For, leaving aside the more far-seeing
minority on either side, what the religious party is crying for
is mere theology, under the name of religion; while the
secularists have unwisely and wrongfully admitted the assumption
of their opponents, and demand the abolition of all religious
teaching, when they only want to be free of theology--burning
your ship to get rid of the cockroaches." ... "If I were
compelled to choose for one of my own children, between a school
in which real religious instruction is given, and one without it,
I should prefer the former, even though the child might have to
take a good deal of theology with it. Nine-tenths of a dose of
bark is mere half-rotten wood; but one swallows it for the sake
of the particles of quinine, the beneficial effect of which may
be weakened, but is not destroyed, by the wooden dilution, unless
in the case of a few exceptionally tender stomachs. Hence, when
the great mass of the English people declare that they want to
have the children in the elementary schools taught the Bible, and
when it is plain from the terms of the Act, the debates in and
out of Parliament, and especially the emphatic declarations of
the Vice-President of the Council that it was intended that such
Bible-teaching should be permitted, unless good cause for
prohibiting it could be shewn, I do not see what reason there is
for opposing that wish.
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