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THE QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF EDUCATION.
taken and misapplied ; to define and explain tlie relations betweenJohn and Jesus : to enforce the Christian comprehensiveness of Love,to distinguish between vindictiveness and resentment : to defineterms apt to pass into conventionality if not into cant—such as Faith ,the Flesh, Nature, the World, Righteousness , Kingdom of God, Grace;and to dwell with tender minuteness on the acts and words of ourLord, fitting them aptly into their surroundings ; this, I say, is aspecies of teaching necessary, valuable, and requiring all the timethat can reasonably be given to Religious Instruction in any school.Not all that we should desire, but more, perhaps, than we havehitherto attained to, and a very good substratum for a preparationfor confirmation, or for adult baptism, good ground for the seed ofparental instruction, or pulpit oratory.
Without this kind of teaching, the reform of the GrammarSchools will indeed be imperfect: the middle-class gentlemen willscarcely be aware that the Bible was not written in English : willcertainly never be trained to read it in a consecutive manner, or tohave any regard for the different eras, different writers, styles, andsubject matter of its several books : his knowledge of it will be verymuch confined to the vivid recollection of a few isolated texts con-nected in his mind with a few striking sermons : the Old Testament will continue to be regarded by him as precisely on the same footingas the New, so that amid the panic of another Indian mutiny hewill again be prepared to regard the imprecations against theCanaanites as a Divine call to exterminate his enemies, nay, so thathe will be ready to accept any dogma, however unjust or immoral, ifonly it can make out a fair case for having some basis of Biblical texts. Is it not true that to a want of a critical and historicalknowledge of the Bible we owe much of our narrow spirit as anation, our tendency to regard England as a chosen people, and our-selves as “ chosen vessels ” of God ’s favour, while our “ electionallows us to dispense with duties both social and international? Forwant of this knowledge the Bible , the very bulwark of Liberty andof Purity, has been used in defence of Slavery , of Despotism , and ofPolygamy : and the beautiful feet of those who bring good tidingshave been steeped in the gore of the most merciless strife.
Those who desire to have the Bible taught in the daily routine ofschool-work by the secular teachers are twitted with desiring nothingmore than an instruction which is historical, geographical, andliterary. But the teaching of the Bible is never separated from his-tory, geography, and literature. It is all history, tending to a bio-graphy and springing out of it. Whatever I may teach in my class-roomI cannot get away from that biography. It haunts me like the eyeof a picture. I must think and speak of it when I read of the JustMan of Plato, of the Alcestis of Euripides , the Prometheus of^Eschylus, the mysterious hero of the Fourth Eclogue of Virgil -Even the sombre despair of Juvenal and Tacitus bids me speak of theDesire of all Nations so near to them, yet so far off.
The olive-wreath, the ivied wand,
The sword in myrtles dreet;