[TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."]
SIR,—A lifelong reader of your paper, I have followed with sympathetic interest the correspondence bearing on the religious compromise suggested to avoid the otherwise inevitable secularisation of our public schools. Many com- promises have been floated, but they all came to grief on the same rock, and that rock is the prevailing Anglican unwilling- ness to admit the elementary principles of freedom and brotherhood. You are fond of announcing the exceeding breadth of the Church of England. But with an obstinacy begotten of old-time ascendency, the leaders of Anglican activity will not permit themselves to entertain the idea of compromise with Nonconformists. The deluge rather than that! The current number of the Church Times, commenting on your proposal, definitely avows its preference of secular teaching to any possible compromise. Its sweet reasonable- ness in arriving at this conclusion is set forth quite un- equivocally :—" We do not consider it possible or desirable to join with Dissenters in any system of religious teaching, call it Undenominationalism or Fundamental Christianity as you will." How, then, is such a working arrangement as you suggest so much as possible ? It is not your correspondents who constitute the difficulty, but such Anglicans as are repre- sented by this influential religious journal. These are the schismatics, the divisive elements in English citizenship, and the last thing that they desire is that our public schools should be the nurseries of civic unity.—I am, Sir, &c., Brixton Independent Church, S.W. BERNARD SNELL.
[Mr. Snell must not imagine that the voice of the Church Times is the voice of the Church of England.—ED. Spectator.]
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