Leading Articles on Various Subjects

by Hugh Miller

Sir,––In your paper of the 26th ultimo, I observe among the advertisements a set of resolutions which have been agreed to and signed by a number of parties, with the view of a national movement in favour of an unsectarian system of national education. It is perhaps too early to say, that though the names of some of the parties are well known and highly esteemed in this country, yet that the names of many who might be expected to be foremost in promoting such an object are wanting.

I cannot, however, help thinking, that some of these may have been prevented from signing the document in question by some considerations which have occurred to myself on the perusal of it; and as a few lines of editorial comment indicate that the project has your sanction, you will perhaps allow me briefly to say why I think the people of Scotland should give to it the most deliberate consideration before committing themselves to it.

Agreeing, as I do most fully, with a large proportion of the contents of the resolutions, I regret that its authors have made an attempt, which it is impossible can be successful, to unite in the national schoolhouses, and in the school hours, a sound religious with an unsectarian education.

What is a sound religious education? Will not the professors of every variety of religious faith answer the question differently?

I think it was Bishop Berkeley who said, Orthodoxy is my doxy; heterodoxy is another man’s doxy. So it is with a sound religious education. What is sound to me is hollow and superficial, or perhaps full of error, to another.

If it be said that the majority of heads of families must decide as to what is sound and what is unsound, I must protest against such an injustice. The minority will contribute to the support of the public schools, and neither directly nor indirectly can they with justice be deprived of the use of them.

It appears to me that the authors of the resolutions are flying in the face of their own great authority, in proposing to introduce religious instruction into the public schools. It is true that Dr. Chalmers proposes that Government should ‘leave this matter entire to the parties who had to do with the erection and management of the schools which they had been called upon to assist;’ but he was not then contemplating the erection of national schools by the public money, but schools erected by voluntary subscription, which the Government might be called on to assist.

His opinion on the right action of Government in the present state of things is clear. He says: ‘That in any public measure for helping on the education of the people, Government [should] abstain from introducing the element of religion at all into their part of the scheme.’

What, then, should be the course taken by the promoters of public schools, in accordance with the principles enunciated by Dr Chalmers? It appears to me to be clearly this: to make no provision whatever for, or rather directly to exclude, all religious teaching within the walls of the school, and to leave, in the words of the fifth resolution, ‘the duty and responsibility of communicating religious instruction’ in the hands of those ‘to whom they have been committed by God, viz. to their parents, and, through them, to such teachers as they may choose to entrust with that duty.’

This was the course pursued by the Government of Holland in the early part of the present century; and I suppose no one will venture to call in question the morality or religion of the people of that country, or to throw a doubt upon the success of the system.