there exist a single good reason
for preventing it from also obtaining in the Scottish national
schools. If the parentage of Scotland, whether Voluntary or
Establishment, were to be vested with the power of determining that it
should be so, and of selecting their schoolmasters, the schools would
open with prayer and the reading of the Word--not because they were
State-endowed, but because, the State leaving the point entirely open,
they were the schools of a Christian land, to which Christian parents
had sent their children, and for which, on their own proper
responsibility, they had chosen, so far as they could determine the
point, Christian teachers. And for this religious part of the services
of the day we would deem it derogatory to the character of a
schoolmaster to suppose that he _could_ receive any remuneration from
the parents of his pupils, or from any one else. For the proper
devotional services of the school we would place on exactly the same
high disinterested level as the devotional exercises of the family,
or as those of the gallant officer and his crew, who, paid for but the
defence of their country, gave God thanks on the blood-stained
quarter-deck, in their character as Christians, that He had sheltered
their heads in one of their country's battles, and then cast
themselves in faith upon His further care. We would, we say, deem it
an insult to the profession to speak of a monetary remuneration for
the read word or the prayer offered up. Nay, if either was rated at
but a single penny as its price, or if there was a single penny
expected for either, where is there the man, Voluntary or Free Church,
that would deem it worth the money? The story of the footman, who,
upon being told, on entering on his new place, that he would have to
attend family prayers, expressed a hope that the duty would be
considered in his wages, has become one of the standard jokes of our
jest-books. We would, however, place the religious teaching of the
school on an entirely different footing from its religious services.
We would assign to _it_ its separate class and its separate time, just
as we would assign a separate class and time to the teaching of
English grammar, or history, or the dead languages. And whether the
remuneration was specified or merely understood, we would deem it but
reasonable that this branch of teaching, like all the other branches
which occupied the time and tasked the exertions of the teacher,
should be