382 THE SCHOOL BOARDS xv 



teaching of all school-masters in the new schools should be 

 strictly ' undenominational. ' . The Cowper-Temple clause was, 

 we repeat, proposed simply to tide over the difficulty. It was 

 to satisfy the Nonconformists and the ' unsectarian, ' as distinct 

 from the secular party of the League, by forbidding all distinc- 

 tive 'catechisms and formularies,' which might have the effect 

 of openly assigning the schools to this or that religious body. 

 It refused, at the same time, to attempt the impossible task of 

 denning what was undenominational ; and its author even con- 

 tended, if we understood him correctly, that it would in no way, 

 even indirectly, interfere with the substantial teaching of any 

 master in any school. This assertion we always believed to be 

 untenable ; we could not see how, in the face of this clause, a 

 distinctly denominational tone could be honestly given to 

 schools nominally general. But beyond this mere suggestion of 

 an attempt at a general tone of comprehensiveness in religious 

 teaching it was not intended to go, and only because such was 

 its limitation was it accepted by the Government and by the 

 House. 



"But now we are told that it is to be construed as doing pre- 

 cisely that which it refused to do. A ' formulary,' it seems, is 

 a collection of formulas, and formulas are simply propositions 

 of whatever kind touching religious faith. All such propositions, 

 if they cannot be accepted by all Christian denominations, are 

 to be proscribed ; and it is added significantly that the Jews 

 also are a denomination, and so that any teaching distinctively 

 Christian is perhaps to be excluded, lest it should interfere with 

 "their freedom and rights. Are we then to fall back on the 

 simple reading of the letter of the Bible ? No ! this, it is 

 granted, would be an 'unworthy pretence.' The teacher is to 

 give ' grammatical, geographical, or historical explanations ; ' 

 but he is to keep clear of ' theology proper, ' because, as Pro- 

 fessor Huxley takes great pains to prove, there is no theological 

 teaching which is not opposed by some sect or other, from 

 Roman Catholicism on the one hand to Unitarianism on the 

 other. It was not, perhaps, hard to see that this difficulty 

 would be started ; and to those who, like Professor Huxley look 

 at it theoretically, without much practical experience of schools, 



