Page:The "Conscience Clause" (Denison, 1866).djvu/9

5 The Committee wanted then—what they found they could not have, and what they have been wanting ever since, but which they never can have—that is to say, what is called the "comprehensive" system of school teaching, in which differences of religious belief go for nothing. They failed then, as they are failing now, when they have revived the attempt in another shape, which goes beyond comprehension even in its outward aspect, and issues directly in "the Secular system." Religious principle was too strong for them, as it is now, and will be. Ex pellas furcâ, tamen usque recurret. For the sense of the people, whether of the Church or of the Sects—and I use the word "Sect" in no offensive sense, but as marking the actual severance of the Nonconformist bodies from the Church, and the vital distinction between them and the Church—a thing which it is every day more and more necessary that the Church should keep carefully in sight, because the world is every day more and more putting it out of sight—the sense of the people, and its steadfast adherence to the denominational principle strictly construed—the principle that school teaching must be not only generally religious, but must be also particularly religious; that is, that it must represent and enforce the precise religious belief of the particular body to which the school belongs, and no other belief—has been from the first, and will be to the last, too strong for the natural tendencies of the governing power. The English people, though, unhappily, they are not one in mind and judgment touching the "one Faith," being yet in the main a religious people, know very well that, under any other conditions, there is really no "education" of a child possible, or, if possible, worth having.

I cite here a passage from the Report of the Education Commissioners 1861:—

"The feelings of the nation at large are proved by the fact that, with hardly an exception, every endowment for purposes of education, from the universities down to the smallest village school, has been connected