporal 
 nature, is the highest kind of testimony possible, it 
 must, according to Hume and those who accept his 
 argument, have laid upon it all the suspicion that 
 attaches to the testimony of witnesses of the most 
 discreditable character. And besides this, Hume is 
 guilty of what is called (no doubt, not consciously) 
 begging the queation, when he says that a miracle is 
 contrary to universal experience, inasmuch as the 
 very question at issue is whether the experience is 
 universal, or whether there is not an excepti<m to its 
 universality in the experience of the early Christian 
 witnesses, and, we may add, of others— a question 
 that cannot be settled by a sophistical assumption 
 which is a begging of the question, but only by show- 
 ing that testimony is dead against the alleged facts, 
 which, we hesitate not to say, is simply impossible', 
 except by sapping the foundations of the l)est 
 accredited facta of history, ancient and modern.* 
 
 Again, it cannot surely be difficult for the trained 
 and skilled teacher to make it plain to the under- 
 standing of the boy or the girl of twelve or fourteen 
 years of age, who is not exceptionally destitute of 
 capacity as a learner, that the primitive Christian 
 martyrs are not to be classed with those who, in all 
 ages, have evinced their sincerity by suffering even 
 unto death for their religious opinions or beliefs, 
 whether right or wrong; but that they suffered as 
 wxtaes sea of a fiict respecting which, according to 
 
 * See Note A on Hume's Argument, in Appendix. 
 
220 
 
 CHttlStlAK iNSTRUCmoiJ 
 
 
 their own showing, they could not have been mis- 
 taken.* 
 
 Nor, again, can it be difficult to show to the ordin- 
 ary understanding of our elder scholars, the unreason- 
 ableness of the universally current assumption of 
 modern infidelity, that any reported fact of a miracu- 
 lous nature, such as the resurrection of our Lord, is 
 to be discredited and set aside, tvithout any condder- 
 ation either of the evidence that can be adduced in 
 proof of it, or of the possible end which it may con- 
 ceivably be designed to subserve. Surely it requires 
 no pains to coAvince the mind of ingenuous and 
 unprejudiced youth, that such an assumption involves 
 nothing less than that of man's competency to sit in 
 judgment upon God, and to determine the procedure 
 proper for Him in all possible circumstances; whei-eas, 
 repudiating an assumption full of horror to a reverent 
 mind, the Christian apologist's assumption is simply 
 that of our competency to judge of our own human 
 nature, by the knowledge we have of it from actual 
 experience and observation— a knowledge which, 
 including, as it does, a knowledge of the laws which 
 regulate human action, fully warrants the affirmation 
 
 • This distinction, imporUnt as it is, and, one would think, suffi- 
 ciently obvious, is persistently and, we may say, sometimes very 
 eloquently disregarded. It is easy to bury it under a heap of elo- 
 quent verbiage, as is done in a book, published some years ago, 
 under the title of "Supernatural Religion," whose author was 
 surely not conscious of the distinction ; because to charge him with 
 willingly ignoring it were to make against him the most serious of 
 all charges. 
 
IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS OP ONTARIO. 221 
 
 that the falsehood of certain kinds of testimony, or 
 of testimony given in certain circumstances, is infin- 
 itely more incredible than the event in whose favour 
 it is fifiven is extraordinary and improbable. 
 
 Only once more. It cannot surely be difficult to 
 make it plain to the ordinary understanding, at the 
 period of its most rapid development, that it is unrea- 
 sonable to expect, as the current infidelity insists, that 
 God's revelations of himself should be accompanied 
 with and attested by such an amount of evidence as 
 shall carry conviction to the minds of all men indis- 
 criminately, however their minds may be affected 
 towards Him ; or, in other words, such an amount of 
 evidence that it shad be imposaibU far any man not 
 to believe, even as it is impossible not to believe that 
 the sun is shining in the cloudless sky at high noon. 
 Whatever may be the literary name of some who so 
 insist, assuming, as they do, that their confident asser- 
 tions have all the weight of the mathematical or 
 ethical axiom, and are as little in need of proof, we 
 cannot hesitate to charge with boundless and in- 
 excusable self-sufficiency the man who is so foolish as 
 to say, as one does, "There ought not to be the 
 least shadow of a doubt whether a given book is 
 from God or not " ; or, as another says, " If the hand- 
 writing of Jehovah in the Scriptures is doubtful "— 
 that is, to any one—" it cannot be Divine." Let it be 
 that men and women who are in high reputation as 
 literary geniuses, such as Frederick Harrison and 
 George Eliot, professing^ympathy with Christianity, 
 
222 
 
 CHRISTIAN INSTRUCTION 
 
 V, 
 
 make themselves responsible for utterances which are 
 the acme of presumption and absurdity, we cannot 
 but accept as final the word of Him who has declared 
 that our acceptance or refusal of Him as the Teacher 
 whose word is the voice of the living (Jod, hinges on 
 our willingness or unwillingness to do the will of 
 God. It may be asked how we can presume to call 
 in question the willingness to do the will of God of 
 those who are models of virtue, though they cannot 
 see the sufficiency of the evidence of the claims of 
 Jesus Christ. Qur answer is that it is not by gross 
 immorality alone that men's unwillingness to do the 
 will of God manifests itself. Men, if they only knew 
 themselves, would be self-convicted of their unwill- 
 ingness to do the will of God, and would see that this 
 unwillingness, and not insufficient evidence, is the root 
 cause of their infidelity in relation to Jesus of Naza- 
 reth. If we would find the fullest development of 
 our native unwillingness to do the will of God, we 
 shall find it, plain as the sun at noon, in our instinc- 
 tive desire and determination to be, each of us, his 
 own god. The presumption of prescfibing to God 
 His duty, implied in the quotations we have given, is 
 of itself evidence sufficient of conscious supremacy, in- 
 consistent with submission to the will of God. 
 
 It is not necessary to go further into a subject so 
 painful. Only let us close it by saying that, to a 
 man who is not altogether ignorant of his own 
 depravity and nothingness, no presumption can exceed 
 taat of the man who, by committing himself to such 
 
IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS OF ONTARIO. 223 
 
 Msertions as those which have been quoted, does no 
 less than commit himself to the baseless and wild 
 assumption, which he mistakes for an axiom, that the 
 attainment of full satisfaction of mind in delation to 
 divinely revealed truth cannot, in any way or in any 
 degree, depend on man's murral ccmdUion ; whereas 
 on the contrary, any mind not hopelessly blinded by 
 invincible ignorance or prejudice cannot, we think 
 but clearly see that most important purposes mpy be' 
 designed, and actually are. as we see. subserved by 
 God's giving us jmt so much light as He does give 
 and no more. To say. as the objector does in effect 
 say. that God. if He speaks to men. ought to speak to 
 them m such a way that their moral condition or 
 the way m which their minds are affected towards 
 Him. shall count for nothing in their forming of a 
 judgment respecting a professing revelation from 
 Him, IS to usthe greatest of all possible human follies 
 Having stated the leading general issues between 
 the Christian apologist and the present-day skeptics 
 we surely cannot be charged with asking too much 
 when, in the interest of the rising generation, we ask 
 at least that the Christian principal of a High or 
 Public School of this Christian Province, should be 
 able to present those issues to the understanding of 
 his pupils so clearly that their minds shall be intelli- 
 gently prepossessed, as, of course, their parents pro- 
 perly wish them to be, on the side of Christianity 
 and that thus they may be proof against the assaults 
 to which they might otherwise succumb, and be also 
 
Hi 
 
 224 
 
 PHBISTIAN INSTRUCTION 
 
 helpful to others For ourselves, we cannot conceive 
 that there could have been such a prevalence of 
 skepticism as characterizes the present time, had 
 there not been a long-continued neglect of the 
 instruction which we are now urging the general 
 introduction of, in the interest of those of our young 
 people who are sufficiently advanced to take it in. 
 An incalculable amount of good could not fail to be 
 the result of such instruction. Were the minds of 
 our young people generally, before leaving the school, 
 made more or l<»ss familiar with the Evidences of 
 Christianity, in their principles and outlines, and in 
 moderate illustration in detail, they would, we can- 
 not doubt, be so impressed with the force of them 
 that objections which are the stock of infidelity, 
 and are daily reiterated, notwithstanding frequent 
 refutation, would have little power to perplex and 
 unsettle them. Those objections, of whatever kind— 
 naoral, historical or scientific— will appear to them of 
 little or no weight, compared with the strength of 
 the evidence. And they will see that many of them 
 are groundless, or founded on misapprehension, while 
 others can be so explained as to fortify the Chris- 
 tian position. Even the great objection in which the 
 unbelieving mind has revelled in later times— the 
 objection drawn from speculations in cosmogony- 
 can be so handled as to strengthen the proof of the 
 inspiration of the Mosaic record.* 
 
 But to conclude. While we cannot but see that 
 
 * S*» Appendix, Note B. 
 
IN THE rUBLIC SCHOOLS OF ONTARIO. 225 
 
 the evidence Of the Divine origin of Christianity is 
 not inUiscnmtnatdy demonstrative, like a proposi- 
 tionm geometry, as some of our very wise men 
 
 ns.st that at ought to be. befor. it can he consid rIS 
 sufficient we hold that the wisdom of those wise 
 men is foohahnesB, and that the loiadom of God is 
 oanspicuously manifest in His determination not to 
 
 a« shall cory,^ all men to believe, whatever may be 
 
 they are willing or unwilling to do His will. If as 
 It IS said, with an unfathomable depth of siraifi 
 cancy. the God who so gr^iously r.L^, himsel? to 
 us m His wondrous Son. "is a God who hideth him- 
 sd/ no one should be so foolish as to complain of 
 His doing so. inasmuch as Ho cannot be supped to 
 do so without a great and good design. He^ures 
 us m eve^ page of Scripture that He is to be found 
 of them that seek Him. and is to be known to the joy 
 of aJ who seek to know Him. Can any one who 
 would justify his claim to reason ask for more ? 
 Can a man justify himself at the bar of reason who 
 win insist that m the matter of finding and knowing 
 God. He ov^htU> make no difference between the 
 man who is anxious to know Him and find Him. and 
 the man who is utterly careless ard will be at no 
 pains to find Him ? And may we not r peat that 
 fording to all experience, to the man So makt' 
 God his supreme quest, the proof of the Divinity of 
 Chnst s teaching will appear to possess such a strength 
 
226 
 
 CHRISTIAN INSTRUCTION. 
 
 that it cannot be Mt aside without discreditinfr all 
 history, and compelling the withdrawal of all coufi- 
 dence in every universally trusted record of s/icient 
 times, none of which has come down to us with a 
 hundredth part of the evidence we have for the 
 purity, genuineness and authenticity of some of the 
 New Testament records, if not of all of them ? And 
 again we repeat, let it not be said that our young 
 people in the High School or in the Bible-class are 
 not capable of a conviction, rational as strong, that 
 shall be proof against the objections of skeptics. 
 Without referring again to his experience as a pupil, 
 when over sixty years ago his school-master formed a 
 class for the study of the Evidences, the writer may 
 state that he has had no small degree of satisfaction 
 in handling the subject in his Bible-daas, some of its 
 members showing a remarkable aptitude of appre- 
 hension, even in connection with the study of such a 
 book as that of Isaac Taylor on " The Transmission 
 of Ancient Books."* 
 
 * The reference U to a later edition in which the two works, 
 "The Process of Historical Proof," and "The Transmission of 
 Ancient Books," are combined. 
 
NOTES AND ADDENDUM. 
 
 ^ot« A, page gl9. 
 
 it ia contrary to univeraal anT^. i! ^ "** *^*«' *'»«*' *»>«« 
 should ooc^, itTnTte .„ 2 T"P""""'**'"**»^1« 
 
 lleged miraculous fact) l^d S^tl^^'T/. t H' "'/"^ 
 no testimony can have such to^JlTrlr^ \t ^' ''**"''*'*' 
 » miracle. Hume admit. thaV^fK ^ ""* '""^ occurrence of 
 or violationa of the ud^L P T^ ^'"^ *"» ™'"«"«' 
 
 «t™it of proof Tm^trn'^t^rr-tr'''''^-^^ 
 
 iitttaiice, whUe he think, no .uchinT ^' ? ""PPoses .n 
 reconi. of history But ha n^"! T^"^ **" ^ '°"»'l '" the 
 with fuU fo««S.inft *miZ! *'"'^ ''»••«»«'««* applies 
 
 of reliKion. Int^ 1 '^^ « connection with any system 
 
 not only to be rejected biitTL ^■' * '^^'^ ""^^^^ « 
 .tion" of any Jtl^'bT^^j^ .^^-^^"-thout «"'"- 
 . However plausible thJl ^ ^ supported, 
 
 difficult to find tX ;ZT' r T^'' "* ^^^'' ^ 
 falUcycompres^Kiinto'sTsliU.^^'"'*^^ "" '"»-"^"' 
 
 It 18 to be noted in general • 1 Tli»f ,* *u 
 -ound. it must apply nniZaUy ^f . "l" '"*""""'' " 
 
 987 
 
228 
 
 NOTES AND ADDENDUM. 
 
 beoauM auoh » deugn ooiutitutM • miaon for the miiMl*. 
 2. The ftigument is not Against the poutitUity of » miracle, but 
 •gainst its eredibUity ; it does not say (as who can say ?) that 
 a miracle is impo$»ibU, but that even if a miracle did occur, its 
 occurrence is beyond the po$»Qnlity of being proved. The 
 unreasonableness of this position is exhibited in his own clear 
 and vigorous style, by Hugh Miller, the eminent Scottish 
 geologist of the century now dosed, in a chapter on the Staring 
 of the Experience Argument, in " Footprints of the Creator." 
 
 But, apart from the above general considerations, it is to be 
 noted, io particular, that the argument involves two faUaeiea, 
 technically called: 1. Petitio principii, or Begging of the qiut- 
 tion ; 2. Sophisma ddieto leeundum, quid ad dictum $impliciter, 
 or reasoning as if what is true only in partieidar eirctimttancee 
 were true universaUy. The former fallacy is evident, without 
 using a syllogistic form, if it be considered that the univerMlity 
 of experience which is affirmed is in reality the question at 
 issue ; that question being, whether there is not in the experi- 
 ence of certain persons, t.e., the early Christian witnesses, an 
 exception to the general experience. To say, as Hume does, 
 that the experienice is uniform and uniteraal is the same thing 
 as to say there is no eauxption to it ; or, in other words, it 
 a$aumea what has to be proved. 
 
 The second faUacy, which is the one first referred to in the text, 
 is apparent, if it be considered that, while it accords with 
 experience that human testimony may be false, every kind of 
 testimony is not equaUy liable to suspicion. Whatever suspicion 
 may attach to testimony given in certain circumstances, there 
 are other circumstances in which testimony may be given that 
 place it above all suspicion. We may suspect the testimony 
 that a man gives, when his giving it is seen to lie in the line 
 of his own interests, but we attach weight to his testimony 
 given in a matter in which his own interests are not concerned. 
 And we are warranted, from what we know of human nature, 
 to hold that the falsehood of testimony given by men, with no 
 
NOTES AND ADDINDUll. £29 
 
 prespeot but tlut of evil in i»Utinn t^ *k 
 
 action of ChruL we h!v!^. ^ witneime. to the re-ur- 
 
 unt^-tworth; r :; izrr H^T'" "- ''^ "•-' 
 
 of «,phi.try of the highert o^ "* '^'^ " •" '"•*•»«• 
 
 ^oU B, page $^4, 
 impor^. .. boa. , ^ "".."I wlS^jS"',r 
 
230 
 
 NOTIH AND ADDINDUM. 
 
 mind bj the Deity would Ulie «hkpe aooording to its mnge of 
 ltn<»wlt)dge, iiiodee of tiiuught, and une of Ungiuge, unluM it 
 w«*re, »t the Mine time, "■upematunUljr gifted with the pro- 
 found knowledge and wtidoiii adequate to their conception ; 
 and even then they cuuld not be intelligibly expreaned, for want 
 of words to represent them." After showing the oorrespnnd- 
 ence between the Mosaic order and that deduced from science, 
 Profemor Dana concludes : **The record in the Bible is therefore 
 profoundly philosophical in the scheme of creation which it 
 presents. It is both true and divine. It is a deokration of 
 authnnihip, both of creation and of the Bible, on the first page 
 of the HAcred volume."— "Manual of Oeology," pp. 846 et aeq. 
 
 The other extract is from Professor Haeckel's '* History of 
 Creation." "The Mosaic history of creation," he says, "has 
 enjoyed, down to the present day, general recognition in the 
 whole Jewish and Christian world of civilization. Its extra- 
 ordinary success is explained, not only by its close connection 
 with Jewish and Christian doctrines, but also by the simple and 
 natural chain of ideas which runs through it, and which contrasts 
 favourably with the confused mythology of creation current 
 among most of the other ancient nations. First, the Lord Ood 
 creates the earth as an inorganic body ; then He separates light 
 from darkness, then water from dry land. Now the earth has 
 become inhabitable for organisms, and plants are first created ; 
 animals later, and among the latter the inhabitants of the 
 water and the air first, afterwards the inhabitants of the dry 
 land. Finally, (Jod creates man, the last of all organisms, in 
 His own image, and as the ruler of the earth. 
 
 " Two great and fundamental ideas, common also to the non- 
 miraculous theory of developement, meet us in this hypothesis 
 of creation, with surprising clearness and simplicity — the idea 
 of differentiation, and the idea of progressive development or 
 perfecting. Although Moses looks upon the results of the great 
 laws of organic development as the direct action of a construct- 
 ing Creator, yet in his theory there lies hidden the r uling idea of 
 
NOTtS AMD ADDBNDUli. 
 
 tsi 
 
 • progwMive development and » diflerentUtion of the origin- 
 My Rimple nuitter. We can therefore bestow our just and 
 uncere admiration on the Jewish Uwgiver's gmnd insight into 
 luture, and Iiis simple and natural hypothesis of creation," 
 but the Professor adds, '• without discovering in it a so-oalled 
 divine reveUtion."-"History of Creation," pp. 37, 38. 
 
 Haeokel's not "discovering a divine reveUtion " where Dana 
 •nd others see it, is owing, of course, to the fact that his mind 
 w previously made up that there can be no such thing as 
 divine revelation, and that his "scientific materialism," to use 
 his own words, "positively rejects every belief in the miraculous, 
 •nd every conception, in whatsoever form it appears, of super- 
 natural processes." His first objection against the reception 
 of the Mosaic record as a divine revelation, viz., that it ,u>ertB 
 (so he says) that the earth is "the fixed central p..int of the 
 whole universe," one would have thought too stale for wpeti- 
 tion in our time. The second objeccion, that man is repre- 
 •ented as the premeditated aim of the creation of the earth, 
 might be expected from one who sco^Us JimU cmises, and 
 exclmUa aU pitrpoae from the order of things. 
 
 m 
 
282 
 
 NOTES AND ADDENDUM. 
 
 ADDENDUM ON THE MEMORIZING OF SCRIPTURE 
 BY THE YOUNG.* 
 
 ITS IMPORTANCB AMD ADVAMTAOK8 WITH SUOOBSTIOMB AS TO ITS 
 BXTKNT AND THB DUTY OF PAKBMTS. 
 
 Thb subject has been chosen under the persuasion that its 
 importance is, at the present time, far from being duly realized. 
 Indeed, we cannot but think that it is greatly underestimated. 
 The subject is, " The Memorizing of Scripture," or the storing 
 of the mind with Scripture truth in the very words of Scripture, 
 or in words which, though not the actual words of Inspiration, 
 are the nearest equivalent to them that is available to those who 
 are not adepts in the original languages in which the Scriptures 
 were written. 
 
 No one who believes that the Scriptures are the writings of 
 men who " wrote for our learning, as they were moved by the 
 Holy Ghost," can consistently question the importance of our 
 having saving truth lodged in our minds and treasured in our 
 hearts, in the very terms in which God has communicated it. 
 We should, of course, be careful in relation both to ourselves 
 and to those whom we instruct, that the words are understood, 
 for otherwise, our Lord tells us (Matt. xiii. 19;, being in the 
 memory only, they penetrate not beyond the surface of the 
 mind, and, so far from being fruitful in any g<K)d, cannot even 
 germinate in .the soul. While we cannot expect that our 
 scholars should be able to fathom the depth and appreciate the 
 richness of teachings, whose depth and richness only time and 
 experience can evolve or reveal, great care should be taken that 
 the memorizing of Scripture should, in no case, be only a learn- 
 ing by rote. So far as he is capable, even the youngest child 
 
 • P»p«r prinUd flom9 yean 1(0 by reqawt ol the Centn WeUington Miniaterial 
 AMOctoUon. 
 
NOTES AND ADDENDUM. 283 
 
 should commit Scripture to memory as »n exereise of intelli- 
 gence ; it being understood, at the same time, that the memo- 
 ming of Senpture by the young is chiefly the laying up of 
 matonal for future use. For the great benefit of the memorildng 
 of Scripture, on the part of our children, does not accrue to 
 them in immediate connection with the exercise, as the benefit 
 of preaching does to the hearer, but is subsequent, often 
 wmotoly subsequent, to it. But when the benefit does accrue 
 •s It does so often, and sometimes when all hope of it has died 
 away, it is unspeakably great, as it is permanent. 
 
 Our young people themselves cannot be expected to appre- 
 ciate the good they are treasuring up for themselves, in com- 
 mittuig portions of Scripture to memory. The value of the 
 acquisition that is made by a young person whose. mind has 
 become h»rgely stored with Scripture, can perhaps be fully 
 appreciated only by those who have occasion to deal with per- 
 sons of mature years, and especially with aged people, in relation 
 to their spiritual mtorests. Every one who is caUed to deal 
 with those whom accident or sickness has awakened to concern 
 about the future, knows the difference between ministering, in 
 such cas^, to those whose minds are st«.red with Scripture 
 truth, and ministering to those who have grown up in ignomnce 
 Of It. In the one case, it is a comparatively easy thing to 
 mmister with good success-to bring light and peace to the suf- 
 ferer, thehghtand peace of intelligent trust and enlightened 
 penitence ; whereas, in the other case, it is often next to impos- 
 sible to impart, to the mind of the suffering or dying manTa 
 nght conception of his moral rektion to God, and of the way of 
 salvation. It seems as if the constitutional legalism of the mind 
 has become so inveterate, that the «>ul is inaccessible to any 
 i^hgious Idea beyond regret for the past, and purpose to do 
 better, should hfe be prolonged. 
 
 nJl^J'*" ''^^' "*' ^ **^°" °" y°""8 P~Pl«. i° the 
 providence of God, we cannot, when labouring to store their 
 
 minds with Scripture, calculate what good we are doing in 
 
234 
 
 NOTES AND ADDENDUM. 
 
 making provision for their salvation, edification and comfort, in 
 the time of their extremity, when they are in deep distress, or 
 when they are dying. And although, as we hare said, they 
 cannot be themselves expected to appreciate the benefit, it is 
 possible to impress them, to some extent, with a sense of the 
 importance of the exercise ; and, knowing ourselves its impor- 
 tance, we do weU to persevere patiently in using all the influence 
 we have with them, and all the power we have over them, to 
 keep them from becoming remiss in the practice of memorizing 
 God's Word. For it is important to remember that it is neces- 
 sary, in the interest of our children, both that they should learn 
 much beyond what they see or are capable of seeing the value 
 of, and that they sheuld commit to memory much beyond what 
 they can understand. They wiU be grateful to us afterwards 
 that we insisted both on their learning many things whi ii, left 
 to themselves, they would not have learned, and on their com- 
 mitting to memory, much that they can grow in the understand- 
 ing of only as their minds mature. Were we to be guided by 
 their appreciation in the one case, or by their capacity of under- 
 standing in the other, we would lose the very best opportunity 
 of storing their minds with the knowledge that is of the most 
 importance to them, in connection with both their temporal and 
 their spiritual interests. The Sabbath School age is the time 
 when the mind is most susceptible of the information and im- 
 pression that are to be its permanent possession, and the time 
 to preoccupy the mind with good, which, being iU first pos- 
 session, is most sure to be its last. The Scripture knowledge 
 early imparted will be the mind's permanent possession. It 
 will be the last to be forgotten, when the memory of other 
 things has passed away, and even when the mind has become, it 
 may be, an utter wreck, the words of God will be remembered. 
 And in the numerous cases in which early Christian instruction 
 is, at the time, instrumental in no saving good, the mind's pos- 
 session of Scripture knowledge is an enduring ground of the 
 hope of a time when it will be the means of a saving change. 
 
NOTES AND ADDENDUM. 
 
 235 
 
 Numerous instances show that we should never despair in rela- 
 tion to the conversion of those, in whose minds the good seed 
 of the Rngdom has been early sown ; whUe, on the contrary, 
 as already indicated, there is comparatively little ground of 
 hope, m relation to those who have grown up or become old. 
 Ignorant of the elements of saving truth. 
 
 As to the extent to which the memorizing of Scripture is 
 desu»ble or attainable, no rule univeraally applicable can be 
 told down Some have much better memories th^n others. 
 Some minds receive more readily and are less retentive. Some 
 toke ui more slowly but are more retentive. Others there are 
 who have a memory that is at once quick and retentive. We 
 have aU heard, if we have not known, of persons whose power 
 of memory was phenomenal. There have been those who could 
 «peat almost the whole of the Bible. No approach to anything 
 
 , !k Jlf °^'"' "' '**"^'''«- '^«'« "« ^^ye Portions 
 of the Bible, in relation to which it is enough that we can 
 readUy fand what we want by turning to the place where it is to 
 be found It IS not of importance that we should be able to 
 state the facts of Scriptore history in the precise knguage in 
 which they are recorded, or that we should commit to memory 
 the histoncal books of Scripture. It is enough that we can 
 stote the facts correctly without addition or omission. There 
 are, indeed, verses occurring everywhere, even in what may be 
 regarded as the least interesting portions of Scripture-for 
 example, m the genealogies-that are worthy of being mem- 
 orized, as being f uU of comfort; or wise counsel. That one should 
 be able to use his Bible without being under the necessity of 
 referring to a concordance, is an attainment that every minister 
 may be expected to have made comparatively early. And let 
 me here add. in reference to the use of Scripture by ministere, 
 that they should be so familiar with Scripture, that, when pro- 
 fessedly appealing to it, or using its language, they should quote 
 It correctly. And especially may ministers be expected to avoid 
 certain erroneous forms of Scripture quotation that one some- 
 
236 
 
 NOTES AND ADDENDUM. 
 
 times heara ; as, for example, " He who runs may read," in- 
 stead of, "He may run that readeth it," a substitution which, 
 though two distinguished CoUege Principals are responsible for 
 it, is a mere jingle of words without any meaning ; and, referring 
 to a recent International Sunday School Lesson, the prayer that 
 " the earth shaU be fuU of the knowledge of the Lord, as the 
 waters cover the channel of the great deep," an alteration which 
 it '8 not easy to account for. 
 
 While it is to be expected of some that thoy should have an 
 acquaintance with Scripture beyond others, and much beyond 
 the ordinary attainments of Christians in Scripture knowledge, 
 the proportion of Scripture which it is desirable, as being of 
 importance, that Christians generally should have in their 
 minds, ready for immediate use or service, in all the emeigen- 
 oies of the Christian warfare, as well as for guidance in the daily 
 duties of the Christian walk, is comparatively small— so small 
 that, if the selections be made judiciously, and the practice of 
 memorizing be begun in early life and kept up t a few years, 
 the result will be such a familiarity with the Scripture grounds 
 of every important Christian doctrine as constitutes a man 
 ♦• mighty in the Scriptures." We can give only a general out- 
 line of what may be regarded as a proper selection, indicating 
 the leading principle that should guide in determining our 
 selection of the portion of Scripture which, it is desirable and 
 important, should, as the result of the practice of memorising, 
 be a part of the mental furniture of every Christian. 
 
 I think all will be agreed that, though, fo- the most part, it 
 may be enough that we are so acquainted with Scripture as not 
 to err ourselves in presenting its teachings to others, by using 
 words that do not convey its true meaning, and to see when 
 others err in using words that do not express the real teaching 
 of Scripture, it is of no little importance that we should be able 
 to give the very words of Scripture in its statements respecting 
 such subjecto as the Being and the Perfections of God, thfl 
 Person and the Work of Christ as our Redeemer, the agency 
 
NOTES AND ADDENDUM. 
 
 237 
 
 of theSpmt in our regeneration, and the way of our acceptance 
 with God and of our access to Him, and our walking with Him 
 and foUowiug Him-*11 things, in short, for the knowledge of 
 which we are entirely indebted to His reveUtion of them 
 Every one, we think, wiU at once see the ground and propriety 
 of the distinction here implied, and will readUy concur in the 
 •«wtion that, in aU matters of pure revelation, it is of impor- 
 tence that we diould be famUiar with the very words which the 
 wisdom of God has er-oloyed in revealing them. Whereas, on 
 the other hand, where Scripture deals with matters pertaining 
 to the affiiirs of this life, our own understanding may be 
 regarded as competent to their faithful expression in other than 
 the very words of Scripture. I need hardly say that in specify, 
 mg the subjects, in relation to which it is i.aportant that we 
 should be familiar with the veiy words of Scripture, I include 
 all that God calls us to under the Gospel of His grace, all the 
 promises and invitations He addresses to us. His counsel and 
 words of warning, including the solemn threatenings of Hib 
 Word. 
 
 It wiU be seen that the amount of Scripture we would urge 
 thv emorizing of not only goes far beyond what most are 
 8ati8..d with, but is such as. with practice, would suffice to 
 make a genuine ChristUn believer "skUful in the woid of 
 righteousness." Most, perhaps, seem to be satisfied to be 
 •We to repeat the Ten Commandments and the Loid's 
 Prayer, the latter, by the way, being geneimUy repeated incor- 
 recUy, I.e., m a form found nowhere in Scripture. The years 
 of cbUdhood and early youth, say from seven to sixteen, would, 
 at the rate of six verses a week, far more than suffice for the 
 ^mnutting to memory of all the recorded direct utterances of 
 God, the personal teachings of Christ, including all His parables 
 and discourses: the promises and predictions of the Old 
 Testament that have direct reference lo the coming and the 
 ministry of Christ, and to His work as our Redeemer and its 
 fruit»-"Hi8 sufferings and the glory following"; many of 
 
288 
 
 MOTES AND ADDXNDUM. 
 
 the Ptolm. ; • Utr* proportion of the Proverb. ; and portions 
 of the prophetic books, and of the Epistles. On^ thing, how- 
 ever, is very evident-that, until professing Christian parents 
 are, much mora genetaUy than they aro now, alive to their 
 responsibility in relation to the religious training of their chil- 
 dren we cannot expect that more than a very small proportion 
 of our children shall make any but the poorest measure of 
 attainment in familiarity with Scripture and in ability to quote 
 It aptly and correcUy. The amount of Scripture knowledge 
 that results from one lesson in the week, cannot, except in mre 
 «wee, be anything but very inadequate to the needs of the 
 Christian life in these days. Owing mainly, no doubt, to 
 parental neglect in the matter of Christian instruction, pro- 
 bably few of our young people grow up to years of maturity 
 without being open to the reproach : •• When for the time, ye 
 ought to be teachere, ye have need that one teach you again 
 which be the first principles of the oncles of God." Most of 
 them are so " unskUful in the word of righteousness," as to be 
 httle able to hold their ground when exposed to the assaults 
 of the errorist. But could the homes of Christian parents be 
 u»ade, to any great extent, places of Christian training, we 
 might expect a goodly proportion of the rising generation to 
 grow up f,„iii„ ^ith Scripture-not babes in knowledge, or 
 chUdren carried about by every wind of teaching," but "men 
 m understanding," "holding fast the faithful word," and 
 able to convince the gainsayers." Were Christian fathen 
 generally, realizing their duty and privilege as heads of Chris- 
 tum homes, to gather in their children nightly at a seasonable 
 hour, and to spend a short time, before retiring to rest, in 
 hearing them read a portion of Scripture, and in assisting 
 them in the intelligent memorizing of a verse or two. our land 
 worn become a very garden of the Lotd-a Und not only fuU 
 of the knowledge of the Lord, but rejoicing in the abundance 
 of ite frmte of righteousness and peace. Surely no observant 
 and thoughtful person can but say that there is an urgent caU 
 
NOTES AND AUDENDUM. 
 
 tohe.d« of familie. to Nt themwlve. against the almoat nightly 
 .b^nce from home tUl . h.te hour. of7ath.„, and one orto^ 
 to ^rn ^^^":, ""u^^ " ■" '"""»°"' '^' «>eir home, a.^ 
 
 moned by the ove of amusement of . harmful or frivolous 
 character, as it is in too many cases. But no matter WhT 
 we cannot withhold our sympathy from effo^ ^e to Jve to 
 the young such occupations, during the hours of lenZ^ 
 
 Z^TZi^ ''™'''"°° "^ "^"^ ''•«™ ^ ^'^ - 'i-o™" 
 "ong practices, no evenmg occupation, however unexception- 
 
 Jble in chamcter. or however rational and improving shouM 
 
 o^ ttl 1"^% "•; P"*" "' ''^^ '^^'^^ gatheri.7'tc;t;t 
 of the members of a famUy, to close the day with the hou«- 
 hold acknowledgment of God, including the Christian insZ- 
 tion of Its young members. "'•wuo 
 
 verrwr.!n"rroft:r;:rrn'?'S "* ^•'l"^ «' -- 
 
 In the whole Bible belnirTm^JlK. k ~ «? ' ^^ '""»•*'' »' ^e"" 
 and 7.859 In the New^^ rfx V^' !« 1™"J !!? '" """ «"* Testament 
 «We of «ven to that of dj^n T Zn^J^r^^u """"^ ''•*''• '«"» *»•« 
 
 •bout 8* percent If we 8UDn«^?^Ll «* *k , * *'"«»«« 1 to 11.84 or 
 three e^tromthemdT^f^^^li^^^^ *««Wy. 
 
 Uon of the Old Tiu'^tTr"oHi;S":^u?ra«^^ S u^""' lH?. -""«'■ 
 • per cent., and of the New. a« 1 toT87Ti?^r ce^t " " ** "*"" '""''"" 
 
 coi!!ir is^tr s °^''' ^r"" '''' '' "p**- *''«"-jv- to 
 
 therchUdJTn slSl '^^ ^'°"' *^'«"' *° --"" *»»' 
 
 Wn m^^ .h ;. ««««««tion with the International 
 L««on, make the attamment above indicated ? Moderate as 
 Buch an attamment is, who can estimate the value of it o/t^ 
 
 ^infonltth^™^ ^^'^ to parents and to' c:adr:'nrnh 
 making of It m the way suggested ? D„not Christian narents 
 fo^et that they are laying up matter of sorrowful reflect^fo^ 
 the dymg hour, when they neglect the Christian duty of^l 
 for the religious mstruction of their chUdyen ? *