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How
to master the difficulty is an important question wherever empty
churches proclaim the polemic or quarrelsome character of the
piety around. The religious difficulty commenced with the
fall of man. It is the difficulty we find in hiding
ourselves from God's presence. In education indigestible
theology has under Satanic influence done the part of forbidden
fruit and made an apple of discord of all theology, and with a
mistaken view of a peaceable solution of the religious
difficulty the legislature shuts up the Bible, unwittingly, no
doubt, but to accommodate the understanding of a Godless
democracy. The word secular slides downwards to the brink of the
bottomless pit. Until sounder wisdom prevails in the
Councils, our duty as teachers is to carry out the school act
without the Bible, and this is imperative till a better act or a
different interpretation releases us. Under existing
circumstances for a teacher to do otherwise is to break the law.
It is not easy to understand how the great political maxim of
the greatest good to the greatest number accords with shutting
up of the Word of God: but perhaps few things accord better with
the evil designs of our spiritual adversary than the resignation
of office by any honest teacher when the religious difficulty
crops up against some of his own dogmas, making forbidden fruit
of his favourite prayer. However unrighteous the decree it
is nothing more than the lips that any human mandate can
close. The breathings of the spirit may become all the
purer for the flames kindled by discord and sore beyond the
reach of human power.
It is true the discontinuance of a prayer and a chapter from the
bible at the opening and closing of schools has an unwholesome
appearance: but up to the present time no authority has ventured
to the Lord's Prayer, which asks for all we are forbidden to ask
for in the words of the other prayer, and a prayer which, thank
God, has so far prevailed over the religions difficulty may
reasonably be looked to for giving a right tone to the most
arduous as well as to the most sublime of the labours of our
school teachers. Let, then, the Lord's Prayer be repeated by the
whole school with a solemn pause till all is hushed but the
beatings of the heart, and we may thus at the opening and
closing of school secure the great end of all prayer--the Divine
Blessing.
Unfortunately the successes we aim at are sometimes very
different. We are too apt to plume up a few bright
intellects and to overlook our duties to the great mass of the
dull and stupid, and there is many a blossom born to blush
unseen, many a gem hidden under clods which the school teachers
may turn up if they plough in the full assurance that the
vineyard is the Lord's, and not merely debating ground for the
trustees of the school who, however worthy of respect, are not
everywhere incapable of hitting upon measures which incline in
the wrong |
direction
and take the wandering sprit of the school children further and
further from Him whom all good Mothers teach their children to
call "Our Father." Education or anything else which
puts the Almighty out of place or gives Him any place out of the
rotary system upon which all creation appears to be based is
very apt to send us away whirling in a wrong direction- for
their is no standing still on any part of the globe. Compulsory
education, which pays no regard to this, is criminal in so far
as it carries out by volume a process hazardous to the great end
for which the Christian is born. There is a downward tendency in
all forcing which makes it very difficult to drive our
neighbours children to school; but the difficulty would be at an
end even with parents of the most abandoned character if the
real blessings of education were more clearly defined. To this
end let education, and especially Colonial education, take
higher ground than upon which the pedagogue stands.
Education was not the first object that God placed before
women's eyes. Work was what man was bidden to do and why should
not education do something to enable the rising generation to
cope against the evils which the disobedience of our first
parents brought upon the world? Secular education is surely an
opponent to formation of good habits. It is good habits
that are wanted-habits that may reclaim all that is lost in
dawdling at the desk in too many cases. A radical change of
system may be demanded for the accomplishment of so great and so
desirable an end. Existing institutions that are working
well it is wrong to meddle with; but they are not so abundant as
to give any assurance that the colony would not be greatly
benefited by the industrial feature which has not only produced
great results in this country but in many parts of the United
States. Without greatly disturbing the present elements an
educational system might be applied to the requirements of the
colony, which is it produced anything like the results it has
under the observation of the writer could scarcely be purchased
too highly. There are gentlemen in the colony capable of
organizing such a system and most gladly the writer place at
their service what experience he has in the matter. A few years
ago the difficulty of manning the British Navy was immense; long
after the days of press gangs, when the HMS Queen Charlotte was
commissioned the writer had to pick up in the the lowest
haunts drunken fellows and take the chance of how they might
turn out when sober. Not many years afterwards he saw at
Hong Kong on board HMS Queen Charlotte a number of the flue
young fellows who had been sent out from the training ship under
the charge of one of their own body. These boys were much
prized to fill the vacancies of seamen on board Her Majesty's
ships. This removal of one of England's greatest
difficulties owes much to Lord Northbrook's advocacy of a system
and a analogous of what is now proposed which may be understood
by a reference to his letter when secretary to the admiralty.
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