education, by that term he meant only education
without theology, and he praised the English Bible in language as
noble as has ever been applied to it by the most ardent of
theologians.

"The Pagan moralists lack life and colour, and even the noble
Stoic, Marcus Antoninus, is too high and refined for an ordinary
child. Take the Bible as a whole; make the severest deductions
which fair criticism can dictate for shortcomings and positive
errors; eliminate, as a sensible lay-teacher would do, if left to
himself, all that is not desirable for children to occupy
themselves with; and there still remains in this old literature a
vast residuum of moral beauty and grandeur. And then consider the
great historical fact that, for three centuries, this book has
been woven into the life of all that is best and noblest in
English history; that it has become the national epic of Britain,
and is as familiar to noble and simple, from Land's End to
John-o'-Groat's House, as Dante and Tasso once were to the
Italians; that it is written in the noblest and purest English,
and abounds in exquisite beauties of mere literary form; and,
finally, that it forbids the veriest hind who never left his
village to be ignorant of the existence of other countries and
other civilisations, and of a great past, stretching back to the
furthest limits of the oldest nations in the world. By the study
of what other book could children be so much humanised and made
to feel that each figure in that vast historical procession
fills, like themselves, but a momentary space in the interval
between two eternities; and earns the blessings and the curses of
all time, according to its effort to do good and hate evil, even
as they also are earning their payment for their work."

Lastly, he laid down the lines of the general education to be given.
He pointed out that already in the existing schools a very
considerable burden of work was imposed on the children in the form of
catechism, lists of the kings of Israel, geography of Palestine, and
that when these fantastic modes of education had been eliminated there
was plenty of time and energy to be employed. The instruction in
physical training was more than half play; that in the domestic
subjects had an engrossing interest of its own. He proposed, first,
the necessary discipline in the means for