Lord Russell also manages to get a shy at the
Denominational Schools, and through them at the Government which encou- rages Denominational Schools, with the Lord's Prayer,—his main point being that the Lord's Prayer as taught in the Bible is accompanied by very much more impressive explanations of the duty of forgiveness than the Lord's Prayer as taught in the Church Catechism, and that therefore it would be much better to teach out of the Bible, and not out of the Church Catechism. He may be quite right, but as his friends and allies, the Birming- ham Leaguers, are half of them (and those the real logical leaders) as much opposed to teaching out of the Bible as Lord Russell is favourable to it, and almost all the remainder want the Bible read "without note or comment," which would certainly not help the .children to understand much about the forgiveness of enemies, and would not admit of using it as a prayer,—which assumes the truth of its assumptions,—is not Lord Russell in this zeal of his to embarrass the Government somewhat recklessly throwing shells into his owo -camp ? Zealous as Lord Russell is for the divine condition of for- giveness that the petitioner shall forgive from his heart the tres- passes of others, Liberal Governments which dispense with Lord Russell obviously hardly seem to him to fall within the limits of the condition.
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