The Dorset County Express and Agricultural Gazette.
Dorchester, Dorset, England, 1866-11-20 00:00:00

Cccltsiastical Intcllignue.
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Ten NEW FORM OF TH•NISGIVINCI.—The Arabs
bishop of Canterbury, in SCOOPII4OB with instructions
from the Crown, circulated the following form of thanks-
giving, which was used in all churehes in his gram's
Province last Sunday, instead of the prayer which has
been used for a long time past —"O, Almighty Lord,
Father of Marcie*, and God of all comfort, we live Thee
humble and hearty thanks for that Thou hut vouchsafed
to ramp the seventy of the plague and petilenc• with
which we have been visited. We bless Thy holy name
for havine thus far r stored to oar dwellings health end
the woioe of gladness, and soared for our sustenance the
remnant of our Socku and herds. Continue, we pray
Thee, their Thy ants of Provident+, over us ; and
although, by reason of our manifold tringreesions, we
have worthily deserved Thy chastisements, yet b- plered
of Thy great coolness and comp...ion to our infirmatip,
wholly to withdraw front us this plague and grevions
deknees; to our relief and Thy glory, through Jesus
Christ our Lord. Amen."
Tug "Corm/ace (rattieL"—A deputation on the
anhiect of the "Conscience Clans." waited on the Earl
I of Oerby,on Turoday,at his official residences in Downing-
I atm, t. Mr. J. G. Hubbard, M.P., rend to his lordship a
I paper embodying the arguments urged by • meeting
held in the Chapter H 0064 at York, and the paper wax
received by his lordship for consideration. His lord-
ship having listehed to the various arguments on the
schieet, professed his anxiety to see his way out of the
difficulty, and would be end to consider any solution of
it which the deputation had to suggest. The subject was
a diffieelt one, both in and out of the honer He would,
however, give it is best considerition. The S andard says
the reports of what pared are brief, but the purport of
the whole is clear enough. On the one hand stands the
old stock grievance, that the prevent system acts in.
juriously on the children of dissenting parents in places
not large enough to admit of their having a school to
themselves, if they are unable to °lode education
exeept at the price of reeeiving with it religious instrue•
tion of a sort to which they object. OD the other hand,
it is replied that the case, in far, hardly ever arises;
that the Secretary of the Privy Council Committee lir
difficulty in discovering a couple of doyen of them in we
do not know how many yearn; that clergyman and
managers of Church schools almost. if not qui,e, uni-
versally relax their rule in the few cases where it his
asked, and that de facto, the grievance only exists on
paper. It is evident enough that while the tolerated
exception of half a dosen children standing apart while
the rest are saying their catechism hss no appreciable
effect on the discipline arid working of the school, the
car would he entirely altered were half the !school or
more to claim the like exemption. The whole arrange--
mooted the plain would be upset, the siergyman might
very possibly retire in disgust, ant, still more pro-
bably, the supporters of the school would withdraw
their snreriptions from an institution which had ceased
to he what they intended it to be. Perham there is no
one whose opinion on the matter of copular education
is better worth having than that of Mr. Framer. His
report as ariet•nt commissioner to the Education Com-
mission has been almost • text book on the subject ever
since, and he has recently had an opportunity of wit-
Tiering the conscience dense system as it works in
("amide, and the secular system in operation in the
United States. In Canada, where one would have
thought that the practical dependence of the ministers
of the Church on pew rents fat all events in towns), or
more esprit de corps. would make the clergy alive to the
necessity of attracting the young, be finds that the
result of the conscience clause system is just what
"alarmists" have always said it would be here—via.,
that secular teaching is alone to be found in the schools,
sod that the clergy have given up the whole thing as •
had job, eecept, perhaps, their Sunday schools, though
Mr. Fraser dues not warrant us in making even tnis
exception. The imults of this sort of teaching seem to
give anything but satisfaction to those who have to
witness and submit to the effects of it; and what is
most remarkable of all is. that (even under •
eompulsory system of cmucniion) the attendance
is considerably ler regular than it is among ourselves,
where it is voluntary. This last result of a ear of
thin" which we heir lauded to satiety in Mr. Bright's
speeches, has, we confer, startled us pot • little We
never auppered that the advantages of secular education
were more than superficial, because we cannot me how
they poribly can be so; but, at all events, we stupor,'
that in so merely mechanical and external • matter as
the attendance of children at the roll-call the model
Republic would have managed to enfoi ee something like
obedience We regret that we have not room for any-
thin beyond this mere rumor of Mr. Forer's revela-
tions. Anything more conclusive than the whole story,
as he tells it, we cannot imagine. The worst that has
been predicted from the general infiietioo of &conscience
deur tone longer, henceforth, • chimerical fanny. The
thing is, on the evidence of one of the wariest and
mod intelligent witneres imaginable, exactly whet Mr.
Hubbard and others have said of it. Of WIMPc this
will not be conclusive with those who ervernidate the
spread of secularism, among men as well as boys, with
satisfaction, bat it will go • long way towards opening
the eyes of every one else.