Page:The Conscience Clause (Oakley, 1866).djvu/51

39 4. "Because the Church may not do harm to the souls of children not of the Church by putting before them in her daily practice that reading, writing, and arithmetic are essential parts of education, but that religious knowledge, with its close application to every part of the daily life, is not."

I take these two arguments as to the effect of the clause upon the two classes of children concerned together.

Archdeacon Denison is playing with the word "privilege." The Committee of Council means by "privileges of the school" its educational advantages of learning and mental cultivation. The Archdeacon means by the word those advantages which undoubtedly result from a direct reference of every good gift to God, and from bringing out the truth that our common right to all the cultivation possible for us, and all other effects of education, arise from our common membership of Christ. But I do not see that he cannot bring the consideration of these privileges to bear without the Church Catechism or the distinctive doctrines of the Church of England.

And in. the lower sense of the word "privilege," I maintain that if it is of any advantage to assert that Church teaching is a privilege, this rule providing for exceptions makes it easy to treat it in the very way best calculated to bring out its character as a privilege, and with probably the best results.

On this point I will ask the Archdeacon to listen to Mr. Chester, who, in a letter to the English Churchman a dozen years ago, which breathes throughout an air of most sincere and earnest orthodoxy, speaks of the alleged danger to the children themselves from that voluntary exemption of children of Nonconformists from learning the Catechism which was then under discussion:—"I have often heard different anticipations of the evil that must result to the Church from such a course as that which I suggest; but while I never heard of a single case in which such evils had really occurred, I have heard of many