REPORT OF THE BOARD OF EDUCATION FOR 1855.

THE report of the Board of Education for the present year is before us. No one would dream from the perusal of it, that the views of the Board of Education had excited any earnest or conscientious uneasiness in the Church. It comes forth with its customary display of partial truth, confused thought, and common place remark, hot in its zeal, emphatic in the enunciation of some unquestionable truths, and particularly discreet in its avoidance of all points of opposition. Now we submit in all candor whether this is the way in which the issues raised with the Board ought to be encountered? The doctrines of their reports and the acts of their policy have been gravely impeached. They have been arraigned before the church as carrying the claims of ecclesiastical power far beyond the bound of a legitimate authority. The utmost candor and fair dealing have been displayed towards them their motives have been honored; their feelings consulted, and every expedient has been adopted to save their personal consideration, while impeaching their policy, yet not once have the official papers of the Board condescended to notice that their views had been questioned. They seemed to be resolved to rest upon other powers than argument for their success, and to combat the opposition with the weapons of dignity and silence.

We shall not pursue the Board through the masses of ill-digested matter with which they afflicted the Assembly, and with which the Assembly has afflicted the church. There are only one or two points to which we shall call attention at present, preliminary to a more active canvass of the modern heresies on this subject, concerning which we have accumulated a quantity of miraculous disquisition, with which we propose hereafter to astonish and console the reader.

The Board after wading through a large proportion of their report, at length touch the vital question in the theory, by a very brief appeal to the alleged historical concession of the issue, and then very sententiously refer the inquirer to their past papers on the subject. They say in phrase remarkable for its gingerly tenderness :*

"The question now arises whether the church ought to assist in founding institutions of this religious character, if the wants of her household require it? The question is not, whether the Church has the exclusive authority to take part in public education, nor whether it is bound under all circumstances to exercise that authority. But it is simply, whether in the absence of the required institutions to carry forward the education of her youth, the Church may not through her judicatories, see that Christian Institutions are established in sufficient numbers to meet her wants. This question has been settled historically again and again, with the utmost unanimity. The Reformers were all of one way of thinking. In Geneva, France, Holland and Scotland the Church established institutions * Report, p. 34.

of learning, and kept their control within her own judicatories. The question is therefore historically settled, if there is any value in precedent."

Upon this paragraph we have several remarks to submit. In the first place, we would inquire, why the Church is degraded in the first sentence into a mere assistant in the construction of these institutions? Assist whom? This remark seems to place her in the position of a mere subordinate to some principal agency, whose rights are implied, but not expressed? Why is the Church placed in such a position if the doctrines formerly advocated by the Board are true-that the Church is empowered to act directly on the subject, in the exercise of her own powers, expressed or implied? Why is she now placed in this subtle deprecatory phrase in the position of a mere assistant, to some implied agency endued with prime powers in the case! Is it because the Board dread the outspoken claim of original and official power, and fear to maintain it? Surely if the Church is possessed of any power at all, it is her own: she is not the servant of any other agency even where she possesses a conjunct or common power, that which she possesses at all, she holds as her own and not as a delegate of another seat of authority. Why then this sweet and subtle evasion of the claim of legitimate official power, direct or implied, set forth in the opening of the paragraph before us?

But again it is said the question at issue simply is, "whether in the absence of the required institutions to carry forward the education of her youth, the Church may not through her judicatories, see that Christian institutions are established in sufficient numbers to meet her wants." What is the meaning of these last words, her wants? Whose wants? The wants of the Church in her organic capacity, things necessary to carry out her business, as the propagator of the Gospel? We are not aware that any one has disputed such a claim. Not one within our knowledge has ever disputed the right of the Church to educate her candidates for the ministry, and consequently to provide schools for that purpose. No one has questioned the right of the Church to erect a school, or establish a farm, or to practice physic among the heathen, or elsewhere, where such a procedure stood in the relation of an immediate and direct incident to its own work, and was necessary to it. Certainly the Church has the right to supply her wants. But the question at issue with the Board is not whether the Church, has the right to supply her own wants in the matter of schools, but the wants of society. It is whether she may take under her control the general interests of education, and supply the necessities of society in this great demand. But perhaps the Board mean to put another construction on the term Church, and consider it the representative of Christian people, simply as such, without any specific relation to their organic character as an ecclesiastical body. Then the wants of the Church are the demands of pious parents for the means of education, and as nobody ever questioned the right of Christian parents to supply the educational wants of their families, the question of ecclesiastical education is settled.

Settled with a vengeance! If this be a correct employment of the term Church, then any Christian parents or members of the Church who may unite to form a school, will form an ecclesiastical institution. If a number of individual members of the Church form a Temperance Society, it is an ecclesiastical organization. There is really no difference between the American Tract Society and the Board of Publication; both are equally ecclesiastical; and the great conflict of 1837 about voluntaryism and ecclesiastical action, was a contest for a distinction without a difference-a second edition of the Gulliverian fight about the big and little end of an egg. It plays a very unmerciful specimen of destruction also, with the Board's own laborious distinctions between Oglethorpe and Hampden Sidney, Lafayette and Princeton. The Church must have enough institutions to supply her wants! That is in one sense, the Church as an organic body, must have enough to supply her organic wants. Very well nobody objects to this. But the Church-that is Christian people must have schools to educate their children. Very well again: nobody quarrels with this sort of ecclesiastical action. But thirdly, the Church-that is the organic body, must have enough institutions to supply her wants-that is the wants of the Christian people considered simply as such. This conclusion limps dreadfully from the premises, and we are sorry to be compelled to characterize it as a very ill favored specimen of a logical cripple. In the name of reason why do not the Board define what they mean by the Church in connection with this subject, and stick to it? Why will they use the term one minute in one sense, and in another sense the minute after, and then jumble up both meanings together in one sentence, so that either can be used in case of necessity, and no one can ever tell exactly which of the two conveys the mind of the writer? If they mean to claim the control of education as a general interest of society, as one of the granted or implied powers of the government of the Church, let them say so, and stand up to it squarely through the fight. If they mean to claim it for Christian people as such, let them say so and the contest is over: for we shall not debate the propriety of the courts of the Church controlling what is admitted to be the affair of men in an unofficial capacity. But if they mean that the control of education, as a permanent interest of civil life, is under the control of the individual and official members of the Church as a mass, yet in their organic capacity, and in the exercise of their official powers, let them come out distinctly and say so, and we shall give them employment hereafter in explaining what part of the official business of either the officer or private member of the ecclesiastical organization brings under its control this vast interest of society. At all events, let the Board clear up the foundations, locality, limits and nature of their claims, so that there may be no doubt about the question. We despise this bush fight, in and out and around and about the many meaning word, Church. It is unquestionable the Board mean the control of education by the government of the Church; but it is necessary for the definite information of the masses

of the people, for them to say so in direct terms, and then proceed to derive the source of this governmental power.

The attentive reader of these remarks will have already discerned the distinction which lies at the foundation of the doctrines of the Board, and in part at least, refutes the argument drawn from the testimony of history on this subject, cited by the report before us. The Church may create a school under such circumstances, that such an institution is really incidental to its own legitimate business and necessary to it. This principle makes ecclesiastical action in the erection of schools limited absolutely in its nature: it cannot proceed beyond what is honestly and truly ecclesiastical necessity. But the claim of the Board is that the Church can control the interests of education as a general and permanent interest of social life it is absolutely as unlimited in its range as the demand in society for the means of education, and the capacity of the Church to fill it. It is a claim of power radically different in every element essential to either from the limited and purely circumstantial power which we have just defined. Now the Board have something else to do in determining on the real nature of the testimony of the Church in its history, than merely to cite the fact that they have erected schools: it must be also shown that the alleged action was not in the legitimate subordination to purely ecclesiastical ends, but was the result of a direct claim to control education as a general interest of society. The Old Hanover Presbytery created a school at Hampden Sidney: this may have been altogether proper. There were no schools then in which candidates for the ministry could receive their education, and it was a legitimate exercise of power in the Court to erect it. But this admission by no means involves that the Presbyteries of Virginia may now do the same thing, because the condition of things in the community is wholly altered. There are now colleges in which candidates can be trained, and the Church would have no right to create a similar school, even for the education of her ministry-a legitimate object of ecclesiastical action. Still less would the example of the Old Hanover Presbytery warrant the creation of a whole system of schools, avowedly designed to embody a claim to control, not merely the official training of candidates for the ministry, but education as a general interest of society. The idea that the past action of ecclesiastical courts necessarily warrants the present claims and doctrines of the Assembly and the Board is utterly unfounded. The claim is radically different from the example cited to sustain it. We might therefore admit in detail the historical examples on which the Board seem to rest as their last dike in the argument, and yet impeach their conclusions. We might do this on a distinct ground if we pleased: the loose notions which have controlled the policy of the Genevan and Scottish Churches in relation to Church and State, might well warrant us in demurring to their example in the matter of education, even admitting as we do, to an extent, that the Board is entitled to plead their action. But we dismiss this for the present, and proceed to the last point in the

document before us, to which we design to allude. The Board tell us:

"Our Church has never advanced the theory-much less adopted it-that secular teaching alone, unconnected with the religious, is a work she may discharge under her own supervision. Such a labor under such circumsatnces, she neither seeks nor practices. Her theory is, that she has a right to teach religion to her youth in every stage of their education; and as the development of the mind goes on with that of the heart and conscience, the two being naturally united, her officers may lawfully educate the mental as well as the moral powers. The chief end in these efforts, is the salvation of the soul. Religious instruction is the main and permanent object; the other instruction being incidental to, and inseparable from the former."*

This is one of those hopelessly confused masses of bad thinking, which have done more to render the reports of the Board of Education the vehicles of error than the extraordinary labor, the commendable zeal, and the occasional ability with which they have been composed, will ever be able to counter-balance. The Church, we are informed, has never pretended to teach secular learning alone: that would be wicked; she has only claimed to teach it in connection with a course of instruction in religion, and as she has the right to teach religion to her youth, she has therefore a right to teach them secular learning along with it. A marvellous sequitur verily !

Let us put a similar case. Suppose the Church wants to get the control of professional education in her hands. It will not do to claim it directly: this would be too obviously inadmissible. But she claims to teach religion to her youth all through their training; and as religion ought to be mixed with the whole course of education, she can in this indirect manner slide her hands upon the reins, and triumphantly do what, in its naked form, it is admitted she had no right to do. In the case of ordinary education, the Board admit she has no right to teach secular learning alone: but she must control education: how is she to manage it? Why she claims to teach religion religion must be taught in the educational curriculum, and therefore her right to teach this part of it gives the right to teach the other. To disentangle this confusion more completely: what is it the Board are aiming to accomplish? It is to inaugurate a complete system of education. Now it would seem that the end involved the means. Secular learning is a part of the means to this end: religious knowledge is another. Now they say the Church cannot teach secular learning alone; but that the right to teach the secular learning is conditioned wholly on the right to teach the religious department of the course. This is about as reasonable as to say that a schoolmaster has no right to teach grammar directly; but he has the right to teach arithmetic; and therefore has the right to teach grammar. It is obvious that the right to teach both is involved in the right to teach *Report, 1855, p. 35.