CHURCHMEN AND THE BIBLE.

WE began the article preceding this by an appeal to Nonconformists not to ask for their full pound of flesh, however great may be the temptation to do so, and however strong their abstract rights in the matter. We must begin the present one by an appeal to Churchmen to consider the grave injury which we are convinced a section of them are unconsciously doing to the cause of religious education by •their violent and unrestrained attacks upon undenominational religious instruction,— that is, upon simple Bible Christianity. We are con- vinced that the great majority of those who make these attacks do not in the least realise the nature of what they are doing. They are carried away by the fact that the denunciation of undenominational religious teaching as the creation of a new. religion or as the establishment of Nonconformity makes a good debating point against the Bill, and appears for the moment to give them the right to pose as conscientious objectors. They forget, though they will discover it if the whirl- wind of abuse of undenominational religious teaching is allowed to continue, that they are undermining the only religious instruction which, whatever may be the fate of the present Education Bill, will ever be obtainable by at least half the children in the nation. Half the children in England are taught in provided schools, and in those provided schools undenominational religious instruc- tion prevails,—the alternative to such undenominational instruction being pure secularism.

But, we may ask, how long is such undenominational Christian instruction in provided schools likely to last if the Church of England, which claims, and ought to claim, to be the guardian of the religious life of the nation, deliberately sets herself to denounce Bible Christianity as something not merely useless and worth- less, but almost as a positive evil ? If once Bible Christianity becomes discredited—and unquestionably it is being brought into discredit at the present moment— we shall find local Education Committees all over the country abandoning it. The representatives of the Church on the Education Committees, when they hear Bishops and Deans and parish clergymen denouncing it as something almost evil per se, will begin to think that they must show that they are good Churchmen by abusing it also, and by acting up to their denunciations. The result must be that the first secularist or agnostic who proposes to do away with religious instruction altogether will find that there is little or no resistance to his proposal. You cannot denounce a thing one day and fight to preserve it the next. Unquestionably no system of religious instruction of this kind can be continued if half the religious people in the country, and that the more powerful half, have agreed to condemn it in the way that it is now being condemned, in order to make out a stronger case against Mr. Birrell's Bill. Yet in reality all those who have any practical experience of education, be they Tories or Radicals, Churchmen or Nonconformists, know at heart that, as the Archbishop of Canterbury has himself admitted, the Bible Christianity taught in the provided schools has always been better than nothing, is generally perfectly good, and is very often excellent. To represent it, as it has been represented, as merely ethical teaching and moral precepts is ridiculous. Let any layman who is inclined to be misled by the wild and " heady " talk about that "moral monster," undenominational religious instruction, send to the clerk of the Education Com- mittee of his County Council and ask for a copy of the syllabus. If he is a man of any fairness, we are convinced that after he has studied it he will no longer have much confidence in the guidance of those who speak of undenomi- national teaching as a sort of worthless agnosticism.

It must not be supposed for a moment that the Hampshire syllabus, of which we have heard so much, stands alone, or is much better than those used in other counties. The present writer, since he happens to be a Surrey ratepayer, may put in evidence the syllabus of the Surrey County Council ; but the syllabus of any other county in England would do quite as well. We wish we had space to set forth the whole of the Surrey syllabus ; but we may draw attention to some of its leading points. Before doing so, however, we may mention that on the Committee which drew up the syllabus there were two Anglican clergymen nominated by the Archbishop of Canterbury, and that the syllabus approved by them and their colleagues has not only given no offence to Churchmen, but is stated to have been accepted by the Free Churches in Surrey as completely satisfactory. The regulations begin by declaring in the usual way that "the School shall begin each morning with Prayer, including the Lord's Prayer with a Hymn, and shall close in the afternoon with Prayer and a Hymn." The syllabus then divides the religious instruction, according to the general practice, into three divisions, and in each division provision is made for the first-year and second-year instruction. We will quote as an example the second-year instruction in the Middle Division, Standards III. and IV. :— " OLD TESTAMENT.

The Lives of Samuel, Saul, and David.

NEW TESTAMENT.

Lessons from the Death and Resurrection of our Lord, from the

Acts of the Apostles, chaps. i. to xiii.

Memory Work.

The Lord's Prayer ; the Ten Commandments; St. Matthew v. 1-12.

New Work :—Two Psalms from the list given above ; 2 Samuel

i. 17-27; Revelation vii. 9-17; St. John's Gospel xiv. 1-19; St. Matthew xxii. 35-40; St. Matthew xvii. 21-35; Six Hymns."

From the details of the courses the following may be quoted :—

"NEW TESTAMENT.

Our Lord's Death and Resurrection.

1. Jesus riding into Jerusalem—The cleansing of the Temple — The praise of the children—The barren fig-tree, a symbol of pro- fession without practice. St. Matthew xxi. 1-21.

2. The Betrayal—Covetousness and its results. St. Matthew xxvi. 14-16.

3. The Passover Supper. St. Matthew xxvi. 17-29.

4. The Warning to Peter—The Agony in the Garden of Geth- semane—The Betrayal—Jesus a Prisoner. St. Matthew xxvi. 17-46; xxvi. 47-56.

5. Peter's denial—Jesus before Caiaphas —Charge of Blasphemy. St. Matthew xxvi. 57-75.

6. Jesus before Pilate and Herod—Charge of Treason. St. Matthew xxvii. 1-14.

7. Jesus before Pilate again—The Scourging and Mocking. St. Matthew xxvii. 15-31.

8. The Crucifixion—The Words from the Cross. St. Matthew xxvii. 32-50.

9. Jesus' Death and Burial. St. Matthew xxvii. 51-66.

10. The Resurrection, St. Matthew xxviii. 1-10. 11. The appearance on the way to Emmaus. St. Luke =iv. 13-35.

12. The appearance to the Ten Apostles. St. Luke xxiv. 36-48. 13. The appearance in Galilee. St. Matthew xxviii. 16-20. 14. The Ascension. St. Luke xxiv. 49-53; Acts i. 1-12."

We may also quote a passage from the texts provided for the "infants and lowest groups." Here are three of the typical questions and answers under the heading "Jesus, the Son of God." :—

" What did God say to tell us Who Jesus is ? "This is my beloved Son, in Whom I am well pleased.' St. Matthew iii. 17.

For what did Jesus come into the world? Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners !' 1 Timothy i. 15.

What did Jesus call Himself? Jesus said: 'I am the Good Shepherd; the Good Shepherd giveth His life for the sheep.' St. John a. 11."

The syllabus concludes with an excellently selected list of books recommended to the teachers.

Can it reasonably be said that the objects and results of a syllabus like that from which we are quoting is to give merely ethical instruction, and that it is valueless from a Christian point of view ? Frankly, those who take such a line must either be grossly ignorant or utterly blinded by party passion. But, in truth, Bible Christianity needs no defence from us. We feel, indeed, ashamed that a lay paper like the Spectator, a paper the conductors of which do not profess to be theologians in any shape, but only politicians, should have to defend the Bible and simple Bible teaching against even a temporary aberration on the part of the leaders of the Church of England, leaders whose business it should be to guard Bible Christianity from attack and. not to dis- credit it. We can, of course, understand the Roman attitude towards the Bible and Bible teaching, for the Roman authorities have always regarded the Bible as a dangerous book when not interpreted by the Church ; but if this distrust of the Bible were unhappily to become, even in appearance only, the attitude of the national Church, then all hope of preventing Disestablishment would be over. We appeal, then, to Churchmen—though we had infinitely rather that the appeal should have come, not from laymen like ourselves, but from those who have the right to lead the Church—not to suffer this dangerous and unreal depreciation of Bible teaching to continue, but to put a stop to these unseemly attacks. Will not the leaders of the Church acknowledge fairly and openly that in the undenominational religious instruction which is given in half the schools in the country we possess a national asset of such incomparable value that no wise and. no good man should lift his band against it or say one word in its depreciation ? We, at any rate, small and weak though our voice may be, will never admit that to study the Bible, even in its most naked simplicity, can be aught but good for man or child, or that it can ever be the duty ef the national Church to discredit Bible teaching. To us Milton's words on the books of the Bible are supremely true :— " In them is plainest taught, and easiest learnt, What makes a nation happy, and keeps it so, What ruins kingdoms and lays cities fiat."

If the work of our schools, as we believe, is to make good citizens, then assuredly we should never do anything or say anything which may tend to deprive our children of the use of the Bible. In our belief, there is hardly a clergy- man or a layman of the Church of England who in his heart does not believe in the value of Bible teaching. But that being so, what are we to say of those who in the frenzy of a public agitation are discrediting Bible instruc- tion, and are teaching the nation to believe that a man cannot be a good Churchman if he does not join in the outcry against the so-called injustice of maintaining un- denominational religious instruction,—or, in other words, Bible teaching ?