CHAP. XII.] LAY TEACHERS. 173 



illustrated : A few tares have grown up among the wheat ; 

 you must not pull them up, or you will loosen the soil and expose 

 the roofs of the good grain, arid then all may wither : moreover, 

 you must go on sowing the seeds of the same tares in the mind 

 of the rising generation, for you can not open the eyes of the 

 children without undeceiving and alarming their parents. Now 

 the perpetuation of error among the many, is only one part of 

 the mischief of this want of good faith, for it is also an abandon 

 ment by the few of the high ground on which their religion 

 ought to stand, namely, its truth. It accustoms the teacher to 

 regard his religion in its relation to the millions as a mere piece 

 of machinery, like a police, for preserving order, or enabling one 

 class of men to govern another. 



If such a state of things be unsound and unsatisfactory, it is 

 not so much the clergy who are to blame as the laity ; for lay 

 men have more freedom of action, and can with less sacrifice of 

 personal interests take the initiative in a reform. The cure of 

 the evil is obvious ; it consists in giving such instruction to the 

 people at large as would make concealment impossible. What 

 ever is known and intelligible to ordinary capacities in science, 

 especially if contrary to the first and natural impressions deriv 

 able from the literal meaning, or ordinary acceptation of the text 

 of Scripture, whether in astronomy, geology, or any other depart 

 ment of knowledge, should be freely communicated to all. Lay 

 teachers, not professionally devoted and pledged to propagate the 

 opinions of particular sects, will do this much more freely than 

 ecclesiastics, and, as a matter of course, in proportion as the 

 standard of public instruction is raised ; and no order of men 

 would be such gainers by the measure as the clergy, especially 

 the most able and upright among them. Every normal school, 

 every advance made in the social and intellectual position of the 

 lay teachers, tends to emancipate, not the masses alone, but still 

 more effectually their spiritual guides, and would increase their 

 usefulness in a tenfold degree. That a clergy may be well 

 informed for the age they live in, and may contain among them 

 many learned and good men, while the people remain in dark 

 ness, we know from history ; for the spiritual instructors may 



