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 ANCE WITH THE PROVISIONS 
 OF THE GIFT 
 
I. 
 THE SCHOOLS OF CHRISTENDOM./ 
 
 /■ 
 
 THE DECAY OF GREEK AND LATIN. 
 
 THE FRUIT OF PRETENCE OF TEACHING, 
 LONG EMPLOYED IN PRIVATE AND PUBLIC SCHOOLS: 
 
 THE TRUE METHOD OF TEACHING LABGUAaE, 
 
 ANCIENT AND MODERN. 
 
 THE 
 
 IMPOSTURE 
 
 OF 
 
 SMATTERINGS OF MANY SORTS OF KNOWLEDGE, 
 
 AND OF THE 
 
 MODERN INVENTION OF CRAMMING, 
 
 Revised and reprinted from " Notes of my Life," 3rd Ed. 1879, C. ii. 
 
 III. 
 
 THE SCIENCE OF FLOGGING, 
 
 ITS NATURAL, NECESSARY, EFFICIENT, AND SALUTARY 
 APPLICATION IN MANY CASES. 
 
 GEORGE ANTHONY DENISON, 
 
 Archdeacon of Tavntcm. 
 
 u 
 
 LONDON" : 
 WILLIAM RIDGWAT, 169, PICCADILLY, W. 
 
 1886. 
 
 Price One SMlling. 
 
The original of tliis book is in 
 tlie Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924031787454 
 
THE SCHOOLS OF CHRISTENDOM. 
 
 n. ^7 / 
 
 THE DECAY OF GREEK AND LATIN. 
 
 THE FRUIT OF PRETENCE OF TEACHING, 
 LONG EMPLOYED IN PRIVATE AND PUBLIC SCHOOLS: 
 
 THE TRUE METHOD OF TEACHING LANfiDAGE, 
 
 ANCIENT AND MODERN. 
 
 THE 
 
 IMPOSTURE] 
 
 OF 
 
 SMATTERINGS OF MANY SORTS OF KNOWLEDGE, 
 
 AND OP THE 
 
 MODERN INVENTION OF CRAMMING, 
 
 Revised, and reprinted from "Notes of my Life," 3rd Ed. 1879, C. ii. 
 
 ^ THE SCIENCE OF FLOGGING,' ' ' 
 
 ■ ITS NATURAL, NECESSARY, EFFICIENT, AND SALUTARY 
 APPLICATION IN MANY CASES. 
 
 GEORGE ANTHONY DENISON, 
 
 Archdeacon of Taunton. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 WILLIAM RIDGWAT, 169, PICCADILLY, W. 
 
 1886. 
 
 & 
 
^^-f^-fTH' 
 
 
 LONDON : 
 NOBMAN AND SON, PRINTERS, HART STREET, 
 COVENT GARDEN, 
 
P REFACE. 
 
 Fob forty-eight years of my life— 1839-40, 1885- 
 1886 — I have done what I could to set before the 
 Bishops, Priests, and People of the Church of 
 England, the inherent character and certain fruit of 
 what has gone by the name of " The Educational 
 Policy" of the CivU Power of England, 1832-1886. 
 For some fifteen years, 1832-1847, to use the ex- 
 pression of its principal author — the late Sir James 
 Kay Shuttleworth, "the Policy was unostentatious." 
 For the remaining thirty-nine years as " ostenta- 
 tious " as he could have desired. 
 
 I end as I began ; having lived to see the com- 
 plete development of that Policy, and the first and 
 enduring fruits of it. 
 
 The misery of the thing is that, while the 
 assailant has been true to the principles of an 
 inherited Policy, the defender and maintainer 
 has not. Forty-six years ago there were States- 
 men, Bishops, Priests, Deacons, Laymen, who, 
 with the "National Society for the Education of 
 the Poor in the Principles of the Established 
 
 1 * 
 
IV 
 
 Church," began with a great parade of remon- 
 strance and resistance in Parhament and out of 
 Parliament; and, after 1852, the Lower House of 
 Convocation of Canterbury did the like, more or 
 less : but only for some fifteen years. 
 
 All this ended sooner or later (the exceptions 
 are few) — it ended, not with public protest and 
 complaint before God and man of the grievous 
 wrong done to the Church, first in undermining, 
 finally in ruining, the distinctive and only true 
 character of a Church school having any connec- 
 tion with the Civil Power ; not with " rejoicing to 
 suffer," rather than be parties to the wrong done, 
 but with active co-operation, promotion, yea, 
 applauding, of the wrong done to the dishonour of 
 God in the National betrayal of His Church. 
 
 In my letter to Mr. Gladstone, 1847, I forecast, 
 with one exception, everything which it has since 
 been the work of that Policy to carry out to its 
 bitter end by the action of Parliament. That one 
 exception is " the time-table Conscience Clause" of 
 1870. This clause, so negativing the commission 
 and oifice of the Parish Priest in his school, and 
 therein so ruinous to the Catholic character of the 
 school itself receiving grants under it, does not 
 appear to have occurred to any mind till after 1847, 
 It had not occurred to my own mind as being 
 ultimately a necessary ingredient of the " Educa- 
 tional" Policy; and I have found no trace of it in 
 
other minds before 1870. I cannot therefore say 
 whether it was from the first in the minds of the 
 authors of that Policy as a thing some day to be 
 done. But whether this or not, it has been the 
 consummation of that Policy — in its birth, growth, 
 maturity; The Anti- Church Policy. 
 
 The " time-table Conscience Clause " has certain 
 distinctive features, all of them bad to look upon. 
 
 1. It turns " Education " into " Instruction." 
 It does this by the daily process of making the 
 inculcation of God's Truth the subject only of a 
 lesson given for a limited time at a fixed hour, 
 after the manner of a lesson in Geography or 
 Arithmetic. The experience of its operation 
 since 1870 shows a further process of allowing a 
 still shorter time for " the rehgious lesson " than 
 that originally allowed. Longer or shorter makes 
 no difference in the principle of this thing. 
 
 2. It breaks into bits the golden thread of incul- 
 cation of Faith and Practice, which in " Educa- 
 tion" runs through, guides, governs, and binds 
 together all the several parts of Instruction ; and, 
 consecrating each and every one of them to God, 
 " educates" the child to " educate " himself. 
 
 3. It robs the Parish Priest of the trust and 
 power committed to him in his Ordination, to 
 exercise his office at any hour of the school-time 
 as he may see occasion, and in connection with any 
 matter of Instruction : to be instant in season, out 
 season : " to reprove, rebuke, exhort with all 
 
VI 
 
 authority, with all long-suffering and doctrine." 
 (2Tim.iv. 2; Tit. ii. 15.) 
 
 4. It forces upon the notice of the Church child 
 in the Church school, by daily contact and dealing 
 with children not of the Church, that the inculca- 
 tion of the Faith and Practice of a Christian man 
 is subordinated to that of the various parts 
 of secular learning. In their eyes the Church 
 of Cheist is disparaged daUy, not magnified. 
 Example is stronger than precept, especially in a 
 child's mind. 
 s jiatt. xix. 5- Prayer before and after school, being, in the 
 s.Mark.x.i3. '^^^'^^^ of the casc, no part of the "Conscience 
 ^'iw;.^™' Clause " system, the child is taught to forget and 
 neglect to pray. 
 
 Having in 1847 found myself unable to continue 
 any manner of connection, direct or indirect, with 
 the Civil Power in this matter, I have since 
 that year had my own schools entirely in my 
 own hands ; admitting no Government inspection 
 or other inspection connected indirectly with Go- 
 vernment; and therefore not " enjoying " any grant. 
 
 For the original "Conscience Clause," its life 
 and its death, if the history of it were not filled 
 from first to last with the worst evils, there would 
 be nothing more eminently and exceptionally 
 ridiculous. 
 
 First, it was the conscience of the parent, object- 
 
Vll 
 
 ing to his child being taught ia the Church school 
 " the principles of the Doctrine of Cheist " (Heb. 
 vii, 1). Accordingly, in obedience to that con- 
 science, the Church school, which could not be got 
 rid of bodily, had to be watered and lowered down 
 to meet the objection : this was largely submitted 
 to on the part of Churchmen. 
 
 Then it was the conscience not so much of the 
 parent as of the child; upon the assumption of "the 
 Committee of Council on Education" that, "at seven 
 years of age, a child may be taken to be capable of 
 discriminating between religious systems." 
 
 Note that here is the origin of classing the Church 
 school in common with the schools of " other forms 
 of faith " under a common head — " Denominational 
 Schools." 
 
 Both these uses of Conscience, having served 
 their turn, were thrown into the ditch nearest to 
 the Church school, already become under their 
 operation "the quasi-Church school;" and time- 
 table Conscience Clause was brought into their 
 room, coupled with compulsory attendance of child. 
 
 The conscience of the parent, or of the child, 
 finds no longer any favour : not so much as any 
 consideration. 
 
 The parent says, " My conscience wUl not per- 
 mit me to send my chUd to a school where he is 
 not to be taught first and last, and above aU other 
 things, ' The Doctrine of Cheist ' as delivered by 
 Him to the Church Catholic for the ' teaching of 
 
VIU 
 
 all nations, baptizing them in the name of The 
 Father, and of The Son, and of the Holy Ghost.' " 
 
 The answer is, we are sorry for your conscience. 
 (The child's conscience has disappeared from the 
 reckoning.) But our schools — that is, the " State 
 and Church " schools and the Board schools — are 
 not schools for teaching children "the principles of 
 the doctrine of Christ." They are schools for 
 teaching children " the wisdom of the world " — see 
 1 Cor. i. vv. 18-31. 
 
 You must send your child to school against your 
 conscience, or be fined. Secular instruction of 
 children is of paramount obligation. 
 
 " Solvurdur risu Tahulce." 
 
 In my contention for the " Church School " I had 
 at one time many with me — Clergy, Lay-people. 
 As the end^drew on, not so many. 
 
 It would, nevertheless, be a long list if I were to 
 attempt to give the names. 
 
 There is one name pre-eminent in work as in 
 honour. The name of the refounder in Century 
 XIX of the Public " School of Christendom " for 
 "all sorts and conditions of men" in many places 
 in England.— Nathaniel Woodaed, Provost of S. 
 Nicolas, Canon of Manchester. 
 
 "The World" has laughed at me all along. 
 The ridicule or the applause of "the World" in 
 respect of obedience to The Law Divine are very 
 small matters. 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 THE SCHOOLS OF CHRISTENDOM. 
 
 * "But the 
 
 saints of the 
 most High 
 shall take the 
 
 As the foundation of what I have to say in this kingdom, and 
 little book, I place in the foreground a few words kingdom for 
 about the Schools of Christendom. ever' and ever. 
 
 Christendom — the Kingdom of Christ upon dom and ™o- 
 Earth.* The Corner Stone of that Kingdom, with Se'^^'great^Ms 
 the Laws of it, Eevealed to man as the one way dom nnder'^he 
 to the Kingdom that is in Heaven.f rhdl'be'gwTn 
 
 Christendom— the Kingdom of the "One Lord, *°f theVnTs^f 
 One Faith, One Baptism." The Kingdom of The ^\'or'"^ig: 
 Orders, The Creeds, The Sacraments. The King- f""?^ ^".^7^"- 
 
 ' ' ' o lastmg kmg- 
 
 dom committed of God The Father, in the name of '^°™'«''^'^»'>i'J°: 
 
 ' mmions shall 
 
 God The Son, by The Spirit, God The Holy Ghost, ^^m*"^°DS 
 committed to everyone Baptized into the Church™- is, 27. 
 Catholic to guard and to keep, to maintain and to ^ <. The King- 
 extend. The Kingdom which, in all the fulfilment worid°L*be! 
 of its Promise, is yet to come. dZs^of^ofr 
 
 The humble, simple, unquestioning Belief of h^s^chkist"" 
 the unlearned — throughout all time the great ^^^'- ^- '^• 
 multitude of the world — the Belief " that worketh + if thon canst 
 by Love," this is chief among the beautiful things thlngTare po^l 
 
 f /-(J J- sible to him 
 
 01 VjOa.| that belieTeth. 
 
 The humble, simple, unquestioning BeUef of^l^'. ^ ^' 
 the learned, this is alike chief among the beautiful ^diS "'mbX 
 things of God.§ Both save. ix.23;24. 
 
 All other belief is dust and ashes. § SeeS.Lnke, 
 
 It is to make the seed of this Belief, already f^ai; 
 
* With the so-^rjj in the heart* of the child, to grow till it 
 
 heart man be- ' ° 
 
 lieveth unto become a great tree ; or to sow it in the heart and 
 
 nghteousness. o ' 
 
 Komans x. 10. make it grow unto the like end, where it has not 
 been sown already, that GrOD hath given "the 
 Schools of Christendom." 
 
 For Schools of Christendom have two primary 
 
 offices — (a) The office of caring for the Baptized 
 
 Child; (b) The office of caring for the un-Baptized 
 
 t That is to Child in bringing it to Baptism :f all other 
 
 sionary Office offices in a School of Christendom are subsidiary 
 
 of the Church - , , . ^ 
 
 School. and subordinate to these, and are stamped and 
 
 sealed throughout " with the sign of the Cross." 
 
 There are many other Schools in Christendom, 
 but not of Christendom. I leave these to Reports 
 and Blue Books. They are not Schools of " The 
 One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism." They are 
 not Schools of the Orders, The Creeds, The Sacra- 
 ments. They have many names — " free," " denomi- 
 national," " voluntary," " board," " secular," and 
 the like. 
 
 I have in them no interest, no concern, save only 
 to lament that a place has been found for them in 
 Christendom. 
 
 Especially, and above all, do I lament that 
 Schools of the Church of England, under whatever 
 influences or excuses, should have lost their birth- 
 right; have fallen from their high estate before God, 
 and have become the Schools of the Indifferentism 
 of the Civil Power—" Church and State " Schools 
 no more. " State and Church " Schools for our 
 own time ; for time to come. 
 
I have nothing to say — I never have said any- 
 thing — against the action of the Civil Power in 
 making grants to Schools of " every denomination" 
 or of "no denomination;" possessed as England un- 
 happily is with religionists of every name, and non- 
 religionists, side by side with the Church Catholic. 
 Because, as everybody is taxed, everybody has a 
 claim upon produce of taxes, without reference to 
 diflference in Religion. What I have complained 
 of all along — and I defy any man to say with any 
 regard for truth or decency that the complaint is 
 not just — is that the Civil Power should have 
 tempted the Schools of the Church of England to 
 abandon their trust, and that the Schools of the 
 Church of England should have yielded to the 
 temptation. (For some principal details of these 
 proceedings, see next chapter.) 
 
 There are two ways of operating against 
 "Education" of the young; that is against the 
 bringing them up in the One True Eeligion; in 
 that which, after the Fall, Jiominem Deo religat, 
 binds man again to God. 
 
 One way is that of open assault and storm. 
 This was the way of Antiochus Epiphanes in the 
 old time.* In the new time it has been twice, * Maccabees, 
 
 ' I. 1., V. 11-15. 
 
 within a hundred years, and is at the time present, see in margin 
 the way of the ruling power of France, the French 
 Democracy. 
 
 The other way is that of Julian the Apostate — 
 the " School Board " way {see p. 12). It is the way 
 of sap and mine ; the way of making all ready for 
 
assault and, storm. This is the way, in the new- 
 time, of Germany and Englaiid. 
 
 T put Germany first, because, though England, 
 next after Socinus, 1525-1562, led the way in point 
 of time, by Herbert, 1581-1648, by Hobbes, 1588- 
 1679. to the Deism and the Infidelity of modern 
 Europe, it was not till Century XIX., 1832-1868, 
 that the sap-and-mine process has been first 
 "unostentatiously," then triumphantly, foi-mally 
 and finally, adopted and established in England. 
 Meantime, the poison was filtered from England 
 through France into Germany, and has been 
 returned to England with large and growing 
 interest by both countries. 
 
 The sap-and-mine process is the plausible 
 ad populum substitution of human intelligence 
 and choice in the place of Diyine Reyelation as 
 the guide and rule of life. " The pride of 
 life " in place of obedience to God. The type 
 of it is to be found for all time in Genesis iii. 1-7. 
 
 In England it finds its expression in the phrase 
 now become " famous " — " Practical Politics." 
 
 " Practical Politics," as applied to things of 
 Divine Ordinance, mean that it is lawful for a 
 Christian man to order the Government of a 
 Christian Country, not by, or according to, the 
 Law Divine, but by, or according to, the will of 
 the majority for the time being; and as part of 
 that will, to deal as it pleases with the Church, and 
 to apply as it pleases, the endowments of the 
 Church to secular uses; to pay rates and taxes 
 
with them. That it is citizenship only and not 
 Reh'gion with which the government of a Christian 
 country is concerned. 
 
 The fruit of Practical Politics, so applied, is, 
 therefore, always one and the same. 
 
 First, Doubt: then Disobedience: then In- 
 differentism : then Infidelity. 
 
 I much prefer the assault-and-storm process to 
 the sap-and-mine process. It is more awakening 
 and invigorating ; less deceiving and betraying. 
 
 It is at this time bearing its proper fruit in 
 France. England, under the sap-and-mine process, 
 is ill deep slumber still. 
 
 As the School^ so the People. If the School he 
 not the School of The One Catholic and Apostolic 
 Church, the People will not he Catholic and Apos- 
 tolic. If the School he of all religions, the People 
 will not he of the TRUE RELIGION. If the 
 School he, primarily, the School of human intelli- 
 gence, and not of Faith, the People will not " trust 
 in The L ORD with all their heart," hut will " lean 
 unto their own understanding.^^* * Proverbs iii. 
 
 The Legacy hequeaihed. Cent. XIX., to all coming 
 Centuries of the English People hy the " Practical 
 Politics " of the Civil Power is not the School of The 
 " One Catholic and Apostolic Church."'^ 
 
 The misery of the thing is that this should he so 
 with consent^ concurrence, applause of Bishops^ 
 Clergy, People of The Church of England. 
 
 t " Bolitudinem, uhi fecerunt Pacem appellant. 
 
 Tacitus. 
 
Is it said — you should always " make the best " of 
 a bad thing. The rejoinder is — you may not attempt 
 to do this in things of The Law Divine. You may 
 not so much as try to " mxike the best " of a thing 
 inherently bad by departing from The Law Divine, 
 and putting a law of your own making in its place. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 DECAY OF GREEK AND LATIN. 
 
 There are two primary causes of the decay, 
 among the English-speaking Peoples, of Greek 
 and Latin, which are next after, and subsidiary 
 to, " The Catholic Faith," chief elements and 
 truest instruments of " the higher education." 
 
 1. The miserable way in which it has been 
 pretended to be taught in private and public 
 schools. 
 
 This has issued, as might have been expected, 
 in making real knowledge, value, appreciation, use, 
 enjoyment of it, things of rare and continually 
 decreasing experience; and, by natural and reason- 
 able consequence, in the general depreciation 
 of it as a thing very unworthy of the time and 
 money spent upon it. 
 
 2. The " Vanity " of universal knowledge, that 
 is to say, of smatterings and surface of knowledge, 
 coupled with the arriving at even so little as this 
 by using other men's minds instead of your own in 
 
employment of the " memoria technica " and the 
 "cramming" processes. 
 
 The time and circumstances of an over-crowding 
 of professional life and calling in the Home 
 Empire, and, in its measm-e, in its dependencies ; 
 coupled with the shrinking from the real remedy 
 of return to truer education^ and from a normal 
 habit of general and progressive colonization ; 
 these all fall in with the unhealthy appetite for 
 fictitious knowledge, and with the application of 
 false remedies. 
 
 This appears to be the substance of position at 
 close of Century XIX. The prospect is not good 
 from any point of the survey. 
 
 It is said everywhere by men supposed to have 
 been in their childhood and youth subjects of the 
 " higher education," " I want something to do, 
 something to live upon, something to marry upon. 
 These things in England cost a good deal, and 
 returns are uncertain. I find now, when it is too 
 late to mend the position, that my mind has not 
 been prepared, ground, whetted, polished, as it 
 ought to have been to qualify me to get them by 
 myself, for myself. I had rather stay at home if 
 I can. I must see about being " crammed." 
 
 Now the teaching and training the mind in 
 childhood and youth, how best to teach and train 
 itself throughout life, and so to become qualified 
 to teach and train others who have not the same 
 
gifts as it has received for itself, this is to 
 " educate." All other systems of teaching are 
 figment, misuse, disappointment. 
 
 The mental mechanism to be employed to this 
 end is what I have in hand. 
 
 Let us consider for a moment the analogy of 
 material mechanism. 
 
 What is the best machine for edge tool making? 
 
 That which grinds to a sharp edge, smooths 
 and fines the edge. 
 
 The mind is the machine of gift Divine. It has 
 to be ground, smoothed, fined in men's hands. 
 
 Now there is nothing in the world which has 
 so great power to do this as the sound and true 
 knowledge of (rreek and Latin. " The Classics," 
 i.e., the first-class languages. First-class in Ma- 
 jesty, Dignity, Grandeur, Beauty, Taste, Terseness. 
 First-class in power generally fo educate the 
 mind to educate itself; and particularly in the 
 acquirement of other languages. 
 
 Century XIX of our Eedemption — the receiver, 
 employer, improver of manifold wonderful Gifts of 
 God to the mind of man for help and comfort in 
 all uses of the life here — with more or less thought 
 of thankfulness to the Giver, with much vaunting 
 of and complacency with itself — at once the 
 receiver and the abuser — is pre-eminent in the 
 World's history in respect of abuse of the Gift of 
 the Greek and Latin languages, the foundation- 
 stone of all modern language at its best ; the 
 
casket and the shrine of the 'ApxtreKroviK^ (ppovrjcn';, 
 the Science of Theology. 
 
 The matter lies very deep. It lies as deep as 
 the entire revolution of our time, which has 
 degraded everywhere, in England, the Schools and 
 Universities of the Church into places either of 
 no religion at all, or, what is even worse, into 
 places of quasi-religion. For " good," plausible 
 but unreal, pretentious but untrue, is always a 
 more powerful instrument in the hand of the 
 Tempter, than openly-proclaimed and undisguised 
 evil. 
 
 The shallowness of prevailing democracy; the 
 race of the material life ; the yielding up the soul 
 to the mastery of "the pride of life;" the 
 making Intellect our- King ; with the natural 
 and necessary issue of these things, the pre- 
 ference for material above moral and religious 
 considerations; these instruments of power for 
 evil have combined to bring about the revolution. 
 English people, aye, even Church-people, are 
 congratulating themselves upon it. Schools and 
 Universities of the modern type ; the science 'and 
 the art, the scholarship and the criticism of Cen- 
 tury XIX.^ are to do what the Church of Christ 
 has failed to do. They are to "regenerate" 
 England. Men are found to say that the Church 
 of the past and the present ; the Church of " the 
 One Faith," has failed. The Church of the 
 
 2 
 
10 
 
 future, the Churcli of all faiths and no faith, 
 man's Church, not God's, is coming to the rescue, 
 
 Alas, for the awful punishment and retribution 
 that has come upon this Church and People! 
 Alas, for the vengeance upon neglect, misuse, 
 abuse, of most precious Gifts of God ! Alas, for 
 the blindness of Bishops, Priests, People ! They 
 could not, they cannot, see that, as respects the 
 Parish School, the nursery of the Parish Church, 
 what they had to do was, as in the case of other 
 Schools and of the Universities, to bring their 
 own care and use of God's Gift something nearer 
 to the level of the Gift itself; not to aid in its 
 disparagement and ultimate rejection, upon ground 
 of social or political expediency, or miscalled 
 peace ; least of all upon ground of money-grants 
 by the Civil Power, given only upon conditions 
 destroying the Church character of the school, 
 and the Trust and the Commission of the Parish 
 Priest in the school. 
 
 And for all other Schools, and for Universities 
 in England which can, under whatever pretext, 
 be forced under the cognizance of the Legislature 
 and its instruments into indifferentism ; sound and 
 excellent as the Schools and Universities may 
 have been in conception, institution, and foun- 
 dation, — sound and excellent as human things 
 may be; guarded by the founders jealously, with 
 all safeguards judged to be necessary and sufficient 
 for preserving for all time their Church character, 
 
11 
 
 devised to the glory of God, the good of His 
 Church, the saving of souls; all these, having 
 come into contact with the worldliness, and the 
 selfishness, and the rapacity of many generations, 
 and having been poisoned at their source, have 
 finally fallen an easy prey to indifferentism in 
 religion — the parent of unbelief — which is in 
 every country the natui-al outcome of the growth 
 and prevalence of the temptation of " the pride of 
 life," and of the democratic principle^ the most 
 powerful springs of all public action in England 
 in Century XIX. 
 
 Alas, I say, once more for ourselves, and for 
 our children, and for our children's children ! 
 The evil is wider, and deeper, and more enduring 
 than words can tell. 
 
 It is curious to note here, that thei'e have been 
 in the last 2000 years three principal instances of 
 the formal repudiation by the Civil Power of the 
 Trust and of the Commission of the Church in the 
 matter of Education. 
 Jewish Chuech. — I. The instance of the reign of 
 
 Antiochus Epiphanes, A.c. 174, 1 Maccabees i. 
 
 11-15.* 
 Church of Christ. — II. The instance of Julian 
 
 the Apostate, a.d. 362. 
 Tillemont, vol. vii., in Article IX. of his Life 
 
 * See in margin of Holy Bible, v. 14. Compare " History 
 of France, 1792 and 1886." 
 
 2 * 
 
12 
 
 of Julian, in the Memoir es Hist. Eccles.^ tells us 
 the whole story. Julian issued an Edict in 362, 
 giving Christian teachers the option of either con- 
 fining themselves exclusively to religious instruction 
 in churches, and catechetical classes,=sermons 
 and Sunday-schools; or, if they chose to teach 
 secular literature in public schools with State 
 support, then they must refrain from any words 
 or actions which would imply the falsity of the 
 pagan systems and deities referred to in such 
 literature. And to make this scheme work better, 
 he set up School Boards in every town, consisting 
 of the Town Council and certain other notables, 
 who were to elect all the masters, subject to con- 
 firmation by the Crown. (For edict, see Baronius.) 
 
 Church of Christ. — III. The instance of the 
 Imperial Government of England in Church 
 and State, a.d. 1832—1886. 
 
 When Mr. Gladstone abandoned the practical 
 
 pursuit of the 'Ap^ireKTOviKrj <f>p6v'r]ai,<; and 
 
 applied himself to the pursuit of the science of 
 " Practical Politics," he became the chief agent 
 in the downfall of the Educational Policy of 
 England. He brought it low, step by step, even 
 to the ground. Finally he set his seal upon the 
 ruin of "Education" by the Act of 1870, and set 
 up instruction upon its throne by the same Act. 
 
 I am able to note unanswerably the year to 
 which the abandonment and pursuit belong. 
 
13 
 
 I had written to him in 1852 in the matter of 
 the "Manchester and Salford Education Scheme," 
 the type of all the so-called "Educational" Policy 
 since adopted : the scheme then before the House 
 of Commons ; and which I was doing all the little 
 in my power to defeat. 
 
 Here is his reply to me, now lying before me as 
 I write. 
 
 " 5, Carlton Gardens, 
 
 " Felruary Uth, 1852. 
 " Mt dear Denison, 
 
 " My own main objection to the Bill, tte one which, I 
 think, would influence me on the second reading, is the sJiam 
 provision for religious instruction in the rate-huilt Schools. 
 
 " I remain, 
 
 " Sincerely yours, 
 
 " W. E. Gladstone. 
 " Ven. Archdeacon Denison." 
 
 The same year he joined a Government com- 
 mitted for many years to " the rate-built Schools ' " 
 Policy, with its '"'' sham provision for religious 
 instruction^ 
 
 If it is said, It is good for Bishops, Priests, and 
 People of the Catholic Church of England to be 
 awakened, roused, stimulated to more genuine 
 exertion in promoting in the Schools and Uni- 
 versities of the Chin'ch of England the larger 
 increase and truer care of Eeligious and useful 
 learning by a sense of danger imminent ; let this 
 so far be granted, for what it is worth. But if into 
 
u 
 
 the cup that wakens, rouses, stimulates to that 
 exertion, the cup held to the lips by one hand, there 
 be poured at the same time by the other hand 
 the deadly poison of Indifferentism touching Re- 
 ligion, the draught is not unto life but unto death. 
 Now, for the last fifty-four years this is the 
 mixed cup which has been held to the lips of the 
 English people by both hands of the Civil Power: 
 for the last thirty-five years by the hand of Mr- 
 Gladstone more than by any other hand. The 
 cup of " Practical Politics " in the matter of 
 Religion: that is the Cup of Subordination of the 
 Religious to the Secular. There is no cup more 
 poisonous to the generation that now is-, more 
 deadly to those which are to come. 
 
 I return to the decay of Greek and Latin, as the 
 primary and principal elements and instruments of 
 the higher education. 
 
 Up to a late period of English life, definite 
 teaching of Religious Truth as delivered by the 
 Church was the avowed basis, and " Greek and 
 Latin" the primary instrument, of our higher 
 " Education." Both are disappearing. 
 
 It will appear in the course of the inquiry, that 
 the causes of the joint disappearance are curiously 
 interwoven and linked together: combining to 
 produce that substitution of English "Instruction" 
 for English "Education," which is a leading, 
 perhaps the leading, when all its issues are taken 
 
15 
 
 into account, and the most unhappy characteristic 
 of our time. 
 
 " Religious liberty," degenerating, as all 
 experience shows inevitably, into "licence," just 
 as " Civil liberty " degenerates inevitably into 
 Democracy, is fast filling the place of the implicit 
 acceptance of Eeligious Truth as sealed and 
 delivered by Authority of the Church. 
 
 The race of life, in a country where the supply 
 of candidates for all callings, professions, and 
 employments, largely exceeds the demand,* has 
 evolved the habit of assigning the early years of 
 life to the acquiring the knowledge wanted for 
 particular employments, so that bread- winning 
 may begin the sooner ; instead of assigning them 
 to studies which in themselves are not, as a rule, 
 productive of income, except as respects the 
 teacher, schoolmaster or assistant, or private 
 tutor, but are best fitted to exercise and sharpen 
 the mental power; and to enable it to engraft 
 upon itself, so exercised and sharpened, as occasion 
 may afterwards arise, the particular knowledge 
 wanted for a particular calling. 
 
 Add to this the truly miserable way in which it 
 has been attempted to teach Greek and Latin, and 
 you have the account, amply sufficient but not 
 satisfactory, of the decay of Greek and Latin. 
 
 * The only exception that I know of is that of Holy Orders 
 in the Church of England. A very adequate cause for the 
 deficiency is to be found in the " policy," Ecclesiastical and 
 Civil, of our time. 
 
16 
 
 That it is a great national misfortune it is 
 impossible to doubt ; whether we look to the 
 injury done to the mental powers, or to the loss 
 of the principal ingredients of scholarship and 
 taste, or to much time and money worse than 
 wasted, A " scholarly " man, even with all our 
 fast multiplying population, is a much rarer 
 individual in England than he was fifty years 
 ago. 
 
 We have a good many Philologists ; not many 
 Scholars. 
 
 First, then, let me say, that in proportion as 
 there is in any country less care for the " one 
 Faith," — that is, for Truth exact, and definite, 
 and always the same, as being matter of Divine 
 Eevelation and not of human discovery, — there 
 will be always less care, becoming less and 
 less continually, for exact and thorough scholar- 
 ship. The original records of Eevealed Truth 
 are Hebrew and Greek. The earliest and best 
 commentaries upon them are Greek and Latin. 
 What is to become of Theology, the 'Apxt-reK- 
 ToviKrj <j)p6v7](n<;* when the knowledge of Greek 
 and Latin is gone, or, at most, confined within a 
 narrow circle, is easy to say, but it is not com- 
 forting to say. 
 
 Secondly, there is the truly miserable way in 
 which Greek and Latin have been taught. 
 
 * See upon this note below, p. 60. 
 
17 
 
 No man has any reason to be surprised, when as 
 matter of fact, some twelve or fifteen years of a 
 boy's life have been spent almost exclusively 
 about Greek and Latin, and at the end he can 
 hardly produce anything in either, except what 
 would properly result in a flogging if justice were 
 done. No one, I say, can be surprised that people 
 in general, and especially parents who have to pay 
 very heavily for no good result in this particular, 
 should make up their minds that boys had better 
 be taught something else. 
 
 Now this conclusion, however reasonable it may 
 appear to be on the surface, where most of us now 
 arrive at our conclusions, is hard upon Greek and 
 Latin. It is not Greek and Latin at all ; it is the 
 truly miserable way of attempting to teach them 
 which is in fault. They would have done great 
 things for the boy, greater far than any other 
 branch of human study, not excepting the exact 
 sciences, if they had been properly handled. As 
 it is, they are made to bear a burden of obloquy, 
 and alleged uselessness and waste of time, for 
 which they are in no respect answerable. 
 
 I will say later what my indictment against the 
 way of attempting to teach Greek and Latin is 
 and how T would have it mended. Here, I propose 
 to go into some examination of the new system 
 of " Instruction," which, possessing neither of the 
 elements of the old system of "Education," neither, 
 that is, definite Religious teaching, as by Authority 
 
18 
 
 for its basis, nor knowledge of Greek and Latin 
 for its instrument, — has, to the great and lasting 
 unhappiness of this people, taken the place of the 
 old system of " Education." It is no more than 
 might have been looked for in a country where 
 respect for authoritative religious teaching has fallen 
 so low as it has in England ; and " private judg- 
 ment " of every man has been, not by Civil only, 
 but by Ecclesiastical authority, encouraged to 
 usurp its place ; where also the vast resources 
 applicable to the best teaching of Greek and Latin 
 literature have been so miserably abused, as to 
 waste altogether, in the great majority of cases, 
 the time and the money expended upon it. It is 
 no more than might have been expected, but it is 
 not the less for that a most unhappy issue : one 
 which, in my judgment, has laid the foundation of 
 a perverted and corrupted system of culture of 
 heart and mind, of decaying scholarship and 
 degenerated taste. 
 
 I shall have to return later to details of the 
 conflict between the system of " Education " and 
 the system of " Instruction." Here I confine 
 myself to some general account of both systems. 
 I am writing to " Church-people." 
 
 Thirdly, there is the " Vanity " of Universal 
 Knowledge; what that is, and how proposed to 
 be arrived at, I have stated above. 
 
 The system of " Education " is that of training 
 
19 
 
 childhood and youth to do their duty in that 
 station of life to which God has called them. 
 
 It lays, first, a sound and substantial basis of 
 Religious principle, and of the moral principles 
 derived and issuing therefrom ; a basis which is, 
 not of man, but of God only. These are ingrained 
 into, and engi'afted upon, the soul, regenerated in 
 Holy Baptism, by authority derived from God ; 
 and to be exercised, first by the parents, then by 
 the school-teacher. This is done, not by appeal 
 to the reasoning power, but to the duty of implicit 
 obedience ; and the means employed are perpetual 
 repetition and inculcation ; as the old maxim has 
 it, inculcanda repetenda. The obedience claimed 
 is obedience to the Book of God ; the H0I3' Scrip- 
 tures of the Old and the New Testament, as first 
 sealed by the Church Catholic under the guidance 
 of the Holy Spirit; as committed to the Church 
 to keep, and to deliver, and to interpret; a Book 
 to which nothing may be added, nor anything 
 diminished therefrom ; and which may not be 
 dealt with upon the same rules which are applic- 
 able to books of man. 
 
 Thus, so far, " Education " provides, by early 
 and steady and faithful anticipation, at least some 
 security against the greatest temptation of man, 
 sure to beset the soul in later years, the temptation 
 of " the pride of life."* 
 
 The foundation being laid, what follows ? To 
 
 * aXa^oviia tov Biov. 1 St. Jolin ii. 16. 
 
20 
 
 enshrine and convey all in the words of the 
 Church's formularies, and, with perpetual reference 
 to these, to exercise and sharpen the mental power, 
 without putting undue and excessive strain upon 
 the mind, or the body, of the young. The parents' 
 and the school-teachers' business being to guide 
 and encourage, but not to supersede the pupil's 
 own intelligence; and, before assisting in any 
 difficulty, to call for steady, honest, and repeated 
 application on the part of the pupil. Wheresoever 
 this rule is transgressed, teaching degenerates into 
 " cramming." 
 
 The mind of the child and the youth thus dealt 
 with, comes to apprehend what is its own proper 
 work ; to begin with the assumption, and to abide 
 and rest on it, that the highest use of reason is to 
 submit reason to Revelation, as delivered in it and 
 interpreted by the Church. Feeling its ground 
 sure under its feet, it applies itself to gather for 
 itself greater weight and more incisive power, to 
 be applied specially to the particular requirements 
 of its calling; and so founded, prepared, and 
 encouraged, proceeds to educate itself throughout 
 this life for heaven. 
 
 This is some bi'ief account of what is meant by 
 " Education " in the Church of Christ. Let me 
 repeat, that the education of early home, and 
 school, and University life is the training mind 
 and body to educate themselves in after life. The 
 setting and the whetting and the polishing of the 
 
21 
 
 machine, so that it may cut shai-ply, truly, finely. 
 " Instruction," duly given, is, of course, a part of 
 " Education," but can never be substituted for it 
 without the deepest injury, private and public. 
 
 The system of " Instruction " is not only a 
 different, but an opposite thing. It is a thing of a 
 lower and, almost exclusively, an earthly type.. 
 It is opposed in respect of its basis, its manner, 
 and its end. It does not lay its basis on authority, 
 parental or other, as derived from Holy Scripture.* 
 It does not therefore, by natural consequence, 
 demand obedience of heart and mind to Divine 
 authority, as committed and entrusted to man. It 
 knows of no hearty obedience, except such as the 
 child or youth may give of himself. For every 
 system must have some basis ; and Divine authority 
 being, by the nature of the case, discarded from 
 the system of " Instruction," which is, to say the 
 least, indifi"erent in the matter of Orders, Creeds, 
 and Sacraments, there remains only the authority 
 of the individual will to fill the vacant throne. 
 Now the authority of the individual will cannot 
 consist together with, but excludes, humble, re- 
 verent, implicit, and unquestioning reverence for 
 
 * My dear brother William used to say that, as the duty 
 and the blessing of obedience of children to parents rests, in 
 the highest sense of both, on the authority of the Bible ; and 
 as the authority of the Bible had come to be so commonly 
 called in question amongst us, it was nothing surprising that 
 the obedience should be so fast disappearing as a matter of 
 every-day experience. 
 
22 
 
 the Book of God, as committed to, delivered to, and 
 interpreted by the Church. To such extent does 
 the difference and the opposition between the two 
 systems run. When it is traced to its source, it is 
 found that the opposition lies at the root. A child 
 and youth is "educated" for the heavenly life, 
 through the earthly life : a child and youth is 
 " instructed " for the earthly life only. Religion 
 is the essence of " Education :" it is the accident of 
 " Instruction." Religion is the beginning, the 
 , middle, and the end of " Education." It is the 
 chance, and not very welcome, companion of 
 "Instruction." "Education" bases itself upon 
 the Creeds and the Catechism of the Church; 
 " Instruction " not only neglects, but puts aside 
 Creeds and Catechism. 
 
 In sum, " Instruction " deals with the child and 
 the youth as bo^nd by no authority but his own, 
 and as not meant for obedience, except in so far as 
 comes either of fear, or of sense of interest. And 
 it does not concern itself with Holy Scripture any 
 more than with the Church of Christ, except as 
 one among many subjects for " free inquiry." 
 
 The democratic principle has received a new 
 and paramount development here in England in 
 Century XIX., in the persons of young children. 
 A development happily expressed by somebody 
 as follows : " There have been priest-ridden ages, 
 and king-ridden ages ; ours is a child-ridden age." 
 
 Loving and tender, thoughtful and considerate 
 
23 
 
 care for children, is a beautiful and GrOD-like thing. 
 Deference, subordination, submission to children, 
 is, under all its aspects, a hideous thing. 
 
 Nevertheless, it is dominant now in England, 
 thanks to the domestic "policy" of the last forty 
 years, which has formally subjected all consi- 
 derations of religious truth and religious obedience 
 to considerations of "social requirement," "eco- 
 nomical adjustment," and "political necessity;" 
 has devolved the responsibility of parents upon 
 the schoolmaster or mistrei3s, by whom it is feebly, 
 if at all, discharged ; has taken for its watchword 
 " free inquiry " alike into all things ; and has set 
 up for its idol indiflferentism in religion. 
 
 There is a subordinate difference between the 
 two systems^ in respect of the manner and the 
 matter of teaching. I shall have occasion to 
 speak of it presently. But as it belongs principally 
 to higher-class education, it may be passed by here. 
 
 The system of " Education " is that upon which, 
 I thank God always, I was brought up. I shudder 
 to think of what might probably have become of 
 me, if I had been brought up under the system 
 of " Instruction," as the vast majority of English 
 children are now. I was brought up in the habit 
 of implicit reverence for the integrity of the 
 Holy Scripture, in humble, and dutiful, and 
 imquestioning acceptance of Creeds and Catechism. 
 I say " integrity of Holy Scripture," first, because 
 
24 
 
 we are forbidden, upon pain of eternal condem- 
 nation, to " add to, or to diminish from," it. 
 Second, because of the common blasphemy of 
 presumption, the above forbiddance notwith- 
 standing, which affirms the right to pick and 
 choose at every man's pleasure, one part of Holy 
 Scripture, and to reject another part as not being 
 of one and the same binding authority and obli- 
 gation. 
 
 In like manner I say "unquestioning acceptance 
 of Creed and Catechism ; " of the Articles of 
 Eeligion and of the entire Book of Common Prayer, 
 and administration of the Sacraments. Because 
 without this I do not see how to claim to be a 
 faithful Member of the Church of England, which 
 to Bishops, Priests, Crown, and People of England 
 is the Church Catholic. 
 
 If a man find fault or be not satisfied with the 
 Church of England, let that man first set himself 
 more and more to live up to its order, teaching, 
 discipline, and his fault-finding or want of satis- 
 faction will flee away. 
 
 I was taught to hold — what I have held always 
 with tenacity of grasp, closer as life draws to its 
 close — that implicit belief in the Ever-blessed 
 Trinity, in the Incarnation, in the Atonement, in 
 the holy Sacraments, and the Priesthood, as the 
 meanswhereby the Atonement is applied throughout 
 the life here to the individual soul ; I was taught to 
 hold, and have held always, that implicit belief in 
 
25 
 
 all these is " necessary to salvation," where within 
 man's reach, i.e. where it " may be had " ; I 
 was taught to live, as I trust to die, clinging with 
 heart and soul to "One Lord, one Faith, one 
 Baptism." 
 
 And yet, I shall be replied upon here, — Your 
 comparative estimate of the two systems, and of 
 their issues, can hardly be a sound and correct 
 estimate. Look at the position which religion 
 occupies in the mind and in the life now, and 
 contrast it with that which it occupied some forty 
 years since, before the new system of "Listruction " 
 was born. Look at the little speaking about 
 things religious then ; at the comparatively rare 
 knowledge of such things; at the scanty obser- 
 vances in church and out of church ; and look at 
 all these things now. Look, again, at the self- 
 denying life of young men and women, of which 
 our time shows so many bright examples. In a 
 word, look at the general position before the 
 revival, and at the position since, under the old 
 system of "Education," and under the new system 
 of " Instruction." 
 
 The reply is plausible, and deludes people who, 
 as is most common in our day, judge and decide 
 upon great questions without pausing to think 
 a little. It is plausible, but it is in fact com- 
 pounded only of two fallacieSj the fallacy of time, 
 and the fallacy of cause. 
 
 3 
 
26 
 
 For the first of these, the men who, under God, 
 originated and shaped, and have hitherto conducted 
 the revival, were brought up under the old system, 
 not under the new. This is true, without an 
 exception. Nor, again, has there been time yet 
 to place beyond dispute, however cogent the 
 " a priori " argument, the true character ; to 
 develop the inherent and irredeemable vice, and 
 the practical vital mischief of the new system ; 
 pervading, as it does. Universities, Public Schools, 
 Private Schools, Schools still ealled Schools of 
 " the National Society for the Education of the 
 Poor in the principles of the Established Church," 
 but heing really State Schools for the "Instruction" 
 of children in no principles at all. The argument 
 is necessarily as yet, for the most part, an "a 
 priori''^ argument. The '"'' a posteriori" argument 
 is on its way, is coming inevitably, is not yet fully 
 come. It has not yet had time. 
 
 Then for the " fallacy of cause." My rejoinder 
 is this. The revival is not of the new system. 
 It is, on the contrary, the recoil and the reaction 
 from it throughout. Men were raised up by God 
 to see in certain facts of the position in Church 
 and State, certain assumptions on the part of the 
 Civil Power; certain developments and conse- 
 quences not less sure than evil. They were called 
 to revive Religion in the face of a Civil Power 
 proclaiming Indifierentism : of an Episcopate and 
 Priesthood and People offering nothing to be 
 
27 
 
 called resistance, in the face of the new system of 
 bringing up childhood and youth : a system born 
 of Indifferentism, as against Eeligion. They 
 obeyed the call, and have prospered in the good 
 work unto which they have been sent. 
 
 In sum, any one, really considering the matter, 
 will see that it is absurd to claim for a system, 
 which is in its essence irreligious, to claim for this, 
 as its genuine fruit, revival of Religion. The con- 
 tradiction is manifest in terms and in things. It 
 may be plausible enough in a time which is 
 always in such a hurry, that it never stops to go 
 half-au-inch beneath the surface; and which, in 
 spite of all its intellectual pretension, is a very 
 shallow time: but the most absurd things are 
 often the most plausible. 
 
 When therefore, I say, as I have said many 
 times, that I bless God for the days which I have 
 been spared to see, even with all their incipient 
 and multiplying evil; — for days in which, as was 
 not the case in the time of my childhood and 
 youth, and earlier manhood, they that fear The 
 LoED speak often one to another,* — days in which 
 the knowledge of Religious books and things has 
 been wonderfully widened and deepened amongst 
 us, — days in which Religious observances, and 
 specially' the Celebration of the Blessed Sacrament, 
 
 * Malachi iii. 16, 
 
28 
 
 have become a part of the daily life, — and last, 
 not least, days in which we see all round us the 
 self-denying life of so many among the young 
 men and women. In one word, days of a great 
 revival of the true Eeligion of Christ ; of His 
 Faith, and of His Worship, among all orders and 
 conditions of men ; — when I say that I bless God 
 for His mercy in permitting me to see all this, I 
 am not attributing it, as to its native source and 
 cause, — how is it possible I should do so ? — to the 
 system of Indifferentism in Eeligion, now publicly 
 and formally endorsed by Power Civil and Ecclesi- 
 astical, and made an intregal part of the adminis- 
 tration in " Church and State ;" but to its real 
 motive cause, as in a case in which the good Provi- 
 dence of God has brought, and is bringing good 
 out of evil 5 to the recoil and reaction from that 
 system, from the "public policy" of Indifferentism 
 in Eeligion, as evidenced indisputably by many 
 things, and especially by the system of " In- 
 struction" in place of "Education/' however 
 isuch Indifferentism be advocated and enforced by 
 the voice and by the example of those set in 
 high places. The movement comes, as true move- 
 ments always do, from below. It is not the 
 Bishops at all : it is not everywhere the Priests and 
 Deacons. It is not the Synod: it is not the 
 Parliament : it is not the Crown, that has helped 
 to the Eevival. Nay, rather, all these have 
 opposed it, in principle and in detail. It is 
 
29 
 
 principally the faithful Laity of all orders and 
 conditions, the "working man" as the "gentleman," 
 who are, under God, the Eevivers of the true 
 Primitive and Catholic Faith and Worship of the 
 Church of England. 
 
 I have always thought the people of the Church 
 of England in one chief particular the worst used 
 of all people. Every parish is liable to diame- 
 trically opposed teaching by successive Incumbents : 
 to have two or more religions delivered to them 
 instead of one and the same always. It is very 
 hard measure for a Church to deal to her children: 
 and, unless the CathoKc Faith were a thing of 
 Divine Gift, would go a very long way to destroy 
 it among us here in England. As it is a Divine 
 Gift, it survives all this ill-usage. 
 
 Education, then, having degenerated into In- 
 struction, Instruction, in its turn, has been depraved 
 into " Cramming," the necessary complement of 
 the modern test of professional competency, com- 
 petitive examination. 
 
 Competitive examination is a monstrous abortion, 
 filled with poison, intellectual and physical : 
 cramming is its proper child. I do not believe 
 that the mind and body of any people can stand, 
 for long, competitive examination, and its necessary 
 complement, cramming: and the English, who, 
 with all their faults, have a good deal of rough 
 common sense, are already beginning to find this 
 out. I forget who it was who said of the English 
 
30 
 
 that, taking them man by man, they were almost 
 idiots, but that, somehow or other, in the mass 
 and in the end, they commonly came right. The 
 experience of my life does not incline me to assent 
 to this statement in either part of it, certainly not 
 to the latter portion of it. The corporate mind 
 of England has, in many principal things, gone 
 deplorably wrong. Nevertheless, it must be 
 allowed that, sooner or later, after making the 
 worst mistakes, and suffering largely in conse- 
 quence, the rough common sense returns to the 
 surface. The rejection of the " Home Eule " folly 
 is a remarkable instance of this. 
 
 The Education, then, properly so called, of 
 early life at home and at school and at college, is 
 the training mind and body to educate themselves 
 in after life : the setting and the whetting of the 
 machine, so that it may cut sharply, truly, finely. 
 In the case of a people believing in Cheist, and 
 especially of a people having, as a nation, a branch 
 of the Church Catholic for their National Church, 
 all such Education is to be based upon certain 
 exact rules and principles ; rules and principles of 
 Divine Authority, and as such always the same. 
 The carrying out of these principles in the several 
 stations to which God calls men, is the beginning 
 and the middle and the end of the Christian life, 
 Every man, no doubt, has to be instructed specially 
 for his particular calling; but this instruction is 
 not Education. It is only one, a necessary but 
 
31 
 
 subordinate and subsidiary, part of it. It can 
 therefore never be substituted for it, as is now, 
 most unhappily, the rule prescribed by public 
 authority, and even not demurred to on the part 
 of the Church, without the deepest and most 
 lasting injury. 
 
 Then, of all ways of Instruction, the modem 
 way, devised to meet the demands of the race of 
 life, is the worst; and the most filled with harm to 
 mind and body. The modern way of " cramming," 
 forced upon us, as a necessity, by the rule of 
 " competitive examination," Now a crammed boy 
 is a pitiable thing. He is like a receiver, sometimes 
 full to bursting, at other times quite empty. But 
 at no time does he pump into himself at all ; some- 
 body else pumps into him. In other words, he 
 does not use his own mind at all, except in taking 
 in formulcB and facts conveyed to it by another 
 mind. As soon as the pumping stops the receiver 
 empties itself rapidly. First there is a vacuum, 
 then a sense of utter feebleness, then a collapse.* *ihm6not 
 
 -r , , ,-, , ... -, noUced, Tiere 
 
 I may not be worth much as it is, and many what is now 
 people call me an educated idiot ; but of this I am fo^^^ra^n 
 sure, that if I had been " crammed " I should he%J"!ilpontL 
 beneath all men's contempt. of competuwe 
 
 With regard to " competitive examination," the ^'"^^^^""rom" 
 silliness of supposing that, at its best, it can ever '""^' 
 be a reliable test of, and a sufficient guide to, a 
 wise and judicious selection of public servants, or 
 of any other servants, is a wonderful thing. You 
 
32 
 
 might as reasonably expect to arrive at a true 
 knowledge of a man by the help of " testimonials." 
 What it amounts to, and issues in, is that a boy or 
 girl being crammed by somebody whose trade it 
 is to collect and provide answers to questions, 
 knows and can produce the answers. Now such 
 knowledge is, at the most, a part only, and a sub- 
 ordinate part, of the competency required. And yet 
 it is all that the examination can touch : on the 
 other hand, " success " or " failure " is regulated by 
 the issue. It is really nothing but a popular fallacy, 
 and an imposition upon the public ; it is true that 
 it serves the public quite right : it is only throwing 
 their own folly back in their own face. Com- 
 petitive examination, with its half-witted officer, 
 " cramming," is the child of democratic shallow- 
 ness. The mass of men never go deep into things; 
 and if we are to be governed, as we are now, by 
 the masses, we must be content to be a shallow 
 people. Now Democracy likes the way to public 
 employments to be opened to it ; and Democracy 
 is quite right here. But when the way of getting 
 public employments is measured by the advantage 
 accruing to the public service thereby, it may very 
 likely be true, and, as matter of fact, commonly is 
 true, that thej/vaj which the Democracy favours 
 is the wrong way, and leads only to a general 
 incompetency and incapacity as soon as real 
 difficulties arise to test it. 
 
 For my part, I believe that the old way of 
 
33 
 
 nomination to public offices, watched and guarded 
 by an ever-vigilant public opinion, was a very 
 mucb better thing in all respects than competitive 
 examination, — even if this could be had, which it 
 cannot, apart from " cramming." 
 
 Take a well " educated " boy, and he will soon 
 master the particular knowledge required. Take 
 a well " crammed " boy, and as soon as his mind, 
 looking as if it were full, but really empty^ is 
 turned down upon anything not within the circle 
 of his formulae and facts and borrowed premisses 
 and conclusions, it is impossible to conceive a 
 creature more inane, jejune, blundering, ignorant, 
 and helpless. 
 
 My dear friend, Francis Knyvett Leighton, late 
 Warden of All Souls' College, gave me, some time 
 ago, a powerful illustration of the difference 
 between Education and Instruction. He said : — 
 
 " Certain of our fellowships having been applied, 
 under the Oxford ' Eeform ' Bill, to the promotion 
 of the study of History and Law, we have been 
 scrupulously careful in respecting such application, 
 and in our capacity of examiners, of duly and 
 faithfully discharging our trust. Now it has 
 happened, very remarkably; that in no single 
 instance has it been the candidate who has got 
 his honours in History or Law, that has passed 
 the best examination for the fellowship. It has, 
 without exception, been the candidate who has 
 got his honours in the Classical School, and has 
 
34 
 
 afterwards, with a view to a fellowsHp in History 
 or Law, turned Ms mental power, so trained, 
 whetted, sharpened, and working upon its own 
 sound basis, down upon the particular subject- 
 matter with which he was preparing himself to 
 deal." 
 
 I have also an illustration, worth recording, of 
 the " cramming " fallacy. 
 
 In the earlier years of this fallacy, a well-known 
 Civil Service Examiner told me the story following. 
 He began by saying, "Archdeacon, I know you 
 hate us and our doings." 
 
 " Well," I said, " I don't like you certainly, or 
 your work. Civil Service Examiners, with their 
 ' competitive' trash, — School Inspectors, with their 
 negation or disparagement of the One Faith, — and 
 Commissioners generally with their blue-books, 
 are people officially very odious in my view of 
 men and things." 
 
 " Well, then," he said, " I will tell you some- 
 thing that will please you. Last week we had an 
 
 examination for a Clerkship in the Office. 
 
 Three candidates." 
 
 " Oh," I said, " a ' dummy ' case. Two Whig 
 dummies, and one other, who is to have the 
 Clerkship." I should observe here, for the infor- 
 mation of a simple and confiding and much-suffering 
 people, that a ' Whig dummy ' is a poor creature 
 who has failed once or twice, but is allowed to 
 'try' again; that is, to 'fail' again. It was an 
 
35 
 
 invention of the Whigs, to give the examination 
 the appearance of equitable and tender con- 
 sideration, while securing the success of the third 
 man ; and is truly Whiggj. 
 
 " Well," he said, " I know nothing about 
 dummies; but here is the story." 
 
 "Prodigious!" I "mentally ejaculated," as 
 the pure English of novels of our time has it, 
 "Here's a Civil Service Examiner who knows 
 nothing about dummies." But; wanting to hear 
 his story, I restrained my natural feeling, and he 
 went on. 
 
 " The examination ended, and election took 
 place yesterday. I should tell you at this point 
 that candidates are examined, 1. in the ordinary 
 routine knowledge of office work; 2. in special 
 and higher knowledge. Our man knew absolutely 
 nothing of No. 1 ; but in No. 2 he showed so 
 remarkable and unusual proficiency, that we gave 
 him the preference over the other candidates, who 
 did extremely well in No. 1, but more or less 
 feebly in No. 2. We made a special case, as in a 
 special instance of original and acquired power. 
 This morning the successful candidate went to the 
 Office, and was received by the Secretary." 
 
 Having duly congratulated him upon his 
 appointment, the Secretary said : 
 
 " Mr. , there are circumstances attending 
 
 your appointment of a marked and unusual cha- 
 racter ; and, if you have no objection, T should be 
 
36 
 
 glad to ask you a question or two for my better 
 information. 
 
 " You are a very young man, and are reported 
 to me as having succeeded in this competition 
 entirely upon one ground, that of your answers to 
 that higher class of questions which Examiners 
 always put, but do not often get answers to. 
 Upon this, though you are also reported to me as 
 knowing nothing of the routine which it wUl be 
 necessary for you to know as soon as possible, 
 you have had the preference given you. Will 
 you let me ask you how long ago it is since your 
 attention was first turned to the subject, and what 
 have been your means of acquiring the knowledge 
 you possess. It may be of advantage to the 
 public service that I should know this." 
 
 The Clerk looked at the Secretary and said, 
 " I think, my Lord, you said that the appointment 
 was mine. I trust to show that I can well dis- 
 charge its duties. But, I think, your Lordship 
 said that I am appointed." 
 
 "0 yes," the Secretary said, "you're all safe; 
 now, then, tell me, as fast as you can, — I have 
 only a few minutes." 
 
 "Well," said the Clerk ; "your Lordship shall 
 know all about it. I think your Lordship said 
 that I had " 
 
 " Oh," said the Secretary, " don't waste my 
 time, you're not going to lose anything." 
 
 " Well, then, my Lord, you ask me how long 
 
37 
 
 ago it is tliat I first thought of standing for this 
 XDlerkship. My Lord, it is just three weeks to-day 
 since I first thought of it, I inquired who was 
 
 the best crammer for the Office in London, 
 
 and I went to him. He said, after a little talk, 
 ' It's absurd ; waste of time, and robbing you of 
 your money. You have got about a fortnight, 
 more or less ; you know absolutely nothing, and 
 have not the ghost of a chance.' ' Very well, Sir,' 
 I said, 'good morning, I'll go somewhere else.' 
 I had got as far as the door, when he said, ' Stay a 
 minute ; you have made up your mind ?' ' To be 
 sure, I have,' I said, ' or I should not have come 
 to you.' 'Well, then,' he said, 'I may as well 
 have the handling of you.' Perhaps, my Lord, he 
 saw I was not quite a fool. ' Now,' he went on, 
 ' I have been at this work several years, and I 
 know all about it. Mind, there are- questions in 
 the examination ordinary and extraordinary. 
 We haven't a minute to give to the first : for the 
 second, / know pretty well what will be asked. 
 Now, if you will give yourself up to me, body 
 and soul, for this fortnight, to do what I teU you, 
 and nothing else; to eat, drink, sleep, wake, 
 work, just as I bid you, and nothing else, — I see 
 you are sharp enough, and I may be able to give 
 you the ghost of a chance.' ' I agree,' I said. 
 The result is, my Lord, that I am here to-day the 
 successful candidate; and, as for my knowledge of 
 the matters in which I have been examined and 
 
38 
 
 succeeded, / have not got any. I have been well 
 crammed, and have been able to take it in, and 
 that's the whole account of the matter." 
 
 What sort of public servant the man made, I 
 never heard. But any start in life, more calculated 
 to do a man harm, it is difficult to conceive. It 
 must be a very strong mind indeed, which could 
 bear up against the impetus given to conceit and 
 presumption, and generally to a plausible and 
 superficial life. No doubt he was a sharp, clever 
 man: but, I suppose, few would say that his 
 sharpness and cleverness would not have been 
 better things without his "cramming;" and that 
 for the true purposes of life, he would have done 
 much better to have waited, and taken time to 
 educate himself. 
 
 If competitive examination be a sound thing, 
 then ecclesiastically it should be applied to Bishop - 
 making; judicially, to Judge-making ; legislatively, 
 to M.P. making; administratively, to Prime Minister 
 and Cabinet-making. But it is not a sound thing; 
 and the argument for it, like many other argu- 
 ments much relied upon for the management and 
 conduct of public affairs, proves too much. 
 
 I repeat, then, that the silliness of supposing 
 that competitive examination can, at its best, be 
 any sufficient and reliable test of competency is a 
 wonderful silliness. What it amounts to, and 
 issues in is, that a boy or girl being able to pro- 
 duce answers to certain questions, in whatever 
 
39 
 
 way this ability has been acquired, is competent 
 to fill this or that public post. Now such ability 
 is only a part, and a very subordinate part, of any 
 such competency. There are things which no 
 competitive examination can touch; but which 
 enter largely into all thoughtful consideration of 
 what is the turn of a boy's mind, and his aptitude, 
 ascertained to those who know him well, for a 
 particular occupation. I hold, therefore, that 
 competitive examination is a gigantic popular 
 fallacy, and believe that it will prove as gigantic 
 a failure. 
 
 In like manner, as the loss of care and love for 
 the " One Faith," as delivered by authority of the 
 Church, has been the loss of the basis of Christian 
 Education, and the cause of its delay and well- 
 nigh ruin : so, what I have called the truly 
 miserable way of teaching Greek and Latin, has 
 been the decay, and bids fair to be the loss, of the 
 chief instrument of the higher Education. 
 
 It is, I know, a heavy indictment, and demands 
 substantial proof. 1 do not think it is far to seek. 
 
 Bad teaching of a language, and consequent 
 ignorance of its literature, with loss of all the 
 time given to the supposed learning of it, comes 
 either of incompetency of the teacher, the system 
 of teaching being in itself good ; or of such in- 
 competency, coupled with a system in itself bad. 
 
 I make my indictment on both counts. To 
 
40 
 
 teach Greek and Latin well, you want men who 
 know it well. Now, if the teacher has been badly 
 taught himself, how is he — as the rule— to know 
 well what he teaches others? Here and there, 
 the nativa vis comes in and makes an exception. 
 But the instances are very few, and I am writing 
 about a national defect and want. 
 
 You want then, everywhere, in private schools, 
 public schools, Universities, men imbued thoroughly 
 with the letter and the spirit of Greek and Latin ; 
 men who have the language, as it is said, at their 
 fingers' ends. You want these men everywhere ; 
 but you have not got them ; you have not had 
 them, you are not going to have them, under the 
 present system of teaching. After making due 
 allowance for exception, the general fact past, 
 present, prospective, remains. 
 
 And it is aggravated by this consideration, that 
 the funds and other appliances for the due remu- 
 neration of first-class teaching-power are immense 
 here in England ; but are wasted upon the remu- 
 neration of second or third-rate teaching-power. 
 
 When I was Editor of the " Church and State 
 Eeview," a paper which, though written by many 
 first-rate hands, was so sound and able, and so 
 little exciting and scurrilous that it did not live 
 long, I had some articles written by such hands 
 upon this matter, discussing the way of teaching 
 Greek and Latin well, and going into detailed 
 calculations founded upon unexceptionable data, 
 
41 
 
 and showing that the remuneration of teachers was 
 so high, that it was only reasonable to expect to 
 find first-rate teaching-power; and that you did 
 not find it. The articles are to be found in 
 Appendix to Blue Book of Public School Com- 
 missioners. 
 
 My dear kind friend, the late Lord Lyttelton, 
 whom I could never agree with, but always loved 
 muchj said to me : " Well, you see we have printed 
 your articles." 
 
 " Yes," I saidj " I see that : but you have not 
 done anything to enforce them by your authority." 
 
 " Well," he replied, " there are difficulties." 
 
 " No doubt there are," was my rejoinder ; " but 
 what is the use of a Commission, which leaves a 
 chief blot just where it found it because there are 
 difficulties ?" 
 
 When I had the articles written^ I had an eye 
 principally to Eton. Eton ought upon all accounts 
 to be first in scholarship, as she is in a good many 
 things. But certainly, she has no pre-eminence 
 here. Eather, especially of late years, the reverse. 
 
 She teaches Greek and Latin ; how shall I say 
 that she teaches it ? Well, I will say infamously, 
 like other schools. But then, there being a larger 
 proportion of rich idle boys at Eton than any- 
 where else, and less stimulus in consequence to 
 mental exertion, Eton comes off badly in the race. 
 
 I prove my indictment positively, negatively, — 
 
 4 
 
42 
 
 the two intermixed, for it is not easy to separate 
 them — ^what is done, what is not done ? 
 
 Now take an Eton boy's day, so far as his 
 "learning" is concerned. I am speaking of nearly 
 sixty years ago. But the system of that time has 
 left its mark upon this generation; and I don't 
 believe, from all I can make out, that the matter 
 is much mended now. 
 
 Before " school " you went to your tutors to be 
 " construed/' that is, to have done for you what 
 you ought to have done for yourself as well as 
 you could, according to your knowledge and your 
 powers. But you were not asked to exercise your 
 powers at all. Here, let me remark by the way, 
 was the first development of that monster vice 
 "cramming." You went into school: most days 
 you came out just as you went in, not having been 
 "called up," called, that is, to produce anything 
 out of your "construing." How could it be 
 otherwise in a class of some forty boys ? 
 
 But, supposing real and frequent "construing." 
 Now, such " construing " is, no doubt, an integral 
 part of language-teaching, but is very far from 
 being the most essential part. Translation is the 
 most essential part. I don't remember translation 
 at Eton. 
 
 But, again, supposing you had frequent trans- 
 lation into English, and out of English, translation 
 upon paper — exercises of written translation, to be 
 
43 
 
 carefully examined, and corrected one by one, 
 very good, so far well. But we have not come 
 yet to the chief instrument of teaching a language 
 well; I mean oral translation — vivd voce, translation 
 from English into Greek and Latin. 
 
 All this was lacking at Eton ; and it is therefore 
 nothing surprising that my recollections tell me of 
 very little learnt in school, and of not much learnt 
 out of school, at Eton, after the first half-year, 
 when I was there in the hands of my dear old 
 tutor, Mr. Drury.* 
 
 Now suppose, once a day at least, a " school " 
 of the kind following. 
 
 The boys, not more than twenty-five in a class, 
 — the number is quite as many as a teacher ought 
 to have in hand at once, — to come into school. To 
 bring with them — though writing down anything 
 would not be the business of that school-hour — a 
 ruled note-book and pencU for entering anything 
 they might wish to make a note of. 
 
 The teacher to be ready with a passage of 
 sufficient length from one of our best Prose 
 English writers. The boys to know nothing 
 beforehand of the passage chosen. 
 
 * I left Eton, Christmas, 1819, after having been there two 
 years and a half; I was just fourteen, and had got that time 
 into Upper Division, Fifth Form. I went home to be in 
 Mr. Drnry'a hands, with younger brothers, till I went to 
 Christ Church, January, 1824. 
 
 4 * 
 
44 
 
 Then as to the placing the passages before the 
 boys. 
 
 This might be done in one of three ways : — 
 
 1. By the class having a small library of cheap 
 editions of — to begin with — one or two of our best 
 prose writers. Thirty copies, say, of each, to be 
 left in the class-room ; a small sum charged to 
 each boy in the class would soon raise a sufficient 
 fund to start with, and additions of like works 
 might be made as time went on. 
 
 2. The passage might be written legibly on a 
 black-board just before the boys were admitted, to 
 be placed well in sight of tbe whole class. 
 
 3. By the use of some one of the many inventions 
 of our time for cheap and rapid printing, a suffi- 
 cient number of copies of the passage might be 
 struck off just before school each day. 
 
 I think plan 1 greatly to be preferred. 
 
 Then the teacher to tell the head boy of the 
 class to read a sentence from the passage aloud ; 
 and, having done this, to proceed to read it into 
 Latin, or into Greek if it was a Greek day. 
 
 In the oral rendering of the passage five things 
 would have to be cared for : — 
 
 1. The knowledge of the equivalent word, or 
 form of expression. 
 
 2. The grammar. 
 
 3. The idiom. 
 
 4. The taste and elegance of expression. 
 
45 
 
 5. The form and turn of sentence. 
 
 A boy at fault in 1 or 2 to be stopped at once, 
 and tbe next boy, put on till tbe defect was sup- 
 plied, or the fault rectified. The boy succeeding 
 in this to go up to, or towards, head of class. 
 
 Interposition of, and inquiry by, the teacher in 
 respect of 3, 4, 5, to be regulated by his own 
 judgment; and success to be made a ground of 
 promotion in the class. 
 
 In this way, instead of the possible unamended 
 ignorance of a " construing " class, or, at least, of 
 most of the boys in it; and of the depressing 
 dulness of only one boy at a time occupied with 
 " construing " what had been " construed " to him 
 by somebody else, every boy would be searched 
 into more or less, stimulated and interested : most 
 boys would be kept on the alert. A great advan- 
 tage would be gained by grammar being taught 
 in the process of learning language, and not by 
 rote ; that is philosophically and not mechanically. 
 Not philosophy of language by rote, as is attempted 
 to be crammed into a young boy's mind in the 
 modern Grammars, but by experiment, and adapta- 
 tion. When school was over boys would go away, 
 feeling. that they had learnt something; and had 
 some thoughts of the correct use and the force and 
 power of language ; of its taste and elegance, as 
 derived from closer inspection of its best models 
 put into their minds and hearts ; and so be led to 
 
46 
 
 think of their school-hours as times of gain and 
 improvement, instead of shiftless loss of time and 
 deadening of energies. 
 
 I was not taught by way of oral translation ; 
 I believe, if I had been, I should have been a 
 much better scholar than I am. I was taught by 
 constant written translation of both kinds, which 
 is the next best instrument, and in no case to be 
 neglected or superseded, as well as by careful and 
 exact construing. 
 
 So much, then, for construing and translation, 
 oral and written. It hardly requires to be pointed 
 out, that for each and all, but especially for oral 
 translation, you must have as a really efficient 
 teacher a first-rate scholar; a man thoroughly 
 imbued with the letter and the spirit of Greek and 
 Latin. And I say again, that the remuneration of 
 teachers accessible in England, especially in our 
 public schools, ought to ensure and command the 
 services of such men. 
 
 Next to construing and translation, there is the 
 learning Greek and Latin Prose by heart. A thing 
 quite as useful and improving, I think more so, as 
 learning Verse by heart; but in my recollection 
 not part of the system. 
 
 Now, if it be said, all this about oral translation 
 is very good for a more advanced class, but very 
 
47 
 
 difficult of application to younger boys, my reply 
 is, that I think the objection not founded; and 
 that a little thought and care would point out how 
 it might be most profitably adjusted to the case of 
 younger boys. 
 
 It was when I was seventeen that my attention 
 was first called to the power of oral translation. 
 I think I have read since that Montaigne and 
 Milton, two of the best scholars of the world, 
 strongly advocate it, as taught by their own 
 experience of it. It is said of Montaigne that he 
 declared about himself that he knew Latin very 
 well till he went to school at six years old ; and 
 then began rapidly to lose his knowledge of it. 
 
 I was saying to a fi-iend in London what a poor 
 miserable thing my knowledge of French was, as 
 I had picked it up at school, and at home by help 
 of my sisters' governesses in the holidays. He said, 
 " Why don't you try the Hamiltonian system ?" 
 and he directed me to a house in the Strand. I 
 went and said I wished to attend the class. When 
 I got into the room I found about a dozen people, 
 younger and elder, sitting round a table, each with 
 a copy of the " Vicar of Wakefield " in his hands ; 
 a copy was given to me. 
 
 " Eead into French," said the teacher. It was 
 a stern and painful necessity, but the thing had to 
 be done by unassisted effort. As I blundered on, 
 I was corrected by the teacher himself, or through 
 
48 
 
 the other pupils, in points of words equivalent, — 
 grammar, idiom, taste and elegance of expression, 
 form and turn of sentence; and, lastly, what I 
 have said nothing about, in speaking of Greek and 
 Latin, because I know nothing, and don't believe 
 anybody does, in point of pronunciation. But I 
 am a Tory about pronunciation of Latin, as ftbout 
 all other things, and laugh to scorn the modern 
 folly of Latin pronunciation. 
 
 All the French I ever had, and I had in early 
 life a decent quantity for reading and writing, — 
 talking I never much attained to,* — I got in 
 eighteen lessons in the Strand ; and from that 
 time I have never ceased to believe that the 
 primary way of learning a language is oral trans- 
 lation, and that you cannot begin with it too young. 
 
 I pass on to that most remarkable engine for 
 stultifying the powers of thought and imagination 
 and taste, the promiscuous requirement of " Latin 
 theme " and " Latin verse." Of all things absurd, 
 I know of no one more absurd ; of all incompre- 
 hensible delusions, no one more incomprehensible ; 
 of all wastes of time, no greater waste ; of all 
 
 * Nevertheless, I record here what I have always thought 
 a very reniarkable instance of the power of French politeness. 
 I was talking with a French gentleman at a table d'hSte, 
 at Rouen, and apologizing to him for my deficiencies of 
 expression. "Mais non," he said, "Monsieur apparemment 
 a vecu long temps a Paris." " Oh dear," I said to myself, 
 " what a polite people it is." 
 
49 
 
 cruel requirements, no one more cruel; of all 
 conspiracies ag'ainst taste and elegance, no one 
 more successful ; of all contrivances to make 
 Greek and Latin hateful and contemptible, no one 
 so ingenious or so powerful ; of all abortion 
 making, no one more prolific than this same 
 promiscuous Latin theme and verse making. 
 
 Take any fifty schoolboys, and see what is 
 proposed, and what comes of it. 
 
 Every boy is to produce a " theme," a thing 
 upon a thesis, some thesis of life and morals. You 
 ask all the fifty boys indiscriminately to set to 
 work "thinking," and to give you their thoughts 
 in a language which they are supposed to be 
 learning only, and have not mastered at all. 
 
 Now, by far the greater part of any fifty boys 
 havn't got any " thoughts " upon life and morals, 
 beyond the simplest truisms, and can't get any 
 "thoughts." They won't come for the asking. 
 There is then a good deal of cruelty, as well as of 
 absurdity, in asking them for what they cannot 
 get, however they may try to get it. 
 
 But it is said, — after the manner of the Com^ 
 mittee of Council on " Education," — this is to do 
 boys great dishonour. Without going so far as 
 the Committee, who contend that at seven years 
 of age a boy may be considered as able to form 
 his own intellectual and intelligent estimate of 
 religious dogma, we protest against its being taken 
 for granted that schoolboys in general do not 
 
50 
 
 think much and deeply upon life and morals. Let 
 me grant then, for argument's sake, that they all 
 have thoughts waiting only to be evoked into 
 expression. Just look at the absurdity and cruelty 
 of telling a boy to do two things at once, which 
 are not only incompatible, but which fight with 
 one another for the mastery during the whole 
 process; you tell him to "think," and to express 
 his thoughts in a language, at the best, as yet 
 very imperfectly known and understood by the 
 thinker. It is simply silly — a bad kind of silliness. 
 It is worse ; it is very cruel to the boy — stultifying 
 and discouraging. It is to delude "the little 
 victims " into the belief that they are employing 
 themselves, when it is a sheer waste of their time. 
 
 There is always a good deal of risk in forcing 
 the young thinking power. But, if you must have 
 a boy set " thinking," in the name of common 
 sense, ask him to give you his thoughts expressed 
 in a language with which he is most familiar, and 
 which comes more or less naturally to his call, — 
 his own language. Don't be asking him to do 
 two things at once, which cannot be done well at 
 once, if done at all. 
 
 And just look at what comes of all this. 
 
 A " theme," in my time — perhaps it is so stUl — 
 was a thing of fourteen lines, not less ; Latin by 
 courtesy, seldom exceeding fourteen lines, except 
 in the case of an ambitious thinker. Fourteen 
 lines, — how many words to a line ? Five words 
 
51 
 
 will be very handsome. Five fourteens, seventy 
 words, — an Essay on life and morals in seventy 
 words, — seventy words, not of Latin, but of Latin- 
 English, and of more than doubtful equivalence, 
 and correctness in point of grammar ; expressing 
 one, perhaps two, thoughts arrived at either by 
 an excruciating internal process, or by external- 
 suggestion, — commonly the last, 
 
 I suppose the number of " themes," beginning 
 omnes homines, and ending faciunt, to have been 
 very large every week. 
 
 So much for the normal prose Latin exercise — 
 the development of assumed original thinking- 
 power, expressed in a language not the thinker's 
 own, and, at the best, very imperfectly grasped 
 by the thinker. 
 
 insulsum et crudele pcedagogorum genus ! 
 
 Then for promiscuous verse-making — original 
 Latin verse, Odes upon Spring, and the like. 
 Why this is, if possible, more absurd still, and of 
 a wider and more comprehensive cruelty. For, 
 granting that there may possibly be out of fifty 
 boys five who can " think " a little, and it is a 
 large allowance, the chances against finding one 
 imaginative boy among the fifty are infinitely 
 great. 
 
 And yet all the boys, every one of them, is 
 bound here to " imagine " something by the con- 
 ditions of their school-life. And, as in the "theme " 
 
52 
 
 case, to express their little "imaginations" in 
 Latin verse. 
 
 Everybody who knows anything of Eton knows 
 very well what came of this requirement. It lies 
 in two words, " Old Copies." 
 
 Sometimes it issued in bold plagiarism. I 
 remember an instance of a very near and dear 
 relative. 
 
 He waSj in common with all the other boys of 
 his part of the school, told to write some original 
 Latin Alcaic stanzas on " The Eagle." 
 
 His imaginative power was unequal to the call. 
 He produced one stanza. Here it is : — 
 
 " Jovis Volucris vivit in arduo 
 Saxo, polv/m quod smtinet arduum ; 
 
 Dilexit et ^rinceps Deorum 
 Jupiter hune avium ferocem 
 Begem, ministrum fulminis alitem 
 
 Perfecit ilium m^rtalihus citv/m." 
 
 The vital mistake is, in supposing that what you 
 want to do is, to get from boys, who have no 
 natural powers that way, imagination and inven- 
 tion. Whereas, what you want to do is, to put 
 into boys correctness, taste, elegance of expression. 
 
 I conclude absolutely, as I began, against 
 promiscuous Latin " theme " and "verse" making. 
 I conclude it upon every ground. 
 
 I say " promiscuous," for I need hardly add, 
 
53 
 
 that I would not only not debar, but would 
 encourage, a boy showing signs of thinking power. 
 I would encourage him to use and develop it 
 humbly, soberly, temperately ; to think and to 
 express his thoughts as occasion served. But, 
 unless he was also a promising scholar, I would 
 not encourage him to express his thoughts in 
 Latin or Greek. It would not be real Latin or 
 Greek ; it would be Latin or Greek English. To 
 write well in a given language, you must be able, 
 more or less, to ihinh in that language. It must 
 come as natural and familiar to you as your own 
 language is. 
 
 Neither, again, would I debar a boy, showing 
 signs of imaginative power, fi.-om original verse- 
 making at school, even as an ordinary habit of the 
 school life. But if it is to be Greek or Latin 
 verse, he should first know a good deal of Greek 
 and Latin. His imagination should not be weighted 
 with a continual and harassing search after words 
 and phases. These should come readily, grace- 
 fully, naturally to his hand. 
 
 I have found great fault ; I am bound to suggest 
 a remedy. It seems to me easy and complete, as 
 in the construing and translation case. 
 
 For Latin Prose, in the place of promiscuous 
 Latin theme-making, I would have either, 1, trans- 
 lation from English, or 2, some original account 
 of historical facts, 3, some biographical notice of 
 
54 
 
 eminent men, or 4, some letter- writing or conver- 
 sation. In 2 and 3, the boys to be directed to 
 authentic sources for the facts, or having them 
 supplied by the teacher. 
 
 For Greek and Latin verse, I would have, in 
 the place of promiscuous verse-making, calling 
 upon boys for imaginings, which either they have 
 not got, or cannot get, and which have been 
 many times better expressed by poets, I would 
 have close and faithful, but free rendering into 
 verse, Greek or Latin, of passages in English ; or 
 other poetry, if a boy has sufficient knowledge of 
 other poetry. 
 
 In both cases, the boys would not be asked to 
 do two incompatible things at once. 1, To think, 
 or to imagine ; 2, to express thought and imagi- 
 nation in languages they are supposed to be learn- 
 ing, but are not yet familiar with. The facts, and 
 the imagination, and the taste being supplied ah 
 extra, they would be able to give all their energies 
 pleasantly and productively, to correctness and 
 elegance of expression. 
 
 I have for many years pondered upon these 
 suggestions; have, as I have had opportunity, 
 tested them in practice; and have thought that, 
 if I were to begin work over again, I would keep 
 a school, being first in Holy Orders, for " Edu- 
 
55 
 
 cation " in all its parts, strictly such as I have 
 endeavoured to describe in outline. 
 
 If Greek and Latin is ever to re-assert its place 
 as the true primary instrument of the higher 
 "Education," as the best, because at once the 
 hardest and the most polishing whetstone for 
 sharpening and reducing into graceful form and 
 shape the mental powers; if it is to be rescued 
 from the undeserved and calamitous oblivion into 
 which it is fast falling ; I am persuaded that this 
 is to be done only by such a reform of the teaching 
 process as I have sketched above. 
 
 It may be that it is too late. That what has 
 been betrayed is beyond our recall ; that we may 
 not look, as a people, to recover what has been so 
 idly and shamefully lost, — I fear greatly that it is 
 so. The, opposing influences of this world's life 
 are so active, pressing, seductive, powerful. 
 
 But of one thing I see no room to doubt, and 
 that is, that a school based upon the One Faith, as 
 committed to the Church to deliver as of Authority ; 
 and using Greek and Latin as its primary instru- 
 ment of teaching, after the manner I have suggested, 
 would very soon appropriate to itself all prizes and 
 distinctions, and be in all highest honour. 
 
 I contend that I have sustained my indictment 
 in all its counts. 
 
 1. That the system of teaching Greek and Latin 
 in England is radically bad. 
 
56 
 
 2. So bad that, if it were by common consent 
 amended, it must be some little time before the 
 supply of teaching-power could equal the demand. 
 
 3. The parents and children have right to 
 complain heavily. Parents that they were so 
 badly taught themselves ; and that they have to 
 pay so extravagant a price for a very inferior 
 article in the case of their children. 
 
 If it is replied^ — Do you, then, mean to say that 
 scholarship in England is a very rare thing ? 
 Eelatively a very rare thing : absolutely not. I 
 have not said or suggested that it is a rare thing 
 absolutely. It would be to state what is no less 
 silly than untrue. 
 
 What I do say is, — 
 
 (a.) That the supply of it falls very far short of 
 the demand. 
 
 (b.) That so much of it as is ready to hand is 
 there in spite of the system, and not as the fruit 
 of it. 
 
 (c.) That an exorbitant price is paid for an 
 inferior article. 
 
 (d.) That the general issue is just what might 
 be expected. 
 
 Wasted years. 
 Grumbling parents. 
 Disgusted children. 
 
 There has never been a time when the class 
 
57 
 
 either absolutely or relatively rich, has more 
 urgent need for the best and soundest culture of 
 heart and mind. 
 
 Democracy, in all its phases, from the claim of 
 equal right to govern, down to Communism of 
 possessions, is coming fast to the surface; and 
 opening wide the maw, which does not close till 
 society is swallowed up, and has to be recon- 
 structed by the force of the stronger hand. 
 
 I say, then, to put the matter on the lowest 
 ground, that of " British interests," — as the 
 ascendency of the love of the material now 
 describes our national duty, — that money, with 
 the leisure for mental cultivation which money 
 commands; the position and the influence which 
 are the natural adjuncts of money, whether 
 employed well or ill; that all these have at 
 this time a special call to provide and care for 
 such culture of heart and mind as commands the 
 affection and the respect of men ; disposing them 
 to feel and to understand that, however full of 
 surface plausibility the argument of democracy 
 may be, the fact remains, — regard being had 
 always to the rule of equity by which it is open, 
 as it ig in England, to every man to win his way 
 from the lowest to the highest position in the 
 social scale, — the fact remains, that distinction of 
 classes, and right of the higher classes to govern, 
 are integral parts of human society, by the laws 
 Divine which govern its being; and that what 
 
 5 
 
58 
 
 the great mass of a people have a right to, and 
 will prefer greatly if they are wise, is not to 
 govern, but to be governed well. 
 
 Where this is not found, this good government, 
 there sooner or later, the evil culminates; law and 
 order give way to force and rapine ; society, after 
 terrible convulsion, has to be re-constructed upon 
 the basis of military despotism, and the history of 
 a people to begin again. 
 
 Let me sum up in brief. 
 
 It is a common thing with us now to hear of 
 " Greek and Latin " spoken of as details only of 
 " the higher Education." Again, a<3 details, the 
 place of which may be not only equally well, but 
 more profitably supplied by other details. 
 
 My position is that " Greek and Latin" are first 
 principles of " the higher Education " subordinate 
 and subsidiary to the one Primary Principle, 
 "The Catholic Faith." 
 
 Again, that, being such, their place cannot be 
 supplied. 
 
 I sdy further, that they are fast perishing out of 
 their place. "Scholarship" is becotiiing more 
 and more a rare thing with us. Into its room has 
 come a pedantry of Philology. Now, true Philo- 
 logy is an integral part of Scholarship. Pedantry 
 of Philology is no part of it. Scholarship 
 implies Philology; Philology does not imply 
 Scholarship. 
 
59 
 
 I rememl)er talking over decay of Greek and 
 Latin with my brother, Lord Ossington, when he 
 was Speaker of the House of Commons. 
 
 He said to me, I wish you could hear what I 
 have heard several times from Members of the 
 House — particularly more than once from Mr. 
 Bright — the expression of their regret that they 
 can only get at the original " Greek and Latin " 
 by way of translation. 
 
 There is a story, how far true I do not know, 
 but it has much point in it and some amusement. 
 That when Mr. Gladstone was announcing to the 
 House my brother's retirement from his fifteen 
 years of office, he cited the very beaxitiful words of 
 Ovid :— 
 
 " Baro conveniunt, et in una sede morantur 
 Majestas et Amor." 
 
 That, as he spoke, a whisper ran down the Liberal 
 benches, faintly echoed from the Conservative 
 side, " What language is that?" 
 
 Further, it is undeniably true that knowledge of 
 Greek and Latin is decaying so largely and so 
 fast, that whereas you used, some fifteen years 
 ago, to see correct citations in first-class news- 
 papers, from both languages, and correct proofs 
 from compositors, it is very rare to see either one 
 or the other now. I suppose that, probably, that 
 its surviving child, medical Latin, will disappear 
 
 5 * 
 
60 
 
 too, and the entire family be extinct. It may be 
 that the great women " medecines " are going to 
 write their prescriptions in Greek, in their pre- 
 eminence over men. In that event I am sorry for 
 chemist and patient. 
 
 Seepage 71. 
 
 P.S. to p. 16. — A humble illustration of the loss 
 to Theolog}' by decay of knowledge of Greek 
 and Latin, is supplied by the words " we entirely 
 desire" — " omnino desideramus " — in beginning of 
 the first of the two prayers next before the Gloria 
 in Excelsis, in " the order of the Administration of 
 the Lord's Supper, or Holy Communion." 
 
 In native English "we entirely desire" ex- 
 presses only that "we earnestly wish for." The 
 translation of it from the Latin " omnino desider- 
 amus " expresses not only the earnest wish, but 
 the absolute need of what is not ours to supply, 
 and which, if withheld, makes the wish an empty 
 wish. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 THE SCIENCE OF FLOGGING. 
 
 Efidentem diaere iierum 
 Quid vetat ? 
 
 PbUosopLia Virgalis, 
 Parentibus, pueris, Praeoeptoribna. 
 
 Pauca Verba, magnum opus, 
 Omni laude et lionore dignum. 
 
 Flogging's true Philosopby, 
 Alas ! I will not see tbee die — 
 Common sense decaying, failing, 
 Common nonsense all preTaiHng— 
 And pass this People from among 
 Unwept, unhononred, and nnsung. 
 
 To fie<Tov T^s ael Twi' ^eXrktop 'jrpoXtj-f'ea'} 
 evvoia. To virep^aXKov avoia hlv.* 
 
 The mean of Optimism is Benevolence ; 
 
 The excess Foolishness. 
 
 7. a. 
 
 The Latin, with Prefix and Conclusion of Letter^ 
 reprinted from The Tablet, JDecemher 5, 1885. 
 
 AN EAELY JESUIT ON THE EOD. 
 
 Sib, — Those twin champions of the rod, Arch- 
 deacon Denison and Father Gurdon, may be 
 
 '■ Incerti auotoiis. 
 
62 
 
 interested and encouraged by the following extract 
 from the Veridicus Chn'sttanus of Father David, 
 S.J., 1601. It certainly seems to suggest a philo- 
 sophic basis for their experimental enthusiasm : 
 
 "Vere mirabile est qua corporis parte natura 
 docuerit pueros virg^ csedendos ut sapientiores 
 evadant et meliores. Non super pectus et cor; ubi 
 stultitia (teste sapiente) requiescit in pueris ; nee 
 super caput, nee super ventrem ; sed plane opposite 
 corporis plaga ut cuique notum est ; perinde ac si 
 posteriori ilia microcosm! regione moraretur 
 sapientia; factoque iliac per virgarum strepitum 
 insultu, sapientia inde emigrans, rursumque versus 
 cor ascendens, illinc stultitiam pelleret, et cor ut 
 propriam sapientise sedem occuparet; atque ita 
 pueri, per setatem iusensati, sapientes fierent per 
 disciplinam. Novi ego ante complures annos 
 puerum, cui neque morum probitas neque Uterarum 
 studium cordi erat. Rogatus ab ejus avunculo; 
 quid remedii ? consilium quod jam dixi dedi ; pro- 
 late iM pueroque persuas^ (ut ingeniosus alioqui 
 erat) supra citatS. Solomonis sententia, credidit 
 puer, si stultitia in corde, ubi sedes sapientise est, 
 haud dubie sapientiam alibi esse oportet. Ibi virga 
 adhibeatiir, et sapientia loco cedens ascendet : ilia 
 autem ascendente fugabitur ex corde stultitia et 
 solio suo sapientia potietur. Prima data post dies 
 occasione factum est periculum ; rogatus ab avun- 
 culo sub virgarum ictibus puer, quidnam aiFulgeret 
 spei; jam incipere sapientiam loco moveri et 
 
63 
 
 ascendere respondit. Jam felici auspicio re ilia 
 aliquoties repetita, tandem accrescentibus annis ita 
 in probum doctumque evasit adolescentem; ut 
 nihil nisi summam et ab ejus avunculo et a praecep- 
 toribus laudem de iUo audiverim, jamque adeo in 
 virum egregium sit evectus." 
 
 Father David suffered, it would seem from his 
 biography, almost as much from unwhipped heretics 
 as did the Archdeacon from unwhipped Eadicals. 
 He wrote many other moral and devotional works 
 like the Veridicus, charmingly illustrated by 
 Boetius a Bolswert, and died in the odour of 
 sanctity. 
 
 If the great Society upon which has mainly 
 devolved the whipping of three centuries in any 
 way neglected the task, or distorted the method, it 
 has clearly not been for want of an early and 
 authoritative exponent within its own ranks of 
 the precept of Solomon. Had Father David only 
 been to the fore in the school days of Voltaire or 
 Gambetta, how much might have been happily 
 otherwise. 
 
 " From fate's dark book a leaf been torn 
 And Plodden had been Bannockbnm." 
 
 I am. Sir, your obedient servant, 
 
 J. xii. 
 
 The above rendered into English : regard being 
 had to the decay of even a poor knowledge of 
 Latin — to say nothing of Greek — which has so 
 
64 
 
 conspicuously gone along with decay of flogging, 
 and other concurrent causes, 
 
 " It is a very wonderful thing to see how Nature 
 herself has provided for the true teaching of effect 
 of application of the rod to one particular part of 
 a boy's body: such effect being growth of, and 
 improvement in, wisdom and virtue. 
 
 The part referred to is not the breast, nor is it 
 the heart, wherein, in boys, as the wisest of men 
 testifieth, foolishness is pleased to dwell : nor is it 
 the head ; nor, again, the belly. It is, self-evidently, 
 as indeed everybody knows, the part opposite to 
 this last part : just as though it were in the hinder 
 part of the microcosm that wisdom is wont to 
 linger. 
 
 Assault, then, being made in that direction, 
 accompanied by the swishing sound of the rod, 
 wisdom, making up its mind to emigrate, and to 
 mount upwards towards the heart, would therefrom 
 expel foolishness, and occupy the heart as its own 
 native place of residence. 
 
 And thus the boy, having been by reason of youth- 
 fiilness, without the true sense of fitness of things, 
 would become a wise boy under due administration 
 of Discipline. 
 
 I knew a boy a good many years ago, not much 
 given to truth of conduct, nor to improvement of 
 understanding. In this strait, his uncle applied to 
 tne, asking what was to be done. I gave him the 
 
65 
 
 advice based upon what I have just laid down as 
 the truth of the case. 
 
 The judgment of Solomon in the matter being 
 placed before the boy, and pressed upon his atten- 
 tion, he took it in — ^for in some respects he was not 
 without wits. He saw at once that, if foolishness 
 was in possession of his heart, the native home of 
 wisdom, it could not but be that wisdom had gone 
 somewhere else in his body. 
 
 Let the rod be applied to me, he said, and wisdom 
 will retire from her present position, and go up- 
 wards. As it goes upwards, foolishness will have 
 to go downwards, fleeing away from the region of 
 the heart. Wisdom wUl replace it, recover the 
 power, and sit upon its own throne. 
 
 On the earliest opportunity, some days after, the 
 experiment was made. The boy, as the rod fell 
 stroke by stroke sharp and quick, being entreated 
 by his uncle to teU him whether there was any 
 hope of a good result, replied that wisdom was 
 beginning to move from below, and was mounting 
 upwards. Thereupon progress was reported. 
 
 Under these happy auspices, promoted by re- 
 petition of the process for a certain number of 
 years, year by year the boy proved to be better 
 and better in heart, sounder and sounder in mind ; 
 and I never heard anything of him again but the 
 largest commendation both on the part of his uncle 
 and his tutors. From youth he passed into man- 
 hood of the highest character." 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 1. Article in '■'■Nonconformist and Independent.^' 
 
 September 23, 1886, Avitli marginal refer- 
 ences and notes, also note upon use of the 
 word " Nonconformist ". 
 
 2. Reply in same Paper, September 30, 1886. 
 
 ARCHDEACON DENISON IN EXGELSIS. 
 The Venerable Archdeacon Denison is like the 
 sole surviving speaker of an extinct language. 
 His words are those of a Hildebeakd or a Laud, 
 but the emotions they excite in the present genera- 
 tion are not those either of terror or of hatred. He 
 moves us only to the respectful, though somewhat 
 amused, sympathy with which we might listen to 
 the intonations of the very last solitary speaker of 
 Cornish or of Manx. In sober truth, it is very 
 difficult indeed to get any intelhgible ideas from 
 his latest utterance — the charge he delivered some 
 weeks ago to his unfortimate clergy, a copy of 
 which has just been forwarded to us. But " Church 
 and State " as an indissoluble unity, " robbery of 
 God," " abohtion of all national religion," and 
 such-like phrases, beget a dreamy reminiscence of 
 times and controversies " gone for ever and ever 
 
67 
 by."* But it is not so much the lanffuao:e or the * Bee i Cor. 
 
 . 1 , . . ? ° , , Ui. V. 1-23. 
 
 ideas that arrest our attention ; it is rather the zechariah viii. 
 
 19 " There- 
 
 person. Archdeacon Denison is, to our thinking, fore love the 
 one of the most absolutely and uncompromisingly peace."— Eph. 
 honest men of the age. He has heen, and is, a "lord, One 
 living protest against the doctrine of compromise B^tj^m."— s. 
 in any form or shape. It is, therefore, a veryll'^^'J. ""^j/'' 
 extraordinary spectacle, and really a most interest- ^^'^'LeiTift 
 ing study, to see the very same venerable man at one 5e^-""ts'/o" 
 time advocating and at another time denouncing *""■■" 
 the proposal of Disestablishment. Not only so, but 
 what makes the performance still more perplexing is 
 that in both instances his reasons are the very same, 
 and consist mainly of a passionate loyalty to the 
 freedom and independence of the Church. 
 
 The charge just published is entitled " The Thing 
 Vulgarly Called Dis-EstabHshment of the Church of 
 England ; Properly Called Dis- Inheritance of the 
 Crown, and People of England." It is a very angry 
 protest against the Liberation Society, against Mr. 
 Albert Gkey, against the Broad Church, and, in 
 fact, against every one who would in the shghtest 
 degree disturb the mediteval constitution in Church 
 and State which totters like an undetermined ruin 
 around us. But in " Notes of My Life," issued by 
 the very same Archdeacon Denison, some years 
 ago, we find that Disestablishment was welcomed 
 on precisely the same grounds on which it is 
 deprecated now ! We read, for instance (p. 183) : 
 " I am persuaded that, for a long time past, possibly 
 
68 
 
 for all time, the Establishment has been doing so 
 much injury to true religion, that, though I am as 
 little of a Liberal as any man, I have joined the 
 Church League for the separation of Church and 
 State." Again (on p. 299) : " The day of Estab- 
 lishments is gone. It would be impossible now to 
 create Establishment in any country. That of it 
 which exists is fast drawing to a close ; and it is 
 difficult to conceive of any future condition of the 
 world in which it will be found again." In a word, 
 the Archdeacon shared at that time, with many 
 of his High- Church brethren, the conviction that 
 Democracy was fast making it impossible to work 
 the hierarchial principle under the patronage of the 
 State. But experience since that time has shown 
 that the Public Worship Regulation Act is a dead 
 letter ; that prosecutions for Eitualism are a farce ; 
 that Ministries, whether Conservative or Liberal, 
 are the nursing fathers, and Primrose Dames the 
 nursing mothers, of the idolized institution. So 
 much is this the case that the Archdeacon now 
 finds in the proved impotence of Parliament the 
 very best guarantee for the supremacy of the priest. 
 All that is necessary now is to insist upon the 
 policy of " Hands off ! " All that Churchmen 
 want from Parliament is (1) that it should say, 
 affirmatively : Let the Church of England continue 
 to be what it has been for more than a thousand 
 years — the National Church ; let not " Church 
 and State" be touched; (2) negatively : " Let the 
 
69 
 
 Church of England be left free to do what it is 
 asked to do and expected to do at home and away 
 from home. Libera sit Ecclesia Anglicana. Church- 
 men are not so foolish as even to think about any 
 other manner of help from Parliament." In other 
 words, by all means stick to the money and the 
 political status, but let any interference of Parlia- 
 ment be met with an Apage, Satanas ! We are very 
 far, indeed, from accusing the Venerable Arch- 
 deacon himself of any mercenary motive for such a 
 programme. If there is any man who is capable 
 of going out into the world naked of everything but 
 his principles, it is surely Archdeacon Denison. 
 But a man may do for a beloved institution that 
 which he would not do for himself ; and the mean- 
 ing of this present charge is undoubtedly — keep 
 a firm grip of the endowments. The reason for 
 this marked change since 1877 is clearly what we 
 have already stated. The Archdeacon Avould rather 
 see his Church poor and free than rich and 
 enslaved ; but as he reads the signs of the times, 
 it is becoming quite possible to keep that Church 
 rich and free at the same time — manifestly an 
 alternative much to be preferred.* *8ee Reply, 
 
 It is true that occasional notes of despondency 
 jar with this strain of sanguine heroism. But 
 experience of the last ten years clearly encourages 
 the Archdeacon of Taunton to adopt an uncom- 
 promising attitude. The one thing that he 
 cannot away with is a base attempt to negotiate 
 
70 
 
 with the Democracy on the condition of giving the 
 people and their representatives in Parliament a 
 right to meddle with the Church, Those who 
 advocate such a course he denounces even more 
 scathingly than he does the Liberationists. "These 
 are the least respectable of all citizens. It is not 
 that they have no mind of their own ; it is that 
 their mind is a low, cowardly, in one word, a mind 
 of a bad sort : a mind mixing up the things of 
 God with the things of men — a mind, therefore, 
 incapable of recognizing any test of right or 
 wrong but that of the voice of the majority." The 
 latter is a taunt which we are happy to think that 
 the Archdeacon does not level against the Libera- 
 tionists. In fact, it is precisely their repugnance 
 to the mean spirit here rebuked which makes them 
 
 *Jt is the Re- _^ 
 
 veaied Will of ia&ist on DiscstabUshment. The voice of the 
 
 aOV, com- 
 mitted to maiority never can be a test of right or wrong. 
 
 " Tlie CathoUc ™ . , . , , , , , . . 
 
 and ApostoUc ihis must DC judged by each man s conscience m 
 uep and to the sight of GoD.* Nevertheless, the voice of the 
 
 deliver, which ... -ij-i ij.'_lit i 
 
 is the one majority necessarily decides what is to be done by 
 mmgp^ amd the State as & whole. So long as the ruling power 
 '^man's "mn- of the majority leaves individuals free, in the more 
 ""Siute"" immediately personal concerns of faith and religion, 
 L"^tr /r"« t° ^o ^^^* conscience dictates, there is little 
 l/in^rfie danger of any demoralization from democratic rule. 
 tla^-t^l But the voice of the majority is quite incapable of 
 i^e5di!cWm- ^^^^"^^"S '^"'^^^ 6^ch member of the community 
 n'easm '"tte o"g^* *<^ think and feel about religion. Therefore, 
 i^^geo} Re«}e- yjQ gay, let the majority, in all compulsory action, 
 
71 
 
 leave religion alone. And under compulsory 
 action we reckon every legal application of com- 
 mon* funds to Church purposes. It is true that y,^g^ {""f^ 
 the days of persecution, as ordinarily understood, 'lu'^'^p^y 
 are past. But if we, as Englishmen, have inherit- ^f^^jji,, "^^n 
 ed a certain interest in public property accumu- *^jj^^"^° *f ® 
 lated by our forefathers * and if the majority forcibly /<"• t/i-s «»«« of 
 
 J ' •! J •' " all forms of 
 
 applies our share of that inheritance to religious ■P"*"'-"/! T* 
 purposes revolting to our conscience, a wrone: is ^v <-«'• /<»•«- 
 
 ^ ^ • ° . . fathers for the 
 
 done to us. In such cases we are no more inclined t^rposes of 
 
 The Faith of 
 
 than Archdeacon Denison to take the voice of the The church 
 
 Catholic 
 
 majority as any test of right or wrong. only. 
 
 Note upon use of the word "Nonconformist." 
 
 The word " Nonconformity " is commonly used 
 as if Nonconformity were an unit ; a thing simple 
 and uncompounded. I pray not to offend. But is 
 this the fact of the case? Is not Enghsh Noncon- 
 formity a common name for an endless series of 
 "forms of faith," devised of human authority, 
 one dififering from another upon cardinal points, 
 and agreeing only in rejecting the Position, 
 Doctrine, Discipline of the Church of England. 
 Further still — has not Nonconformity become in 
 the day of its Parliamentary power since 1832, 
 rather a political than a religious bond of 
 union ? 
 
 When in 1855-6, Mr. Henley defeated the Whig 
 Government upon the Schools Question, what 
 
72 
 
 enabled him to do it, April llth, 1856, was the 
 Nonconformist support assured to him in the 
 lobby upon the ground that aU Education must be 
 religious. This gave him his majority of 102. 
 
 Some thirteen years after, when I made a final 
 effort in London by a meeting at WiUis's Rooms, 
 the present Lord Halifax in the chair, I asked 
 Mr. Henley whether it would be of any use to 
 make a move in House of Commons. He said, 
 of no use at all; adding, that Nonconformity was 
 become political rather than religious, and that the 
 Nonconformists who supported him so heartily in 
 in 1856, would all vote against him in 1868.— 
 Notes of my Life, pp. 269-278. 
 
ARCHDEACON DENISON'S REPLY, 
 September 27, 1886. 
 
 To the Editor of the " Nonconformist and Independent." 
 
 SiK, — I beg to thank you for your courtesy in 
 sending me your article on the 23rd inst., and to 
 acknowledge all the personal kindness of it. I 
 have many good friends among Nonconformists, 
 and will venture to number you among them upon 
 the strength of your article. They know that I 
 have nothing but good will towards them, though 
 it be impossible in the nature of the thing that is 
 between us that we should be at one ; and, faithful 
 to their own principle of individual liberty in 
 things of the law Divine, they allow to me what 
 they claim for themselves. Further, I have given 
 you an indisputable right to comment upon my 
 inconsistency of some years past in respect of 
 Disestablishment and Disendowment. I have 
 never had any part in the vain imagination that 
 the two are things separable. But when you 
 assign as the ground of my return to the principle 
 of " Establishment" the better prospect of retain- 
 ing Endowment, I have to say that I am able to 
 set myself wholly free from this account of my 
 action. I refer you to a place in my Charge of 
 1883, and this, I see, refers to a date earlier still. 
 It will be seen that my action had nothing to do 
 
 6 
 
74 
 
 directly or indirectly with the prospect of retaining 
 Endowment. My words are : 
 
 " I found that I was, so to speak, proposing to 
 lay hands unbidden upon an ordinance of the law 
 Divine. I found myself to be inventing a provi- 
 dence, rather than submitting to the Providence 
 of God. If it should be the decree of His provi- 
 dence that " Church and State " in its phase of 
 " Establishment " — that is, the phase still remain- 
 ing to us — should cease to be, whether for 
 retribution upon unfaithfulness to trust, or for 
 correction, amendment, recovery, I found that it 
 was not for man to go about to anticipate Provi- 
 dence by a remedy of his own : a remedy not only 
 not advised of God, but contrary to the letter and 
 the spirit of an ordinance of the law Divine. But 
 having made this confession of error more than 
 once publicly, I will not take up your time upon 
 it further." 
 
 And now I hope I shall not offend in what I go 
 on to say as briefly as I can. Where there is 
 absolute difference touching " the principles of the 
 doctrine of Christ " (Heb. vi. 1) there is no room 
 for what is commonly called " Controversy." 
 There is, therefore, no room for controversy 
 between the Churchman and the Nonconformist. 
 They start from opposite and contrary poles, and 
 it is by necessary consequence beforehand certain, 
 so long as they abide each by their own pole, what 
 the issue of the controversy will be. 
 
75 
 
 The pole of the Chui'chman. is the matter and 
 the manner of religion, and this externally to 
 himself, to his own intellect, and his own know- 
 ledge. His authority is ab extra. The pole of the 
 Nonconformist is ah intra — that is, in each indi- 
 vidual case his authority is internal to the indi- 
 vidual himself. I am speaking of the religious 
 Nonconformist as of the religious Churchman. I 
 am. not concerned with any other. Both appeal 
 to Holy Scripture. To the Churchman the one 
 interpreter of Holy Scripture is the Church 
 Catholic. In and for England, to which I coniine 
 myself, the Church of England is the Church 
 Catholic. To the Nonconformist the one inter- 
 preter is himself. Authority is no real part of his 
 rule of faith. Hence to the Church " one Loed, 
 one Faith, one Baptism," one Revelation. To the 
 Nonconformist, upon his own principle, as many 
 faiths as there are men, women, children. I 
 submit, then, that there is no room for controversy. 
 What the Churchman has to do is not to argue, 
 but to state — to deliver not his own at all, but that 
 which he hath received. Let him take heed how 
 he states — that he does it boldly and fully and 
 faithfully, knowing whose and what it is that he 
 hath received. Let him do it in all humbleness, 
 gentleness, love for souls. " He that winneth 
 souls is wise." But let him take heed that he 
 states always — yesterday, to-day, and for ever ; 
 
76 
 
 because that is what he is sent into the world to 
 * 1 Cor. xvi. do for others, and for himself, and for all men.* 
 
 The Nonconformist has gained much for himself 
 and his at the hands of a civil power of which he 
 has formed a part in the last fifty-four years. I 
 need not sum up here the many instance of bit-by- 
 bit " Disestablishment " and " Disendowment." 
 I have done this already publicly more than once. 
 There are not a few Churchmen who are pro- 
 posing a great deal more of bit-by-bit poHcy of 
 this character, in the idle hope of saving from the 
 wholesale process which they assume is coming. 
 Whether it will come or be stayed depends upon 
 the faithfulness or unfaithfulness of Churchmen. 
 It is not of man to say, " Let it be done." 
 
 Yours, &c., 
 
 GEORGE ANTHONY DENISON. 
 
ARCHDEACON DENISON. 
 
 Octoher 16, 1886. 
 To the Editor of the " Nonconformist and Indepmident" 
 
 Sir, — Mr. Gasquoine's kindly letter in your 
 paper, October 7, assigns to me confusion of 
 thought and expression. I think the confusion is 
 not with me. I will be very brief. 
 
 Churchmen and Nonconformists both appeal to 
 the same final authority — the Holy Scriptures, the 
 Bible. Nonconformists, perhaps, not commonly 
 to the old Scriptures : But this does not interfere 
 with the fact of common appeal. Upon this, 
 let me preface what I have further to say by a 
 question : How is it that Churchmen and Noncon- 
 formists have the Bible to appeal to? The one 
 answer is, that they have it because the Church 
 has sealed and deUvered it under the promised 
 guidance of The Spirit, as and when it pleased 
 God, for the use of all generations to come. With- 
 out this Providence vouchsafed to the bishops of 
 the Church some 1500 years ago, more or less, 
 there would have been no Bible to appeal to. We 
 have, then, all of us. Churchmen and Noncon- 
 formist alike, the Bible to appeal to by gift of God. 
 
78 
 
 Next, for interpretation of the Bible, whence 
 and how comes the authority to interpret? The 
 one answer, again, is, from the same source, 
 through the same hands which have sealed and 
 delivered. Where have we the interpretation 
 stated in terms ? The answer again is : In the 
 Creeds of the Church, 
 
 All this I have expressed by the words " ah 
 extra" ; signifying that the Holy Scriptures, the 
 interpretation thereof, and the expression of that 
 interpretation in terms, are things belonging ex- 
 clusively to the Church of God, not as being in 
 any manner or measure things of their own in- 
 vention, but as things of God only in their origin 
 and substance ; and that the same law ■which bars 
 any addition to, or taking away from, the Bible, 
 bars alike, and no less " aijy private interpreta' 
 tion" of it. When, therefore, I use the words 
 " ah extra^" I am expressing, as best I can, the 
 Divine authority both in gift and in interpretation, 
 above and apart from that of any man or number 
 of men. "^6 extra" to the Church herself in 
 every age ; to every Churchman in every age. 
 When I use the expression "a& intra" I mean 
 the claim of every man's conscience to interpret for 
 himself what is found in the Bible. 
 
 This is, I apprehend, what lies at the root of the 
 Nonconformist position. And this is what made 
 me say in my previous letter to you that, with all 
 my earnest desire to avoid giving oJSfence, I was, as 
 
79 
 
 I am, unable to see how the Churchman and the 
 Nonconformist can enter into controversy the one 
 with the other ; inasmuch as they start from 
 opposite poles of the subject-matter. 
 
 Yours, &c., 
 
 GEORGE ANTHONY DENISON. 
 
 East Bkbnt. 
 
 O. NORMAN & SON, PRJNTKRS, HART STREET, COVENT GARDEN 
 
Comeir University Ubrary 
 
 arW37656 
 
 The schools of Christendom : 
 
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