That there may be practical difficulties in the way of such a scheme I do not dispute. The object of this chapter is not to elaborate a plan, but to exhibit an idea. That the amount of definite knowledge acquired in this way might be small, and what Archbishop Benson oddly called "unexaminable," is, I think, quite likely. A man cannot learn in the leisure-hours left over by exhausting work as he would learn if he had nothing to think of except his studies and his examination. But Education has a larger function than the mere communication of knowledge. It opens the windows of the mind; it shows vistas which before were unsuspected; and so, as Wordsworth said, "is efficacious in making men wiser, better, and happier."
IV
LIFE, LIBERTY, AND JUSTICE
When an article in a newspaper produces a reply, the modest writer is gratified; for he knows that he has had at any rate one reader. If the reply comes to him privately, he is even better pleased, for then he feels that his reader thinks the matter worthy of personal discussion and of freely exchanged opinion. I have lately written an article on "Life and Liberty" as proposed by some earnest clergymen for the English Church, and an article on Mr. Fisher's Education Bill, in which I avowed my dislike to all attempts on the part of the State to teach religion. Both these articles have brought me a good deal of correspondence, both friendly and hostile. The term allotted to human life does not allow one to enter into private controversy with every correspondent, so I take this method of making a general reply. "Life and Liberty" are glorious ideals, but, to make the combination, perfect, we must add Justice. Hence my title.
The State consists of persons who profess all sorts of religion, and none. If the State compels its citizens to pay for religious teaching in which they do not believe, it commits, in my opinion, a palpable injustice. This is not merely a question between one sect and another sect. It is, indeed, unjust to make a Quaker pay for teaching the doctrine of the Sacraments, or a Unitarian for teaching the Deity of Christ; but it is equally unjust to make an Atheist pay for teaching the existence of God, or a Churchman for teaching that curious kind of implied Socinianism which is called "undenominational religion."
The only way out of these inequities is what is commonly called "Secularism." The word has some unfortunate associations. It has been connected in the past with a blatant form of negation, and also with a social doctrine which all decent people repudiate. But, strictly considered, it means no more than "temporal" or "worldly"; and when I say that I recommend the "Secular" system of education, I mean that the State should confine itself to the temporal or worldly work with which alone it is competent to deal, and should leave religion (which it cannot touch without inflicting injustice on someone) to those whose proper function is to instil it.
Who are they? Speaking generally, parents, ministers of religion, and teachers who are themselves convinced of what they teach; but I must narrow my ground. To-day I am writing as a Churchman for those Churchmen whom my previous articles disturbed; and I have only space to set forth some of the grounds on which we Churchmen should support the "secular solution."
A Churchman is bound by his baptismal vows to "believe all the articles of the Christian Faith." These, according to his catechism, are summed up in the Apostles' Creed. He cannot, therefore, be satisfied with any religious instruction which is not based on that formula; and yet such instruction cannot rightly be enforced in schools which belong as much to unbelievers as to Christians. A Churchman's religious faith is not derived primarily from the Bible, but from the teaching of the Christian Church, who is older than the oldest of her documents. There was a Church before the New Testament was written, and that Church transmitted the faith by oral tradition. "From the very first the rule has been, as a matter of fact, that the Church should teach the truth, and then should appeal to Scripture in vindication of its own teaching." For a Churchman, religious instruction must be the teaching of the Church, tested by the Bible. The two cannot be separated. Hence it follows that, while the State is bound to respect the convictions of those who adhere to all manner of beliefs and disbeliefs, the Churchman cannot recognize religious teaching imparted under such conditions as being that which his own conscience demands.
And, further, supposing that some contrivance could be discovered whereby the State might authorize the teaching of the Church's doctrine, the Churchman could not conscientiously be a party to it; for, according to his theory, there is only one Body divinely commissioned to decide what is to be taught—and that Body is not the State, but the Church; and there is only one set of persons qualified to teach it—viz., those who are duly authorized by the Church, and are fully persuaded as to the truth of what they teach.
It is sometimes asked how the Church is to fulfil this obligation without being subsidized in some way by the State. The principal requisite is greater faith in its Divine mission. If the Bishops and clergy had a stronger conviction that what they are divinely commissioned to undertake they will be divinely assisted to fulfil, this question need not be suggested. The first teachers of the Christian religion performed their task without either "Rate-aid" or "State-aid" and the result of their labour is still to be seen; whereas now the object of leaders of religion seems to be to get done for them what they ought to do for themselves. It may be well to quote an utterance of the Bishop of Oxford at the time when the Liberal Government was dealing with education. "We are now, more or less, in the middle of a crisis. We are always in the middle of a crisis. This crisis is about the religious question in our day-schools. I would ask you, then, to get at the root of our difficulty. What is it? The heart of our difficulty is partly that we have shifted on to the wrong shoulders the central function of teaching children; secondly, that we have so lost the idea of what the teaching of the Church is, and the meaning of religious education, that we are considered by the public to be unreasonable and uncompromising people if we are not disposed to admit that the County Councils can settle the standard of sufficient religious knowledge for everybody."