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COURT OF CHANCERY, WEDNESDAY,…

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MERTUYR POOR LAW UNION. 0

CRICKHOWEL UNION.

CARMARTHENSHIRE LENT ASSIZES.

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TO CORRESPONDENTS.

MERTHYR TYDVMj. AND BRECON,

CHURCH OF ENGLAND EDUCATION.

Newyddion
Dyfynnu
Rhannu

CHURCH OF ENGLAND EDUCATION. TO THE EDITOR OF THE GAZETTE AND GUARDIAN SIR,-Tlie intention of our respected Dio- cesan to meet the Clergy of Monmouthshire, for the purpose of forming a Diocesan Society for Education, by means of the Established Church, must have highly gratified your readers; and as a Clergyman of another part of the Diocese, who has long wished that this subject could pub- licly and efficiently be brought before us, allow me to make your excellent journal the medium of a few remarks, which the present occasion may perhaps justify. In considering the subject of general edu- cation in the county in which I write, the preva- lence of the Welsh language materially forces itself npon attention. After as much observa- tion and enquiry as I can bring to bear upon the point, I imagine that any plan we adopt should be entirely English. The chief defence of this position I rest on the principle, that our plan must be essentially a prospective one. In educating the men and women of the next gene- ration, every one must perceive that it becomes of the greatest importance to prepare them for social changes in which the distinction of lan- guages must every year be lessened, and when a respectable knowledge of the English lan- guage must materially advance their success and happiness in 4ife. The instruction of the young throughout the empire must be carefully adapted to the present circumstances and haoits of the labour- ing poor. These are, in many instances, most unfavourable to solid improvement, and such as an intelligent and inventive zeal can never over- look. In particular, the greatest importance should be attached to the manner in which chil- dren, at the most tender age, are taken even from charity schools, where their education costs their parents notiling, to labour throughout the week for some trifling sum, often a few pence, to add to the scanty means of support their parents may obtain- Perhaps this misfor tune exists in Glamorgan to a greater extent than in Monmouthshire; at any rate within the range of the writer's observation, it is an evil fatal to such hopes for the next generation, as might otherwise arige from the means of educa- tion already in existence. This early removal of children from school may, in some instances, be checked by eflorts to impress on the minds of their parents, the superior importance of in- struction to any little gain their almost infant labours might obtain and the danger, lest their characters should be prematurely hardened, when the best qualities of mind and heart are for ever obliterated, even in the crisis of their early developement. But efforts of this kind can seldom succeed beyond the sphere of pas- toral and religious influence, leaving an im- mense amount of parental error and guilt to operate without the leait possibility of restraint. Besides, in many cases, hard necessity will be I found to act as a motive to what must, always be regretted, and particular circumstances will often afford irrisistable indwemenls to the igno- rant and weak. In short, the evil we are con- sidering must be admitted as one to be specially provided against, if we would give a due moral efficiency to any benevolent place of education for the labouring poor. On this account I have been led for se- veral years to attach more general imparlance than formerly to a system of Sunday-school instruction for the poor. An extensive and anxious observation on Sunday-schools in va- rious parts of the kingdom, has produced in mv mind a painful dissatisfaction with their aggre- gate efficiency. They are, in many instances, insulated efforts, distinguished in various ways by their irregularity, and in their religions cha- racter affording nothing but the most fragment ary and fugitive instruction. My regret on this account is great, because I entertain the convic- tion, that could a system of Sunday-school in- struction be properly organised in the Church, in connection with a large system of education, and perfective of its means, incalculably happy results would follow. There are many reasons why Diocesan Societies, multiplying through- out the kingdom, should devote particular at- tention to this subject; and in no Diocese, at least in relation to the county of Glamorgan, is it more important than in ours. The necessities of our population require particular attention 4o those, who pass from the instruction of their childhood and youth—both in schools on the week day and on Sunday—to habits of life which usually estrange them from their early religious discipline. In country places, thousands of this description speedily sink into ignorance and insensibility. In towns they have various stimulants to continue their reading, when the newspaper, the magazine, and the tale, supply the food of the mind; and when the club at the ale-house, or the rendez- vous of the excitable and the excited, draws them away from the domestic hearth, and from their home in the Church and at length irre- trievably engages them in that course of life in which the abuses of their early advantages often furnishes plausible objections to the friends of popular education. The zeal the Church now exhibits must not stop short of the protection and improvement of this class of persons. We must protect them in the dangers to which they are exposed, and provide facilities for their continuance within the pale of our instructions. Two ways will immediately occur to the mind, in which they may be benefitted, and our Church saved, in the experience of a future generation, from the indifference and hostility of those who enjoy in their childhood the privileges of its schools. First, they should be made the objects of catechetical instruction; for which purpose higher classes than are generally formed of the children in the school, should be constituted of those who leave it for service, apprenticeship, &c. And, secondly, libraries partaking, per- haps, both of a school and parochial character, should be established with particular regard to those who, having been prepared in our schools for confirmation, might on leaving them be directed to a profitable course of reading, without which it is almost impossible to keep them in safety amidst the temptations of the present age. And, observe, any school system now to be established, may be the means of centralization, in regard to all plans of this nature. These considerations will shew the essen- tial need of obtaining, as the foundation of any Diocesan system, the complete statistics of erln- cation throughout all the parishes of Llandaff: and this, I imagine, with the avowed design. first to incorporate all existing schools in the new plan and also, to ascertain how far more extended and varied efforts than have yet been attempted in various places, are necessary to an efficient education. In this last particular, the most careful enquiry, and the greatest honesty in making the required returns, are indispens- able. Nominal and inefficient s hools, originat- ing no superintendance ovor the YOllthful popu- la,iott -ftirnisliiiiz no Catechumens to the Minister-and entirely disconnected with other means of instruction, must be incorporated in an improved plan, for the sake of their instru- mental improvement, and niiist not be iiiiiiiited in its records, as already fulfilling its design in their respective localities. in conclusion, Sir, let me express my hopes that the present movements throughout the laid, on this subject, willleaù to the adoption of that wide view, which, perhaps, generally remains to be taken of the education of the public mind by means of our Clwrh. Thousands whom we have instructed in their childhood, have afterwards been educated in hostility against us* And has not this, to a great extent, been through our own neglect of them ? Hundreds of thousands also of the1 present generation, have grown up without any effort being made to bring them within our pale, or without the means of instruction at our hands being placed within their reach. Our Church, therefore, with all its practical impor- tance as a national establishment, has not, for sp.veral <renerations, educated the public mind in its consistent tutelage from youth to maturity. This is the fact. Let us candidly admit it, and make our admission with all the candour true penitence inspires. Let us look into the fact closely, and neither blind ourselves, nor cast a veil over the unpleasant object before our eyes. The more accurately we estimate the past, the better we shall be prepared for futurity. With a full knowledge and feeling of past error, we shall become the most capable of controlling present embarnssments, and most prompt to future duty- Among the misfortunes which a neo-lect of the high vocation of the church, in educating the public mind,has entailed upon us, it is not the least, that many among its ire tir)- prepared to admit that large view of it for which we now contend. We must aim at an embrace of the whole population of the empire, and at its preservation through all the stages and changes of life within the circle of our in. fluence. More than this, we must propose to ourselves the education of men, in the strictest or most philosophical sense of the term. The mind and heart must be disciplined. Element- ary learning must be joined with the education of circumstances, surrounding the next genera- tion with influences from which it will be impos- sible for them to escape; and with the highest morality of education—the moral power of a Christian education—moulding the motives and principles of action. We have arrived at a crisis in the history of modern states, when the existing education of the people must speedily prove the means of their improvement or over- throw. In the nations of Christendom this edu- cation must be made Christian, or their Chris- tianity will be placed in peril. And who does not see, that in our own nation in particular, the combined interests of education and Christianity are at this moment a solemn charge in the bands of* our establisliinent ? Here alone we find such disposable means as are necessary. Here alone is the spirit to which a successful appeal, when great in proportion to the exigences of the case, can ever be made. And here alone exist, in the simplicity of their nature, and the majesty of their pretensions, the great principles of truth, in the relation of Christianity to the state, on which a stable and complete fabric of zeal can ever be erected. Let us hope that our Church has been spared through its recent trials, for the enjoyment of a divine direction and blessing in the fulfilment of its duty in this respect. Let us encourage in each other the expectation, that in the merciful course of Providence, its destiny will soon appear greater than ever. Should the efforts which are now making end in a complete awakening of national zeal on this subject, and a complete organization of national activity, we may reasonably anticipate a triumph for our Church, greater than can be compared with any thing in its history-a triumph not in the party sense of the term, but in the fulfilment of the holy purpose for wh.ch it exists as the institu- tion of Christianity. The clergy and laity of every diocese in the kingdom must strenuously exert themselves for this purpose. We shall not, I trust, he be'ow comparison with others, according to the circumstances of our duty but succeed in laying a wide and firm founda- tion for the social and religions prosperity of this part of the Principality in future years, by means of the Church to which we belong. A GLAMORGANSHIRE CLERGYMAN.

CARDIFF CYMREIGYDDION SOCIETY.

GLAMORGANSHIRE AND MONMOUTHSHIRE…