The Evening Star TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 26, 1871.

Evening Star, Volume IX, Issue 2686, 26 September 1871, Page 2

The Evening Star TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 26, 1871.

We Imve no objection to Bishop Moran holding his peculiar opinions on education, nor to his giving expression to them. In fact we are glad to find that he does freely give them to

the world and invite that discussion of them that must necessarily follow. Were it not for this fearless utterance of thought, men of sound and advanced ideas would not know what to grapple with, and would be silent because they would not fight with a shadow. Dr Moran very kindly takes care that they shall not where he is ; and though in our estimation his whole theory is based upon religious and social fallacies, and his conclusions utterly inconsistent with fact and experience, it is better that the world should know the obstructions to be overcome in its onward struggle to moral and intellectual excellence. Those, who like ourselves, advocate secular education are especially placed under a ban. We are described as persons of limited intelligence, so narrowed by prejudice as to be incapable of giving an unbiassed opinion. In proof of which it is averred that only some small and insignificant States behind the rest of the world in civilisation, have adopted so retrograde a system. It would be no use as an argument to retort upon Dr Moran, and in his own strain reply that exercising the same right of judgment as he claims for himself, in our opinion, those very States by adopting the purely secular system have shewn that they are in the van instead of the rear of civilisation. Mere dogmatic assertion of a fact or a falsehood proves nothing ; and on cpiestions of social or moral science, the world is at present too dependent upon the opinions of the learned to be capable of arriving at correct independent conclusions. But there are certain conditions necessary to clearness of thought that even the unlearned can well appreciate. It must be very evident, for instance, that where one principle, religious or moral, is held to be a necessary ruling thought, every other idea must be made to submit to that. It follows, therefore, that if Dr Moran holds—as he has told the world time after time he does—that the Church, by which as an orthodox Roman Catholic he means tire Roman Catholic Church, should have the direction of education,* he enters upon the discussion of the question with a bias in one direction ; and on that very account his opinions require to be sifted thoroughly and examined carefully before they are accepted as rules of action. But precisely the same care requires to be observed with regard to the clergy of other sects. To the honor of men of every Church, even Mahommedans, there have been those who have risen superior to this deification of self—for it is nothing less when a man assumes to dictate what his fellow-man shall believe and what faith he shall hold. They have learned not only in word, but in practice, that second high Christian truth, that it is part of their duty to their neighbor to allow him the same liberty they would claim for themselves were they in 'his position ; and since religion is not common ground on which to meet, and education—by which we mean training the faculties to receive moral and scientific truth—ought to be, then it is the highest attainment of civilisation to strip education of everything that has a tendency to interfere with civil and religious liberty and preconceived religious opinion is one thing. The system that Dr Moran wishes to fall back upon has failed wherever it has been tried. His own Church had the sole direction of European education for perhaps eight or ten centuries, and what has it done for Europe? It has raised up an aristocracy of learning, power, and wealth, intermixed with a vast mass of poverty, ignorance, and abject superstition. Every advance in science has had to struggle against the religious idea. Belief in the rotundity of the earth, its revolution round the sun, and the truths of geology, has been stigmatised, as atheistic; and now, by not a few persons of various creeds, the advocates of secular education are held up to condemnation as if they were advocating what the clergy term a godless system. This is not true. They hold that teaahiug is divisible into religious and secular, and that the first belongs to the various churches alone, while the State has a right to insist upon the last; and until the clergy learn this truth they will never realise their duties to the churches to which they belong nor fulfil the functions • they have undertaken. The State is not a mass of individuals holding every idea in common. It is an aggregation of people who agree. upon certain laws and rules of life which are applicable to the exercise of liberty of action, but who have a right to enjoy their religious belief without any State bias whatever. But since no State can sanction religious teaching in schools without departing from this equity towards men of opposite beliefs, nor give money in aid of schools teaching peculiar religious doctrines without unfairness towards other sects, Christian or otherwise, any step in such a direction, such for instance as is provided by the Aided Schools Clause, must be to a certain extent a misappropriation of the revenue—the fund subscribed for common purposes only;

aud can only be excused as a bribe given to the selfish, superstitious, and unreasoning, to silence their opposition. It is evident the world is not prepared to accept the highest principles, and that the science of Government is a system of compromises to meet the ideas of the time. Much as we object to denominationalism, we object to the perpetuation of national ignorance more. Had there been denominational education a century ago, all educational systems would be secular now. It is only a question of time ; and aided schools, or any other form of denominationalism, must if adopted, be allowed only as a concession to the infirmities of the weak.