1893 RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION IN BOARD SCHOOLS 281 



In a leading' article of your issue to-day you state, 

 \vitli perfect accuracy, that I supported tlie arrangement 

 respecting religious instruction agreed to by tlie London 

 School Board in 1871, and hitherto undisturbed. But 

 you go on to say that " the persons who framed the rule " 

 intended it to include definite teaching of such theological 

 dogmas as the Incarnation. 



I cannot say what may have been in the minds of the 

 framers of the rule ; but, assuredly, if I had dreamed that 

 any such interpretation could fairly be put upon it, I 

 should have opposed the arrangement to the best of my 

 ability. 



In fact, a year before the rule was framed I wrote an 

 article in the Contemporary Review, entitled " The Board 

 Schools — what they can do, and what they may do," in 

 which I argued that the terms of the Education Act 

 excluded such teaching as it is now proposed to include. 

 And I supported my contention by the following citation 

 from a speech delivered by Mr. Forster at the Birkbeck 

 Institution in 1870 : — 



" I have the fullest confidence that in the reading and 

 explaining of the Bible, what the children will be taught 

 will be the great truths of Christian life and conduct, 

 which all of us desire they should know, and that no 

 eff"ort wiU be made to cram into their poor little minds, 

 theological dogmas which their tender age prevents them 

 from understanding." 



The other was on a lighter, but equally perennial 

 point of interest, being nothing less than the Sea 

 Serpent. In the Times of January 11, he writes, that 

 while there is no reason against a fifty-foot serpent 

 existing as in Cretaceous seas, still the evidence for 

 its existence is entirely inconclusive. He goes on to 

 tell how a scientific friend's statement once almost 

 convinced him until he read the quartermaster's 



