The Education Question [pp. 504-544]

The Education Question.
academy, or college, has no more relation to religion, than what
he learns in a tannery or carpenter's shop; and yet consistently
assert the right of the Church, on due occasion, to supervise
and control it. Architecture, and the building of houses, is a
matter purely civil, and yet the Church has the right to build
houses and to organize a system of Church extension. The
truth is, that any thing, no matter how purely it may be of a
civil nature in itself considered, becomes a legitimate matter of
Church direction whenever it is a necessary means for the promotion of religion. We, however, deny that education is in
its nature a civil affair. On the contrary, the training of the
young is of necessity of a moral and religious, as well as an intellectual operation. The Southern Reviewer himself says:
Revealed religion "ought to be made a prominent part of education, from the primary school to the University." How, then,
can it be "an affair purely civil?" How can the school be
sunk to a level with the tannery? Is "the revealed religion"
an essential part of the art of tanning leather? It is only by
degrading education to a level with a handicraft, that even a
plausible pretext can be framed for withdrawing it from the
province of the Church.
4th. It is urged that the Church has not perfectly secured
the object aimed at, when she had the control of schools and
colleges. Even in Scotland, "it has not availed much that the
schoolmasters must be members of the Established Church, and
in our own country memorable examples are not wanting to
prove that we have achieved little in the way of giving education a safe moral direction, when we have placed it most completely under ecclesiastical control." We cannot see the force
of this argument. Does the fact that the Church has not fully
accomplished her mission, though she has ever\been intrusted
with the preaching of the gospel, prove that she has no right to
preach? or that she should be forbid to exercise that right?
How then does the fact, that she has not accomplished her whole
work, though she has had the control of education, prove either
that she has no right to educate, or that the work should be
taken out of her hands and given to the State? Has nothing
been done in Scotland by her parish schools? Lives there a
Scotchman in the world, or a man in whose veins a drop of
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