Page:The Conscience Clause (Oakley, 1866).djvu/53

41 the Bible. Even in British and Foreign Schools exposition of it by the master is fully recognised. Indeed, any other rule is not so much absurd as impossible.

The clause remains in the trust deeds of schools in union with the National Society that the moral and religious superintendence of the school shall be in the hands of the clergyman, the Society's terms of union remain, that the children "are to be instructed in the Holy Scriptures;" and, as Mr. Lingen tells Mr. Caparn {supra p. 25), it is only proposed to give parents the right of complaint when such reading and exposition is made use of to inculcate "doctrine which ex hypothesi is that of the Church of England, but not that of the parent." And in order to sustain such a complaint, and to bring the school under forfeiture of its grant from the Committee of Council, a troublesome process of proof must be gone through, which is not at all likely to be undertaken by the class of parents concerned, who are for the most part satisfied with the bare concession of their right in question. In other words, I believe that the Conscience Clause would leave the Scripture lesson the unchallenged domain of the clergyman.

At the same time, I see, of course, the point of honour that is raised; and I can understand men who knew that they were going to expound the third chapter of St. John in the sense of baptismal regeneration, feeling it their duty to remove certain Dissenting children, if they knew them, from the class. Many clergymen, in fact, I know would rather exempt Nonconformist children from all religious instruction whatever than exempt them from learning only part of what they hold as truth. I do not agree with them, but I feel the unsatisfactoriness of their whole position, and I maintain that the unsatisfactoriness, whatever it is, is in ourselves, and not in the clause—in the Church's actual position, and not in the State's requirements—and that it must be remedied by conciliating the Dissenters to the Church