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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 3a

My Friends,—

It can afford no real pleasure to you and me, to whom what are known as The Bible and The Church count for so very much, to find that the complete secularisation of national education is inevitable. We neither profess nor entertain any hostility to religion or to the Bible. Those of us who, in our modest way, are students of history—ancient and modern, sacred and secular—know something of the normal course of events in connection with the rise, progress, and triumph, as well as the decline, disintegration, and fall of human institutions. No man of any standing in the world of thought, science, or letters, to-day, regards the Church as anything other than a purely human institution. History makes it abundantly manifest that the story of the pre-Christian, Christian, and other Churches, is but the story, for the most part, of the work, influence, and legislation of humanly accredited priesthoods. All priesthoods began their career as servants of families, tribes, communities, or nations, and gradually, under the pressure and influence of social and political circumstances, acquired such prestige and power that they became too often, not merely tribal and national "masters," but tribal and national tyrants. All churches or priesthoods were originally founded to supply a social or spiritual need and demand. Slowly, but surely, what was meant to be a servant, became a master—and a very exacting master, too. The history of the Christian Church is no exception to the rule. An institution that began in the service of the State gradually acquired such power and influence that it eventually employed the State in its service. The servant became master and vice versa! It is easy enough to understand how this came about. The influence of genuinely righteous and Christian priesthoods is necessarily at its very highest and best when the social, civic, and political fortunes of the nation or people to whom it ministers are at their lowest and darkest. The misfortunes of empires and emperors have always furnished priesthoods with opportunities for both good and evil—for the good of ministering comfort and consolation in times of personal and national loss or disaster; for the evil of self-aggrandisement and the acquisition of undue power. We know that the Christian Church acquired during the past 1900 years such enormous influence that it at times completely dominated the States page 4 (Catholic and Protestant alike) of the Western world. It was the fact that the Churches (Catholic and Protestant alike) seemed to have succeeded in reducing "thrones, dominations, princedoms," as well as the general body of the people, to a. state of abject servitude in a virtual theocracy, that seems to have roused the modern democracy to a consciousness of the injustice and irrationality of their humiliating predicament. The secularisation of education, my friends, is then but one-phase of the modern revolt against ecclesiastical tyranny and self-aggrandisement.

Not so very many years ago, not a few of our Churches acquitted themselves with considerable distinction in connection with the education of their people—though, unfortunately, their idea was that real learning and knowledge were to be got from books and the older the books the better. Too often the Churches set to work as though all that was of real value to men was, not equipment for this life, but preparation for the life-to-come. Man's chief end was to save his soul and to provide modest luxuries for those saintly guides who showed him how to do it. His next duty was to be humbly and thankfully content with whatever lowly lot God had assigned him. In fact, the Churches at no time in their history (notwithstanding laudable efforts, according to their light, in certain educational directions) can be said to have made a serious effort to impart, as part of their educational system, the results of accredited knowledge, science, and research. They were, and are, pre-occupied with their old ideas and methods, with the inevitable result that the State itself has found it necessary, in the interests both of justice and education proper, to undertake the task of providing that part of education concerned with our life and prospects here. The State, too, virtually asks the Churches to confine their attention to what the modern world has come to regard as their legitimate sphere—that of the claims and interests of the spiritual life and the world-to-come. The process of secularisation has been quite phenomenally rapid and drastic in certain parts of the world. Even in Great Britain what is virtually secularisation has made enormous progress during the past few years.

The (English) Northern Counties League met for its annual .meeting at Leeds on the 14th November last, and its Secretary (Rev. C. Peach) submitted some remarkable statistics bearing on the transference of Church, or voluntary, schools to the State (as represented by Provincial Councils).

Since 1903 (that is, in seven years) voluntary schools in England have decreased in number by very nearly 1200, and the number of pupils on their registers by over half a million. On the other hand, during the same period the number of Council (or State) schools has increased by over 1700, and the number of pupils on the register by over three-quarters of a page 5 million. In 1903 the pupils in the voluntary or Church schools outnumbered those in the Council schools by 650,000; in 1910 the pupils in the Council schools outnumbered those in the voluntary schools by 600,000. In other words, the Council schools have 1,250,000 more pupils than they had seven years ago, while the voluntary or Church schools have more than half a million fewer than they had seven years ago. Of course, it must not be supposed that there is no Bible-reading or religious instruction in these Council (or State) schools. There is; but it is of the order known as non-sectarian—an order virtually secular, though apparently more objectionable to Catholics and High Church Anglicans than a purely secular system. In fact, Catholics and High Churchmen regard this system as the endowment of Nonconformity. They sometimes nickname it "School-Board religion!" Well, one thing is clear: that this non-sectarian use of the Bible in State, or "Provided" schools as they are called, is but one remove from what must inevitably become very shortly the complete secularisation of national education. Examination of the relative strength and educational service of voluntary and Council schools indicates what their respective futures are to be:—