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justice, no harm is done by the controversy, though public discussion is rather a futile agent for settling the questions involved; but higher and more interesting and quite other arguments than legal ones are often used, and these it is with which the public and the parents and the educators are chiefly concerned.

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It seems quite unlikely that any large number of parents are anxious for their children to have special, as contrasted with general, religious education. fact the chronic complaint of those who profess themselves anxious for each parent to be amply provided with his particular religious color, is that the great mass of people not only have no color, but have no religion at all, that they are quite careless, and too easily satisfied with anything or nothing.

Of large numbers this is certainly true, and it is to be feared that any residual desire for their children to receive at least a minimum of religious instruction is not likely to withstand a very severe test. Hence it may be doubted whether the appeal to the religious autonomy of the parent is quite lucid, or even quite just. For surely children belong to some extent to the State, as well as largely to themselves; the right of parents to bring them up in idleness and dissoluteness is limited, their power of determining the exact shade of religious belief of the next generation is naturally limited, and even their right of specifying what shall be inculcated may be limited, if they avail themselves of the machinery of State education, and, nevertheless, wish to specify extravagances repugnant to the general sense of the community. But as a matter of fact probably only a very small percentage could formulate any wishes on the subject at all.

However that may be, and however easy it is to satisfy the actual as contrasted with the hypothetical demands

of parents for religious instruction, I am convinced that the majority of people in this country are not really dead to the old deep truths of the Universe. They are readily awakened to a contemplation of the serious problems of existence; and if they have grown hopeless of any solution, and careless of religious observances-as undoubtedly most of them have-I fear it must be admitted that the carelessness is due partly to the class-respectability of religious bodies, and partly to the overlofty absorption of some church-officers in rites and observances and modes of expression too remote from everyday life and ordinary human experience.

It is easy to appreciate the efforts of any Church or Brotherhood to insist on the importance of membership and corporate religious life; it is less easy, though it is possible, to understand their insistence on the importance of sacramental and sacerdotal aids to right disposition; but these hothouse flowers of religious culture, the outcome of a highly developed historic sense, are hardly appropriate for school routine; nor can teaching of this kind, though singularly effective with a certain class of mind, be held to replace all other treatment, and render unnecessary the efforts of educators to inform and influence children in much simpler ways and on more fundamental topics.

It is intelligible that pinnacles and decorations should chiefly interest those to whom the main building has long been a tacit and almost unregarded assumption; but I venture to say that even in the common foundation is a vast amount of fact and feeling which they have to some extent overlooked, else they could hardly profess themselves indifferent to it.

The old familiar problems which group themselves round the fundamental ideas of God, Freedom, and Immortality are far more interesting

and weighty than questions concerning sacerotal authority and apostolic succession which have always been responsible for divergence between Church and Dissent; and it is those root ideas which are being attacked, it is from living apprehension of these that the Nation is in danger of drifting away, unless religious organizations are able to amend some of their methods of procedure.

It is not likely to be true that secularism is the only alternative to the acceptance of any particular Bill that may be before Parliament; for some form of compromise is possible, and it is much to be hoped that agreement can be attained; but there is a danger lest the Nation, in despair at an entanglement from which it can see no release, may take refuge, against its will, in a purely secular system of State education,-whereby everything relating to Biblical literature, religious ideals, and 'spiritual life is forbidden to the regular teachers, and left to the intermittent and feverish activity of competing sects.

Such a solution could convey no real satisfaction-even to extreme sectarians; for they too realize that the personal influence of the teacher is the really stimulating thing, that the atmosphere in which children are immersed is a determining factor more effectual by far than the verbal memorizing of any form of words. And this is just the fact that makes agreement so difficult. For we are all genuinely eager for the best training to be given, if only we could decide what the best training is: there is not a disputant in the whole controversy, from the most self-confident Atheist to the most dogmatic Priest, who wishes to injure a single child. It is recognition of the vital interests at stake that warms, and sometimes strangely embitters, the controversy; the war is war for an ideal; and in the heat of battle com

promise may feel like treachery. And yet-hostility is only appropriate in a contest with the bad; a wasting conflict between the good and the better ought not to last forever: surely the bigoted intolerance of the Restoration period must some day cease to transmit its withering influence. A mechanical uniformity, such as was then insisted on, is not worth having, and is impossible; but a concurrence of effort for the amelioration and spiritualization of human life, in the light of a common gospel and a common hope, is not impossible. Hitherto the night of division has continued throughout Christendom, because even yet, for the most part, the "sun is but dimly seen," but there will come a time when

the mortal morning mists of earth Fade in the noon of heaven, when creed and race

Shall bear false witness, each of each, no more,

But find their limits by that larger light,

And overstep them, moving easily Thro' after-ages in the love of Truth, The truth of Love.

The fact is that there is a growing conception of religion which regards it, not as a thing for special hours or special days, but as a reality permeating the whole of life. The old attempt to partition off a region where Divine action is appropriate from another region in which such action would be out of place, the old superstition that God does one thing and not another, that He speaks more directly through the thunder of catastrophe or the mystery of miracle than through the quiet voice of ordinary existence-all this is beginning to show signs of expiring in the light of a coming day. Those to whom such a change is welcome regard it as of the utmost importance that this recognition of a Deity immanent in History and in all the processes of Nature shall be guided and elevated

rather than curbed and frustrated; but curbed and frustrated it would be by a legal enactment distinguishing secular from sacred, definitely forbidding their admixture, and reserving the sacred for specifically doctrinal or ecclesiastical treatment alone.

So what chiefly impresses me about the whole subject is the mass of fundamental material on which the great majority are really agreed. Is it not possible to familiarize children with that, up to such an age as thirteen, during school hours, and leave distinctive coloring to other influences operating both then and later? Surely it is something to lay a sound foundation such as can stand subsequent scrutiny and rationalistic attack-a foundation which may serve as a basis for more specific edification among those who are capable of sustaining a loftier structure.

The attempt to draw up anything of the nature of a creed unhallowed by centuries of emotion and aspiration is extraordinarily difficult, and to obtain general acceptance for such a production is doubtless impossible. Nevertheless, if a possible alternative is to be the deliberate stunting of an essential part of man's nature and privilege during childhood, such a treatment of the coming generation would be so serious a national misfortune that it becomes the duty of any one who has the higher vitality of his country at heart to do what he can to recall attention to the main issue, without drifting among the contending factions, and without being deterred by the contemptuous accusation that he is attempting to formulate some cold-blooded "greatest common measure" of all religions, and to set it up in their place. Not so; the warmth and vitality imparted by strong religious conviction is a matter of common observation, and is a force of great magnitude; but it is a personal and living thing, it cannot be embodied in a formula or taught in a class. Here

lies the proper field of work of the churches. What can be taught in a school is the fundamental substratum underlying all such developments and personal aspirations; and it can be dealt with as a basis of historical and scientific fact, interpreted and enlarged by the perceptions and experiences of mankind.

A creed or catechism should not be regarded as something superhuman, infallible, and immutable: it should be considered to be what it really is-a careful statement of what, in the best light of the time, can be regarded as true and important about matters partially beyond the range of scientific knowledge.

A religious creed must always reach further into the unknown than science has yet explored. It must be of the nature of speculation, based upon ineradicable instincts in the human mind, and on experience of a kind not easily stated and not fully realizable except by those who have felt it. But it should also be based upon a substratum of knowledge, it should have a scientific and a historical foundation, and it should thence extend into a region of postulate and axiom beyond what can be rigorously deduced: these axioms and postulates, like all others, being based upon primary experience.

The existence of higher beings and of a Highest Being is a fundamental element in every religious creed; and I maintain that it is hopelessly unscientific to imagine it possible that man is the highest intelligent existence-that we dwellers on this planet know more about the universe than any other sentient being. Science has investigated our ancestry and shown that we are the product of planetary processes. We may be, and surely must be, something more, but this we clearly are-a development of life on this planet earth. Science has also revealed to us an innumerable host of other worlds,

and has relegated the earth to its now recognized subordinate place as one of a countless multitude of worlds.

The self-glorifying instinct of the human mind resented this, and for long clung to the Ptolemaic idea that the earth was the centre of the universe, and that the sun and all the stars were subsidiary to it. A Ptolemaic idea clings to some of us still-not now as regards the planet, but as regards man; and we, insignificant creatures, with senses only just open to the portentous meaning of the starry sky, presume to deny the existence of higher powers and higher knowledge than our own. We are accustomed to be careful as to what we assert; we are liable to be unscrupulous as to what we deny. It is possible to find people who, knowing nothing or next to nothing of the Universe, are prepared to limit existence to that of which they have had experience, and to measure the cosmos in terms of their own understanding. Their confidence in themselves, their shut minds and self-satisfied hearts, are things to marvel at. The fact is that no adequate conception of the real magnitude and complexity of the universe can ever have illuminated their cosmic view.

An element of mystery and difficulty is not inappropriate in a creed, although it may be primarily intended for comprehension by children. Bare bald simplicity of statement, concerning things keenly felt but imperfectly known, cannot possibly be accurate; and yet every effort should be made to combine accuracy and simplicity to the utmost. A sentence stored in the memory may evolve different significations at different periods of life, but at no one period need it be completely intelligible and commonplace. The ideal creed should be profound rather than explicit, and yet should convey some sort of meaning even to the simplest and most ignorant. Its terms,

therefore, should not be technical, though for full comprehension they would have to be understood in a technical or even a recondite sense.

With these preliminary remarks I shall attempt to indicate some of the heads of what, were I a teacher, I should endeavor to weld into the lessons in an unobtrusive and perhaps imperceptible fashion. I shall thereby be formulating a set of doctrines not very dissimilar, I suppose, from what might be drawn up by most trained teachers, irrespective of religious denomination, if they were asked to state something like the kind of view which they themselves take of the universe, and therefore naturally and even unconsciously impress upon their pupils.

Each of the following heads could be expanded into a treatise, and for full explication would demand considerable space, but in this Journal it is sufficient briefly to indicate the sort of thing intended: and for extreme brevity it may be permissible to throw it into the form of an imaginary catechism. It shall be a sort of scientific catechism: or rather one based on scientific knowledge, but leading up to a religious creed.

Q. What are you?

A. I am a being alive and conscious upon this earth, my ancestors having ascended by gradual processes from lower forms of animal life and with struggle and suffering become man.

Q. What is the distinctive character of manhood?

A. The distinctive character of man is that he has responsibility for his acts, having acquired the power of choosing between good and evil, with freedom to obey one motive rather than another.

Q. What is meant by good and evil? A. Good is that which promotes development and is in harmony with the will of God. It is akin to health and beauty and

happiness.

Evil is that which retards or frustrates development and injures some part of the universe. It is akin to disease and ugliness and misery.

Q. What is the duty of man?

A. To assist his fellows, to develop his own higher self, to strive towards good in every way open to his powers, and generally to seek to know the laws of nature and to obey the will of God, in whose service alone can be found that harmonious exercise of the faculties which is synonymous with perfect freedom.

Q. How does man know good from evil?

A. His own nature when uncorrupted is sufficiently in tune with the universe to enable him to be well aware in general of what is pleasing and displeasing to the guiding Spirit, of which he himself should be a real and effective portion.

Q. What is sin?

A. Sin is the deliberate and wilful act of a free agent who sees the better and chooses the worse, and thereby acts injuriously to himself and others. The root sin is selfishness, whereby needless trouble and pain are inflicted on others; it is akin to moral suicide.

Q. How comes it that evil exists? A. Acts and thoughts are evil when they are below the normal standard attained by humanity. The possibility of evil is the neces

sary consequence of a rise in the scale of moral existence: just as an organism whose normal temperature is far above "absolute zero" is necessarily liable to damaging and deadly cold. But cold is not in itself a positive or created thing.

Q. Are there beings lower in the scale of existence than man?

A. Yes, multitudes. In every part of the earth where life is possible, there we find it developed. Life exists in every variety of animal, in earth and air and sea, and in every species of plant.

Q. Are there any beings higher in the scale of existence than man? A. Man is the highest of the dwell. ers on the planet earth, but the earth is only one of many planets warmed by the sun, and the sun is only one of a myriad of similar suns, which are so far off that we barely see them, and group them indiscriminately as "stars." We may be sure that in some of the innumerable worlds circulating round those distant suns, there must be beings far higher in the scale of existence than ourselves; indeed we have no knowledge which enables us to assert the absence of intelligence anywhere.

Q. What caused and what maintains existence?

A. Of our own knowledge we are unable to realize the meaning of origination and maintenance, but we conceive that there must be some Intelligence supreme over the whole process of evolution, else things could not be as organized and as beautiful as they

are.

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