Secular instruction implies that the proper business of the school-teacher is to impart a knowledge of the duties of this world; and the proper business of chapel and church is to explain the duties relevant to another world, which can only be done in a secondhand way by the school-teacher. The wonder is that the pride of the minister does not incite him to keep his own proper work in his own hands, and protest against the school-teacher meddling with it. By doing so he would augment his own dignity and the distinctiveness of his office.
By keeping each kind of knowledge apart, a man learns both, more easily and more effectually. Secular training is better for the scholar and safer for the State; and better for the priest if he has a faith that can stand by itself.
If the reader does not distrust it as a paradox, he will assent that the Secular is distinct from Secularism, as distinct as an act is distinct from its motive. Secular teaching comprises a set of rules of instruction in trade, business, and professional knowledge. Secularism furnishes a set of principles for the ethical conduct of life. Secular instruction is far more limited in its range than Secularism which defends secular pursuits against theology, where theology attacks them or obstructs them. But pure Secular knowledge is confined to its own pursuit, and does not come in contact with theology any more than architecture comes in contact with preaching.
A man may be a shareholder in a gas company or a waterworks, a house owner, a landlord, a farmer, or a workman. All these are secular pursuits, and he who follows them may consult only his own interest. But if he be a Secularist, he will consider not only his own interest, but, as far as he can, the welfare of the community or the world, as his action or example may tell for the good of universal society. He will do "his best," not as Mr. Ruskin says, "the best of an ass," but "the best of an intelligent man." In every act he will put his conscience and character with a view so to discharge the duties of this life as to merit another, if there be one. Just as a Christian seeks to serve God, a Secularist seeks to serve man. This it is to be a Secularist. The idea of this service is what Secularism puts into his mind. Professor Clifford exclaimed: "The Kingdom of God has come—when comes the Kingdom of man?" A Secularist is one who hastens the coming of this kingdom: which must be agreeable to heaven if the people of this world are to occupy the mansions there.
CHAPTER XII. THE DISTINCTIVENESS MADE FURTHER EVIDENT.
"The cry that so-called secular education is Atheistic is
hardly worth notice. Cricket is not theological; at the same
time, it is not Atheistic."
—Rev. Joseph Parker, D. D., Times, October 11, 1894.
NOR is Secularism atheism. The laws of the universe are quite distinct from the question of the origin of the universe. The study of the laws of nature, which Secularism selects, is quite different from speculation as to the authorship of nature. We may judge and prize the beauty and uses of an ancient edifice, though we may never know the builder. Secularism is a form of opinion which concerns itself only with questions the issues of which can be tested by the experience of this life. It is clear that the existence of deity and the actuality of another life, are questions excluded from Secularism, which exacts no denial of deity or immortality, from members of Secularist societies. During their day only two persons of public distinction—the Bishop of Peterborough and Charles Bradlaugh—maintained that the Secular was atheistic. Yet Mr. Bradlaugh never put a profession of atheism as one of the tenets of any Secularist Society. Atheism may be a personal tenet, but it cannot be a Secularist tenet, from which it is wholly disconnected.
No one would confuse the Secular with the atheistic who understood that the Secular is separate. Mr. Hodgson Pratt, a Christian, writing in Concord (October, 1894), a description of the burial of Angelo Mazzoleni, said "the funeral was entirely Secular," meaning the ceremony was distinct from that of the Church, being based on considerations pertaining to duty in this world.
In the indefiniteness of colloquial speech we constantly hear the phrase, "School Board education." Yet School Boards cannot give education. It is beyond their reach. Most persons confuse instruction with education. Instruction relates to industrial, commercial, agricultural, and scientific knowledge and like subjects. Education implies the complete training and "drawing out of the whole powers of the mind."* Thus instruction is different from education. Instruction is departmental knowledge. Education includes all the influences of life; instruction gives skill, education forms character.