The aim of our London authorities, and education authorities generally in England, is not to train character, but to teach the contents of the Bible. Why a civic authority should include the teaching of the Bible no man knows; and whether a civic authority can be indifferent to the truth or untruth of the lessons it imposes few seem to ask. Mr. Sidney Webb, endorsing these lessons, said that the Bible was "great literature"; and scores of our parochial legislators, who were not generally known to admire great literature (but _were_ known to have numbers of Nonconformist constituents), fervently repeated the phrase. Does the child appreciate or hear a single word about the literary qualities of the Bible? Does a literary lesson need to be a deliberate lesson in untruth? Can we find no great literature which has not the taint of untruth? Dr. Clifford says that these lessons tend to make "good citizens." It is not at first sight apparent why we should go to the literature of an ancient, mendacious, polygamous, and bloodthirsty tribe for lessons in citizenship in a modern civilisation. Let us suppose, however, that the ingenious teacher has wrung a moral of truthfulness, fraternity, respect for women, self-reliance, and universal justice out of these peculiar records of ancient Judæa. Follow the child, in imagination, into the later years of citizenship. He hardly leaves the school before he learns that the whole Biblical scheme is very generally ridiculed, and is rejected even by large numbers of learned theologians. Before many years, at least, he is fairly sure to learn this. The prescriptions of the Sermon on the Mount he, of course, never had the slightest intention of observing. The teacher, even while he reads the quixotic counsels, knows, and possibly notes with approval, that the boy's code is: "If any smite thee on the one cheek, smite him forthwith on both." But the boy now learns that from the Creation to the Resurrection the whole story is seriously disputed and is rejected by the majority of well-educated people. He looks back on his "Bible lessons" and his teacher with derision, and he discards the whole authority of his code of conduct. Surely an admirable foundation for virtue and citizenship!