The Review of Reviews. 



Jul:/ 1. 1906. 



The Palace Hotel idestPoyeO) in Market Street. 

 San Francisco. 



fuitlKT ;■ I t> .iipiT till- \\\]'.'\ i> \'. r shurn himli, the 

 Church is to l>t aildued to send its clei"j;y into the 

 schools two (lays in exery week to teach the Church 

 Catechism as fully and .is do<;matically as they 

 please. And .is a further concession, in 800 school 

 districts in which 5000 denominational schools stand 

 in the midst of 24,000,000 of the population, they 

 are to be allowed to teach the Catechism and their 

 dogma as thev have done lieivtofore wherever four- 

 fifths of the parents r,t ih.- children desire such 

 teachinir to he "iven. 



The Mistake 



of 

 the Bishops. 



'I'luTC .irr 14.000 dciiom'national 

 schools attended liy 2.000,009^ 

 scholars in England and Wale^'. . 

 All these will henceforth |)ass under- 

 public control because tlie\ are maintained solely at 

 the i)ubli." expense. The lira) authorities^ can decide 

 whether or not' religious teaching is to be allowed, 

 but if they decide against the secular policy — which 

 they will do, for thev have always done so in the 

 case of the schools already uiuler their control — 

 they are forbidden to teClch any formulary distinc- 

 tive of any sect. Simple Biblical teaching, with 

 hymns, prayers, and le.'i.sons, embodying the reli- 

 gious beliefs of all Christians without any trespass 

 upon the domain of controversial theologv. is to be 

 imparted to the children. This arrangement was 

 origin. illv jirojwsed by ,1 C.hurcljman. Cowper- 

 Temple, and.it was carried out by the London 

 School Board on the motion of Mr. W. H. Smith. 

 Churchman and Conservative. It has been embodied 



in syllabuses drawn up by nearly all the School 

 Boards and County Council educational authorities, 

 on most of which Churchmen have been in the ma- 

 jority. The quality of the religious teaching given 

 under this clause has been reiieittedly certified as 

 excellent by .\rchbishops and Bishops. No parents 

 have objected to it. nor has any Anglican yet been 

 a.ble to produce ,1 single instance in which this 

 Cowper-Temple teaching has I>een used to prejudice 

 clrildren against the" Established Church. Neverthe- 

 less the Bishoi>s and the clergy, with a few distin- 

 guished exceptions, have declared war against the 

 Hill, on the ground that it establ'shes and endows 

 Birrellisni. nonconformity. undenominationalism, 

 ,ind the lilce. ' ' .■ 



The serious blot on the Bdl is that 

 The it makes no pro\ ision for any moral 



Serious Blot, in.st ruction, at the same time that 

 bv making the conscience clause a 

 ii-.ility it nuts a premium upon abstention from re- 

 ligious instruction. Mr. Birrell frankly avowed that 

 he intended to make the child who objected to reli- 

 gious instruction an object of envy to his mates, ^o 

 child will go to school to receive a religious or any 

 other kind of lesson if he is to be free to spend the 

 time in the playground.- But the only moral traia- 

 ing given to the children is to be in the hour covered 

 by the conscience clause. That won't do. What is 

 needed is to make moral, training an integral part of 

 the compulsory curriculum, it ought not to be diffi- 

 cult to make that moral tr.\ining so religious in 

 spirit, so Biblical in its illustrations, as to satisfy 

 the wishes of the parents. .-\11 the four cardinal vir- 

 tues, as well as all the gifts and graces of the Holy 

 Spirit as defined by the Catholic Church, are, with 

 one doubtful exception, secular virtues. We are all, 

 even the stoutest unbelievers— and although there 

 are fifty " secularist '■ Labour men in the House, 

 there are said to be only four avowed unbelievers — 

 in favour of moral instruction. It will depend upon 

 the teacher and the handiiook as to how far th.it 

 moral instruction is saturated with religion. But the 

 confusion in the ])ubiie. mind as to what is religious 

 and what is secular is very great. Of this the classic 

 Ulustration is the seventh clause of the New South 

 Wales Public Instruction Act of 1880, which ex- 

 pressly states that the term " secular instruction " 

 shall he held to include " general religious teaching 

 as distinguished from dogmatical and polemic.il 

 theologv." 



Mr. Morley's 



Apologue of the 



Three Rings. 



There have been few out-of-Parlia- 



ment speeches last month. Almost 



the only important utterance was 



Mr. Morley's speech at the Eighty 



Club, and the best thing in that was his apologue of 



the three rings— which is well worth quoting here: — 



Somebod\- submitted to a S.iraceii oliief wliicli was the 

 true religion— tlie .Tewisli. tlie Moliammedan. or tlie Cliris- 

 tian— and tlie cliief replied b.v tliis apologue. Ill a fanul.T 

 ot great lionour and e't.Me tliore was a ring whioll coa- 



