ii.] THE SCHOOL BOARDS. 43 



resisted. " There speaks the advocate holding a brief for 

 his party. " Verily," as Trinculo says, " the monster hath 

 two mouths : " the one, the forward month, tells us very 

 justly that the teaching cannot " honestly " be " distinctly 

 denominational ; " but the other, the backward mouth, 

 asserts that it must by no manner of means be " undeno- 

 minational." Putting the two utterances together, I can 

 only interpret them to mean that the teaching is to 

 be " indistinctly denominational." If the editor of the 

 Guardian had not shown signs of anger at my use of the 

 term "theological fog," I should have been tempted to 

 suppose it must have been what he had in his mind, 

 under the name of "indistinct denominationalism." 

 But this reading being plainly inadmissible, I can only 

 imagine that he inculcates the teaching of formulas 

 common to a number of denominations. 



But the Education Department has already told the 

 gentleman from Steyning that any such proceeding will 

 be illegal. " According to a well-known rule of inter- 

 preting Acts of Parliament, ' denomination ' would be 

 held to include ' denominations/ ;; In other words, we 

 must read the Act thus : 



" No religious catechism or religious formulary which 

 is distinctive of any particular denominations shall be 

 taught/' 



Thus we are really very much indebted to the editor 

 of the Guardian and his correspondent. The one has 

 shown us that the sectaries mean to try to get as much 

 denominational teaching as they can agree upon among 

 themselves, forced into the elementary schools ; while 

 the other has obtained a formal declaration from the- 

 Education Department that any such attempt will 

 contravene the Act of Parliament, and that, therefore, 

 the unsectarian, law-abiding members of the School 

 Boards may safely reckon upon bringing down upon 



