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!

But my belief is, that no human being, and no society composed of
human beings, ever did, or ever will, come to much, unless their
conduct was governed and guided by the love of some ethical ideal.
Undoubtedly, your gutter child may be converted by mere intellectual
drill into "the subtlest of all the beasts of the field;" but we know
what has become of the original of that description, and there is
no need to increase the number of those who imitate him successfully
without being aided by the rates. And 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 a few cases of 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-reading should be permitted, unless good cause for prohibiting
it could be shown, I do not see what reason there is for opposing that
wish. Certainly, I, individually, could with no shadow of consistency
oppose the teaching of the children of other people to do that which
my own children are taught to do. And, even if the reading the Bible