position for approaching the higher truth and understanding it at a future day. So in teaching a language he determines not to follow the pedantic and outworn practice of bringing together all the technicalities of grammar and requiring them to be accepted at the outset; but he proceeds by way of example, deals with one difficulty at a time, explains a new grammatical distinction when he wants it and not before, and reserves all the broader scientific generalisations until the time when the intelligence of the scholar has been so far trained as to enable him to receive them. Whether he teaches history or geography or natural science, he pursues a like course. He takes into account that the imagination, the observant faculty, the power to admire what is beautiful in the outward world or noble in human character, can easily be awakened in early life, but that the power to reason, to form opinions, and to accept formal intellectual propositions, is a later acquisition. To enforce the acceptance of such propositions on a boy, to ask him to declare his belief in what he does not understand, is to defeat the purpose in view, to take an unfair advantage of his youth and his ignorance, and possibly to lead to an intellectual revolt in the days to come. Why should not teachers who have learned from Comenius, from Pestalozzi, from Arnold or from Thring the best ways of finding access to the intelligence and the sympathy of a child, be free to apply this knowledge to the mode of treating the highest of all subjects? Why, for example, should the method of teaching by creeds and catechisms, a method which is universally discredited and would not be employed by a well-trained teacher in communicating any secular knowledge, be supposed to be valid for imparting religious knowledge? One may confidently appeal to the experience of Christian parents who have their own children about them, and who know something of the perils which have to be encountered in life. Is it, after all, doctrinal orthodoxy, the intellectual assent to theological propositions, which such parents rely on as the safeguard against these perils, and as the best basis for Christian life and character? But they would generally rejoice to see their children interested in the Bible, touched and inspired by the Gospel story, by the glowing visions of Isaiah and St. John, or by the fervent zeal and self-devotion of St. Paul. And if in this way a father recognises in the young learner some of the fear of God which is the beginning of wisdom, some love of truth and goodness, and some reverence for God and His Word, he is well content to postpone for the present the formation of right 'views' about the Incarnation, the Trinity, the meaning of the Sacraments, or the claims of the Church. Herein he will find his own parental experience very helpful to him when he is asked to provide denominational' teaching for poorer children and to protect them from heresy.

There is another practical reason why we should acquiesce in the continuance of the present arrangement, which gives Biblical and

unsectarian instruction in the Board School. And this is because, for the present at least, it is the best arrangement we can get. Some good people feel it to be unsatisfying, and long to supplement it by the addition of human formularies which the Bible itself does not supply. But to all complaints that it is incomplete the practical answer is that at least it is well adapted to the age and capacity of children; and that if it awakens the desire for further knowledge and prepares the way for larger and more definite convictions hereafter-and in the hands of trained teachers who know their business it can do this-it needs no other vindication. Those who demand more than this in our civic and rate-aided schools are incurring the risk of losing what we have. Divided as the English people are and are likely to be in matters of theological belief, and large as is the number of those who attach themselves to no denomination at all, there yet remains deep down in the popular mind a belief that the Bible is the Word of God and that it ought to be held in reverence. This sentiment is perhaps a survival from Puritan times, it is somewhat vague in its expression, and it does not always rest on any reasoned basis. But the sentiment is there; it is much too good a thing to be lost, and I think it is the duty of Christian men to recognise its existence, to be thankful for it, and to make the most of it. It is in the Board Schools no less than in the National Schools that this sentiment is kept alive, and the Biblical instruction given in them both has been well described as 'the one elevating and inspiring element in the scanty instruction of our primary schools.' It is astonishing and a little saddening to observe the way in which some good Churchmen are accustomed to speak contemptuously of the Bible as a factor in school education, unless the Aberglaube-the extra-scriptural teaching of the Church-can be added to it. Considering what England owes to the Bible, our one great English classic, what a wealth of material it contains, not alone 'for reproof, correction and instruction in righteousness,' but also for the culture of the imagination, and for the enrichment of the understanding, it is certain that we could not part with it without lowering the tone of our schools and of our national life.

There are many problems of the deepest interest and importance which await the serious study and deliberations of the new School Board, and with which both parties-Moderates and Progressives— have a common concern. There are the steady improvement of the teaching, more efficient support to the teachers, better training for the pupil teachers, the right adjustment of the claims of manual and of intellectual instruction, the co-operation of the Board with the London County Council in their efforts to make technical instruction more effective, the best way of discovering and helping promising scholars who need access to places of higher instruction, and the establishment and organisation of higher grade schools. In the

prospect of such legislation for secondary instruction as is foreshadowed by the Duke of Devonshire in his admirable speech at Darlington on the 8th of October, the members of the School Board will do well to study the Report of the Royal Commission on that subject, and to qualify themselves to co-operate with the Government in establishing a right rapport between the primary and the secondary schools. And in regard to religious instruction-the one subject for which no Government examinations are held, and no Government grants can be obtained-it is the duty of all who value such instruction, to whatever party they belong, to exercise due vigilance, and to take care that it shall be vital and efficient within the limits-and they are very wide limits-prescribed by the existing law. These are duties of the highest national concern, and will suffice to absorb the best energies of the Board. Every member of that body who enters on his work with other aims, and who promises to support either the teaching of the Creed as part of the ordinary course, or by means of the Orpington' or other device to secure the introduction of the clergy and sectarian teachers into the schools, will in the first place be raising expectations which he will find himself powerless to fulfil, and in the second will be doing something to make the present compromise less easy to maintain, and so to bring nearer the adoption of an absolutely secular system. If he and his allies succeed, the future historian will be able to say: 'These English people once had a system of popular education which, it is true, did not appear to be very logical or symmetrical, but which was generous, was comprehensive and conciliatory, was well adapted to the needs of a divided but in the main a religious people, and gave more encouragement to the teaching of the Holy Scriptures than any other State system in the world. But they have it no longer.' And when he comes to inquire who are responsible for this grievous loss, the answer will be: Not the secularists, for they were few in number and never objected in any practical fashion to the compromise of 1870. Not the Roman Catholics, for they had every reason to be content with the liberal aid afforded to their own schools. Not the Nonconformists, for they not only accepted but thankfully welcomed the unsectarian religious teaching in the schools provided by the Board. But the loss was due solely to the intemperate zeal of those persons who, attaching more importance to Churchmanship than to Christianity, grasped at the shadow and lost the substance, and who for the sake of achieving a temporary sectarian triumph were willing to impoverish the teaching of the schools, and ultimately to deprive the children of their share in our best national heritage-the English Bible.

J. G. FITCH.

MODERN EDUCATION

(AN ADDRESs delivered AT THE MASON COLLEGE, BIRMINGHAM)

[Prefatory Note. In the face of adverse criticisms upon brief summaries of this address published in the daily press when it was delivered (the 30th of September), I think it due to myself to print the full text, suppressing only a sentence or two of merely local or provincial interest. Those who will take the pains to compare what I did say with what I was supposed to have said, will need no further vindication from me. I have added a very few notes where an additional word seemed desirable. In general, I may say that I have received from professional educators nothing but approval; not so from the politicians who tamper with education. To the latter I should willingly dedicate this address:]

EDUCATION is now so vast a subject, it has so enormous a literature, so many widely separated branches, so many distinct lines, that a man who ventures an address upon such a subject feels like the traveller facing the great tangle of a tropical forest. There is an immense mass of vegetation, an enormous number of trees, but many are choked by the competition of their neighbours, many by the giant parasites which clamber round them, many sicken in the damp and gloomy shade produced by the spreading summits of those that have reached the sun. And probably the first thing that strikes him after the wealth of nature, is the waste of nature.

So I feel when facing the jungle of modern education. We have not only old seats of learning, pursuing a well-seasoned system, but all manner of new establishments which profess to improve on this; we have, moreover, Ministers of Education, and a whole department of clerks, who legislate upon the schooling of the people; we have Boards and Councils managing, or attempting to manage, new foundations, and these Boards mainly consist not of educators, but of amateurs appointed because they are rich, or because they are Lords, or, worse still, because they are Members of Parliament. And then we have vast systems of examination, pretending to replace teaching, and pretending to tell us that people who know the insides of a list of books, more or less imperfectly, are well educated, and fit to teach others, or to lead armies, or to direct other important human affairs. We are living in an age which professes to educate the poor and fit them for a higher life, and open to them the prizes

once confined to the richer classes; and yet we find that the race for distinctions is after all practically confined to the rich, and that the poor have been gulled out of their expected privileges. All this uncertainty, this confusion, this interfering of amateurs with professionals, of politicians with pedagogues, of impostors with genuine men, makes it exceedingly difficult, but for that reason exceedingly important, to attempt some general survey of our position, to see whether we are indeed progressing with great strides, as some say, or not progressing at all, as others say, or oscillating between progress and regress, and, if so, with what general result.

Let us look out into the English world and see what the effects of the reforms of the last generation-so many and so various-have been upon the people at large. The most signal results ought to be found among the masses-among the poor, who have been brought within the reach of education by the provisions of recent laws. Are the poor, then, of England happier than they were thirty years ago? I don't think any careful inquirer would assert that. If there is less misery and squalor in the homes of the poor who have attended the Board Schools, there is surely more discontent. The successes of the Socialist, the mutterings of the thunder or the earthquake which may shatter our society, arise from the large number of malcontents in the land who have learned to feel new wants. They have eaten of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; their eyes are opened, and they know that they are naked. I may be told that this, though to us an unpleasant symptom, is no sign of decay, but of progress in the masses. Discontent with the present is the first condition of improvement in the future. The present discord between the masses and the classes may be like the tuning of an orchestra, which is in itself harsh and disagreeable, but yet the cause of the great harmonies which are to follow. Look, you will tell me, at a far better indexnot the amount of discontent, but of crime. Since the School Boards have been established, the convictions in the various criminal courts throughout the land have sensibly, nay enormously, diminished. This being so, I have heard intelligent English Radicals argue that, with the increase of enlightenment, crime will so diminish that we may look forward to another Golden Age, not of innocence, but of security against vice from the clear knowledge of its consequences.

All this optimism seems to me based upon a profoundly mistaken view of human nature. It is only to rare and exceptional men and women that knowledge is virtue, and vice ignorance. Even the ancient theorists who sketched ideal societies never imagined that these could reach such perfection as to secure them from decay.

It is the little rift within the lute

That by and by will make the music mute,
And ever widening slowly silence all.

And when we look carefully at this vaunted diminution of convictions