The Birkenhead News and Wirral General Advertiser. — 1903-06-20 (Birkenhead, Merseyside, England)

THE EDUCATION ACT AND  PASSIVE RESISTANCE. -SERMON BY THE REV. C. RIGNAL.  On Sunday evening last the Rev. Charles Signal preached an eloquent sermon to a crowded congregation, at the Grange-road Baptiet Church, on " Passive resistance for conscienee sake." In the course of his iuldress the preacher said that to all thoughtful obsem era of the times and the movements of the national life, it war daily becoming more epparent that they were in the vortex of religious strife, and in the incipient stages of what everyone should regard as a deplorable civil and religions war, the precise character, extent, and consequences of which no one could foresee. Be the end near or distant, the outcome would be a new chapter in the annals of freedom. The forces of conscience to-clay enlightened and invigorated by strong religious convictions could no more be defeated than could Cromwell's [muskies at Marston Moor and Newby. To be more explicit, they had before them the unusual spectacle stretching throughout the length and breadth of the land of a vast number of men and women ranking with the noblest of their citizens, cad second to none in intelligence, in patriotism, in loyalty to the civil order, and also in Godliness of heart and life, who had risen up with one consent, animated with the same religions spirit to resist the impositions of a religious tax. Whatever might be the views of the promoters, and their party, or the Anglican and Romanist Churches in whose interests and at whose instigation it had been imposed, in the eyes of these people who resisted it was an unjust and iniquitous law, demanding that they should violate the most cherished and sacred rights of their being, and commit ecclesiastical suicide. This was not a political question. It v:as a religious question, pure and simple, that went down to the very foundations of the re. ligious future of our people. He (the preacher) had taken his stand alongside ' those who in the spirit of their fathers res slated the eucroachments of the State on the religious sphere. He could do no other, and be true to himself and to God. I Having explained the relationship that I should exist between Church and State in the light of certain Scriptural quotations, the preacher said there were things of God as well as things of Cresol., and when the latter clashed with the former there could be no doubt where duty lay. They must obey God rather than man. No civil enactment could ever make -eoid the laws of God.. The civil goverrment must not intrude between the soul and God, for here they were responsible to God alone. The Government I did this when it interfered in the things of , I religion. If the State stepped in here it I was to be resisted like MI other intruders. I If it interfered beyond a lostering care, it I went beyond its proper province, and not ' only did violence to the rights of conscience but invaded the prerogative of God Himself. They had nothing to do here with the educational value of the new law. It mirtit or might not be an improvement. Some °people delighted in it, because it co-ordinated authority. That appeared to be so, , for in nearly every case it meant taking the I people's schools out of the hands of the people, and handing them over to clerical dominance. He was not sure that it was likely to prove a boon and blessing to anyone lint the priests. It wee a cunningly. devised project to enable the priests to capture the people's schools, and to secure to the priests in their own schools the compulsory attendance of a susceptible audience whom they might inoculate with their Racerdotal teachings at the expense of their fellow ' citizens. The only effective protest that appeared to be left was to refuse active compliance with this law, and if need be, to suffer its penalty—to offer a passive resistance to it demands, and allow the law to work out it own redress in the distraint of goods.