arrival may possibly be only a matter of months. Doubtless it is open to Churchmen to reply in some such fashion as this: All this may be quite true and yet make no difference to our reading of our duty. What we have to do is to fight for the management clauses so long as they are there to be fought for, and to regret them when they are gone. After all, there is still the chapter of accidents in reserve. None of these alternative predictions may come to pass, and if some one of them does come to pass, its results may be less harmful in fact than they are in prospect.' This would be a very reasonable way of looking at the matter if Churchmen had no power of influencing what is to follow upon the abolition of the management clauses. As a matter of fact, however, they have a very real power of doing this. A compromise of some sort is certain to be effected, and the character of the religious instruction given in elementary schools will depend on what the terms of that compromise are. What we want to know, then, is what Nonconformists ask from Churchmen, and what Churchmen ought to ask from Nonconformists. If we ask too much, we wreck the prospects of an educational settlement. If we ask too little, we make that settlement worthless when gained. We are already in possession of the minimum and maximum of the Nonconformist demand. The minimum is to be found in Dr. Horton's letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury, the maximum in the 'Scheme of a National System of Education' unanimously adopted by the General Committee of the Free Church National Council at their meeting on the 30th of November. The minimum demand appears, with a slight but not unimportant variation, in both documents. Dr. Horton embodies it in two fundamental positions : (1) That all schools maintained by public money must be absolutely under public control; (2) that in all schools maintained by public money all teachers must be appointed by public authority without reference to denominational distinction.' The Committee of the Free Church Council add a third position: 'That no distinctively denominational teaching or formulary shall be given or used in public schools in school hours, but simple Biblical instruction may be given according to a syllabus, as is general at present in provided schools.' Here, then, we have the two forms of the Nonconformist demand, and the issue, which of the two shall be the form ultimately embodied in an Act of Parliament, will depend in a great measure upon the time and nature of the action which Churchmen take in regard to them.

The first condition of any permanent and friendly settlement of the controversy must be the full acceptance by Churchmen of the principle of public control. It may be hard to demand it of them, but unless they are prepared to go this length they must dismiss all thought of coming to terms with their opponents. It would have been well if they had recognised this necessity in the first

instance. There was a time, indeed, when they saw the inevitable consequences of accepting rate aid much more clearly than they have done of late. Their change of mind is mainly due to the growing difficulty of maintaining Church schools on any other footing. This must be supposed to have been the reason of Archbishop Temple's remarkable change of front. So long as he thought that Church schools could be maintained out of the Parliamentary grant supplemented by voluntary subscriptions, he saw as plainly as anyone the danger of rate aid. It was only when these two sources became inadequate to the work that had to be done that he came to regard rate aid as, at all events, a lesser evil than the abandonment of separate Church schools. There is no need, however, to dwell on the incompatibility of rate aid and denominational teaching. The next Parliament, if not the present, may be trusted to make this clear. The question for Churchmen to ask themselves is not, How shall we keep Church schools? It is rather, How shall we give them up with the least injury to the one object for which Church schools ought to be maintained?

It is strange that it should be necessary at this date to remind people that Church schools exist for a special object, and that in so far as this object is not attained the reason for their existence ceases. The object of Church schools is not to teach children the three R's, or to give them instruction in special subjects, or to qualify them for passing into secondary schools-these things are done, and done better, in provided schools. Neither is it to give children 'simple Biblical instruction,' to lead them upward, as has been well said, 'from Stories from the Book of Genesis in Standard I. to Stories from the Book of Joshua in Standard V.'-that also is done, and done as well, in provided schools. It is not for these purposes, good as they are in themselves, that Churchmen are asked to find money when a hundred more pressing needs are staring them in the face. No, the object of Church schools is to teach the children who attend them the religion of the Church of England. I will leave on one side the consideration how far they fulfil this object-in how many Church schools the teaching is radically different from that given in a well-managed provided school, or what religious impression is likely to be made on the scholars by teachers whose connection with the Church is limited to the accident that they find themselves in a Church school. I will assume that the teaching in these schools is in all respects what it claims to be, and insist only on the fact that it cannot remain what it claims to be under that popular management which is bound to come, and probably will come very soon. But, with Church schools gone, can the religion of the Church of England be taught in elementary schools? I believe that it can, if only Churchmen will look at the substance and not at the shadow. The danger is that the Nonconformists, and through the Nonconformists

the Liberal party, may be committed before we know where we are to the larger of the two demands I mentioned just now. The form which this larger demand commonly takes may be seen in the resolutions adopted by the Education Committee of the Free Church Council, and in the questions which the Executive of the Metropolitan Free Church Federation recommend should be put to candidates at the next County Council election. In the former the sixth resolution runs thus: That no distinctively denominational teaching or formulary shall be given or used in public schools in school hours, but simple Biblical instruction may be given acccording to a syllabus, as is general at present in provided schools.' In the latter the fourth question runs: 'Will you maintain the existing system of Biblical instruction carried on under the London School Board and resist all attempts to introduce denominational teaching into provided schools?' The two formulas differ somewhat in wording, but they mean the same thing. Undenominational teaching is to be given to all children not expressly withdrawn from it, by the regular teachers, as part of the school curriculum, and at the cost of the ratepayers; denominational teaching is to be given to those children whose parents expressly ask for it, by outside teachers, out of school hours, and at the cost of the persons providing it.

It will not be difficult to show that this scheme is fatal to the giving of denominational teaching in elementary schools; that it will probably be adopted unless Churchmen bestir themselves; and that the only way in which they can usefully bestir themselves is by coming forward with an alternative proposal.

The fact that so many people who really value denominational teaching are yet blind to the worthlessness of what are called 'outside facilities' can only be set down to an entire misreading of the average parent. I believe that the vast majority of the class whose children attend elementary schools wish them to have some kind of religious instruction. That, however, is quite compatible with an equally general indifference to the particular kind of teaching. The parent has played a very prominent part-on paper-in the educational controversy. But he has played it only on paper. Both sides have suffered from the impossibility of getting him either to protest or to vote against the treatment his children receive, whether in Board schools or in Church schools. The Nonconformist can point triumphantly to the entire acquiescence of parents who call themselves Churchmen in the teaching given under the Cowper-Temple clause. There have been moments when to show that even a few thousand Churchmen had used their right of withdrawing their children from the religious lesson in Board schools would have been an invaluable controversial weapon. But no such expression of distaste to undenominational teaching has ever been produced. The Nonconformists, however, can make no capital out of this fact, because they find it equally impos

sible to bring forward any appreciable number of Nonconformist parents who have withdrawn their children from the religious lesson in Church schools. There are thousands of parishes all over the country in which the Church school is the only school that the children of Nonconformists can attend. But the Nonconformist parent is not in the least disturbed. Though he might, if he liked, forbid his child to be present at the religious lesson, he is apparently of opinion that the wholesome medicine of the Sunday chapel will be a sufficient antidote to the poison of the weekday school. The effect of this indifference will be that if there be one religion taught in school hours by the regular teachers and as part of the school course, and another religion taught in the school buildings indeed, but out of school hours, as something extra and optional, and by outside teachers, the former will be the religion in which 99 per cent. of the children in every school will be brought up. Yes, it may be said, this is what would happen if the choice of the parent lay between the religion taught in the school and none at all. But it will be different if the opportunity is given him of having his child taught the religion he himself professes after school is over. He may not think it worth while to withdraw his child from the undenominational religious lesson, but he will welcome the opportunity of having his child taught by the clergyman of the parish or by his own minister when the other children have gone home. But there will be three influences steadily making against any such arrangement, and any one of the three, as I believe, and certainly all three in combination, will be fatal to its success. There is the influence of the child, who naturally prefers getting out of school at the same time as the others to being 'kept in' for an additional lesson. There is the influence of the mother, who wants something done in the house or fetched from outside, and thinks that it is quite enough to forego these services during the hours when attendance is compulsory. There is the influence of the father, who knows that when the child comes out of school he may earn a few pence, and has no wish to see the time in which he can do this shortened. If any one thinks that the parents' regard for the real interest of their children will stand in the way of their being put to these base uses, how does he explain the necessity for a law making school attendance compulsory? If a parent cannot be trusted to send his child to school in order to get that secular education without which he can hardly hope to earn his living, why should he be more unselfish when the attendance is optional and the subject taught is religion?

Thus, if all religious teaching is given out of school hours, it will be given to empty benches. If denominational teaching is given out of school hours and undenominational teaching in school hours, the only religion taught will be undenominationalism. The first result will be tantamount to banishing religion from the school,

the second to the establishment of a particular religion in the school and to its endowment out of the rates.

Yet, although one of these two solutions of the educational problem is not desired by the nation, and the other directly conflicts with the principle of religious equality, one or other of them stands a good chance of being adopted if Churchmen continue to think that their strength is only to sit still. A large part of the people of England, including a number of Nonconformists, seem to have persuaded themselves that it is possible to draw a distinction between simple Biblical teaching' and denominational teaching. Their idea appears to be that all religions are alike up to a certain point. Undenominationalism is the stock which serves as the common foundation of all soups. Denominationalism is only the flavouring which differentiates one soup from another. I do not wonder that undenominationalism finds favour with the mass of the Anglican laity. In their eyes the Church is little more than an institution founded to teach such parts of the Bible as do not contain any disputed statements of doctrine. Anything beyond this is variously set down as narrow,' or 'extreme,' or 'partisan,' or 'beyond the comprehension of children.' If this 'simple Biblical teaching' were given in Church schools as well as in provided schools, the mass of the laity would be quite satisfied. They would think that the clergy were doing their duty by the children as much in what they withheld as in what they imparted. What is surprising is that Nonconformists should equally desire to see this sort of teaching made universal and provided at the cost of the ratepayers. What has become of all their protests against establishment and endowment? What has become of their insistence on the inalienable right of every man to shape his religion on the pattern which his own conscience prescribes to him? They are shocked at the notion that a school in which the authorised teaching is that of the Church of England should be supported out of the rates. But that a school in which the authorised teaching is founded on a principle which directly contradicts that of the Church of England should be supported out of the rates seems to them an arrangement that can offend no one. It should be a sufficient answer to Nonconformists

of this type that it does offend a great many. The dislike of Churchmen to the Cowper-Temple clause is identical in principle with the Nonconformist dislike to the management clauses. These objections may be exaggerated, or illogical, or politically inconvenient, but so long as they feel them and are resolved to act upon them this does not matter. The line that politicians love to follow is the line of least resistance, and that is not the line that leads straight up to a fortified position, whether that position be held by Churchmen or by Nonconformists.

Fortunately, the view I have been combating is not taken by all