[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR:1 SIR,—May I, as a
clergyman who greatly deplores the pre- vailing abuse of the religious teaching in provided schools, thank you for your article in last week's Spectator on "Church-
men and the Bible " ? As you truly say, "they forget 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 "; and if once Bible Christianity becomes dis- credited it will be impossible to defend it from the secularist.
That seems to me the soundest argument. May I try to enforce it by my own experience as a former South London clergyman and local manager on three large Board-schools ten years ago. What used to strike me then was the strange fact that the condemnation by the clergy of Board-school religious teaching was practically confined to those who never had been inside a Board-school ; whereas those clergy who were in touch with the schools, and often present during the religious teaching, regarded it, not of course as all that a Church- man could wish, but in most cases as excellent in substance and in the religious spirit in which it was given. Personally I got to know not a few of the teachers, including two of the Head-Masters of our group, really well ; and splendid work, they did, not only for religion, but for the Church, in school hours and out. I shall never forget one of these Head-Masters saying to me: "It is most refreshing to feel that some of you clergy think we Board-school teachers are Christians." It struck me as a most pathetic utter- ance,—and I would beg all those who are new so earnestly defending the right of clergy and school teachers to teach the faith of our fathers in our own schools not to damage a good cause by depreciating the work of others, who are often the Church's best allies, and would be much more so were justice (not to mention sympathy) extended to their work. Think how hard it must be just now for a Board-school master who is a Churchman to teach his Scripture lesson with enthusiasm amid this chorus of depreciation, often, alas! from the clergy of his own Church. Let him be sure, however,
that there is a very large number of Churchmen, clerical and lay, who do value greatly the excellent religious teaching given in very many Board-schools, who know that the Church of England could not supply its place, and who want both classes of schools to work together as the most powerful combination against the forces of irreligion.
Of course there are Board-schools where the religious teaching is v?.ry unsatisfactory, some where the Bible is excluded, some where the solemn farce of merely reading it is alone allowed. But is not the only hopeful policy for Churchmen to unite with all other religious people in preserving the good and amending the bad ?
—I am, Sir, &c., QUONDAM WALWORTH PARSON.
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