RELIGION IN STATE SCHOOLS.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPEOTATOE.'.] SIR,—Thank you for your protest against Dr. Dale's idea of injustice. Assuming Dr. Dale's premisses, he is strictly logical. Few Nonconformists are as logical. I have more than once retorted on leading Nonconformists their strange conduct in establishing a religion for children and wishing to dissociate religion for children of a larger growth from the State for the reason that it is inconsistent with religious equality. When I asked one Nonconformist of some eminence, who said that "he objected to pay for that which he disapproved of," what answer he gave the Secularist, his answer was,—" Oh, that is such a email matter." Dr. Dale, at least, sees that the whole principle is here involved. But I venture to dispute, with all respect to one from whom I have learnt so much, Dr. Dale's premiss, and to affirm that negation of religion by the State will not give the absolute equality he desires :— 1. Can you be so cock-sure of anything at all, that some -"injustice" to a minority may not be involved in the State teaching it ?
2. If the State must teach morality in the schools (and so France seems to think), is not the injustice, the inequality, involved in ignoring the spiritual sanctions of morality greater than that involved in recognising them, always providing that the teaching is such as meets with the approval of a large majority, and is administered with a conscience-clause observed in the spirit, as well as in the letter ? And if in the schools, why not in the churches P Though a parson, my relations with Nonconformists have always been most cordial, and I voted Liberal this election ; but I cannot but think that Christian Nonconformists are being led by a phrase, in a cause the fruition of which will parallel the old story, "He made a solitude and called it peace."—I am, Sir, &c.,
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