go THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."] SIR,—" Lookers-on see most
of the game"; and no doubt it is in character for the Spectator to appeal to Churchmen and Nonconformists alike to accept a via media on the question of religion in elementary schools. It is certainly true that to exact "the pound of flesh" to which one may be legally— not morally—entitled will prove as disastrous to the Non- conformist as to the Jew of Venice. There I think you are on firm ground. It never pays to press merely legal rights to extremes. But has the Spectator—I ask it with diffidence —fully grasped the meaning of "simple Bible teaching" as voiced by recognised Nonconformist leaders of to-day ? Or have you in mind Nonconformists of the type of Dr. Dale ? Dr. Clifford would have the Bible taught in "an ethical, non. creedal, non-theological sense " ; and Dr. Forsyth goes further and states that "civic secularism "—i.e., the abandonment of all religious teaching as part of national education—is the "ideal," though he admits England is not ready for it yet. In view of the disastrous results of this policy—admitted on all hands— in the United States, in Australia, and in France, I cannot wonder that our Bishops are rousing the nation to a sense of the real peril. We must recognise the fact that the militant section of Nonconformity, whether it be representative of the whole body or no, has forsaken the traditions of Dale : "They wear their rue with a difference." The Surrey syllabus you quote in your last issue is admirable, and assumes a definite "creedal" and "theological" standpoint throughout ; but I have reason to know that such documents are sometimes better on paper than in practice in provided schools, and the present Bill undermines the safeguards that are left.—I am,
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