of government,
the spirit of the age struggles with not less zeal to introduce, as its
substitute, education; that is to say, the cultivation of the intellect
of the natural man instead of the heart and affections of the spiritual
man--the abiding in the life of Adam, instead of passing into the life
of Christ."[181] This is precisely what has taken place in Australia.
Only two years after the foundations of the colony had been laid,
George III. was pleased to provide for the Church and for schools, by
ordering the governor to allot in every township 400 acres of land for
the maintenance of a minister, and 200 acres for the support of a
schoolmaster. This provision continued to be assigned, and in many cases
the portion of allotted glebe became of considerable value; but, in
1826, a yet more extensive and promising support was afforded by the
British government to the cause of religious instruction in New South
Wales. The nature of this assistance may be detailed first in the words
of a violent and not very sensible or consistent enemy of the Church of
England, and then the reader may turn to the account given by one of its
ablest and best friends. "I was utterly astounded," says Dr. Lang, "in
common with most of the colonists, at the promulgation of a royal
charter appointing a Church and School Corporation for the religious
instruction, and for the general education of the youth of the colony,
_on the principles of the Church of England, exclusively_, and allotting
a seventh of the whole territory, for that purpose, to the Episcopalian
clergy, with free access, in the meantime, to the colonial
treasury-chest. It will scarcely be believed that so wanton an insult as
this precious document implied, could have been offered to the common
sense of a whole community, even by the late tory administration; or
that men could have been found in the nineteenth century to perpetrate
so gross an outrage on the best feelings of a numerous body of reputable
men." During the ensuing four or five years, we are told by the same
authority that it was completely in the power of the archdeacon and
clergy "to have formed a noble institution for the general education
of the youth of Australia with the very crumbs that fell from their
corporation-table."[182] They might, "if they had only been possessed
of the smallest modicum of common sense, have secured the exclusive
predominance of episcopacy in the management of the education of the
whol