the
articles of the Christian Faith." These, according to his catechism,
are summed up in the Apostles' Creed. He cannot, therefore, be
satisfied with any religious instruction which is not based on
that formula; and yet such instruction cannot rightly be enforced
in schools which belong as much to unbelievers as to Christians.
A Churchman's religious faith is not derived primarily from the
Bible, but from the teaching of the Christian Church, who is older
than the oldest of her documents. There was a Church before the
New Testament was written, and that Church transmitted the faith
by oral tradition. "From the very first the rule has been, as a
matter of fact, that the Church should teach the truth, and then
should appeal to Scripture in vindication of its own teaching."
For a Churchman, religious instruction must be the teaching of the
Church, tested by the Bible. The two cannot be separated. Hence it
follows that, while the State is bound to respect the convictions
of those who adhere to all manner of beliefs and disbeliefs, the
Churchman cannot recognize religious teaching imparted under such
conditions as being that which his own conscience demands.

And, further, supposing that some contrivance could be discovered
whereby the State might authorize the teaching of the Church's
doctrine, the Churchman could not conscientiously be a party to
it; for, according to his theory, there is only one Body divinely
commissioned to decide what is to be taught--and that Body is not
the State, but the Church; and there is only one set of persons
qualified to teach it--viz., those who are duly authorized by the
Church, and are fully persuaded as to the truth of what they teach.

It is sometimes asked how the Church is to fulfil this obligation
without being subsidized in some way by the State. The principal
requisite is greater faith in its Divine mission. If the Bishops
and clergy had a stronger conviction that what they are divinely
commissioned to undertake they will be divinely assisted to fulfil,
this question need not be suggested. The first teachers of the
Christian religion performed their task without either "Rate-aid"
or "State-aid" and the result of their labour is still to be seen;
whereas now the object of leaders of religion seems to be to get
done for them what they ought to do for themselves. It may be well
to quote an utterance of the Bishop of Oxford at the time when the
Liberal Government was dealing with ed