, conversion on the part of the teacher to God, is still
unaccounted for; and we contend that, respecting that item, the
parent, and the parent only, has a right to decide, all difficult and
doubtful as the decision may be: for be it remembered, that there
exist no such data on which to arrive at a judgment in cases of this
nature, as exist in the choosing of a minister. And though we would
deem it eminently right and proper that our child should read his
daily Scripture lesson to some respectable schoolmaster, a believer in
the divine authority of revelation, and should repeat to him his
weekly tale of questions from the National Catechism, yet to the
_extempore_ religious teaching of no merely respectable schoolmaster
would we subject our child's heart and conscience. For we hold that
the religious lessons of the unregenerate lack regenerating life; and
that whatever in this all-important department does not intenerate and
soften, rarely fails to harden and to sear. Religious preachments from
a secular heart are the droppings of a petrifying spring, which
convert all that they fall upon into stone. Further, we hold that a
mistake regarding the character of a schoolmaster authorized to teach
religion _extempore_ might be greatly more serious, and might involve
an immensely deeper responsibility, than a similar mistake regarding a
minister. The minister preaches to grown men--a large proportion of
them members of the Church--not a few of them office-bearers in its
service, and competent, in consequence, to judge respecting both the
doctrine which he exhibits and the mode of its exhibition; but it is
children, immature of judgment, and extremely limited in their
knowledge, whom the religion-teaching schoolmaster has to address.
Nay, more: in choosing a minister, we may mistake the character of the
man; but there can be no mistake made regarding the character of the
office, seeing that it is an office appointed by God Himself; whereas
in choosing a religion-teaching schoolmaster, we may mistake the
character of both the man and the office too. We are responsible in
the one case for only the man; we are responsible in the other for
both the man and the office.

We have yet another objection to any authoritative interference on the
part of ecclesiastical courts with the natural rights and enjoined
duties of the parent in the matter of education. Even though we fully
recognised some conscientious teacher as himself in posses