A " REVOLUTION " TO BE RESISTED.
[To THE EDITOR OF TUB "S1'ECTATOR:1 put,—As one who had shared " Conservator's " apprehensions (see issue of April 14th) that much zeal for Free-trade had chilled for a time the conservative sympathies of the Spectator, I now cordially rejoice with him in the assurance that you are still prepared to resist the wild legislative schemes, Socialistic or revolutionary, with which we are threatened by the present Government, or its more or less attached adherents. Against the four such which you specify your help will assuredly be as much needed as it will be valuable. But may we not hope that on further considera- tion you will see your way to resist also the not less " wild " and "revolutionary" measure, as to most of us Church folks it appears, propounded by Mr. Birrell ? You tell US: "The Church must not talk of my schools," &c., so I will not insist on the confiscatory character of the measure, though I imagine neither Roman Catholics nor Free Churches would be quite as silent as you would have us if it were proposed that property of theirs to the value of 225,000,000 should be handed over to a Government Commission, to be purchased at prices to be fixed by the Commission itself! But setting that aside, is it anything less than a revolution suddenly to eject the Churches and to instal the State in their place as the religious teacher of the nation; to deny to at least one half of the Christian population of the country the right to teach as they believe, and to abrogate the natural right of parents to choose what their children shall be taught P You do us, I am sure, an unintentional injustice in inferring from the isolated expressions of one or two zealots the Church's preference for secularism. If we distrust and dislike un- denominationalism, it is mainly because we regard it under the conditions of this Bill as a sure and speedy road to secu- larism. Nor are we fighting against fundamental Christian teaching. We believe—and the Spectator not long since acknowledged—that the Church in her Catechism possesses the best extant statement of what is really fundamental. And we cannot admit that our claim to be "national" involves the acceptance of all the negations of belief to which any sect of those who have separated from us may have at any time
committed itself.—I am, Sir, &c., PREBENDARY.
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