More and more are the schools
trying to prepare those in their charge for the perils that threaten
the physical health and the character of the young; but it is tragic
that they should be so unwilling to face frankly the perils that will
sap the man's faith, and so expose his soul to the assaults of the
world and the devil. It is very hard to put oneself in another's
place; perhaps harder for the schoolmaster than for any other man, but
when we are teaching such a subject as religion--a subject whose roots
must perish if they cannot draw moisture from the springs of
sincerity, we should try to imagine what must be the feelings of the
thoughtful boy when he first discovers that the lessons which he has
so often learnt and the Creeds that he has so often repeated were
taken by his teachers in a sense which they carefully concealed from
him. More harm is done by the economy of truth than by the suggestion
of doubt.
It may be extraordinarily difficult to treat these problems of the New
Testament with becoming reverence; but is it not true to say that the
day when it becomes easy to any man to do so will be the day when he
ought to stop dealing with them? The real irreverence, the only
irreverence, is the glib confidence of the ignorant or the cynical
concealment of one who knows but dare not tell. What idea of the New
Testament does the average boy who leaves, say in the fifth form,
carry away with him from his public school? He may know that certain
facts are told in one Gospel and not in another; that there are
certain inconsistencies in the accounts given by the different
Synoptic Gospels of the same miracle, or what is apparently the same
miracle.
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