CHILDREN OF UNITARIAN PARENTS IN ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS.
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."'
SIR,—I receive the Spectator a few days late, so I fear this letter is belated. Yet I should be very grateful if you would
publish it and answer the question which I venture to ask. In the Spectator of March 3rd you publish a letter from the honorary secretary of the London (Unitarian) Sunday-School Society. He surely speaks with authority. He says :—
" As far as I am aware, Unitarians were perfectly satisfied with =oh religious teaching as was given by the London School Board and the Boards of other large centres. The children were well grounded in fundamental religious truths and obtained a good knowledge of the Bible. They thus acquired in the day-school grounding in religion upon which Sunday-school and other teachers could base the definite theological instruction of their particular denomination."
Could Unitarians be perfectly satisfied with a system under which the Child must learn that Christ is God? Could they use that belief as a grounding on which to base their own definite theological instruction? Can Churchmen be expected to regard as Christian any teaching which can leave this out; or consider that a child who has not learnt that Christ is God is well grounded in fundamental truths, or has a knowledge of the Bible? If the divinity of Christ is a fundamental truth of Christianity, how can you ask Churchmen to accept a system with which a Unitarian, in the position of your correspondent, is perfectly satisfied P-1 am, Sir, &c., [Our correspondent, like many others who address us, writes as if the non-denominational teaching of Christianity- i.e., Bible Christianity—were an absolutely new and untried proposal never before attempted. Yet it has been in operation in London and in most Board-schools throughout the country for over thirty years. We have never heard it objected that the religious teaching thus given was in any fair sense of the word non-Christian, though—notably in the controversy in which Mr. Athelstan Riley was engaged—objections have been made in regard to it from a high doctrinal point of view. We cannot admit that the fact that certain Unitarians find nothing objectionable in such teaching is a proof that it denies or does not affirm the divinity of Christ.—En. Spectator.]
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