He had research, good faith, candor, and courtesy, qualities rare in his day. * A term of intentional offence as here used. Infidelity meant treachery to the truth, whereas the heretic has often sacrificed his life from fidelity to it. CHAPTER XI. SECULAR INSTRUCTION DISTINCT FROM SECULARISM "A mariner must have his eye on the rock and the sand as well as upon the North Star." --Maxim of the Sea. IT IS time now to point out, what many never seem to understand, that Secular instruction is entirely distinct from Secularism. In my earlier days the term "scientific" was the distressing word in connexion with education, but the trouble of later years is with the word "Secular." Theological critics run on the "rock" there. Many persons regard Secular teaching with distrust, thinking it to be the same as Secularism. Secular instruction is known by the sign of separateness. It means knowledge given apart from theology. Secular instruction comprises a set of rules for the guidance of industry, commerce, science, and art. Secular teaching is as distinct from theology as a poem from a sermon. A man may be a mathematician, an architect, a lawyer, a musician, or a surgeon, and be a Christian all the same; as Faraday was both a chemist and a devout Sandemanian; as Buckland was a geologist as well as a Dean. But if theology be mixed up with professional knowledge, there will be muddle-headedness.* At a separate time, theology can be taught, and any learner will have a clearer and more commanding knowledge of Christianity by its being distinctive in his mind. Secular instruction neither assails Christianity nor prejudices the learner against it; any more than sculpture assails jurisprudence, or than geometry prejudices the mind against music. If the Secular instructor made it a point, as he ought to do, to inculcate elementary ideas of morality, he would confine himself to explaining how far truth and duty have sanctions in considerations purely human--leaving it to teachers of religion to supplement at another time and place, what they believe to be further and higher sanctions. * Edward Baines (afterwards Sir Edward) was the greatest opponent in his day, of national schools and Secular instruction, sent his sou to a Secular school, because he wanted him to be clever as well as Christian. He was both as I well know. Secular instruction implies that the proper business of the school-teacher is to impart a knowledge of the duties of this world; and the proper business of chapel and church is to explain the duties relevant to another world, which can only be done in a secondhand way by the school-teacher. The wonder is that the pride of the minister does not incite him to keep his own proper work in his own hands, and protest against the school-teacher meddling with it. By doing so he would augment his own dignity and the distinctiveness of his office.