Illustrations from Scotland.

ARGUMENT BY DR. CANDLISH.-OPINION OF BUNSEN.

MR. GLADSTONE of England recently declared, in speaking of the happy union of religious and secular instruction in the schools in Scotland, that there is the closest and the happiest harmony between the scientific training of the intellect and the religious training of the heart; that he commits a profanation against God and against human nature who would attempt to dissever them; and that where the truths of the Christian faith are fully taught and rightly received, there you will best and most fruitfully pursue the work of that temporal and secular training, which is the specific object of the school. In the acknowledgment and light of the Christian faith, and not in the exclusion of it, that specific ob

ject is to be pursued; for surely one specific result, if not design, of a school from which the Christian religion is by law excluded, will be the product of infidelity.

Dr. Candlish, in speaking recently in Edinburgh, on the importance of retaining the religious element in the common schools, established the point that that element may be introduced without sectarianism, and without offence to any conscience. The children were permitted to avail themselves of the religious instruction in the schools or not according to the pleasure of their parents; but it was found that the Roman Catholics themselves chose the whole course. "Dr. Candlish then showed the non-sectarian character of the education given in the schools, as indicated by the fact that it appeared from the returns of 568 of the schools, that there were in these schools 31,999 scholars whose parents belonged to the Free Church, 10,054 belonging to the Established Church, 614 Roman Catholics, and 9,223 belonging to other denominations. It is a principle of our scheme, said Dr. Candlish, as I believe it is generally in schools in Scotland,

that parents may withdraw their children from religious instruction altogether. They may avail themselves of any one branch of educa tion, and decline to avail themselves of any other branch. That liberty is conceded in most schools in Scotland. I think it a proper principle, and one which greatly facilitates the right settlement of the question. Of the 618 Roman Catholics attending our schools, I have not learned an instance-and I do not believe there is one of an application for the exemption of their children from religious instruction. I believe they generally conform to the whole course of education, unless some priest comes over from the land of intolerance with fresh zeal. But be that as it may. The second statement I have to make on this point is this: We selected 75 schools in the large towns of Scotland, and found that there were in them 4,658 children of parents belonging to the Free Church, 1,904 belonging to the Established Church, 212 Roman Catholics, and 3,357 of other denominations-in all, 4,658 of Free Church children, and 5,487, or a considerable majority, belonging to other denomi

nations; so that our scheme manifestly bears on the face of it the character of thorough catholicism, thorough unsectarianism.”

This is a most important and impressive testimony; and not less important, and applicable to our own case, is the principle justly laid down by Dr. Candlish, that as to the matter of religious instruction, the Scottish educational traditions and hereditary principles of education ought to be regarded; "it was the right of the Scottish people, for there were such hereditary educational principles in Scotland, as made it easy to bring in a system of education that would harmonize all, and place education on a religious, and yet non-sectarian basis. There ought to be, in Scotland, a national system, and that system ought to be, according to the hereditary traditions of Scotland, the use and wont of Scotland, in educational matters, since Scotland was a reformed country."

Now, in regard to ourselves, this right is still clearer and more positive. The hereditary educational principle with us always has been the Bible at the foundation, and religious

instruction from the Bible. It is no new thing. The innovation would be the exclusion of the Bible, a tyrannical defiance and destruction of all our usages from the outset, at the demand of a single sect. The Bible in the schools has been the custom and common law of the schools from their origin. The Bible ousted from the schools is a new and oppressive law sought to be forced upon us by a particular political and ecclesiastical party. We have the right of our forefathers, and of habit and law from the beginning downwards, as well as the right of God and duty, for the Bible in the schools; and none shall take it from us. Dr. Candlish would have the question so settled in Scotland (and it is the right view) as that it shall not be in the power of local boards so much as to raise the question whether there shall be religious teaching; there always has been, and it ought not to be in the power of any to say that there shall not be. "Let there be exceptional cases, if you choose, but surely, the national mind of Scotland being clear, all but unanimous, it will be a grievous hardship, a gross outrage, if we be