How much to be regretted is it, that instead of splitting up the Clergy Reserves into fragments, the friends of religious education had not joined their forces for the purpose of endowing all Christian denominations with the like means of usefulness. We are now extending across the entire continent what I cannot help regarding as the anti-Christian practice of non-religious popular education. We are, I believe, but smoothing the road to crime in the majority of cases. Cannot something be done now, while yet the lands of the vast North-West are at our disposal? Will no courageous legislator raise his voice to advocate the dedication of a few hundred thousand acres to unselfish purposes? Have we wiled away the Indian prairies from their aboriginal owners, to make them little better than a race-course for speculating gamblers?
Even if the jealousy of rival politicians--each bent upon self-aggrandizement at the expense of more honourable aims--should defeat all efforts in behalf of religious endowments through the Dominion Legislature, cannot the religious associations amongst us bestir themselves in time? Cannot the necessity for actual settlement be waived in favour of donations by individuals for Church uses? Cannot the powerful Pacific Railway Syndicate themselves take up this great duty, of setting apart certain sections in favour of a Christian ministry?
The signs of the times are dark--dark and fearful. In Europe, by the confession of many eminent public writers, heathenism is overspreading the land. In the United States, a community of the sexes is shamelessly advocated; and there is no single safeguard of public or private order and morality, that is not openly scoffed at and set at nought.
Oh, men! men! preachers, and dogmatists, and hierarchs of all sects! see ye not that your strifes and your jealousies are making ye as traitors in the camp, in the face of the common enemy? See ye not the multitudes approaching, armed with the fell weapons of secular knowledge--cynicism, self-esteem, greed, envy, ambition, ill-regulated passions unrestrained!
One symptom of a nobler spirit has shown itself in England, in the understanding lately suggested, or arrived at, that the missions of any one Protestant Church in the South Sea Islands shall be entirely undisturbed by rival missionaries. This is right; and if right in Polynesia, why not in Great Britain? why not in Canada? Why cultivate half-a-dozen contentious creeds in every new township or village? Would it not be more amiable, more humble, more self-denying, more exemplary--in one word, more like our Master and Saviour--if each Christian teacher were required to respect the ministrations of his next neighbour, even though there might be some faint shade of variety in their theological opinions; provided always that those ministrations were accredited by some duly constituted branch of the Christian Church.