PROFESSOR M'KENZIE AND THE ALLIES

Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2326, 7 December 1914, Page 7

PROFESSOR M'KENZIE AND THE ALLIES

■With reference to the strictures which the National Schools Defence League have published on the siibiect of the letter written by Canon Garland to the Church of England Men's Society, and iu which statements the Bible-in-State-Schools League has been charged with claiming in its inner circles an exclusive -position' for the Church of England, to the detriment of the other Churches in alliance with the Churoh of England, the Rev. 6. S. Cook, in charge of the Methodist Clmrch at Thorndon, has addressed a letter to Professor M'Kenzie, secretary of the Defence League, in the course of which he says:— "I received fTom you a copy of a letter of the Bible-in-Schools' League, dated November 19, which your league is reprinting for circulation with your footnotes attached. I would draw your attention to the fact that the original circular letter of November 19 was not issued to ministers of the Anglican Church (as stated in the footnotes), but to the laymen of the Church of England Mon's Societies, and that' a very small proportion of those sent out went througli ministers' hands for branches of the C.E.M.S. "Consequently there is no truth in the imputations contained in your footnotes, the letter being an altogether unobjectionable one when honestly and intelligibly ' read in tho above connection.

"I have myself received communications from Canon Garland on behalf of the league to bring before Methodist laymen in which they were referred to as 'the Church' in a 'corresponding manner, but no one could imagino that this reflected on any of the other Churches concerned. • "Putting it mildly,-the use yora league has made of the letter is decidedly nil-British." —[Published'by arrangement.]