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Objections urged by the Free Church Presbytery of Glasgow against the Educational Movement––Equally suited to bear against the Scheme of Educational Grants––Great superiority of Territorial over Denominational Endowment––The Scottish People sound as a whole, but some of the Scottish Sects very unsound––State of the Free Church Educational Scheme.

‘Whereas attempts are now being made to reform the parish schools of Scotland, on the principle of altogether excluding religion from national recognition as an element in the national system of education, and leaving it solely to private parties to determine in each locality whether any or what religious instruction will be introduced into the parochial schools,––it is humbly overtured to the Venerable the General Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland, to declare that this Church can be no party to any plan of education based on the negation of religion in the general, or of the national faith in particular,’ etc.

Such is the gist of that ‘Overture on Education’ which was carried some three weeks ago by a majority of the Free Church Presbytery of Glasgow. It has the merit of being a clear enunciation of meaning; of being also at least as well fitted to express the views of the Established as of the Free Church courts in Glasgow and elsewhere, and a great deal better suited to serve as a cloak to their policy; and, further, by a very slight adaptation, it could be made to bear as directly against State grants given for educational purposes, if dissociated from the religious certificate, as against State endowments given for the same purpose, when dissociated from statutory religious requirement. It is the religious certificate––most anomalously demanded of denominations diametrically opposed to each other in their 51 beliefs, and subversive of each other in their teachings––that constitutes in the affair of educational grants the recognition of religion on the part of the State. Educational grants dissociated from the religious certificate are educational grants dissociated from the State recognition of religion. The fact that the certificates demanded should be of so anomalous a character, is simply a reflection of the all-important fact that the British people are broken up into antagonistic Churches and hostile denominations, and that the British Government is representative. And that men such as those members and office-bearers of our Church who hold the middle position between that occupied by Mr. Gibson of Glasgow on the one hand, and Dr. Begg of Edinburgh on the other, should see no other way of availing themselves of the educational grants, with a good conscience, than by getting rid of the religious recognition, only serves to show that they are quite as sensible as their opponents in the liberal section of the enormous difficulty of the case, and can bethink themselves of no better mode of unlocking it. For it will not be contended, that if in the matter of grants there is to be no recognition of religion on the part of the State, the want of it could be more adequately supplied by sects, as such, denominationally divided, than by the people of Scotland, as such, territorially divided; seeing that sects, as such, include Papists, Puseyites, Socinians, and Seceders,––Muggletonians, Juggletonians, New Jerusalemites, and United Presbyterians,––Free-thinking Christians, Free-Willers, and Free Churchmen. Nor can we see either the wisdom or the advantage of any scheme of Government inquiry into the educational destitution of a locality, that, instead of supplying the want which it found, would merely placard the place by a sort of feuing ticket––destined, we are afraid, in many instances to be sadly weather-bleached––which would intimate to the sects in general, that were any one of them to come forward 52 and enact the part of school-builder and pedagogue, the State would undertake for a portion of the expenses. We suppose the advertisement on the ticket would run somewhat as follows:––‘Wanted by the Government, A Church to erect a School. Terms Liberal, and no Certificate of Religious Teaching demanded. N.B.––Papists, Puseyites, and Socinians perfectly eligible.’[8]

Leaving, however, to profounder intellects than our own the adjustment of the nice principles involved in this matter, let us advert to what we deem the practical advantages of a territorial scheme of educational endowments over a denominational 53 scheme of educational grants. At present, all or any of the sects may come forward as such, whatever their character or teaching, and, on fulfilling certain conditions, receive assistance from the Government in the form of an educational grant; whereas, by the scheme which we would fain see set in its place, it would be only the more solid people of districts––let us suppose parishes––that would be qualified to come forward to choose for themselves their parochial State-endowed teachers. And at least one of the advantages of this scheme over the other must be surely obvious and plain. Denominationally, there is much unsoundness in Scotland; territorially, there is very little. There exist, unhappily, differences among our Scottish Presbyterians; but not the less on that account has Presbyterianism, in its three great divisions––Voluntary, Establishment, and Free Church––possessed itself of the land in all its length and breadth. The only other form of religion that has a territorial existence in Scotland at all is Popery, and Popery holds merely a few darkened districts of the outer Hebrides and of the Highlands. It would fail, out of the one thousand one hundred parish schools of the country, to carry half-a-dozen; and no other form of religious error would succeed in carrying so much as one parish school. There is no Socinian district in Scotland; old Scotch Episcopacy has not its single parish; and high Puseyism has not its half, or quarter, or even tithe of a parish. That Church of Scotland which Knox founded, with its offshoots the Secession and Relief bodies, has not laboured in vain; and through the blessing of God on these labours, Scotland, as represented by its territorial majorities, is by far the soundest and most orthodox country in the world. A wise and patriotic man––at once a good Scot and a judicious Churchman––would, we think, hesitate long ere he flung away so solid an advantage, won to us by the labours, the contendings, the sufferings of reformers, confessors, 54 martyrs, and ministers of the truth, from the days of Melville and of Henderson, down to those of the Erskines and of Chalmers. He would at least not fail to ask himself whether that to which what was so unequivocally substance was to be sacrificed, was in itself substance or shadow.

Let us next remark, that the Scottish national schools, while they thus could not fail to be essentially sound on the territorial scheme––just because Scotland is itself essentially sound as a nation––might, and would in very many instances, be essentially unsound on a denominational one. There is no form of religious error which may not, in the present state of things, have, as we have said, its schools supported in part by a Government grant, and which may not have its pupil-teachers trained up to disseminate deadly error at the public expense among the youthhead of the future. Edinburgh, for instance, has its one Popish street––the Cowgate; but it has no Popish parish: it has got very little Popery in George Square and its neighbourhood,––very little at the Bristo Port,––very little in Broughton Street; and yet in all these localities, territorially Protestant, Papists have got their religion-teaching schools, in which pupil-teachers, paid by the State, are in the course of being duly qualified for carrying on the work of perversion and proselytism. St. Patrick’s school, in which, as our readers were so lately shown, boys may spend four years without acquiring even the simple accomplishment of reading, has no fewer than five of these embryo perverters supported by the Government. Puseyism has, in the same way, no territorial standing on the northern shores of the Frith of Forth; and yet at least one Free Church minister, located in one of the towns which stud that coast, could tell of a well-equipped Puseyite school in his immediate neighbourhood, supported in part by the Government grant, that, by the superiority of the secular education which it 55 supplies, is drawing away Presbyterian, nay, even Free Church children, from the other schools of the locality. On the territorial principle, we repeat, schools such as these, which rest on the denominational basis alone, could not possibly receive the support and countenance of the Legislature. And let the reader remark, that should the Free Church succeed in getting rid of the anomalous religious certificate, and yet continue to hold by the denominational basis, something worse than mere denomination would scarce fail to step in. The Combeite might then freely come forward to teach at the public expense, that no other soul of man has yet been ascertained to exist than the human brain, and no other superintending Providence than the blind laws of insensate matter. Nay, even Socialism, just a little disguised, might begin to build and teach for the benefit of the young, secure of being backed and assisted in its work by the civil magistrate. Further, should the grant scheme be rendered more flexible, i.e. extended to a lower grade of qualification, and thus the public purse be applied to the maintenance and perpetuation of a hedge-school system of education,––or should it be rendered more liberal, i.e. should the Government be induced to do proportionally more, and the school-builders be required to do proportionally less,––superstition and infidelity would, in the carrying out of their schemes of perversion, have, in consequence, just all the less to sacrifice and to acquire. According to the present arrangement, a schoolmaster must realize, from salary and fees united, the sum of forty-five annual pounds, and be, besides, furnished with a free house, ere he can receive from the Government a grant on its lowest scale, viz. fifteen pounds;[9] and whatever judgment 56 may be formed of the proportion in which the State contributes, there can be no question that the general arrangement is a wise one. Sermonizing dominies could be had, no doubt, at any price; and there can be as little doubt that, at any price, would the great bulk of them turn out to be ‘doons hard bargains;’ but it is wholly impossible that a country should have respectable and efficient teachers under from sixty to eighty pounds a year. The thing, we repeat, is wholly impossible; and the State, in acting, as in this arrangement, on the conviction, does but its duty to its people. The some sixty or seventy pounds, however, would be as certainly realized as under the present arrangement, were it Government that contributed the forty-five pounds, and the denomination or society the fifteen and the free house; and this, of course, would be eminently liberal. But what would be the effects of so happy a change? It might in some degree relieve the Free Church Scheme from financial difficulty; but would it do nothing more? There are Puseyite ladies in Scotland, high in rank and influence, and possessed of much wealth and great zeal, who are already building their schools, in the hope of unprotestantizing their poor lapsed country, spiritually ruined by the Reformation. The liberality that might in part enable the Free Church Education Committee to discharge its obligations at the rate of twenty shillings per pound, would be a wonderful godsend to them; seeing that they would have little else to do, under a scheme so liberal, than simply to erect schoolhouses on the widespread domains of their husbands or fathers, and immediately commence perverting the children of the nation at the national cost. It would be no less advantageous to the Society of the Propaganda, and would enable it to spare its own purse, 57 by opening to it that of the people. The Socinian, the Combeite, the semi-Socialist––none of them very much disposed to liberality themselves––would all share in that of the Government; and their zeal, no longer tied down to inactivity by the dread of pecuniary sacrifice or obligation, would find wings and come abroad. Surely, with such consequences in prospect, our Free Church readers would do well to ponder the nature and demands of the crisis at which they have now arrived. Our country and our Church have in reality but one set of interests; and a man cannot be a bad Scot without being a bad Free Churchman too. Let them decide in this matter, not under the guidance of an oblique eye, squinted on little temporary difficulties or hypothetical denominational advantages, but influenced by considerations of the permanent welfare of their country, and of their abiding obligations to their God.

But why, it may be asked of the writer, if you be thus sensible of the immense superiority of a territorial scheme of educational endowments over a denominational scheme of educational grants,––why did you yourself urge, some three years ago, that the Free Church should avail herself of these very grants? Our reply is sufficiently simple. The denominational scheme of grants was the only scheme before us at the time; these grants were, we saw, in danger of being rejected by the Free Church on what we deemed an unsound and perilous principle, which was in itself in no degree Free Church; and last, not least, we saw further, that if the Church did not avail herself of these grants, there awaited on her Educational Scheme––ominously devoid of that direct divine mandate which all her other schemes possessed––inevitable and disastrous bankruptcy. But circumstances have greatly changed. The Free Church is no longer in any danger from the principle which would have rejected Government assistance. There is now a territorial scheme brought full before the view of the 58 country; and, further, the Government grants have wholly failed to preserve our Educational Scheme from the state of extreme pecuniary embarrassment which we too surely anticipated. Salaries of £15 and £20 per annum are greatly less than adequate for the support and remuneration of even the lower order of teachers, especially in thinly-peopled districts of country, where pupils are few and the fees inconsiderable. But at these low rates it was determined, in the programme of the Free Church Educational Scheme, that about three-fourths of the Church’s teachers should be paid; and there are scores and hundreds among them who regulated their expenditure on the arrangement. For at least the last two years, however, the Education Committee has been paying its £15 salaries at the reduced rate of £10, and its £20 salaries at the rate of £13, 13s. 4d.; and those embarrassments, of which the reduction was a consequence, have borne with distressful effect on the Committee’s employés. However orthodox their creed, their circumstances have in many instances become Antinomian; nor, while teaching religion to others, have they been able in every instance to conform to one of its simplest demands––‘Owe no man anything.’

There were several important items, let us remark, in which we over-estimated the amount of assistance which the Scheme was to receive from the Government; and this mainly from our looking at the matter in the gross, as a question of proportion––so much granted for so much raised––without taking into account certain conditions demanded by the Minutes of Council on the one hand, and a certain course of management adopted on the part of our Education Committee on the other. The grant is given in proportion to salary of one to two (we at present set aside the element of fees): a salary of thirty pounds is supplemented by a grant of fifteen pounds,––a salary of forty pounds by a grant of twenty,––a salary of fifty by a grant 59 of twenty-five,––and so on; and we were sanguine enough to calculate, that an aggregate sum of some ten or twelve thousand pounds raised by the Church for salaries, would be supplemented by an aggregation of grants from the Government to the amount of some five or six thousand pounds more. The minimum sum regarded as essentially necessary for carrying on the Free Church Educational Scheme had been estimated at twenty thousand pounds. If the Free Church raise but twelve thousand of these, we said, Government will give her six thousand additional in the form of grants, and some two thousand additional, or so, for the training of her pupil-teachers; and the Church will thus be enabled to realize her minimum estimate. We did not take the fact into account, that of our Free Church teachers a preponderating majority should fail successfully to compete for the Government money; nor yet that the educational funds should be so broken up into driblet salaries, attached to schools in which the fees were poor and the pupils few, that the schoolmaster, even though possessed of the necessary literary qualification, would in many cases be some twenty, or even thirty, pounds short of the necessary money qualification, i.e. the essential forty-five annual pounds. We did not, we say, take these circumstances into account,––indeed, it was scarce possible that we could have done so; and so we immensely over-estimated the efficacy of the State grant in maintaining the solvency of our Educational Scheme. We learn from Dr. Reid’s recent Report to our metropolitan church court, that of the forty-two Free Church teachers connected with the Presbytery of Edinburgh, and in receipt of salaries from the Education Committee, only thirteen have been successful in obtaining Government certificates of merit. And even this is a rather high average, compared with that of the other districts; for we have ascertained, that of the six hundred and eighty-nine teachers of the Free Church scattered 60 over the kingdom, not more than a hundred and twenty-nine have received the Government grant. There are, however, among the others, teachers who have failed to attain to it, not from any want of the literary qualification––for some of them actually possess the parchment certificate bearing the signature of Lansdowne––but simply because they are unfortunate enough to lack the pecuniary one.

That which we so much dreaded has come, we repeat, upon our Educational Scheme. The subject is a painfully delicate one, and we have long kept aloof from it; but truth, and truth only, can now enable the Free Church and her people to act, in this emergency, as becomes the character which they bear, and the circumstances in which they are placed. Let us not fall into the delusion of deeming the mere array of our Free Church schools and teachers––their numbers and formidable length of line––any matter of congratulation; nor forget, in our future calculations, that if the Free Church now realizes from £10,000 to £12,000 yearly for educational purposes, she would require to realize some £5000 or £6000 more in order to qualify her to meet her existing liabilities, estimated at the very moderate rates laid down in the programme. The £5000 or £6000 additional, instead of enabling her to erect a single additional school, would only enable her to pay in full her teachers’ salaries. And so it is obviously a delusion to hold that our Free Church Educational Scheme supplies in reality two-thirds of our congregations with teachers, seeing that these teachers are only two-thirds paid. We are still some £5000 or £6000 short of supplying the two-thirds, and some £6000 or £7000 more of supplying the whole. And even were the whole of our own membership to be supplied, the grand query, How is our country to be educated,––our parish schools to be restored to usefulness and the Scotch people,––and Scotland herself to resume 61 and maintain her old place among the nations?––would come back upon us as emphatically as now. Judging from what has been already done, and this after every nerve has been strained in the Sisyphisian work of rolling up-hill an ever-returning stone, it seems wholly impossible that we should ever succeed in educating the young of even our own congregations; and how, then, save on some great national scheme, is a sinking nation to be educated?