EDUCATION IN SYDNEY.

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attends to the Biblical instruction in the schools of Sydney, and it is a part of the obligatory curriculum. Of course there is permission to withdraw; but I was informed by a high authority that as many as 145 Jews were regularly in attendance at the Scripture lessons in one school, and that in only one case for many years had a desire been expressed for withdrawal. Still, the method cannot be said to work well. Whilst I was in Sydney the Presbyterian Assembly passed a resolution complaining of the neglect of this extra service, and urging the ministers to pay more attention to it. Here and there large classes are gathered, and the work is well and ably done, but I heard very few speak in its favour.

Judging the trend of the forces at work in the life of Greater Britain to-day, it is obvious that it is increasingly felt that the first duty of the State is to equip the younger citizens to make the best and most of human life; to render all the accumulated stores of the commonwealth available to them, and to fit them for the wise use of all this wealth; to create in them a sense of belonging to a great people with an inspiring history and a glorious future; to qualify them for industrial, agricultural or pastoral work; and finally to develop the sense of duty, to quicken and inform the conscience, so that they may be just, upright, and useful citizens.

This, too, is apparent in the schools of the future. The Bible will be used as one of the best instruments the State possesses for building up the Commonwealth. More and more it is seen that it is a book for the human race; a citizen's book, wholly without any sectarian bias; greater than all the creeds and all the theologies. Its histories are of the rise and fall of nations; its biographies are of State builders like Moses and David; its prophets are statesmen and patriots; its laws are laws for the collective life of man; its songs are the ballads of a people, and its proverbs are the sayings of the wiser leaders of the organised life of man. Surely a nation cannot undertake the education of its citizen children, and refuse to train them in a knowledge of the book that of all others offers the finest aid they can ever obtain for their work.

In Toronto the director of the City Schools, who had held his post for twenty-five years, told me that he had only heard of two objections to the use of the Bible in the whole of that time; one objected because he thought some parts of the Bible would not be likely to do any good; and the other disapproved of the use of the Bible as one of the everyday books of the school.

The fight in Victoria is for the introduction of the Bible into the obligatory curriculum of school work; and this procedure is resisted, not

FACTORS IN EDUCATION.

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from antipathy to the Bible, but from a dread lest the Romanisers should make it a medium by which they may further their sacerdotal claims. In the final settlement of State Education the non-sectarian use of selected portions of the Bible is sure to have a place.

It is also manifest that the spheres of the several factors in the education of the child must be more and more sharply defined and separated. There are three parties to that education-the parents, the State, and the Christian societies. Each has its responsibility, and there must be no trenching upon each other's ground. The parent has no right to ask the State to teach his child his own private sec tarian belief. If that is to be done he must do it himself or get it done at his own cost. It is outside the province of the State to teach Mormonism or Methodism, the doctrines of the Peculiar People or of the Plymouth Brethren, of Romanist or of Anglican. The Churches must do their own work out of their own reThe line of State action in education is clearly marked, and may be readily found by those who look with a single eye to the interest of the child on the one hand, and that of the Commonwealth on the other. If they put their "Church" before both, they will miss truth and justice, hinder educational efficiency, and stop the progress of the State.

sources.

The outlook is cheering; but every citizen

must strike a blow in this warfare.

The evolution of human society is very slow, and is effected at great cost. Even new countries are in peril from the past. Manitoba is on the watch lest her recently-won liberties should be snatched from her at the dictation of a stranger. The Romanist ascendancy is feared in Victoria, and the Anglican in New Zealand, and at home we have gone back disastrously. Mr. Riley has wrought vast mischief. Already our Board school work in London has been undermined. If we fail through our lack of tenacity and courage and self-sacrifice, the children of London will suffer for many a day to come; and our country, instead of marching forward, will shrink into weakness and worthlessness. Let us up, and play the man for God and for His children!

LETTER VI.

FIVE WAYS OF SOLVING THE PROBLEM OF STATE EDUCATION IN RELIGION.

November 25, 1897.

Ir must not be forgotten that the system of State education, now in the ascendant in the colonies of Australasia and in the newer divisions of the Dominion of Canada, has not been adopted without patient inquiry and after sustained struggle; nor has it been maintained and advanced without great difficulty. It is the survival of a system which has proved itself to be at once the most fit for the child, the most just towards the citizens as a whole, the most efficient for all the purposes of the Commonwealth, and the most helpful to real religion.

There are five ways in which the State may solve the problem of religious teaching in the national education of the young. First, it may make a declaration of war against religion in any and every form; refuse it admission into its text-books or recognition by its teachers; exclude the Bible and forbid any recognition of God. Sometimes, it is said, this is done in France; I cannot say, of my own knowledge,