LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
THE WESLEYANS AND LORD SALISBURY.
[To TIM EDITOR 07 TEE " SPECTATOE:]
Sut,—In your article in the Spectator of November 30th, on the Wesleyan Memorial to Lord Salisbury with regard to the schools question, you express your agreement with the Times that, in places where Nonconformists are not strong enough to provide a school of their own, the best available remedy for existing grievances appears to lie in the provision of facilities for Nonconformist teaching in Church-schools. I believe that many of us who claim nevertheless to be tolerant as well as conscientious Churchmen, would find this a very hard pill to swallow ; and that we should strenuously and (as I contend) not unreasonably resist the opening of the doors of our schools to teachers coming for the avowed and express purpose of teaching principles directly opposed to those for the sake of which alone Church people have been content to undertake the cost and burden of building and maintaining the school which it is proposed these teachers should make use of. Besides, how is it to be worked ? Imagine the discord of half-a-dozen "ministers of religion," side by side, barely out of each others' reach, teaching and insisting upon their differ- ing and opposing tenets! or are so many different class-rooms to be built ; and if so, by whom ? Surely it would be a much more fair and practicable arrangement, that Nonconformists should, if they think it necessary, provide their religious teaching for their children on weekdays in their own Sunday school-rooms or chapels, daring the same hour that it is being given in the school, allowing the children time to reach the school before the registers are marked. The registers being closed at 10 or 10.15 a.m., there would be no insuperable difficulty in this.—I am, Sir, lee.,
St. Thomas' Vicarage, Oxford. W. WATSON.
Previous page
