This day week Mr. Forster made a remarkable speech on
Religious Education, at the Crystal Palace, in distributing Mr. Peek's 3,800 prizes to the children of the London School Board Schools who had gained them for religious knowledge. Of the 126,000 children who are attending the London schools, only Ole- 126—or one in a thousand—are withdrawn from religious in- struction, and even they are withdrawn chiefly for purposes of convenience. The great majority of schoolmasters and school- inistresses, he said, valued the right of giving religious instruction greatly, and would feel that, if they lost it, they would lose their greatest hold over the minds and affections of the children. Mr. Peek had conditioned that all the children who competed for his prizes should be past the age of infancy, and should have attended 175 times within the previous six months (or, even allowing for holidays, at the rate of many more than 300 attendances in the year). Of the 126,000 children on the books, 44,000 fulfilled these conditions, and 42,000 were actually examined. The host of childish faces before him struck Mr. Forster's imagination, and he could not help remarking on the strain which it would put on any human heart to forecast, if that were possible, the future of such a host; but thus much he said, with a kind of eloquence in which he rarely indulges, he might prophesy,—that there would be no circumstance in any of their lives in which the Bible given to them that day would not help them, if they rightly read it,— " no temptation,—and there would be many to assail thorn,— which it would not tell them how to resist ; no perplexity which it would not assist them to solve, no grief which it would not give them power to bear, and no pure pleasure which it would not enable them more fully to enjoy."
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