EDITOR'S TABLE. 



557 



THE ECCLESIASTICAL VIEW OF 

 EDUCATION. 



OUR attention has been drawn to 

 an article by an excellent con- 

 tributor of our own, Dean Car- 

 michael, of Montreal, which ap- 

 peared a few months ago in the 

 Canada Educational Monthly, on 

 the subject of " Religion and Edu- 

 cation." The writer is candid, able, 

 and eminently well-meaning, but we 

 find it impossible, nevertheless, to 

 agree with the views he puts forth, 

 or at least with his main contention. 

 The dean is much impressed with 

 the rapid progress which education 

 has been making in the modern 

 world, and he prophesies that, if the 

 same rate of progress is maintained 

 for seventy-five or a hundred years 

 longer, it will be impossible in any 

 civilized country to gather together 

 so ignorant a crowd as that which 

 tore down the Bastile in 1789. Does 

 that mean that society will then 

 be safe from such convulsions as 

 marked the French Revolution ? By 

 no means: crowds may again gather 

 for deadly work, but they will be 

 educated crowds, each man able to 

 write his name and read his paper 

 and proceed with the business of de- 

 struction "as an intelligent being, 

 instead of being whirled to it as an 

 atom in a vortex." The dean sees 

 signs of great disturbance in the 

 present day, and he thinks that edu- 

 cation, as it is now being imparted 

 to the masses, is rendering society 

 not more but less stable. " The mil- 

 lions," he says, " that in times past 

 were only used to dig and delve, to 

 fill up giant armies, to crowd pauper 

 workhouses, to tenant penal settle- 

 ments," are being reached by the 

 light of education and are "fast 



growing into mental as well as 

 physical power." One would be 

 disposed to think that this was not 

 a very lamentable prospect, but it 

 fills Dean Carmichael's mind with 

 the gravest apprehensions. Why ? 

 Because he does not see how the 

 minority are going to hold this vast 

 educated majority in check. That 

 the majority must be held in check, 

 unless society is to go to smash, he 

 seems to consider axiomatic. The 

 specific complaint he makes against 

 modern education is that it is vir- 

 tually divorced from religion. " The 

 whole tide," he says, "of modern 

 civilization, as set going and lauded 

 by the middle and higher classes of 

 society, desires either to sweap dis- 

 tinctive religious teaching clean out 

 of the world's curriculum, or to put 

 it into a corner with a fool's cap on 

 its head. . . . No greater anom- 

 aly, I think, has ever existed than 

 that of institutions based upon the 

 open principle that the Bible is the 

 foundation of all education, practi- 

 cally joining hands with unbelievers 

 the world over to make the Bible 

 the least prominent volume of in- 

 struction in public education." 



These quotations at once indicate 

 the writer's standpoint and suggest 

 our reply. The " anomaly " which 

 appears so striking and inexplicable 

 in his eyes loses much of its extraor- 

 dinary character on close examina- 

 tion. The question is this : Why 

 are Christian parents so generally 

 willing, where they are not actually 

 desirous, that the Bible should not 

 be made an authoritative text-book 

 in the public schools ? Many rea- 

 sons may be assigned. In the first 

 place, they know that the Bible as it 

 stands, in its entirety, is not adapted 



