The Free Education Bill was read a second time in
the House of Lords on Thursday without a division, the debate turning chiefly on the question whether or not the Gladstonians really do wish to discourage religious education, which Lord Spencer and Lord Herschell earnestly deny, and whether the Board schools do or do not give any religious education which can be called effective. We do not question the sympathy of a great many Gladstoniana with religious education ; but we do think that on the whole they care more to humiliate the Church than to promote it. As to the religion taught in the Board schools, the objection to it is not so much that it is undogmatic, as that it hardly admits of anything like the free use of personal religious influence by master or mistress. The fear of protest, the duty of being undogmatic, embarrasses them, and prevents them from speaking with the freedom and earnestness necessary to leave any real mark on children's minds.
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