SCYLLA AND GHARVBDIS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XVIII, Issue 6003, 12 February 1881, Page 5

SCYLLA AND GHARVBDIS.

TO THE EDITOK. Sir, —In the minds of many of your readers, and perhaps in your own, there can be 110 medium between the old denominational system of education and the present one. A not unnatural fear exists that to be unseenlar is to be sectarian. It may interest many to know that Old England has found the via media, a safe and sound middle course where secular teaching has full swing and yet religion is neither ostracised nor ignored. Ten years ago in England the same arguments pro and con were rife, as amongst us ; the secularists were abused as infidels, the parsons and religious people generally were regarded as a nuisance in education. To-day all has changed. Like an unsubstantial pageant faded, or a bugbear strangled, "the reliaious difficulty" is practically dead, and the elements of Christian truth are taught in nearly every Board school ; and that by schoolmasters and schoolmistresses and their subordinate teachers. How has this come about ? England, especially in London, Liverpool, Birmingham, Bristol, and such large towns, has masses of Catholic Irish, secularists, and Nonconformists, to say nothing of high, low. and broad Church people ; so the feeling, like the community, is divided just as we are in opinion as to religious themes. How is it? This answer will be the truth : Ist. The religions difficulty was a myth, a Jack-o'-lantern, that died out—when examined its unreality was seen. 2nd. Seven years ago the secularist idea on education was 011 the wane. Two years ago Birmingham, its last stronghold, succumbed, and to-day both religion and morals are taught in the Board schools among its dense population. 3rd. Good men of all ranks and creeds worked to produce a healthy tone and sentiment about education, as being a moral agent, and not merely a system of "cram." The happy result to-day is national and ecclesiastical harmony on education. All pull together, not merely to educate, but to elevate the children ; not merely to tcaeh, but to purify the national sentiment and awaken truthful, manly, and God-like habits among all classes. Why, in escaping the Soylla of denominationalism, should we rush into 'the Charybdis of secularism ?—I am, &c., Englishman.