Page:Jesuit Education.djvu/622

602 intimately connected with other, particularly the ethical branches. From this principle we may draw another argument for the advantages which can be derived, if education is in the hands of the clergy, especially in the higher classes, where a thorough knowledge of theology is required in order to give that religious training needed in this stage of education. It is evident that such a course can be followed only in denominational schools. For this reason Professor Schiller deplores the fact that, in consequence of religious differences, it is almost impossible to apply this most important principle.

English and American educators are not wanting who advocate the same principle on which the Jesuits have insisted for centuries. Arnold's opinion on this subject was quite explicit. Sir Joshua Fitch tells us that he dreaded any theory which would tend to view the life of the scholar as a thing apart from the life of a Christian. He protested earnestly against any attempt to divorce religious from secular instruction, or to treat them as distinct parts of an educational scheme. "The device sometimes advocated in later times for solving the religious difficulty in our common and municipal schools by confining the functions of the school teacher to secular instruction, and calling in the aid of the clergy or other specialists to give lessons on religion at separate hours, would have seemed to him wholly indefensible, and, indeed, fatal to any true conception of the relation of religious knowledge to other knowledge." In one of his ser-