The Sun.
London, England, 1837-03-29 00:00:00

TV
creatures, is inculcated ; obedient°, that uty which rve'ree,
owe to God, to man, and to oursefves, is i dideated. We
find, then, the three great conditions of t ristian, Co-
venant implied in the answer to the third' ten of our
Church Catechism are set forth in these cx • • 6,0; e
quote the question and answer ii order to exiiki
anent more fully :
" Question. What did your Godfathers and Go ltrio01:t"
then (that is at your Baptism) do for you
"Answer. They (lid promise and vcw three trines in my
name ; first that I should renounce the Devil and ail his
works, the pomps and vanity of this wicked world, and all
the sinful lusts of the flesh." Hire is the subject matter of
our repentance—the Devil—worlla----and flesh. We are to
grieve for the power they have over us ; for power they
have had, and will have more or less over every child of
Adam ; if we grieve for that poorer, we will strive eg tiost
it, we will renounce, forsake. it. A change is our affections
will take place. We will seek oul. another power under
whose influence, to be guided, etnOther domirtiou, under
which we are anxious to be ruled. That dominion is the
dominion of Christ :—here is the doctrine of repentance,
and atom hence follows the second thing promised on the
part of our godfathers as stated in the answer-- -" Secondly,
that I should believe all the articles of the Christian faith."
Belief in,the Lord Jesus as the, author and finisher of our
faith—that faith which worketh love, the truth, the ge-
nuineness of which faith is provexl by the third thing pro,
raised as simply stated in the aslswar—" Tnirdly, that I
should keep God's holy will and !ternmandments and walk
in the same all .the days of my lila?' Such is the faith eif
the Gospel, such is the morality e t the Gespel—!,exit of
them are taught and exhibited io the. extracts ; the features
of each are there depicted in living colours ; the language
being often the very same as that of • the authorised version
of the Scriptures, and when it does serry the souse and sub-
stance are mostly the same. I shat give two more rea-
' sons making six specific arguments. in all, and then sum
succinctly the force of the entire ; fift.ii y, suppose :Any good
presented to man, does it not become, a decided, positive,
moral duty to embrace the meanie that are accesible,
though they may not be the very b e ;t that can be con-
ceived. Education is admitted to be aepositire good for the
community, especially an education feu tided upon solid-re-
ligious principles. The ministers of, the Protestant and
Catholic faith both allow the Holy ; 3eriptures to he the
foundation of doctrine and morals. Protestant clergy
says no evil, no harm can result from Cie free use of those
Scriptures, from the entire Bible being, placed in the hands
of children of the Protestant Church. The Roman Ca-
tholic Clergy hold a contrary opinioa ; they say. portions
of God's word may be read with adv 3 wage by the youth-
ful mind ; but it is not prudent to pi a' !c the entire volume
of Holy Writ in the possession of t h 3 children of the Ca-
tholic Church. We conceive that th e unrestricted use of
it has been the occasion of grosse error. I -will not
here state my own opinions on this pa.etieular, whether it has
or has not been the cause of gross c rror. I would only
remark, ecclesiastical history is -ncn an old almenack.
The question at issue is—shall the community the
lower classes of society be depriv, tel of the best edu-
cation which the government of tl te! country can afford
to give—shall that system of educati m be rendered void
or in a great measure nugatory—shall not the most be
made of it, by the co-operation of all, because one prin-
ciple supported by the Protestant ,!iiergy is opposed ; a
principle, whatever may be their hop, , could never, in the
common course of things, be reducciet to practice, viz.—
instil the whole Bible in the course, of the first sixteen
or seventeen years of life into the ;minds of the people.
Es not, then, this a mere bone of csantention—a fighting
about straws ? Are they really uti&earians who do not
avail themselves • of means of doing ',good, because those
means are not' so full and ample, or they conceive they
might or ought to be. The gforioust result of the revo-
lution of 1688 is, thank God, still flourishing ; men can
in these islands worship the Almighty as conscience dic-
tates or approves—this is the liberty•of the Gospel. The
Gospel itself—the greatest boon of die even to earth—is
not to. be propagated by the sword, by violence—treet is
the religion of Mahomet ; if any body of men are un-
willing to read the Scriptures, it is not thug spirit of that
sacred word to use compulsion. The Bible addresses man
as a free agent ; and the Blessed Redeemer, when lie
sent forth his twelve apostles, as reoerded in the tenth
chapter of St. Matthew's Gospel, to preach, gave them
direction that whoever would not receive them, nor hear
their words, when they departed from the house or city
where they were preaching, they were to shake off the
dust of their feet—a phrase, denoting, that the people
were to be left to their own option, and to incur. the aw-
ful consequences of rejecting their preaching. Perhaps that
phrase of shaking off the *dust of their feet, could not be
better explained, than by those words :
" Populus wit decipi et decipiatur."
I do not apply them to any particular nation, but consi-
der their meaning may, to a certain extent„ be applied to
every country. I would thus far apply them, viz., that nei- .
ther religion nor education is to be forced upon the minds
of the people—they are not to be propagated contrary to
the free will of men ; sixthly, I have inspected some of the
National Schools, examined the children, and found them
possessed of a good elementary knowledge of the Scrip-
tures, a knowledge of those truths, the most necessary for
their walk and direction in this life, so that when time has
allowed the seeds sown in those schools to grow up and
ripen, the State may expect to see a harvest which its sin-
cere friends would wish to see—a harvest, if not the most
fruitful, still a fruitful one ; a rising generation of 'the
Roman Catholic people, a rising generation—a branch
of Christ's Churebe possessing a greater knowledge of the
great truths of the Gospel that any generation of the same
branch that hers preceded it. Let us now bridle sum up
these six reasons—a knowledge of the entire Bible could
trot be obtained in the time usually allowed for thUeduca-
tion of the lower classes, the labour of the children being so
requisite to their own support, and that of their parents,.
that they must discontinue their attendance at school. to see
and provide the necessaries of life. Tee right of lecturing
on every portion of the Bible is permitted by the system
to the Protestant Clergy. Children of every denomina-
ti, n taught to r-ad, which is the high road that leads to
all knowledge. The doctrine of the atonement; made for
sin, by the sacrifice of Christ, and the morality resulting
from that doctrine, is exhibited in the Scripture extracts.
It is a decided, positive truth, an axiom in ethics, that good
whenever it can be pursued, ought to be pursued, though it
cannot •be pursued to the fullest extent ; a practical know-
ledge in the faith and morality of the Gospel, is evidently
disseminating by the system, and may fitirly be expected to
lead to desirable results. Such, Sir, are my reasons for
being willing to co-operate with the National Beard—and I
do believe they arc calculated to have weight, to have in-
fluence, with candid and unprejudiced minds in fatour of
the system, at least, to give it a fair trial for some years.
The first clerical meeting which I attended in this diocese,
I took the opportunity of bringing forward then a fact
mentioned in the 4th ch. of St. John's Gospel, as an argu-
ment in favour of the National System of Education, in .the
conversation of our Lord with the woman of Samaria. We
are told there that this woman had a more correct idea of
the true character of the Messiah than the Jews ; every
one knows that the Jewish nation looked for a Temporal
Deliverer in die promised Redeemer, but this woman,
belonging to the Samaritan nation, looked for a Prophet
in the Messias, who would. reveal trtithe-•" the woman
saith unto him, I know that Messias corneae which. is
culled Christ ; when he is come he will tell us all things."
Now the people to whom this woman belonged, the
Samaritan nation, only acknowledged the Pentateuch or five
books of Moses as authentic ; it was the only portion of the
Scriptures used by them ; and yet we see from ' this part a
more correct knowledge of the Saviour was obtained than
what the Jews derived from the entire volume of the old
testament ; the five hooks of Moses do not comprise a great
•
deal more than a tenth of the Old Testament ; yet from
this limited portion a more just idea of Christ is obtained by -
those who read it, than by those who had free access to the
entire sacred volume. This should lead the candid to pause
and consider how the spirit of God can make even a little •
of his own holy word instrumental in bringing men to a
saving knowledge of himself ; at the time I refer to, I
suggested the propriety of the Protestant Clergy vi-
saing. the National Schools, and endeavouring 'to co-
operate with the Board—my suggestion was not very fa-
vourably received. While officiating in Staplestown parish
I visited occasionally the National school of Tinryland.
I would have continued visiting it; but I understood it
gave great offence to some of the Protestant parishioners,
who, I believe, said they would not go the church if I went
there. I was ordered by my Rector not to go any more.
I thought it right to obey him, at the same time the order
seemed strange to me, coming from him, because I was in- ,
formed that he signed the memorial to the 13oard, to have
the school established. A rumour not long since was cir-
culated, that I had made an observation in the. Daily Re-
port Book of the Protestant School of Bellinacarig, preju-
dicial to the interests of :that school ; I was told iudeed by
a subscriber to that school, that I had no right to make
those remarks, that the school was a private one ; now, it
happens to be in connection with the Kildare-street So-
ciety ; it is not very long since an invector from that So-
Ciety visited the school. It therefore came under the de-
nomination of a public institution, and as such I was fully
authorised to visit and make observations in the Report
Book. The following is the observation, let the public;
judge whether it can be considered injurious or not—sonie
persons'who read it, could not view it in that light :
The situation of. the parish of Staplestown with regard
to a school, for the scriptural and general instruction of.
the Protestant children belonging to it, is much to be re-
gretted. There are three schools in the parish, in each of
which some of the few Protestant children residing in ,the
parish attend—one a female school, with a Protestant mis-
tress, in connection with the Kildare-street Soeietv, sup-
ported by the resident ladies of the parish, under the con •