A New Inquisition.

Now, although the attempt to force a text-book containing such matters as these into the curriculum of our State schools must, if it is persisted in, make the most sacred articles of the Christian creed a legitimate subject for political controversy, we do not feel called upon to discuss any of the deep dogmatic problems which are raised by the text-book. The State Schools Defence League cannot speak with one voice upon this page 8 subject, since all sorts of conflicting views are represented in its membership. In this respect the League faithfully reflects the variety of opinion prevailing in the whole community, and it is this variety which makes the attempt to enforce uniformity in the State schools intolerable and impossible. In the creed of a voluntary church miracle may have its proper place, but it has none in the compulsory school curriculum of a secular State. And it is remarkable indeed that the State should be asked to declare for rigid uniformity by a Church whose tendency is lately in the opposite direction. Formerly the Church regarded the acceptance of all miracles, including the absolute inerrancy of the record which enshrines them, as an indispensable article of faith, but the position has been much modified in recent years. There has been no formal amendment of the creeds; miracle still stands in the very forefront; yet inside the Church itself there is a growing tendency to treat the miraculous element as less essential, or at least to distinguish between its essential and its non-essential parts. Many accordingly of the subsidiary miracles which are included in this text-book are for one reason or another rejected by many devout and learned men who remain nevertheless within the Church; and the astounding and almost incredible demand is now made of this free democracy that it shall prescribe a more rigid standard of orthodoxy for its school teachers than many branches of the Christian Church enforce upon their own members. Doubts which find expression in the pulpits and Church Congresses of the Old Country and do not disqualify those harbouring them from the highest ecclesiastical positions are to be held by a State which has no religion of its own to qualify its school teachers for the black list, and to expose them at the hands of unskilled and perhaps bigoted tribunals to harassment, persecution, and dismissal. It is surely safe to say that the State will never undertake such a work either directly or by deputy.