rro TOR EDITOR, Ole TON "SPROTATOR.1 Sin,—The exception taken by
the Dissenters in your columns and -elsewhere to the action of the Endowed Schools' Commission in placing the rector or incumbent of the parish ex officio on the managing body of endowed schools, seems to me to rest upon a misapprehension of the true position of the clergy in the National Church. That the Rector should occupy a place in the manage- ment of an educational institution in his parish seems to be only natural and proper, when we reflect that he is an officer of the State, appointed for the purpose of teaching the religion that the State has selected in the parish in which he resides. Many years ago he was a Roman Catholic, he is now a Protestant, teaching oertain doctrines and using certain formularies prescribed by Parliament. If Parliament, or in other words the nation, should hereafter decide to adopt any other form of creed or worship, he would have to accept the modified creed or ritual, or-else to resign his benefice, which would speedily be filled up by a minister prepared to carry out the national fiat.
Such being the position of a clergyman of the Church of England, it seems unwise and unnecessary to exclude or even to omit a valuable public officer from the management of institutions which may fairly be considered to be within his department (for he has a duty to perform to the State in all matters bearing on enlightenment, morals, or learning), simply because those who do not agree with him in religious views, and who prefer to worship apart, choose to reckon every additional duty he performs and service he undertakes as a personal grievance and a sectarian wrong.
If, therefore, it should prove to be the case that the rector can- not legally be appointed trustee or manager of an endowed school ex officio as minister of the State Church, such legal exclusion ought to be at once removed, and I urge this especially, on the ground that the State has a right to the best services of well-paid and highly-educated public servants.
I venture to hope that you will insert this letter in your widely- read paper, because it seems to me that the true view of a State Church, so strongly advocated and eloquently explained by Cole- ridge, is beginning to be lost sight of, and, moreover, that such true view is at the present moment especially valuable, inasmuch as thoughtful men begin to doubt the certainty and to estimate at its real value the importance of the small differences which divide the Protestant Churches, and at the same time they tend more and more to cleave to the ideal of combined and national worship of the Creator and Lord of the Universe. If I am right in this supposition, Mr. Miall and your Nonconformist correspon- dents are moving in a direction opposite and antagonistic to the healthiest and wisest tendency of modern thought.
It is as an advanced Liberal, and at the same time a thorough supporter of Church and Queen, that I have the honour to subscribe
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