The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1839-10-29 00:00:00

Vottrp.

SHEW US THE FATHER!

The Father, saidst thou, thou couldst see,
In springing grass, or budding tree ?
In rippling streams, released from frost?
Or in the stars, heaven's shining host?
The wild, uncultur'd, blushing rose,—
Thinkst thou that it the Father shews ?
The infant's eye, that sparkles mind,
Oh ! canst thou there the Father find?
Where wilt thou then the Father trace,
When nature is despoiled of grace ?
The withered rose, its beauty lost;
All nature bound in iron frost !
The lovely babe,—its sparkling eye
Is dull'd, convulsed with agony ;
It knew no sin, yet suffer'd so,—
Say, canst thou thus the Father know?
The sun, which shines on all abroad,—
Is that the image of our God?
Oh ! no—it takes far more to shew
The mind of God to man below.
Vain man! reflect—thy thoughts call home :
The Father 's seen in Christ alone !
Justice and mercy there do meet;
In Him the Father 's seen complete.
His love is seen, in that he gave
His own eternal Son to save
Poor ruined man, who, fall'n from God,
In Christ alone regains the road.
" Shew us the Father !" Philip cried :
Our condescending Lord replied—
" Have I so long time been with thee,
And, Philip, hast thou not known me?
" Oh, Philip ! thou canst only see
The Father when thou look'st at me;
I am the way—in me alone
Thou canst approach the Father's throne."
E'en so, vain man ! think not to find
In nature God the Father's mind:
He only can be seen and known
In Christ the everlasting Son !
God's manifested mind His Word,
His living Word, is Christ our Lord:
Conte, then, to Him, and thou wilt find
A Father, ever good and kind !
Liverpool, Oct. 22nd, 1839.

CONTEMPORARY PRESS.

THE GOVERNMENT SYSTEM OF NATIONAL
EDUCATION.
(From the Morning Herald.)
In the evening organ of the Government appeared
last night the following portentous announcement
" We learn from an authority which enables us to state it
as a fact, that the Bishop of Exeter. in the course of a recent
correspondence with Lord John Russell on the subject of
the government scheme of education, has expressed himself
in terms of approval of its principle, and proposes a confer-
ence between the committee of privy council on education
and the bishops, for the purpose of devising measures for
carrying that principle into effect. We understand the whole
correspondence is about to be published, and will, if our in-
formation be correct as to its character, induce a satisfactory
hope that those who have hitherto most opposed its introduc-
tion will be found most active in contributing to its success."
If " the authority" for the alleged approval by the
Bishop of Exeter of the government scheme of national
education be as shadowy a one as the "most positive
authority" of the paper which enjoys the " immediate
patronage of the Queen and court," for the atrocious
fabrication touching Sir Robert Peel, and the answer
given on his behalf to certain Protestants of Ireland, to
engage in controversy upon the subject would be to
grapple with a phantom. We recollect when a former
correspondence took place between the Bishop.of Exe-
ter and Lord John Russell, which ended greatly to the
discredit as well as discomfiture of the latter. The re-
sult of that interchange of epistles was certainly
scarcely of a nature we should have thought to invite
the present Secretary for the Colonies to what Lord
Palmerston would call a " renewal of his diplomatic
relations" with the distinguished prelate who showed
that an over-scrupulous adherence to the truth was not
one of the " weak points" of Lord John's political
character.
Still we are not prepared to deny that a correspond-
ence on the subject of the government scheme of edu•
cation has taken place between the noble lord in ques-
tion and the Bishop of Exeter, Until, however, that
correspondence shall have been published, and we see,
under the Bishop's own signature, an approval of the
principle of the Romano-infidel scheme of popular in-
struction, we shall question the correctness of the state-
ment put forth by the Globe, asserting so splendid, and
yet so melancholy, an instance of episcopal apostacy
from the high and holy cause of scriptural' education.
But supposing that which it requires a great stretch
of imagination, on our part, to conceive even for the
sake of argument—supposing, we say, it should turn
out that its ministerial " authority" has not in this in-
stance deceived our contemporary, but that the corre-
spondence with the Bishop of Exeter bears the inter-
pretation thus put upon it—greatly shall we lament
such a defection from sound principle as the conversion
of the Right Rev. Dr. Phillpots to Mr. Wyse's scheme
of education would show, but we shall not imitate it.
The government journal may indulge in its " satisfac-
tory hope that those who have hitherto most opposed
the introduction of the scheme in question will become
henceforth most active in contributing to its success ;"

but as to ourselves, who were among the first and most
• determined opponents of that Jesuitical scheme, both
in its principle and details, we are not prepared to emu-
late even episcopal tergiversation, and vote " black
white," in compliment to any prelate, party, or power
whatever.
The Romano-infidel scheme of education we call the
government scheme merely in courtesy, because the
government took it under its especial patronage. But
we know that it did not originate with the government,
but with Mr. Wyse and a certain Jesuitical circle that
have long been plotting the unprotestantising of the
popular mind of England. If the popish authors of
that scheme had no opposing protestantism to over-
come in this country, they would have framed a plan
of education somewhat different—a plan in which the
intolerant domination of the papal power would not
have been kept in the background, but brought pro-
minently forward. Under existing circumstances Mr.
Wyse and his colleagues had to conciliate the dissen-
ters, and hold out inducements to the infidels to assist
in overthrowing the authority of the Church of Eng-
land, hoping that the destruction of that great bulwark
of the reformation would allow the Church of Rome to
crush the dissenting sects—the scions from the mighty
trunk—at its leisure and with great facility.
The Jesuitical scheme of education was well con-
trived for its purpose, and that is the strongest reason
why Protestants should resist it with unflinching de-
termination. Has the Bishop of Exeter approved,
indeed, of the principle of this Jesuitical scheme ?
Surely it is impossible ! We can as easily believe that
the I3ishop of Exeter would give his vote in the House
of Lords for the repeal of the Act of Settlement, and
for restoring the former connection,, so diastrous to
England, between the Vatican and St. James's.
National education, based—infitorably based upon
the pure and unadulterated word of God, is the only
system of national education that true Protestants—
whether prelates, peers, or commoners—can conscien-
tiously support. We, of the Church of England,
leave all sects free to act in the education of their
children as they think best. We do not, after the
manner of our "liberal" friends of the Jesuit school,
demand that the compulsory power of the state shall
be employed to force our views upon those who con-
scientiously differ from us. We only demand for our
own opinions that freedom which we concede to others
—a freedom never granted in any Roman Catholic
country to any sects of Protestants. Let, then, the
political dissenters and infidels place their children, if
they please, under Mr. Wyse's system of instruction,
which begins by teaching a cold indifference in mat-
ters of religion, in the hope that the superstitions of
Rome may hereafter be easily planted in a soil from
which vital Christianity shall have been, root and
branch, extirpated. We stand up for that upon which
the reformed religion is founded—SCRIPTURAL EDU-
CATION.
If any bishop of the present day tells us that it is
expedient to sacrifice the scriptural part of popular
education to conciliate the Church of Rome, we refer
him to the writings of the fathers and martyrs of the
reformation—we refer him to the testimonies in sup-
port of scriptural instruction sealed with the blood of
the men who did not allow the base suggestions of
expediency to cross their:minds when the question was
about immortal principles. If he thinks those blood-
sealed testimonies of the Protestant victims of Romish
intolerance and cruelty are not sufficient, we refer him
to the Scriptures themselves—we refer him to the great
mandate to teach the Gospel to all people—we refer
him to the beautiful exhortation, " Suffer little children
to come unto me and forbid them not—for of such is
the kingdom of Heaven." How can ‘4 little children"
come to Christ but through scriptural instruction ? An
education essentially Christian, and therefore scriptu-
ral, can alone prepare them a fitting offering to Him
under whose inspiration the Gospel was written, and
who thus invites the young and innocent to come early.
to their God.
A journal like that from which we have• quoted,
whose opinions for years past have varied with every
shifting of the vane of political opinion at Whitehall,
may think it natural enough, that because any distin-
guished leader of the conservative party chose to take
an opposite course on a vital question from that which
might he reasonably expected of him, therefore the
organs of Protestant opinion should instantly veer
round, and contribute to the success of false princi-
ples-and dangerous errors, which they had been stre-
nuously opposing. But, as one of those organs of
Protestant opinion, we must be allowed to say that we
respect principles more than we do men ; nor can we,
to gratify a prince or prelate, allow those Scriptures
which are the foundation of the Protestant faith, and
of all sound, moral, and religious instruction, to be
made a burnt-offering on the altar of political expedi-
ency.

We imagine the vast body of Protestants who signed
the 3,000 petitions and more against the government
scheme of national education are of the same opinion,
and never will consent to abandon, on any ground
whatever, the great principle, that to educate the peo-
ple well—tp educate tkem to good and not to evil, po-
pular instruction must be of that sound, religious, and
moral kind, which has no other foundation than the
in/adulterated Scriptures,