The author has amply discussed the question, with a zeal in which we may all desire to partake. He traces the educational movement under the National Society from its rise, and thinks, or rather shows, that we have now reached a stage at which something further should be done to give permanence to the framework which has been raised. Various questions would be raised by different parties upon any such proposal. 1. Are not churchmen already drained, by contributions to other church purposes? See table, p. 103-5, which shows that our monied and money-making brethren in large towns offer nothing to the service of mother church proportionate to their means, and that there seems to be quite a maiden field of resources for the church to call forth. Amount raised under National Society's Royal Letter for 1840 in London and Westminster Since the above list was in print, I find that Brighton, already a larger proportionate contributor than any other parish, has remitted £560, in answer to this year's Letter. £ S. d. 5,696 17 8 Total amount raised in the Diocese of London * Produce of the Bishop of London's Pastoral Letter for Chinese Amount contributed from Birmingham under the National Society's 1823 102 7 4 Number of Churches and Chapelries to which returns are sent, 13,081 do., Letter of 1840 do., Number of Cathedrals which made no returns 2,669 !!! 115 4 6 It appears from these returns, that the great cities of the empire, those possessing the largest churches and the wealthiest congregations, contribute a bare pittance to the National Society. The immediate result of the movement during 5 years, has been to produce a general educational fund of £138,844; and this is from a nation whose income (rated from property-tax, and therefore excluding incomes below £150 a year,) exceeds £170,000,000, and the annual value of whose real property has increased from £52,000,000 in 1815, to £62,000,000 in 1841-10,000,000 in 25 years; and her legislators boast that they have saved £16,962,070, to the holders of property by reduction of poor-rates, of which a large proportion is, of course, money saved to the rich from what they formerly paid to the poor. The whole population of England and Wales is 16,000,000, of which the Dissenters claim no more than 3,000,000,-and there are 723,328 persons sufficiently well off to deposit £20,792,602. "Who then, that loves his country, feels otherwise than humbled, when we compare our worldly means with our heavenly aims, and thinks how little is done by English churchmen, to communicate to their brethren the blessed privileges they themselves enjoy? The fear then that the church's resources are drained is quite groundless. It rather would seem that they are yet hardly touched ;what means must be applied to open them into action, is another question. We can hardly but think, that if the church were to raise a general war-cry against vice and infidelity, and point to her schools as the battle-field, that some of her wealthy members would be roused. Then comes another question. Can the church educate the people? And for this we would refer our readers to p. 98. The Now comes the question, Can the Church educate the people? Can it succeed, where the State has twice signally failed? I answer unequivocally;-it can. National School system has grown with our growth, and strengthened with our strength: be it ours to deepen its foundations, to lay well its bulwarks in the col * The smallness of this amount is the more remarkable and deplorable, because, of all boards, the Metropolitan Branch of the London Diocesan Society is least wellsupported, and, on the Surrey side of the river, no metropolitan remittances whatever are made to the Winchester Board and to the important Training Institutions at Winchester and Salisbury. legiate system of the church; and, like other voluntary associations to which the spirit of christianity has given birth, it will advance more naturally, and rule men's minds for good more effectually than any state system yet devised in Holland, Prussia, Ireland, or Downing Street. It is parochial-it is diocesan. It will in time lead back the poor to the church, instead of making them outcasts from it in the workhouse; and leave educational influences under the control of the clergy, whose faith we share, and whose administration, if less worldly wise, is certainly more stable than that of parliamentary politicians. In proportion, however, to its value should be our estimation of it; and, if difficulties occur, ours be it to surmount them. If apathy abound, let those who have zeal quicken it. If there be distrust of ecclesiastical authority among the ignorant, let churchmen confront the tongue of obloquy, by standing forward manfully and unitedly, and proving, at some sacrifice of worldly substance, that the souls of poor children, whose daily toil is an element of national strength, are subjects of national concern. In former times the church had no appointed channel of national confederation for educational purposes. The bishops now act with boards or councils in every diocese, and the National Society can, if it please, give life by its central funds to every new school undertaking. If the sum of £299,100 has been obtained for building schools, training teachers, and other fundamental improvements, during the last five years, and from £140,000 to £150,000 during the last few months, for mining and factory districts only, why should not much larger sums be ere long raised through central and diocesan and parochial agency for collegiate as well as school purposes, so that a vigorous and comprehensive and simultaneous attack may be made during the next few years on every strong-hold of manufacturing and mining and agricultural ignorance? It is natural that sanguine and enthusiastic men, who enter warmly into every project for benefiting humanity, and whose inquiries open widely the penetralia of social misery, should feel some disappointment when their exertions are not fully successful, and the disease more obvious than the cure. We are, however, responsible for our principles rather than for their results. Our agency, much as we may magnify it to ourselves, is not needed by Almighty power; and often, when the church horizon seems most clouded, the day-star from on high breaks forth on us. When it was said in parliament that the voluntary school system had been tried and failed, I suppose the speaker meant that it had not attained its full efficiency so rapidly as we could desire; but what system involving human agency ever did? The church certainly has not; why then should her subsidiary and partial coadjutor-the school? Why is the world, in spite of Christianity, a mass of imperfection, inconsistency, and wretchedness, in every social ramification? What is the Bible itself but a record of human suffering among individuals and nations, as has been shown by the most learned and pious of writers? If the discouragements of this particular epoch, particularly those arising from the divided opinions of churchmen, be (which they are not) as numerous as in every preceding century, from the days when St. Helena founded, and when St. Chrysostom* preached for new churches, up to those when English bishops and statesmen unite in commending churches, schools, and colleges for teachers to private benevolence, we find in every page of history the same strong ground for patience, the same hopeful motives to diligence. In labore quies! When controversy rages, a devout mind believes that truth will prevail in God's own time, and he does not fear the issue. If love wax cold for a season, he seeks to renovate it; yet is content to labour for years, peradventure for a whole life, without rekindling the faint embers. To sow and to reap both, is a blessed privilege; but to few, alas! is it accorded, and in all great enterprises faith must take the place of sight. Instead of encouraging and multiplying private exertions by extended grants Vid. Wordsworth's Translation of St. Chrysostom's Sermon on Church extension. which was all that churchmen asked for and expected under present circumstances, the state attempted a new system; and here again, in spite of every legislative facility (the Whigs uniting with Government on a common basis), the result, when all appearances seemed most favourable to a State educational system has disappointed its projectors. All eyes reverted to the church; and your Grace, in common with the whole bench of bishops, appealed with the full weight of authority, argument, and example, for pecuniary aid and generous confidence. There were not wanting last year those who feared lest any movement should prove a failure, and some even doubted whether 100 persons could be found to give as much as £100 each. The sum of £50,000 was regarded as the extreme limit of subscription, and now the Factory Fund alone is nearly treble that amount. So with regard to the National Training system. The cold and indifferent may make it fail, but the church at large, if rightly appealed to, can and will render it successful. If the success of the movement in 1839 were incommensurate with our expectations, and yet attended with most important results, raising the income of the National Society within a short period from £1,000 to £6,000 and £7,000 per annum, and that of the Diocesan Boards to £12,000 per annum, why may not the present opportunity, when so many special circumstances combine together to animate exertion, enable the seeds of success then scattered over the country to produce a still richer harvest? The bishops and committee of the National Society raised last year £7,640 among forty-four members of their central board of management for mining and factory schools only. Why should not the committees of all the 18,250 daily and Sunday schools, which are known to be under the direction of the clergy, in England and Wales, follow so good an example, and send up to the National Society in aid of St. Mark's and Diocesan Training Colleges generally, the produce of united contributions? Every church school teacher in the kingdom ought to feel that, directly or indirectly, this great national work is a personal concern. The Wesleyan Methodists already contemplate raising 700 new schools, at a cost of £300,000; yet they maintain their own ministers, and theological seminaries, and missionaries in every quarter of the globe, and no ancestral endowments are theirs-no universities-no aristocratic influences-no tithes-no bounty boardsno rates-no royal letters to authorize collections in every church. In numbers, wealth, and in social position, they form, compared with churchmen, a small fraction of the community; but they have large hearts, and lofty aims, and, as compared with English churchmen for many ages past, united energies. The more we deprecate their zeal against church principles, the more we are bound to emulate and surpass it, in furtherance of those principles, and to render their labours superfluous. The church collections under the authority of the Queen's letter might hereafter, if duly estimated and advocated, go far, not only to build new school-rooms, but to build and endow a corresponding proportion of training colleges. Bishop's College, Calcutta, owed its earliest provision in 1819 to this source, having realized under one royal letter above £45,000. Our congregations, however, have been too long accustomed to treat as a formal empty ceremony the most blessed mode of collecting alms which christian charity ever yet devised. Sad and sickening will it be, if, when newspapers teem with thousands bestowed in the sight of man, the offerings, which God alone can see, in the precincts of His sanctuary, should continue to give evidence of niggardly hearts and unwilling minds, and produce on an average two or three pounds only per church throughout this wealthy empire. The managers of church societies have long regretted the inadequate result of these periodical appeals; but as the necessity of united co-operation becomes daily more apparent, a synopsis of church collections, has been drawn up, in the hope that churchwardens and other laymen who assist the clergy in parochial concerns, and those clergymen who have hitherto confined their zeal to their own schools, may try how large an augmentation of our national resources can be produced by liberal and simultaneous offerings in every parish. Amount received under the Propagation of the Gospel £. s. d. 1836 34,850 0 0 " 30,001 199 Amount received under National Society's Royal Letter for " " " " Amount raised under the Royal Letter for 1842, for the relief of distressed manufacturers 76,675 19 1 The author is decidedly of opinion that the training of teachers is the first step, and therefore the endowment of training schools the first object of the present moment. He earnestly desires to see a permanency given to our present diocesan schools, and has shown by some interesting facts how endowed bodies become a kernel for other contributions to grow upon them. He doubts not that the want of schoolmasters will grow yearly, and has obtained some data in order to answer the questions. What number of schoolmasters is required? What number of schoolmasters is now supplied? 1. That we are likely to require 2,000 teachers annually, reckoning four annual vacancies in every hundred schools, which is the Prussian average. 2. That the present number in training for various periods from three months to three years is about 450, of whom the available annual supply would be under 200. This will allay all fears that the church is now training too large a number of masters. It is probably that the new Factory and Mining Schools will absorb all that Battersea can furnish during the next seven years-and besides this, there are now 50,000 children in workhouse schools, for whom it may be hoped a better class of masters will be employed, when they have been duly trained. The author shows also, from some statistics, the advantage of central funds; but this does not at all imply centralizing the operation of the training department. He would decidedly encourage branch operation, though it might be aided when required by funds drawn from the centre into which they had been collected. The National Society, as the centre which has acted hitherto under the approval of the bishops, seems to have all necessary recommendations, and the diocesan framework is decidedly to be the means of all branch operations. The author has gone much further into details than we need follow at present--but amongst the abundant facts with which he has recommended his various proposals, he has given us much interesting educational history. It would interest our readers, but the account of Raine's charity (p. 92), has struck us more than any other and we present it to our readers, The foundation called Raine's Charity, in St. George's, Middlesex, affords one of the most memorable examples of real education for the working classes. It carries |