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Disputes regarding the meaning embodied by Chalmers in his Educational Document––Narrative suited to throw some light on the subject––Consideration of the Document itself––Testimony respecting it of the Hon. Mr. Fox Maule.

One of the most important controversies which has arisen within the pale of the Romish Church––that between the Jansenists and Jesuits––was made to hinge for many years on a case of disputed meaning in the writings of a certain deceased author. There were five doctrines of a well-defined character which, the Jesuits said, were to be found in the works of Cornelius Jansenius, umquhile Bishop of Ypres, but which, the Jansenists asserted, were not to be found in anything Jansenius had ever written. And in the attempt to decide this simple question of fact, as Pascal calls it, the School of the Sorbonne and the Court of the Inquisition were completely baffled; and zealous Roman Catholics heard without conviction the verdict of councils, and failed to acquiesce in the judgment of even the Pope.

We have been reminded oftener than once of this singular controversy, by the late discussions which have arisen in our church courts regarding the meaning embodied by Chalmers in that posthumous document on the Educational question, which is destined, we hold, to settle the whole 15 controversy. At first we regarded it as matter of wonder that such discussions should have arisen; for we had held that there was really little room for difference respecting the meaning of Chalmers,––a man whose nature it was to deal with broad truths, not with little distinctions; and who had always the will, and certainly did not lack the ability, of making himself thoroughly understood. We have since thought, however, that as there is nothing which has once occurred that may not occur again, what happened to the writings of Jansenius might well happen to one of the writings of Chalmers; and further, that from certain conversations which we had held with the illustrious deceased a few months before his death, on the subject of his paper, and from certain facts in our possession regarding his views, we had spectacles through which to look at the document in question, and a key to his meaning, which most of the disputants wanted. The time has at length come when these helps to the right understanding of so great an authority should be no longer withheld from the public. We shall betray no confidence; and should we be compelled to speak somewhat more in the first person, and of ourselves, than may seem quite accordant with good taste, our readers will, we trust, suffer us to remind them that we do not commit the fault very often, or very offensively, and that the present employment of the personal pronoun, just a little modified by the editorial we, seems inevitably incident to the special line of statement on which we propose to enter.

During the greater part of the years 1845 and 1846, the Editor of the Witness was set aside from his professional labours by a protracted illness, in part at least an effect of the perhaps too assiduous prosecution of these labours at a previous period. He had to cease per force even from taking a very fixed view of what the Church was doing or purposing; and when, early in January 1847, he returned, 16 after a long and dreary period of rustication, in improved health to Edinburgh, he at least possessed the advantage––much prized by artists and authors in their respective walks––of being able to look over the length and breadth of his subject with a fresh eye. And, in doing so, there was one special circumstance in the survey suited to excite some alarm. We found that in all the various schemes of the Free Church, with but one exception, its extensively spread membership and its more active leaders were thoroughly at one; but that in that exceptional scheme they were not at all at one. They were at one in their views respecting the ecclesiastical character of ministers, elders, and church courts, and of the absolute necessity which exists that these, and these only, should possess the spiritual key. Further, they were wholly at one in recognising the command of our adorable Saviour to preach the gospel to all nations, as of perpetual obligation on the Churches. But regarding what we shall term, without taking an undue liberty with the language, the pedagogical teaching of religion, they differed in toto. Practically, and to all intents and purposes, the schoolmaster, in the eye of the membership of our Church, and of the other Scottish Churches, was simply a layman, the proper business of whose profession was the communication of secular learning. And as in choosing their tailors and shoemakers the people selected for themselves the craftsmen who made the best and handsomest shoes and clothes, so, in selecting a schoolmaster for their children, they were sure always to select the teacher who was found to turn out the best scholars.[2] All other things equal, they would have preferred a serious, devout schoolmaster to one who was 17 not serious nor devout, just as, cœteris paribus, they would have preferred a serious shoemaker or tailor to a non-religious maker of shoes or clothes; but religious character was not permitted to stand as a compensatory item for professional skill; nay, men who might be almost content to put up with a botched coat or a botched pair of shoes for the sake of the good man who spoiled them, were particularly careful not to botch, on any account whatever, the education of their children. In a country in which there was more importance attached than in perhaps any other in the world to the religious teaching of the minister, there was so little importance attached to the religious teaching of the schoolmaster, that, when weighed against even a slight modicum of secular qualification, it was found to have no sensible weight. And with this great practical fact some of our leading men seemed to be so little acquainted, that they were going on with the machinery of their educational scheme, on a scale at least co-extensive with the Free Church, as if, like that Church––all-potent in her spiritual character––it had a moving power in the affections of the people competent to speed it on. And it was the great discrepancy with regard to this scheme which existed between the feelings of the people and the anticipations of some of our leading men, clerical and lay, that excited our alarm. Unless that discrepancy be removed, we said––unless the anticipations of the men engaged in the laying down of this scheme be sobered to the level of the feelings of the lay membership of our Church, or, vice versa, the feelings of the lay membership of our Church be raised to the level of the anticipations of our leaders––bankruptcy will be the infallible 18 result. From the contributions of our laymen can the scheme alone derive its support; and if our leaders lay it down on a large scale, and our laymen contribute on a small one, alas for its solvency! Such were our views, and such our inferences, on this occasion; and to Thomas Chalmers, at once our wisest and our humblest man––patient to hear, and sagacious to see––we determined on communicating them.

He had kindly visited the writer, to congratulate him in his dwelling on his return to comparative health and strength; and after a long and serious conversation, in which he urged the importance of maintaining the Witness in honest independency, uninfluenced by cliques and parties, whether secular or ecclesiastical, the prospects of the Free Church educational scheme were briefly discussed. He was evidently struck by the view which we communicated, and received it in far other than that parliamentary style which can politely set aside, with some soothing half-compliment, the suggestions that run counter to a favourite course of policy already lined out and determined upon. In the discrepancy which we pointed out to him he recognised a fact of the practical kind, which rarely fail to influence the affairs upon which they bear; and in accordance with his character––for no man could be more thoroughly convinced that free discussion never hurts a good cause, and that second thoughts are always wiser than first ones––he expressed a wish to see the educational question brought at once to the columns of the Witness, and probed to its bottom. We could not, however, see at that time how the thing was to be introduced in a practical form, and preferred waiting on for an opportunity, which in the course of events soon occurred. The Government came forward with its proposal of educational grants, and the question was raised––certainly not by the writer of these chapters––whether or no the Free Church could conscientiously avail 19 herself of these. It was promptly decided by some few of our leading men, clerical and lay, that she could not; and we saw in the decision, unless carried by appeal to our country ministers and the people, and by them reversed, the introduction of a further element of certain dissolution in our educational scheme.

The status of the schoolmaster had been made so exceedingly ecclesiastical, and his profession so very spiritual, that the money of that Government of the country whose right and duty it is to educate its people, was regarded as too vile and base a thing to be applied to his support. There were even rumours afloat that our schoolmasters were on the eve of being ordained. We trust, however, that the report was a false one, or, at worst, that the men who employed the word had made a slip in their English, and for the time at least had forgot its meaning. Ordination means that special act which gives status and standing within the ecclesiastical province. It implies the enjoined use of that spiritual key which is entrusted by Christ to His Church, that it may be employed just as He directs, and in no other way. The Presbyterian Church has as much right to institute prelates as to ordain pedagogues. ‘Remember,’ said an ancient Scottish worthy, in ‘lifting up his protestation’ in troublous times, ‘that the Lord has fashioned His Kirk by the uncounterfeited work of His own new creation; or, as the prophet speaketh, “hath made us, and not we ourselves;” and that we must not presume to fashion a new portraiture of a Kirk, and a new form of divine service, which God in His word hath not before allowed; seeing that, were we to extend our authority further than the calling we have of God doth permit––as, namely, if we should (as God forbid!) authorize the authority of bishops––we should bring into the Kirk of God the ordinance of man.’ If men are to depart from the ‘law and the testimony,’ we hold that the especial mode of their departure may be very 20 much a matter of taste, and would, for our own part, prefer bishops and cardinals to poor dominies of the gospel, somewhat out at the elbows.[3] The fine linen and the purple, the cope and the stole, would at least have the effect of giving that sort of pleasant relief to the widespread sable of our Assemblies which they possessed of yore, ere they for ever lost the gay uniform of the Lord High Commissioner, the gold lace of his dragoon officers, and the glitter of his pages in silver and scarlet. ‘We are two of the humblest servants of Mother Church,’ said the Prior and his companion to Wamba, the jester of Rotherwood. ‘Two of the humblest servants of Mother Church!’ repeated Wamba; ‘I should rather like to see her seneschals, her chief butlers, and her other principal domestics.’

We again saw Chalmers, and, in a corner apart from a social party, of which his kind and genial heart formed the attractive centre, we found he thoroughly agreed with us in holding that the time for the discussion of the educational question had fully come. It was a question, he said, on which he had not yet fully made up his mind: there was, however, one point on which he seemed clear––though, at this distance of time, we cannot definitively say whether the remark regarding it came spontaneously from himself, or was suggested by any query of ours––and that was the right and duty of a Government to instruct, and consequently of the governed to receive the instruction thus communicated, if in itself good. We remarked in turn, that there were various points on which we also had to ‘grope our way’ (a phrase to which the reader will find him referring in his note, which we subjoin); but that regarding the 21 inherently secular character of the schoolmaster, and the right and duty of the Government to employ him in behalf of its people, we had no doubt whatever. And so, parting for the time, we commenced that series of articles which, as they were not wholly without influence in communicating juster views of the place and status of the schoolmaster than had formerly obtained in the Free Church, and as they had some little effect in leading the Church to take at least one step in averting the otherwise inevitable ruin which brooded over her educational scheme, the readers of the Witness may perhaps remember. We were met in controversy on the question by a man, the honesty of whose purpose in this, as in every other matter, and the warmth of whose zeal for the Church which he loved, and for which he laboured, no one has ever questioned, and no one ever will. And if, though possessed of solid, though perhaps not brilliant talent, he failed on this occasion ‘in finding his hands,’ we are to seek an explanation of his failure simply in the circumstance that truths of principle––such as those which establish the right and duty of every Government to educate its people, or which demonstrate the schoolmaster to possess a purely secular, not an ecclesiastical standing––or yet truths of fact, such as that for many years the national teaching of Scotland has not been religious, or that the better Scottish people will on no account or consideration sacrifice the secular education of their children to the dream of a spiritual pedagogy,––are truths which can neither be controverted nor set aside. He did on one occasion, during the course––what he no doubt afterwards regretted––raise against us the cry of infidelity,––a cry which, when employed respecting matters on which Christ or His apostles have not spoken, really means no more than that he who employs it, if truly a good man, is bilious, or has a bad stomach, or has lost the thread of his argument or the equanimity of his temper. Feeling somewhat annoyed, 22 however, we wished to see Chalmers once more; but the matter had not escaped his quick eye, and his kind heart suggested the remedy. In the course of the day in which our views and reasonings were posted as infidel, we received the following note from Morningside:––

Morningside, March 13, 1847.

My dear Sir,––You are getting nobly on on education; not only groping your way, but making way, and that by a very sensible step in advance this day.

On my own mind the truth evolves itself very gradually; and I am yet a far way from the landing-place. Kindest respects to Mrs. Miller; and with earnest prayer for the comfort and happiness of both, I ever am, my dear Sir, yours very truly,

Thomas Chalmers.

Hugh Miller, Esq.

In short, Thomas Chalmers, by his sympathy and his connivance, had become as great an infidel as ourselves; and we have submitted to our readers the evidence of the fact, fully certified under his own hand.[4] There is a sort of perfection in everything; and perfection once reached, deterioration usually begins. And when, in bandying the phrases infidel and infidelity––like the feathered missiles in the game of battledore and shuttlecock––they fell upon Chalmers, we think there was a droll felicity in the accident, which constitutes for it an irresistible claim of being the terminal one in the series. The climax reached its point of extremest elevation; for even should our infidel-dubbers do their best or worst now, it is not at all likely they will find out a second Chalmers to hit.

We concluded our course of educational articles; and though we afterwards saw the distinguished man to whom 23 our eye so frequently turned, as, under God, the wise pilot of the Free Church, and were honoured by a communication from him, dictated to his secretary, we did not again touch on the subject of education. We were, however, gratified to learn, from men much in his confidence and company––we hope we do not betray trust in referring to the Rev. Mr. Tasker of the West Port as one of these––that he regarded our entire course with a feeling of general approval akin to that to which he had given expression in his note. It further gratifies us to reflect that our course had the effect of setting his eminently practical mind a-working on the whole subject, and led to the production of the inestimably valuable document, long and carefully pondered, which will do more to settle the question of national education in Scotland than all the many volumes which have been written regarding it. As in a well-known instance in Scottish story, it is the ‘dead Douglas’ who is to ‘win the field.’

But we lag in our narrative. That melancholy event took place which cast a shade of sadness over Christendom; and in a few weeks after, the posthumous document, kindly communicated to us by the family of the deceased, appeared in the columns of the Witness. We perused it with intense interest; and what we saw in the first perusal was, that Chalmers had gone far beyond us; and in the second, that, in laying down his first principles, he had looked at the subject, as was his nature, in a broader and more general aspect, and had unlocked the difficulty which it presented in a more practical and statesmanlike manner. We had, indeed, considered in the abstract the right and duty of the civil magistrate to educate his people; but our main object being to ward off otherwise inevitable bankruptcy from a scheme of our Church, and having to deal with a sort of vicious Cameronianism, that would not accept of the magistrate’s money, even though he gave the Bible and the Shorter Catechism along with it, we had 24 merely contended that money given in connection with the Bible and Shorter Catechism is a very excellent thing, and especially so to men who cannot fulfil their obligations or pay their debts without it. But Chalmers had looked beyond the difficulties of a scheme, to the emergencies of a nation.

At the request of many of our readers, we have reprinted his document in full, as it originally appeared.[5] First, let it be remarked that, after briefly stating what he deemed the optimity of the question, he passes on to what he considered the only mode of settling it practically, in the present divided state of the Church and country. And in doing so he lays down, as a preliminary step, the absolute right and duty of the Government to educate, altogether independently of the theological differences or divisions which may obtain among the people or in the Churches. ‘As there seems no reason,’ he says, ‘why, because of these unresolved differences, a public measure for the health of all, for the recreation of all, for the economic advancement of all, should be held in abeyance, there seems as little reason why, because of these differences, a public measure for raising the general intelligence of all should be held in abeyance.’ Such is the principle which he enunciates regarding the party possessing the right to educate. Let the reader next mark in what terms he speaks of the party to be educated, or under whose immediate superintendence the education is to be conducted. Those who most widely misunderstand the Doctor’s meaning––from the circumstance, perhaps, that their views are most essentially at variance with those which he entertained––seem to hold that this absolute right on the part of Government is somehow conditional on the parties to be educated, or to superintend the education, coming forward to them in the character of Churches. They deem it necessary to the integrity of his meaning, that Presbyterians should come forward as Presbyterians, 25 Puseyites as Puseyites, Papists as Papists, and Socinians as Socinians; in which case, of course, all could be set right so far as the Free Church conscience was concerned in the matter, by taking the State’s grant with the one hand, and holding out an indignant protest against its extension to the erroneous sects in the other. But that Chalmers could have contemplated anything so monstrous as that Scotchmen should think of coming forward simply as Scotchmen, they cannot believe. He must have regarded the State’s unconditional right to educate as conditional after all, and dependent on the form assumed by the party on which or through which it was to be exercised. Let the reader examine for himself, and see whether there exists in the document a single expression suited to favour such a view. Nothing can be plainer than the words ‘Parliament,’ ‘Government,’ ‘State,’ ‘Legislature,’ employed to designate the educating party on the one hand; and surely nothing plainer than the words ‘people,’ ‘men of all Churches and denominations,’ ‘families of the land,’ and ‘society at large,’ made use of in designating the party to be educated, or entrusted with the educational means or machinery, on the other. There is a well-grounded confidence expressed in the Christian and philanthropic zeal which obtain throughout society; but the only bodies ecclesiastical which we find specially named––if, indeed, one of these can be regarded as at all ecclesiastical––are the ‘Unitarians and the Catholics.’ It was with the broad question of national education in its relation to two great parties placed in happy opposition, as the ‘inner hall of legislation’ and the ‘outer field of society,’ that we find Dr. Chalmers mainly dealing. And yet the document does contain palpable reference to the Government scheme. There is one clause in which it urges the propriety of ‘leaving [the matter of religion] to the parties who had to do with the erection and management of the schools which [the rulers of the country] had 26 been called on to assist.’ But the greater includes the less, and the much that is general in the paper is in no degree neutralized by the little in it that is particular. The Hon. Mr. Fox Maule could perhaps throw some additional light on this matter. It was at his special desire, and in consequence of a conversation on the subject which he held with Chalmers, that the document was drawn up. The nature of the request could not, of course, alter whatever is absolutely present in what it was the means of producing; but it would be something to know whether what the statesman asked was a decision on a special educational scheme, or––what any statesman might well desire to possess––the judgment of so wise and great a man on the all-important subject of national education.

It will be found that the following valuable letters from Dr. Guthrie and the Hon. Mr. Fox Maule determine the meaning of Dr. Chalmers on his own authority:––

2, Lauriston Lane, March 5, 1850.

My dear Mr. Miller,––When such conflicting statements were advanced as to the bearing of Dr. Chalmers’ celebrated paper on education, although I had no doubt in my own mind that the view you had taken of that valuable document was the correct one, and had that view confirmed by a conversation I had with his son-in-law, Mr. M’Kenzie, who heard Dr. Chalmers discuss the matter in London, and acted, indeed, as his amanuensis in writing that paper; yet I thought it were well also to see whether Mr. Maule could throw any light on the subject. I wrote him with that object in view; and while we must regret that we are called to differ from some most eminent and excellent friends on this important question, it both comforts and confirms us to find another most important testimony in the letter which I now send to you, in favour of our opinion, that Dr. Chalmers, had God spared him to this day, would have 27 lifted up his mighty voice to advocate the views in which we are agreed.

Into the fermenting mind of the public it is the duty of every one to cast in whatever may, by God’s blessing, lead to a happy termination of this great question; and with this view I send you the letter which I have had the honour to receive from Mr. Maule.––Believe me, yours ever,

Thomas Guthrie.

Grosvenor Street, March 4, 1850.

My dear Dr. Guthrie,––When you wrote me some time since upon the subject of the communication made to me by the late Dr. Chalmers upon the all-important question of education, I could not take upon myself to say positively (though I had very little doubt in my mind) whether that document took its origin in a desire expressed by me to have Dr. Chalmers’ opinion on the general question of education, or merely upon the scheme laid down and pursued by the Committee of Privy Council. My impression has always been, that Dr. Chalmers addressed himself to the question as a whole; and on looking over my papers a few days since, I find that impression quite confirmed by the following sentence, in a note in Dr. Chalmers’ handwriting, bearing date 21st May 1847:––‘I hope that by to-morrow night I shall have prepared a few brief sentences on the subject of education.’

None of us thought how inestimable these brief sentences were to become, forming, as they do, the last written evidence of the tone of his great mind on this subject.

Should you address yourself to this question, you are, in my opinion, fully justified in dealing with the memorandum as referring to general and national arrangements, and not to those which are essentially of a temporary and varying character.––Believe me, with great esteem, yours sincerely,

F. Maule.