Anonymous

“ They start without knowledge; they enter on the duties of life without any rule except that which is given them by the world around them. They rush heart and soul into the bustle and cravings after this world's goods; they practise the conventional arts of their calling, unconscious of any harm even where it exists. If they have any qualms of conscience, or plan of religion, it is rather an effort of outraged nature to throw off a burden and an inconvenience, than any settled choice of truth. ”

“ But at present how are the mass of the masters qualified to influence beneficially those large numbers of work-people who so implicitly depend upon them? let those who think the highest of their virtue go and question them either on the Scriptures or the Articles of Faith, and see if they have, many of them, a knowledge of even the elements of the Christian religion. The painful ignorance of the majority is a standing disgrace to the Church, who cannot escape from the charge of having left her children without information on the most momentous questions of faith and morals. ”

“ I think a very cold-hearted man might see the evils of leaving the middle classes—the strength of England—to their present uncertain mode of gaining information, secular and religious; and might desire some plan for counteracting those evils; but the same evils pointed out to one imbued with Christian philanthropy could scarcely do less than engage him heart and soul in a diligent and never-tiring effort to remedy the innumerable evils of our present neglect. ”

“ Every son of the Church who is passed by without a proper Christian training, is furnished with a sword to draw against his own spiritual mother, and draw it he will, sooner or later, and that too effectually. How large an army is there of such at this moment waiting for the first opportunity which shall offer for thrusting their swords into the breast of her who gave them indeed spiritual birth, but who afterwards cast them away and deserted them, because of evils and difficulties real or fancied. ”

“ Public opinion is setting in strongly against law, order, and religion, and public men dare not oppose it—the best and bravest give way. The only power on earth which has the means of directing it, is the Church; and unless she takes steps to do so by some great effort, it would be the height of presumption to expect to escape the infection which has seized on the whole of Europe. The Church's mission is becoming every day of more and more importance to the interests of mankind. ”

“ But another branch of the same argument is, that by neglecting the employers, you are, in the pesent pressure of civilisation, hastening on a very general state of barbarism. A high state of civilisation and barbarism are two extremes which have a constant tendency to meet. The demand for labour lessens the time for education and training, and as the nation becomes more and more refined and perous, the mass of the labourers must be left without sufficient time for even such a secular education as is sufficient to fit them to be intelligent members of their class. ”

“ For with us the boys in the national schools remain not more than three or four years on an average, during which time we must teach them much that is to them unpleasant to learn, and but little that is agreeable, or that will attach them to us; while with their masters they spend a whole life, hear their opinions on every subject, watch their habits and modes of life, and in time come to think as they think, and to make common cause with them in their unfriendly feeling towards the Church, and the more sacred institutions of the State. ”

“ You are aware, perhaps, that a society has been formed, the object of which is, to grant diplomas to schoolmasters, without any theological test. If they should succeed, they may do much mischief, unless we forestal them. As yet, in England, when the Church does offer help, her children, after all, would sooner have it of Her than elsewhere. If our claims were equal, the majority would listen to us rather than to others; but if we neglect them altogether, they must go where they can. ”

“ Even their religion takes that form. They have no idea of the Church as a Divine institution; never once think that they have any share in her fortunes; could not be brought to understand the privileges secured to them when they were admitted into the Church by Baptism; test all the acts of the Church by the same rule by which they try their secular affairs, viz., that of success; think all payment for religion unendurable, and expect a competent return for all subscriptions and donations of charity, in the shape of influence by right of voting or otherwise. ”

“ Much as there is in this consideration, there is a good deal more behind; and that of a nature to move, it is hoped, the sympathies and affections of those who feel that the love of God is the soul of existence to a rational creature, and that the best employment of a sincere Christian is, next to his love of God, that pure love of our neighbour, which is exhibited in an unceasing effort to rescue souls from error, and to train them up in "the truth." ”

“ The Clergy scarcely think it either their duty or interest to be on very free terms with even the most influential part of their trading parishioners. For this practice there may be excuses offered, and some undoubtedly reasonable ones, but it does not alter the fact that tradespeople, as a class, although by far the majority of the Church's children, and the most able to do her service in times of difficulty, are yet neglected by the Clergy. Some will say, "familiarity breeds contempt," and that the Clergy would lose their influence by any intimacy with such persons. ”

“ This is the fruit of ages of neglect, which will not be remedied without great exertion and much patience. But the visible consequence is, that an unpleasant feeling exists between the Clergy and the mass of the people. They do not sympathise with each other; and, so when difficulties arise, they cannot feel alike or pull together. They have no thoughts in common, and the people could not possibly understand the genius of the Church, if ever so well inclined. ”

“ For these two hundred boys I would have four Clergymen, at an average stipend of £100 per annum each, with four lay assistants, sent gratuitously from the school class No. 1, and simply kept out of the funds of class No. 2. Here, again, then, should have sufficient funds to keep my second school going, especially when you take in the sums paid by day scholars in each of the schools. It only requires the absence of selfishness, and an earnest impression of the magnitude and dignity of the work, to make it entirely successful. ”

“ They have no standing ground so as to be able to resist the form into which the world around moulds them. Their life and death is a sad spectacle, and yet infinitely better than could have been expected ”

“ And what else was to be expected? that which we hear every day asserted as true, we soon believe to be so, in spite of the best of intentions: but the poor man knows no higher authority than his master for facts or faith; he is so deeply affected by what his master does, and how he acts, that it is to him of oracular dignity. Probably, if you could overhear the conversation of a labourer and his wife, or of fellow workmen, more than one half of their talk would be about their employers. ”

“ The stability of thrones now depends upon the way in which she fulfils her mission, and that particular class of her children for which I now plead, have more than once changed the destinies of this empire; and when it is matter of history that they have such power as this, can we be good subjects, good citizens, and what is a more serious inquiry, can we be good or even sincere Christians, if we neglect them or even allow them to escape us? ”

“ That till the Church do educate and train up the middle classes, she can never effectually educate the poor. All national and parochial schools must to a great extent prove unsuccessful; our money, labour, and anxiety be, in a great measure, thrown away, so long as we seek to form religious principles in the minds of the poor, while we neglect their masters. ”

“ The dreadful consequences which daily result from this coldness between Priest and people are too many to be numbered, and too great to be thought of, without the deepest emotion by those who have the best interests of mankind at heart. ”

“ In cases of this sort, the Church resembles an unnatural mother, who gives birth to children, and then exposes them, as if she could not feel for them as her own; for go from house to house, up and down one street, and inquire how many adults, even among trades-people, who have been baptized into the Church, are yet unconfirmed; add house to house, and street to street, and the aggregate of one parish will present such a disclosure of practical weakness on the part of the Church that the chief wonder is, how the people of this country have been kept together so well as they have. ”

“ With numbers, therefore, sixteen pounds per annum, or a little more, will amply meet every demand, the cost of education excepted. The responsible masters will all be in holy orders, and in the first school, will, several of them, be volunteers, fellows of colleges, &c., willing to labour at a very small rate for the good of the rising generation. In its present infant state such a gentleman has charge of the school—a first class Oxford man. ”

“ The two extremes—the rich and the poor—will both find means in abundance for obtaining the education best suited to each. But the middle classes are above charity on the one hand, and on the other, as a body, cannot give sufficient remuneration to secure competent teachers when the Church withdraws her help. ”

“ In the first class schools the Church should offer education at a lower rate than any other body can, and should conduct her plans on the most imposing scale, to raise the thoughts and feelings of the boys in reference to the Church. Forty, fifty, or even sixty pounds per annum are now paid for even the very poorest education at vulgar, flashy boarding schools; we shall begin at thirty pounds per annum, without any extras, except books. ”

“ The middle classes may be as virtuous as any other class, and indeed, as being shielded from the dangers of the two extremes, by far the most virtuous, (though this now is very doubtful,) yet the Church must ever feel herself open to reproach, while she leaves untrained and uninstructed the most numerous, influential and best disposed body of the community ”

“ Religious commotions are ever the most bitter and fatal. Blessings abused are God's scourges wherewith He chastises the disobedient. Wealth well applied "purchases us a good reward in the day of necessity;" ”

“ Once baptized, they are left to themselves; they never receive any intelligible dogmatic teaching. They have no arguments whereby to sustain their minds in times of temptation. The religious instruction they received at school may have been of the very worst kind, or, at best, of such an indefinite character, that, in after life, they could make no use of it. ”

“ The Clergy, however, are not alone to be blamed, and perhaps are to a great extent free from fault; for the evil has now proceeded so far that it is impossible to know how to meet it, or what to do. In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, a Clergyman in London would find it impossible to gain an entrance to the family of his trades-people, and where he did succeed, it would put them out of their way, and cause them pain and inconvenience rather than any pleasure. ”

“ However, without dwelling on the amount of blame which attaches to us, this fact remains, with all its solemn reality, staring us in the face wherever we turn, that the great mass of the people, the real life and strength of England, occupy so anomalous a position that they can never enjoy the fatherly and friendly ministrations of their spiritual guides. ”

“ If this were not a matter of life and death, security to the state, peace to society, and the moral regeneration of the masses of the people, it might be endured as nothing more than one illustration of the sharpness which poverty gives to very sober wits ”

“ But if it did, and its arrangements and teaching were unexceptionable, it yet could not cure one of the chief evils of which I complain, nor fill up that void which now exists in the disseverance of the Clergy and people. Nothing but the Church can do the Church's work: and if ever there was a time when the call to labour was urgent, it is now. All Europe, seemingly, is about to reap the fruits of its neglect, and we can scarcely hope to be exempted. Duties neglected will ever avenge themselves. ”

“ We ought not to be put down by too great delicacy of feeling in making efforts, nor by the discouraging views of others. If we wish to work for the good of souls, we cannot do better than work in this way, for this is laden with promises of the richest harvest, since hereby we shall get hold of the main strength of the nation—the best disposed people in the kingdom if fairly dealt with ”

“ They cannot be kept at the national school now a sufficient time to do them any permanent good, and when they leave they are so absorbed by the pressure which civilisation causes, that they lose in a short time the little they did know. ”