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NATION versus CHURCH.

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NATION versus CHURCH. Issue has now been joined on the subject of the Education Bill and a heavy campaign, with a decisive battle at the end is now a sure prospect. It is the Armageddon of Church and State. The leaders of the Anglican Church have desired and chosen it, but they will not, perhaps, be satisfied with the result when the fight is over. The Pope of Rome, a year or two since, forced a quarrel on the French Republic, which has eventuated in a separation of Church and State in that country, carrying with it the loss of France as the "eldest daughter of the Roman faith. In the same manner, the Anglican leaders, either solicited or accepted the dangerous gifts of rate aid for Church schools from the late Government of Mr. Balfour. Archbishop Temple had wisely said that public support meant public control, and expressed the opinion that as the Church would not concede the control, the State would never grant complete public support. But an infatuated Government made the offer, and a short-sighted episcopate accepted it. As a consequence, they are in the position in which we find them to day-mad with rage in the loss of schools which they had themselves abandoned to public maintenance. The Anglican Church has been steadily losing her statesmanship during recent years. It- has, for some time, been said, that owing to the rigid creeds and articles of the Church, young men of intellectual distinction were refusing to enter its ministry. This lamentable tendency is beginning to tell on the quality of its rulers and, to-day, we have Davidson where some of us have seen Tait, and Winnington-Ingram in the place of Temple. The ablest prelate in the Church—Dr. Percival, Bishop of Hereford, the last of her statesmen—is a voice crying in an episcopal wilderness. He warned the Church in vain against the dangerous legislation of 1902 and 1903; and, to-day, equally unheeded, he warns his fellow Churchmen against insensate opposition to the Bill of Mr. Birrell. This Bill is not all that some of us would have wished, and is contrary to what we advocated at a time when there was a chance of modifying its character in the period of gestation. We had hoped that the Government would rise to the level of its majority in the House of Commons. But it is one of the misfortunes of the political situation that the Ministry was formed before the majority came into existence, and falls below it in character and vigour. We saw the con- sequence in the humiliating error of the Trades Disputes Bill, which, however, is to be retrieved. In the same way, the Education Bill is lacking in a thoroughness accordant with the composition of the majority, and calling forth its power and enthusiasm. The Government might have once for all-and it would not have been too early in the sixth year of the twentieth century- separated the education of the nation's children from the sectarian questions on which citizens are hopelessly divided, and which have in the past gravely hindered the progress and efficiency of education. But they have failed to do this, and lost a splendid opportunity of doing the nation a great service and making themselves famous in history. Nevertheless, the Bill of Mr. Birrell is a noble measure, and constitutes a marked advance towards a thorough system of national education free from religious bickering and obstruction. For this reason, those of us who would have wished it better, must not allow the better to be the enemy of the good, as the proverb warns. We must stand by the Bill, the whole Bill, and nothing but the Bill, excepting, uideed, the four-fifths clause. The threats of the clerics will have the effect of closing the

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NATION versus CHURCH.