ANGLICAN UNANIMITY.
IF diversity of opinion be a sign of vitality, the Church of England has every cause to be satisfied with her condition. We are not now thinking of what may be called the permanent divisions of the Church—High Church, Low Church, and Broad Church—for these repre- sent differences not of opinion only, but of mental con- formation, and are reproduced with more or less exactness in every religious communion. There are Ultramontanes and Liberal Catholics in the Roman Church ; there are Scottish Presbyterians who stand by the Solemn League and Covenant, and Scottish Presbyterians who have leanings to ritual and a sacramental system. The differences which pre-eminently belong to the Church of England are more far-reaching than these. They divide men not merely of the same Church, but of the same party in the Church ; they extend to every proposal for common action that happens to be brought forward. It is wholly unimportant by whom the proposal is made or to what it relates. It may come from men supposed to be leaders or from men known to be only privates ; it may relate to matters of principle or to matters of practice ; it may be rich in con- sequences or be wholly insignificant. The mere fact that a proposal has been put forward, instead of suggesting a basis for common action, is treated as putting the very idea of common action out of court. Counter proposals of every kind are at once sent into the air like so many rockets, and everybody who takes any interest in the sub- ject busies hiinelf in adding to their number. The approaching election for the London School Board is a remarkable instance in point. The contest will lie in a general way between Moderates and Progressives, but an appeal has been made to Churchmen to intervene for the purpose of securing or improving the religious instruction given in the London Board-schools. We have no intention of saying anything on this aspect of the question. It is immaterial for our present purpose whether the religious instruction in the Board-schools is good or bad, adequate or inadequate, definitely Christian or only generally Biblical. All we are concerned with is the attitude of Churchmen, and especially of the clergy, in regard to it. Considering the educational controversies that. have been carried on for the last six years, it is a point on which they might have been expected to be pretty well agreed. They have had ample time in which to make up their minds, and the area over which the controversy extends is not very large. The London School Board framed in 1871 a certain compromise by which denominational teaching was not to be given by the Board teachers. Though this compromise is very variously viewed, no suggestion has been made that it should be disturbed. All that is now in issue, or that has been in issue for the last six years, is whether there are sufficient securities that the undeneminational teaching which is alone possible under the compromise shall be as satisfactory as the nature of the case admits. The earlier controversy as to the precise nature of the undenomi- national instruction contemplated by the compromise seems to be at an end. The instruction in question is to be "Christian," and "Christian" is understood to mean so much of Christianity as is held in common by Anglicans, Roman Catholics, and Orthodox Nonconformists. At this stage the question presents itself : Is it possible to make sure that Christianity as thus interpreted is really taught in the Board-schools of London ? This is so simple and obvious an issue that we might have expected Church- men to come without much difficulty to some common conclusion in regard to it. How far this expectation has been fulfilled may be seen very conveniently in certain letters published in a single number of the Times. It will be remembered possibly that the Board preceding the present had attempted to attain this end by the composi- tion of a circular defining the religion to be taught in their schools. This circular, to put it mildly, was not strikingly successful, and though at the last election its defenders secured a nominal majority, the result was not decisive enough to encourage them to bring out the circular again. The suggested substitute is the Apostles' Creed, which the Education Department does cot hold to be a denominational formula, while it is one that is accepted by Churchmen and Orthodox Noncon- formists alike, though they differ, of course, in the sense they affix to certain clauses. Whatever may be the merits of this proposal from the Nonconformist point of view, we should have thought it excellently calculated to secure the universal assent of Churchmen. Or rather, we -should have thought this had we not known Churchmen as well as we do. What has actually happened may be inferred from the letter of Mr. Charles Brooke, who says, in the Times of Tuesday, that of the many clergymen he has met within the last fortnight, "not one would care to allow the Creed to be taught in the Board-schools without some safeguard." That Dissenters should desire a safe- guard is intelligible. But that a clergyman can desire one -can only be explained by the necessity under which Churchmen seem to live of wanting something different from their neighbours. That the Churchmen represented by the Voluntary Schools Defence Union ask for one thing is reason enough why Mr. Charles Brooke and his group of Churchmen should ask for another.
The School Board controversy has revealed another ground of difference which is still more minute, and con- sequently still more characteristic. This same Voluntary :Schools Defence Union asks that provision should be made in the London Board-schools for instructing children in the religion professed by their parents. If this request were granted, arrangements would be made to st aside certain class-rooms in which the ministers of the various denominations, or their properly accredited sub- stitutes, would give the religious lesson to children of their own persuasion. Here, again, is a proposal which seems exactly suited to obtain clerical assent. In London a large number of children whose parents belong to the Church necessarily attend Board-schools. What, there- fore, can be better than a scheme which gives facilities to the clergy to provide these children with the same religious instruction that they would have if they were in Board-schools ? We again turn to the clergy whom Mr. Charles Brooke has met within the last fortnight, and we learn that only two of them "would like to see denominationalist outsiders teach religion" in Board- schools. When we remember that these "denominational outsiders" would be the clergy themselves, we feel that the force of divergence can no further go. It is "the dissidence of dissent" running riot in the straitest sect of Anglicanism.
A further study of Mr. Brooke's letter discloses a reason for this attitude. Mr. Brooke, and, as may be supposed, the many clergymen he has met within the last fortnight, are strongly in favour of an arrangement called the Orpington scheme, which is to meet all the difficulties that invest the question, and in fact give satisfaction all round. We are more than ever impressed with the fineness of the distinctions on which ecclesiastical disunion can be built up when we find that the special characteristic of the Orpington scheme is that, while equally with the other it provides denominational instruction for denominational children in Board-schools, it provides it "in outside build- ings." This is indeed a distinction with a difference. Doctrine under the same roof, with merely a lath-and-plaster partition, or perhaps only an interval of match-boarding between it and the secular class-room—that is the scheme of the Voluntary Schools Defence Union. Doctrine under a separate roof with an interval between it and the secular class-room, in which there can be a free circulation of air and DO confusion between opposing systems—that is the Orpington scheme. At the risk of being set down as mere Gallic's we are forced to say that the two schemes seem to us equally suited to their purpose, and that the adoption of one or other may well be decided simply by local circumstances. But this is not Mr. Brooke's idea, nor very possibly will it be the idea of the Voluntary Schools Defence Union. The • two are not unlikely to go on preaching the virtues of their respective policies all through the contest, and to end by seeing both defeated because they could not unite upon either. Is it useless to proffer them one very simple counsel ? At all events we will try the experiment. It is to suggest that where no common ground can be dis- covered between Tweedledum and Tweedledee the decision Ls best arrived at by the toss of a halfpenny.
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