Page:The Conscience Clause (Oakley, 1866).djvu/61

49 Catholic Church? Be this as it may, if proselytism were never so sacred a duty, it would never be right to associate it with education or any other external good. For that reduces it to mere commonplace bribery, which, as such, is repugnant to every upright mind.

As to the second position, that the Church "may not teach any child anything apart from, or independent of, the one faith," we may at once refuse to be misled by any such high-sounding phrase. She does so already; she must do so always. Spelling is "apart" from the faith, sewing is wholly "independent" of it. The only question is, how far it is possible and lawful to carry that distinction between sacred and secular learning which every one well knows to exist. The difficulty will not be solved by confounding the two spheres of knowledge together with a view to rhetorical effect. What I wish to impress upon Archdeacon Denison and his followers is this—that their resolute refusal to recognise any such distinction is likely to drive, has driven, and is driving, many zealous educationists into the support of purely secular education. If the religious difficulty is hindering the work of education, then, they say, away with the religious difficulty; limit religion to the Church and the Sunday-school, and give an education uninterrupted by sectarian interests. I am far from accepting this solution. I believe the public mind is farther still from adopting it. But I know whose fault it will be if it is adopted.

14. "Because it is one thing to admit a child of Dissenting parents into a Church school according to the discretion of the managers for the time being, and then and there to teach it the one faith; and another and an opposite thing to have the child intruded there, as of right, to be taught no faith at all."

I have the fear of being accused of "discreditable trickery" before my eyes, but I must paraphrase Mr. Lingen's answer, and say, "Of course it is; if it were otherwise, this 'controversy'