Page:The Conscience Clause (Oakley, 1866).djvu/55

43 exempt certain children from certain parts of it, never from the whole. I have allowed that I can realise a case in which a clergyman might prefer to teach a child no religion at all to seeming to exercise any reserve in his teaching. But I own that it seems to me exactly a case for the exercise of that practical philosophy which holds (I mean nothing offensive by the quotation)—

"That he's a fool

Who does not know the half is better than the whole."

Better, I believe, because the "half" measure of exempting some children from inapplicable or unwelcome teaching is better than the coveted "whole" of teaching all of them doctrine which is untrue to some, or disapproved by the parents of some; better, because symmetry of system is often a snare, and induces complacency where none is justifiable, whereas the very occurrence of these rare exceptions, which prove the general rule, will reveal to the Christian minister and set him to grapple with the mischief which produces them, but which he has no right to ignore, nor to coerce to his will.

8. "Because the Church may not place the parish schoolmaster in the false position of separating between the religious and the secular teaching of the school."

Nevertheless, I suppose he does separate them. They are not, cannot be, taught together. Of course I know their abstract connection, but in the practical mechanism of an individual school I suppose there is no help for their taking different positions on the time-table, no means of obviating the necessary orders, "Close spelling-books: Catechism class, come up!" And with this inevitable line drawn in practice, I am wholly unable to see the deep departure from good principles in the master's adding, "A, B, C, D, take your slates, and write out a psalm or hymn from memory, while the others say their lesson." It is notorious that the much-debated Catechism is the only one formula likely to be excepted to, and I do