creating a precedent which will afterwards be used to the injury of
every Nonconformist? The editor of the _Guardian_ tells his friends
sternly to resist every attempt to throw the burden of making the
teaching undenominational on the managers, and thanks me for the
warning I have given him. I return the thanks, with interest, for
_his_ warning, as to the course the party he represents intends
to pursue, and for enabling me thus to draw public attention to a
perfectly constitutional and effectual mode of checkmating them.

And, in truth, it is wonderful to note the surprising entanglement
into which our able editor gets himself in the struggle between his
native honesty and judgment and the necessities of his party. "We
could not see," says he, "in the face of this clause how a distinct
denominational tone could be honestly given to schools nominally
general." There speaks the honest and clearheaded man. "Any attempt
to throw the burden of making the teaching undenominational must be
sternly resisted." There speaks the advocate holding a brief for his
party. "Verily," as Trinculo says, "the monster hath two mouths:" the
one, the forward mouth, tells us very justly that the teaching cannot
"honestly" be "distinctly denominational;" but the other, the
backward mouth, asserts that it must by no manner of means be
"undenominational." Putting the two utterances together, I can only
interpret them to mean that the teaching is to be "indistinctly
denominational." If the editor of the _Guardian_ had not shown signs
of anger at my use of the term "theological fog," I should have been
tempted to suppose it must have been what he had in his mind, under
the name of "indistinct denominationalism." But this reading being
plainly inadmissible, I can only imagine that he inculcates the
teaching of formulas common to a number of denominations.