52 CRITIQUES AND ADDRESSES. [n. 



On the whole, then, I am in favour of reading the 

 Bible, with such grammatical, geographical, and historical 

 explanations by a lay-teacher as may be needful, with 

 rigid exclusion of any further theological teaching than 

 that contained in the Bible itself. And in stating what 

 this is, the teacher would do well not to go beyond the 

 precise words of the Bible ; for if he does, he will, in 

 the first place, undertake a task beyond his strength, 

 seeing that all the Jewish and Christian sects have been 

 at work upon that subject for more than two thousand 

 years, and have not yet arrived, and are not in the least 

 likely to arrive, at an agreement ; and, in the second 

 place, he will certainly begin to teach something dis- 

 tinctively denominational, and thereby come into violent 

 collision with the Act of Parliament. 



4. The intellectual training to be given in the elemen- 

 tary schools must of course, in the first place, consist in 

 learning to use the means of acquiring knowledge, or 

 reading, writing, and arithmetic ; and it will be a great 

 matter to teach reading so completely that the act shall 

 have become easy and pleasant. If reading remains 

 " hard," that accomplishment will not be much resorted 

 to for instruction, and still less for amusement which 

 last is one of its most valuable uses to hard-worked 

 people. 



But along with a due proficiency in the use of the 

 means of learning, a certain amount of knowledge, of 

 intellectual discipline, and of artistic training should be 

 conveyed in the elementary schools ; and in this direc- 

 tion for reasons which I am afraid to repeat, having 

 urged them so often I can conceive no subject-matter 

 of education so appropriate and so important as the 

 rudiments of physical science, with drawing, modelling, 

 and singing. Not only would such teaching afford the 

 best possible preparation for the technical schools about 



