30
in like manner, be very scantily furnished with the powers and moral qualities needed for a cure of souls. It is, therefore, a narrow and shallow view to conceive that the clergy are, in virtue of office, charged with the details of schools and parochial education. With the duty of parochial catechising the clergy are fully and exclusively charged; and it is their function and privilege, as spiritual guides to their flocks, to visit, inspect, and promote the welfare of all schools and systems of education within their parishes. But clear as this is in principle, let us never forget that the question of education must become ultimately a masked form of the question of the pastoral office of the Church; for what is it but the unfolding of the baptismal life in her spiritual children? It is impossible that the education of a country should be in the hands of one power and the pastoral ministry in the hands of another. Though distinct, they are inseparable; and if the pastoral ministry do not draw to itself the work of education, and superintend it, schemes of education will assimilate to themselves the pastoral office, and undermine it, by limiting the action of its catechetical teaching within the range of what is acceptable to a divided population. There are two points which may be laid down as certain: first, that the hearts of the people of England in the next generation are now to be lost and won in the area of our parish schools; and next, that the education of the country will ulti-
