tive church, there were not under the rule of the clergy any schools of general instruction; and we cannot infer that the apostles or their disciples wished to have such schools; otherwise, when the Emperor became a convert, the foundation of such schools would have been concerted with him; it seems, however, that Christians were aware that their Master's kingdom was not of this world; and, though they studied rhetoric themselves, they did not assert their claim to modify or diminish the opportunities of others in studying, as occasion offered, the various branches of secular knowledge then extant.

The facts of Christianity seem not to have been looked upon as requiring iteration and re-iteration, so much as a hearty expression of faith; it was a high privilege to be enabled to hear them, and as their inculcation was in no way dependent upon the ordinary cultivation of intellect, the process of secular education neither retarded, nor was retarded by, the higher office of evangelism; in fact, the persecutions to which the early Christians were subject, are a sufficient testimony that in public schools their doctrines could not have been taught; yet, they were taught in those days, and perhaps more successfully than they have been subsequently.

After the conversion of Constantine, Christianity could be safely professed; and, accordingly, we find that Christians. occupied public posts in almost all departments of the Empire, and could fearlessly teach their doctrines; some of the most learned amongst them, having been, as stated above, summoned by Constantine to assist in educating the royal family. The apostacy of one of that family deserves mention here, in order to enable me to allude to his subsequent dealings with regard to Christian teachers; and those dealings I allude to here, because they have been inadvertently misrepresented by the present Right Reverend Bishop of Sydney. It is well known that Julian, who had been a

Christian Catechumen, and had publicly read the Scriptures in the church at Nicomedia, was converted from Christianity to Paganism when about twenty years of age. On his accession to the throne he endeavoured, by all insidious, and some flagrant means, to quench the flame of Christianity, and make the Empire heathenish as himself. One of his laws was a prohibition of the teaching by Christians, the arts of grammar and rhetoric; and he, to use the words of Gibbon, "vainly contended that Christians ought to be contented with expounding the Gospels in the churches." His edict appears to have included the physicians and professors of all the liberal arts, and he himself reserved the right of approbation of candidates for the office of teacher, and "was authorised by the laws to corrupt, or to punish the religious constancy of the most learned among the Christians." "Then," continues Gibbon, 66 as soon as the resignation of the more obstinate teachers had established the rival dominion of the Pagan sophists, Julian invited the rising generation to resort with freedom to the public schools, in a just confidence that their tender minds would receive the impressions of literature and idolatry. If the greatest part of the Christian youth should be deterred by their own scruples, or by those of their parents, from accepting this dangerous mode of instruction, they must, at the same time, relinquish the benefits of a liberal education."

Now what object the Bishop of Sydney could have in making out Julian's conduct worse than it really was, I am at a loss to conceive. Had his Lordship been a person open to suspicion of unscrupulous motives, his meaning would be intelligible, though indefensible, for he was speaking of the National system of education, and, therefore, in exaggerating Julian's crimes, he was in effect condemning their asserted similitude. We cannot of course, suspect his Lordship of foul motives, and my duty is, therefore, without recrimination, to set him right as far as I may, by the above

historical reference. These were his Lordship's words, "Julian prohibited Christians from keeping any schools in which their Scriptures should be read, or the doctrines of their faith be explicitly or exclusively taught. * * * His professions were specious, but his real object was to undermine the Gospel; and this was the course he pursued as most effectual for his purpose. God forbid that I should impute any such purpose to those who now-a-days contend in like manner for a suppression and exclusion of all doctrinal teaching from our schools. They have, I am sure, no such intention; but yet, against their intention the effect may nevertheless follow."

Few minds can be so innocent of analysis as to tolerate a simile between Julian's Pagan Edict, and a system which has ever stipulated that its teachers shall be Christian, and that Christian ministers shall have free access to its pupils.

Concerning this unfair comparison I felt it necessary to forward to the paper in which the Bishop's speech was inserted, the following remarks, and I now transcribe them as a corollary to my present objection to the comparison he instituted. "I could have wished that the Bishop had been less equivocal in the terms he used with reference to the modern system of general education, and the tyrannical system of Julian the Apostate. Cursory readers may imagine that he reprobated both alike; a thing impossible-seeing that the Queen of England is the promoter of the National system, and is likewise the head of the Church of England, and, consequently, the fountain whence the Bishop derives his honour and his place. Now the first and second canons of the Church, the preamble to our Articles, and the 37th Article itself, lay down the principle that the “ Queen's power is supreme, and that all ecclesiastical persons, having cure of souls, and all other preachers and readers of divinity lectures, shall, to the

utmost of their wit, knowledge, and learning, purely and sincerely, without any colour or dissimulation, teach, manifest, open and declare, four times every year at the least, that the (King's or) Queen's power in England, Scotland and Ireland, and all other, (his or) her dominions and countries. is the highest power under God, to whom all men within the same owe most loyalty and obedience, afore and above all other powers and potentates in the earth.”

It follows, therefore, that if the Bishop of Sydney were to oppose the National system, of which the Queen is a supporter, he would be virtually impugning the constitution. of the church to which he belongs, which would be absurd. Doubtless if he thinks the Queen in error he may resign his place, or refuse to act in it, or he may by the constitutional method of petitioning, endeavour to effect a change in the matter in hand; but it is as clear as the noon-day sun, that he cannot consistently deny, in his place of Bishop, the very authority which has made him a Bishop; and that, too, of a Church whose fabric is precluded by its constitution from existing in opposition to the law of the land."

These remarks are as applicable now as when I wrote them a year and a half ago, and therefore I insert them, though they form, perhaps, a tedious parenthesis.

The schemes of Julian perished with him. On the accession of Jovian, Christianity became again the religion of the court, and through many succeeding ages, Goth after Goth, and Vandal after Vandal, came into contact with the religion of the Bible, only to profess their allegiance to it; and after the end of the fourth century, when Symmachus became silent, and when the senate decided on the question submitted to them by Theodosius, whether Christianity or Paganism should be the religion of Rome, it may be said that the entire people became nominally Christian. I must not, however, pass over the conduct of Valentinian with respect to public schools.

I have already stated that Constantine gave no power to the clergy to interfere with public schools, and this fact, I may remark, arose in no manner from the absence of clerical persons, for they were sufficiently numerous to supply several hundred ecclesiastics to attend the cathedrals of Carthage and Constantinople.

The constitution of the schools founded by Valentinian in Rome and in Constantinople, is a proof that education was in his day still allowed to remain in the course prescribed in olden Scripture, and which, neither by our Saviour nor by his apostles, was recommended to be changed.

The professors of one of the above schools were thirty-one in number, and professed various branches of learning.

"One philosopher and two lawyers, five sophists, and ten grammarians for the Greek, and three orators and ten grammarians for the Latin tongue, besides seven scribes, or, as they were then styled antiquarians, whose laborious pens supplied the public library with fair and correct copies of the classic writers. The rule of conduct prescribed to the students, is the more curious, as it affords the first outlines of the form and discipline of a modern university. It was required that they should bring proper certificates from the magistrates of their native province. Their names, professions, and places of abode, were regularly entered in a public register. The studious youth were prohibited from wasting their time in feasts or in the theatre, and the term of their education was limited to the age of twenty. The præfect of the city was empowered to chastise the idle and refractory by stripes or expulsion; and he was directed to make an annual report to the master of the offices, that the knowledge and abilities of the scholars might be usefully employed to the public service." It is to be observed that the professors in the college were all selected for the inculcation of secular and general learning, and that the visitation of the establishment was controlled by the præfect of the city; but it must