The Sun.
London, England, 1870-06-20 00:00:00

TllE EDUCATION QUESTION.

The Standard thinks the aspect of the great question
of national education has been entirely changed by the
event of Thursday night ; and the situation is critical.
What course the friends of religious education ought now
to pursue is one of the most difficult and most momentous
problems that ever tasked the prudence of leaders or the
temper of a party. We have already considered the nature
of his amendments, and we shall not here repeat either
the objections or the recommendations we then pointed
out. What is of more immediate moment is the spirit in
which these amendments have evidently been framed.
It seems to us, judging of the matter from a pofnt
outside of Parliamentary entanglements and of party
necessities, that the course of the friends of religious
education should be determined by a single main
consideration. That our primary schools shall be as a
rule religious, and secular or ' unsectarian" only were
sectarian feuds make common action on religious grounds
impossible, is the ona essential necessity, the one point of
transcendent importance to which all other considerations
should be subordinated. That England should remain
Christian is an object of more consequence than any that
can ordinarily engage the ambition or stir the passion of
political parties ; and England will not long remain
Christian after her primary education has been practically
heathenised.

A board of ratepayers, , or their representatives, says
the Times, in discussing the education difficulty, will
never agree upon anything beyond the Bible and the
teacher, which are the first and last necessities of the
case. This is manifest from the experience of the last
four months, which Mr. Disraeli regards as so much lost
time in this discussion. Lost they are not if they have
saved us from the hasty adoption of a measure which,
as it first stood, might have distracted every parish and
town in the kingdom. It is true the four months
have been employed not only in fighting against
the bill, but also in securing that it should
not work well, even if it should become
law. The word went out that the bill should' not
pass ; and, even if it should pass, it should never work.
The demonstration has been as effectual as its authors
could possibly desire, and the Christians of this country
have entirely succeeded in shewing how little they are
ever likely to love one another—at least on a local board.
Mr. Gladstone has had no choice but to accept the super-
abundant proof, and permit a modification of the measure.
The Scriptures are to be read and taught, unless, indeed,
Mr. Disraeli and his friends should achieve a further suc-
cess, beyond their most sanguine expectations, by the ex-
clusion of the Bible from the Rate-founded, and therefore
also from the rate-supported, schools. That is the conclu-
sion we shall be inevitably driven to, if the opposition
to this bill be only persevered in. Mr. Gladstone said at
first he should Ise able to do nothing without mutual con-
cession, for in the very nature of things the proposition
was a compromise. If nobody will give way, there is an
end of the bill—with the probability of one even less to
the taste of highly fastidious religionists in a few years.
We are disposed to think that now is the time, and that
it would be very lamentable if all the jealousy, which has
been lately shewn for religious education should be per-
mitted to evaporate without the passing of some sort of
measure of a not entirely irreligious character.