RELIGION IN THE SCHOOLS.
pro THE EDITOR Or THE "sescreroir..- SIR,—All unprejudiced Christians must be grateful to you for the sustained support you have given to the cause of religious education. But is it quite clear that you are not tilting against a man of straw ? Could any one have pronounced more decisively than Mr. Birrell in favour of Christian teaching in English schools ? Not even this Government, I am persuaded, could face the storm that would be aroused by a Bill to banish religion from elementary education. When such a Bill is introduced, it will be time enough to organise the opposition. What needs doing now is to drag out every existing grievance into the light, and to formulate principles on which they can be redressed without sowing the seed of a crop of new grievances. To some of us, old friends of the Bishop of Carlisle, it has seemed that in his letter to the Times he gave away more than he had any right to surrender. It is neither good policy nor sound Christianity for trustees to offer to sacrifice interests which they are charged to protect. The Bishop's fuller paper in the Guardian partly, but only partly, corrects this impres- sion. The two crying grievances left in the existing system are (1) that Nonconformists' children in single-school districts can only have Church teaching or nothing, and (2) that Churchmen's children in Council-school districts can only have au undefined and nnformulated Christian teaching or nothing. If, to meet the first, Churchmen express their readiness to fall in with an arrangement for restricting specific denominational teaching to one day in the week, they must no less clearly emphasise their first claim for definite Prayer-book teaching for at least the upper standards on that one day. To sacrifice this right will do no good to anybody. For what will it profit a little Baptist that a little Churchman is deprived of an opportunity of being taught the faith of his parents' Church? Again, why should Churchmen scruple to ask that their own grievance should be set right in Council-school districts ? The same argument can be reversed. How is a little Baptist hurt if a little Churchman is granted an opportunity of Church teaching ? By all means let us strive with Canon Beaching to get some agreement as to the main lines of the Biblical instruction to be given in Council schools. Some sort of Catechism might usefully serve to lay down those lines. Ninety-nine out of a hundred parents want the New Testa- ment taught in its broad, natural meaning. They ought to have some security that this is done. But let us also claim, as mere justice, that where no hardship is involved to any one, full liberty be left to denominational schools. In a word, let us not imitate the timid traveller who presented his purse to a masked horseman, in case he should turn out to be a highwayman. When Mr. Birrelfs mask is off he may prove to be a friend in disguise.—I am, Sir, &c.,
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