Excerpt from The Canada Educational Monthly, Vol. 12: And School Magazine, January to December The consideration that recommends a purely secular system of education to many, notwithstanding its obvious drawbacks, is, if I mistake not, the belief that only through its adoption can the separate schools of the Roman Catholic Church be abolished without even the shew of injustice to their supporters. The belief is, in my humble opinion, a mistaken one; but even if it were not a mistaken one - even if it were a fact that separate schools could only be equitably got rid of through the entire secularisation of our public school system, much as this end is to be desired, I could not consent to purchase it at such a cost. If the thing is wrong in principle, and likely to be pernicious in operation, is it necessary to say that a right-minded man will feel that he has no liberty to employ it to accomplish any end, however desirable. Truth and right disdain the aid of such weapons. The Roman Catholic Church errs, indeed, as most Protestants think, in claiming the absolute right to regulate and control the education of its youth. It is a claim which the State, if it would preserve its independence, cannot afford to concede - cannot allow to be put in operation in schools supported by public funds. But that church has hold of a great truth when it asserts everywhere and always that education should be religious, that instruction in the fundamental principles of morality should go hand-in hand with instruction in reading and arithmetic. As a Protestant, I am unwilling that it should be left to it to be the only witness for this important truth - important alike to the State and to the Church, and that the Protestant churches, through their abandonment of it, should be to that extent placed at a disadvantage in the conflict, whether with sceptical thought or with depraved conduct. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.