iSyr RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION IN SCHOOLS 367 



musicians, but as civilising arts. History, except the most 

 elementary notions, he put out of court, as too advanced for 

 children. 



Finally, he proposed a list of members to serve on the 

 Education Committee in a couple of sentences with a hu- 

 morous twist in them which disarmed criticism. " On a 

 former occasion I was accused of having a proclivity in 

 favour of the clergy, and recollecting this, I have only given 

 them in this instance a fair proportion of the representation. 

 If, however, I have omitted any gentleman who thinks he 

 ought to be on the committee, I can only assure him that 

 above all others I should have been glad to put him on." 



That day week the committee was elected, about a third 

 of the members of the Board being chosen to serve on it. 

 At the same meeting. Dr. Gladstone continues — 



Mr. W. H. Smith, the well-known member of Parliament, 

 proposed, and Mr. Samuel Morley, M.P., seconded, a resolution 

 in favour of religious teaching — " That, in the schools provided 

 by the Board, the Bible shall be read, and there shall be given 

 therefrom such explanations and such instruction in the prin- 

 ciples of religion and morality as are suited to the capacities of 

 children," with certain provisos. Several antagonistic amend- 

 ments were proposed ; but Prof. Huxley gave his support to 

 Mr. Smith's resolutions, which, however, he thought might be 

 trimmed and amended in a way that the Rev. Dr. Angus had 

 suggested. His speech, defining his own position, was a very 

 remarkable one. He said it was assumed in the public mind 

 that this question of religious instruction was a little family 

 quarrel between the different sects of Protestantism on the one 

 hand, and the old Catholic Church on the other. Side by side 

 with this much shivered and splintered Protestantism of theirs, 

 and with the united fabric of the Catholic Church (not so strong 

 temporally as she used to be, otherwise he might not have been 

 addressing them at that moment) there was a third party grow- 

 ing up into very considerable and daily increasing significance, 

 which had nothing to do with either of those great parties, and 

 which was pushing its own way independent of them, having 

 its own religion and its own morality, which rested in no way 

 whatever on the foundations of the other two." He thought 

 that " the action of the Board should be guided and influenced 

 very much by the consideration of this third great aspect of 



