The Position of the Teachkhs.

The effect upon the teachers of the introduction of such lessons into the curriculum deserves to be more particularly considered. A conscientious teacher who, like the Dean of Westminster, is unable to accept the stories of the creation, of the making of woman from the rib of man, and of her deception by the serpent, according to their literal meaning, will refuse to teach as the truth what he believes to be false; and he must make way for a successor who is less critical, or perhaps less scrupulous in expressing the results of his criticism. We are, of course, aware that a conscience clause is proposed which will give a teacher a theoretical protection in such a case; but though this provision would enable him to plead conscientious objection as a sufficient excuse for declining to give the lesson, there would be absolutely nothing to prevent the Education Board, the School Committee, and the parents from securing the removal of any teacher availing himself of the privilege, and therefore the practical operation of the clause would be as a religious test, and nothing else. Are we going to add the interpretation of Scripture to the duties of School Committees and Education Boards, and heresy hunts to their diversions? Unless the local element in our educational administration, which is a main source of its strength, is to be superseded altogether, and the Minister of Education installed as the supreme administrative and exegetical authority, the standard of interpretation will necessarily vary with the denominational or critical bias of each district or neighbourhood, and no statutory restrictions can possibly prevent the local authorities and the majorities which elect or control them from in directly using their wide powers in enforcing their particular views. Lip-service is, of course, all that they can exact, for religious tests can never touch opinion, but only the expression of it; and valuable indeed will be the religious teaching of those who teach with the lips only, and, disbelieving, conform for the sake of a livelihood! Yet those who are constrained to do so will be but following the counsel of the accredited agent of the Bible-in-schools party, who urges that the unbelieving may teach as a venal journalist writes in a purely "professional" page 7 way. The remedy for the immorality and irreligion of the secular system is that men shall go into the schools and speak what to them are "lies, in the name of the Lord." We assert with confidence that there is nothing in the present "godless" system so utterly repugnant to religion and morality' as this aslonnding advice.