I shall conclude by making two practical suggestions ;

1. That the Universities be urged, in the meantime, to prescribe an entrance course to all those joining colleges for the first time :— and

2. That Government be petitioned to appoint a Royal Commission to inquire into the state of middle-class education generally in this country, and into that of the grammar schools in particular.

NATIONAL EDUCATION.

The Parish Schools of Scotland, and their bearing upon the question of National Education in Scotland. By PROFESSOR MILLIGAN.

IT

T is altogether unnecessary to dwell upon the results which have flowed from the parochial system of Education, so long and so happily established in this land. These results are denied by none. They have been again and again acknowledged in language of striking eloquence and power by men of the highest position and of intimate acquaintance with the subject. And the conviction of their value is so deeply imprinted upon the mind of every Scotchman that it is impossible even to name the parish schools in an assembly of my countrymen without awakening feelings of gratitude and pride. These schools have been associated with almost all that Scotchmen in any sphere of life have been able to accomplish ; they have been closely connected with the development of the best features of the national character; they have been scenes where, amidst many difficulties, work of the highest order has been done with unvaried faithfulness and patience; and we who have been educated at the parish school must ever look back to it as a place whose whole arrangements were eminently calculated not only to promote our literary training, but to foster those principles and feelings which ought to have made us religious, moral, and patriotic Recall for an instant the history of Scotland from the days when our forefathers formed the noble resolution that wherever there was a parish church there should be a parish school. Take in at one glance the length and breadth of the land. Everywhere the good that has been done meets the eye. Si monumentum quæris circumspice.

• men.

Taking, therefore, these results for granted, it is of far greater consequence to endeavour to discover to what particular features of the parish school system they were owing. We need extended education now. Has the past any lessons for us as to the manner in which we should extend it?

In endeavouring to answer this question, it may be well to notice for a moment that there may have been parts of the old parish school system which, in the altered circumstances of the country, we must

not expect, which indeed it may be no longer possible, to preserve. It may be the highest tribute to an old institution that it has fulfilled its end, and that it is ready to die. At the best it was only a means, and not itself an end. By the very success with which it has worked towards the attainment of the end of its existence, it may have contributed to bring about the time when, in at least all the particulars of its old form, it shall be no longer wanted. It was a help in its day to something higher than itself, and it may have helped that higher thing so well, that to continue its own condition exactly as it was might be to diminish materially its power of further helping. Unless we admit this principle it is vain for us to study the best ancient institutions of a land with the hope of deriving from them lessons either for the present or the future.

Looking then at the old parish schools for a moment in this light, they do seem to have possessed characteristics which contributed powerfully to their success, but which cannot be repeated now. Thus, for example

1. In their teaching power they once absorbed a greater proportion of the talent of the country than they now do. Not that they were then either taught by an absolutely larger number of able men, or that they ever possessed more numerous specimens of high talent among their teachers than they do at the present hour. But relatively to the amount of talent in the country these advantages did belong to them. Since that time, however, they have so diffused the benefits at their disposal, they have so helped forward the general cause of education, that their own position is no longer so pre-eminently high as it once was, and they must be content with occupying relatively a lower level. It is not otherwise with the ministers of the Church, and it would be useless for either ministers or teachers to complain. It would not indeed be right to do so. Their own faithfulness has largely contributed to the result, and in that is their reward.

2. The parish schools once stood to the general education of the country in a different relation from that in which they stand now. I do not here refer to the fact, which however is not unimportant, that they were then nearly the only schools which we possessed, while they have long been outnumbered, probably three to one. I refer rather to the fact that there were few other educators in the field. It is very different at present. The extended political privileges of the people, the extraordinary changes in their habits owing to the increased facilities of travelling, the penny post, the cheap literature of our day, above all the newspaper press-these, and such things as these, are now largely contributing to the education of the nation, and the schoolmaster is no more almost sole possessor of the field.

3. The parish schools were formerly more closely connected with the National Church than they are now. On this point I say nothing further at present, than that the old connexion cannot be restored. Whether there is any corresponding equivalent which we can obtain will be afterwards considered.

To the three points which have been noticed the parish schools

of Scotland owed no small measure of their fame. But they are points which, in the altered circumstances of the country, cannot mark them either now or in the future. Of all the three, and certainly of the first two, it may be said that the parochial educational system itself tended powerfully to bring about the change.

Having thus prepared the way for the more immediately practical lessons of my subject, I turn to those characteristics of the old parish schools which greatly contributed to their efficiency, and which we may preserve in either exactly the same or in substantially analogous forms. If this can be done, then all our recollections of the past and all our hopes of the future bind us to do so. To allow them to disappear from the parish schools, to fail to extend them to other schools, would be a folly and a sin of which it is hardly possible to believe that the country can be guilty. It seems to me that of these characteristics the following are at least among the most important:

1. The end which was contemplated in education. That end was religious. These are the words of their great founder:

...

Seeing that God hath determined that His Kirk here on earth shall be taught not by angels but by men, and seeing that men are born ignorant of God and of all godliness, and seeing also He ceases to illuminate men miraculously, suddenly changing them as He did the apostles and others in the primitive kirk; of necessity it is that your honours be most careful for the virtuous education and godly upbringing of your youth of this realm. . . . Of necessity, therefore, we judge it that every several kirk have one schoolmaster appointed. ... The fruit and commoditie hereof shall suddenly appear. For first the youthhead and tender children shall be nourished and brought up in virtue." . . . . And again as principles which "ought and must be learned in ye youthhead," and that previous to either more learned studies, or any handicraft, are enumerated, "the knowledge of God's law and commandments, the use and office of ye same, the chief articles of the Belief, the right form to pray unto God, the number, use, and effect of the Sacraments, the true knowledge of Christ Jesus, of His offices and natures."

It cannot be denied that one of the leading characteristics of a school system which produced the most precious results was that it was animated by a religious aim. Such was actually the case, and that aim was not an accidental feature of the system. It was interwoven with the whole economy of the school. It was required of the schoolmaster that he should be a member of the National Church.. He had to sign the Confession of Faith as the confession of his own faith. He had to open and close his school with prayer. The school was annually inspected by a religious body all whose reports testify that it valued its schools mainly for this end. The very child was long taught its A B C upon a page of the shorter catechism. The book of Proverbs was the reading book of the

*First Book of Discipline, c. 71.

school. Everything tended to impress teacher, child, and parent with the idea that the godly upbringing of the young was the great end of education. You cannot separate an element like that from the old school-life of the parish schools. You cannot say that it was in spite of it, rather than by means of it, that the system accomplished its results. But I go further and maintain that that characteristic was one to which the parish schools largely owed their power. It was because they educated with a religious aim that they educated so well. They helped to form all that should afterwards make the child well-principled, brave, and patient, fit at once for the duties and trials of life, not only the churchman but the citizen. Whatever be the manner in which education is now to be extended, it is of the very first consequence that this characteristic of the parish school system should be preserved. It is not that arithmetic, geometry, writing are to be taught religiously-to speak thus is to abuse language-but it is that the child is to be taught the great truths of religion, that the religious and even missionary character of the teacher is to be preserved, that the teacher is to have religious ends in view, that the tone of the school is to be a religious tone.

How is this characteristic to be maintained in the parish schools and extended to other schools? The question is one which I might decline to answer. What is wanted is that the infinite importance of the matter should be fully felt-that taught by all philosophy, warned by all experience, men should resolve that they will submit to no system of education which does not at least leave ample scope for this end being kept in view. Thus means will suggest themselves which no single person may be able to point out. One word however upon it.

First then it is obvious that the test is gone, and that, at least in its old form, it cannot be restored. But we need not despair on that account. It was not owing only to the progress of infidelity or dissent that the test was done away. It was owing, at least in a great degree, to a change in men's estimate of the connexion between the Church and religion. The Church was once the only embodiment of religion; the test was the most natural bond of connexion with the Church; and thus it naturally had its place assigned to it, yet not as a bulwark of the Church, but as a bulwark of religion embodied in the Church. Of this religion no one Church, perhaps not all the churches put together, are now regarded as the only guardians. Were they so, a test would still be in existence. Party spirit may have helped to abolish it, but party spirit found its strength because there was a change in men's ideas, in men's beliefs. At this moment religious truth is taught as earnestly in the parish schools as it was when the test existed.

But, the test was not the only guarantee of religious education in the parish schools, there was also the connexion between the schools and the clergy acting in their corporate capacity and representing the church. That connexion was of the highest value, and, in spite of everything that may be said to the contrary, I must maintain

that Scotland owes to the clergy of the national church a debt of gratitude, not easily repaid, for the benefits which flowed from this connexion to her schools. It helped to breathe into them the spirit of Church life. It helped to keep alive in the teachers the sense of religious responsibility. It associated the schoolmasters with the great mission work of the Church. It bound ministers and schoolmasters together as fellow labourers in the same great field. In the parish schools, it is well-known that this connexion is still preserved. How it is to be extended to others, I do not know. But all are interested in trying to devise the means for doing so. I claim no special privilege in this respect for the clergy of the Establishment. Connexion with the Establishment is in itself nothing. Connexion with the Christian Church is all.

The influence of public and especially of parental opinion was even in the parish schools the most important guarantee of religious instruction which we possessed. That we still have, and that we can extend to all. And here is a noble sphere of labour for all the churches. Let any educational measure leave here at least an open door, and let them all enter in-let them keep alive, let them deepen in the minds of the community the sense at present existing of the fact that education, to be worthy of the name, must be religious. Let them deprecate all substitutes proposed for the maintenance of the religious character of the schools, such as instruction given by themselves at separate hours, and Sunday schools. Let them keep the heart of the community sound by the faithfulness of their preaching and the zeal of their pastoral labours. No formal guarantee will be of use without that, and if we cannot get formal guarantees, valuable as they are, we may find, perhaps, in this alone all we need.

2. A second characteristic of the old parish school system, to which its great results were owing, was that a high standard of teaching was considered indispensable to success. Not that every, or even nearly every, child was to be taught higher branches; but no teacher was satisfied if he could not point to these branches in his school, if he had not at least a few children who were learning them; at least one class for French, or Latin and Greek, or Mathematics. It has, indeed, often been questioned whether it was wise to teach such things in a common country school, whether it was not apt to lift children above their station, to put false ideas into their heads, to lead them to make efforts afterwards to rise in life which in many cases must have proved unsuccessful, and to withdraw the teacher's attention too much from the humbler work of teaching the lower but more numerous classes. These objections are not wholly without weight, and it may be at once allowed that the introduction of higher branches into an elementary school needs to be gone about with caution and prudence. Yet, putting all things together, few lessons are stamped more emphatically upon the whole history of the parish schools than this; that a limited measure of such higher instruction exercised a most important influence upon their success. It was, in the first place, a matter of the very greatest consequence that, in almost every