A meeting was held in the Albert Hall on Tuesday
night to protest against the Education Bill. Lord Halifax, who pre- sided, read a letter from Lord Hugh Cecil dealing with two points. First, Lord Hugh spoke of the danger of allowing undenominational religion to be alone recognised and approved by the State. " It is emphatically a new religion which is absolutely inconsistent with and contrary to the teaching of the Church of England." Though there was teaching given under the Cowper-Temple Clause which does not lead to undenominational religion, "the effect of the clause is unquestionably to produce in people's minds an impression that religion freed from what is peculiar to a denomination is something finer, more Christian, and more elevated than the teaching of the historic and universal Church. It is therefore a matter of life and death to the Church of England to oppose to the utmost undenominational religion." We have no wish to seem discourteous to Lord Hugh Cecil, but we must ask what grounds he has for his very wide and self-confident statements as to what is contrary to the teaching of the Church of England. Would he, we wonder, denounce Jeremy Taylor's " Liberty of Prophesying ". as contrary to the teachings of the Church of England ? It is certainly not easy to describe it as denominational religion.
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