Owing to the much-regretted absence of the Bishop of Peterborough,
the Bishop of Leicester at Northampton on Tuesday opened the Church Congress as Acting President. His address was moderate in tone and spirited in manner. Naturally he touched on the education question. He quoted with excellent effect Milton's words on education. "'The end of all education is for a child to gain the knowledge of God in Christ, and out of that knowledge to love Him, to imitate Him, and to grow like Him.' And how should he attain that knowledge except from a child he has known the Holy Scriptures ' ? " The Bishop further made a concise statement of the position of the Church of England as regards education. "The Church of England's desire in this matter might be broadly and simply stated in a very few words. It was this : In addition to all other education, also to teach Church children in Church schools, by Church teachers, in regulated hours, the Bible, the Creed, and the Christian faith, as it had been taught from the beginning of Christianity, as their Church had received it from their fathers, and as the parents of the children believed it ; for Here is wisdom, this is the Royal law, these are the lively oracles of God,' as the Archbishop said the other day addressing the King's Majesty in the Coronation Service and presenting the Bible in the old Abbey at Westminster." That strikes us as a statement as fair and unaggressive as it is lucid. No claim is made to create a Church atmosphere during the secular teaching for the purpose of influencing non-Church children. We cannot doubt that the various Nonconformist bodies would, in theory at any rate, admit that this is the position which every earnest denominationalist ought to maintain.
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