Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 29.djvu/571

Rh this would lead would tend to prepare the way for the introduction of more specific theological teaching, and, little by little, we should have, by the help of the State, a kind of official theology formed, the influence of which on the development of thought, and perhaps also of morals, would be far from favorable. No better way of stereotyping a civilization could be devised than for a government, through the public schools, to undertake to tell people what they should believe on the most fundamental questions of theology and philosophy.

We should therefore strongly advise all well-meaning people to pause before they give their support to measures which certainly would not have the beneficial results which we may be sure they have at heart. In what we have said above we have assumed the success of the supposed attempt of the State to control the theological opinions of the people. But there is a possibility that things might take a different turn, and that State patronage of certain forms of opinion might tend to produce skepticism in regard to the very doctrines it was sought to protect and strengthen. We hold very strongly, for our own part, that in the public schools, controlled as they are by the civil authorities, nothing should be taught beyond the broad and demonstrable results of human inquiry. We may perhaps trust our politicians, through their nominees, to give our children facts; because, if they depart from facts when they are purporting to give them, it is comparatively easy to bring them to book. It is a different thing, however, to intrust them with the enunciation of theories, particularly in the region of theology. If they go wrong there, who is to check them? What standard is to be applied? If they teach in a dull, formal, mechanical way what, if taught at all, should be taught with earnestness and conviction, how are we to repair the mischief they will certainly do?

There is, lastly, a point to consider, which our contemporary, above referred to, urges with a great deal of force—the question of simple justice. It is known that, whether or not all Christian sects are agreed in accepting the theological propositions set forth, the whole community does not accept them. It may be unfortunate that it should be so—we do not discuss that question—the fact is that it is so; and people who want a merely secular education for their children would have reason to complain if a teaching they did not think best for their children's minds should be forced upon them. The State, be it remembered, has completely dwarfed and starved out private enterprise in education, so that the average parent has no choice but to send his children to the public school. Should, then, anything be taught there which presupposes a uniformity of opinion that does not exist? If the reason why we have no state church in this land is that we could not have one without doing injustice to some element or elements of the population, the same objection precisely will apply to having an authoritative teaching in the schools of matters that every man claims the right to judge of for himself, and in regard to which important differences of opinion prevail. The case is very simple and clear—too clear to admit of much mystification in the popular mind; and it is to the good sense of the people at large that we trust for the decisive overthrow of any measures looking to the perversion of our school system by making it an agency for the propagation of an official theology.

invite attention to the opening article in the present number of the "Monthly," which is on a subject of great economical importance. The author, Mr. P. H. Dudley, is an engineer who has given much time and attention to special investigations of the decay of wood and its causes, and presents some