Page:The Conscience Clause (Oakley, 1866).djvu/76

64 teaching our formularies to the next generation, in spite of their parents' opposition! I would ask if we cannot take advantage of this demand on our elasticity, this shock to our prejudices, if you will, which the Conscience Clause seems to be, to ask ourselves if it be a pre-ordained necessity that these men should always be Dissenters, and if the Church cannot afford, to put it on no higher ground, in her conscious superiority of theory and organisation, to make some concessions to them, at least in this matter of education, in the hope of bringing about a deeper reconciliation? The State at this moment stands baffled by the multiplicity of sects, to all of whom it is determined to extend the benefits of elementary education, of religious education, if they will let her. And in her perplexity the State applies to one of the existing denominations, to that which seems most able and most bound to do so, to help her meet this difficulty. The denomination so appealed to is, of course, the National Church. Let her beware how she trifles with the invitation!

3. I cast a glance in the third place, and it can but be a glance, at the appalling ignorance of the lower orders in our land, as a motive for removing any obstacle that exists to the spread of education, for adopting any measure that tends to promote it. I believe it is indisputable, though it attracts too little of our attention. This is not the place to produce evidence. I can only say that I could almost have matched the stupendous specimens of ignorance among the children of the operatives at Sheffield which were lately disclosed, out of the papers of an examination in religious knowledge held last winter in London, under the auspices of the Metropolitan Association for Promoting the Education of Adults, in which I acted as examiner, the candidates being many of them pupils of schools of good status and organisation. And I believe they may often be matched all the country over, even in schools under Government inspection. I must not dwell now on the direct and indirect