4 AUGUST 1894, Page 3

At a meeting of the Church Education and Voluntary Schools

Union, which was held yesterday week at St. Martin's crown Hall, Charing Cross, under the presidency of Sir Richard Webster, Q.C., Lord Selborne delivered a very im- pressive address in favour of the definite Christian teaching in Board-schools, for which the majority of the London School Board are contending, as the kind of teaching to which the children of the great majority of London parents are entitled tinder the Education Act of 1870, and also in favour of the fair trEattnent of voluntary schools. He quoted Mr. Gladstone's words in discussing the Act of 1870, "We do not admit that that simple and direct method of teaching" [that is, one suitable to the understandings of children] "can be secured by an attempt to exclude all reference to tenets and doctrines. That is an exclusion. which cannot be effected, and if it could, it ought not to be." Lord Selborne denied that in advocating definite religious teaching, as definite religious teaching is understood by almost all Christian Churches, there is any intention of making a stroke for Church ascendency. No such intention was entertained by the Church Education and Voluntary Schools Defence Union, and be quite approved of the earnest discouragement of any such effort. Mr. Gladstone's article in the current number of the Nineteenth Century seems to us in perfect harmony with Mr. Gladstone's speech in 1870, and also with Lord. Selborne'a speech of yesterday week. Undenominational Chriztimby and vapid Christianity are very different things.