Canon Beaching, preaching in Westminster Abbey last Sunday on the
relations of Church and State, dealt with the question of religious teaching in elementary schools in a passage that deserves close attention. The plea that the State should take no part in religious education rested on the theory that the State was secular; but that theory was neither Scriptural nor Christian, nor did it answer to the facts; for, as he pointed out, if the State is secular, why does it go beyond its province and forbid Sunday trading ? So far as Christianity was common to all English Christians, the State was justified in prescribing it to be taught,—nay, it would be guilty of a suicidal neglect of duty if it did not so prescribe it, subject to safeguards for conscien- tious scruples. If doctors of theology, on being consulted as to what these common principles were, declared that they did not exist, then we must de-Christianise the English State, but only because we had first de-Christianised the English people. But this was not the case. On the contrary, most English Churchmen could subscribe to the greater part of the common statement of faith recently put forth by the Free Churches. Failing a scheme of teaching prepared by the leaders of the several religious societies for use in State schools, the State might appoint a central representative Committee, responsible for the religious teaching in its elementary schools, instead of leaving so important a matter to chance local majorities.
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