No syllabus, no act of Parliament can do this. There is no royal
road which all can travel. It has been done, to some extent, in the
past, and it will have to be done, to a much greater extent, in the
future by the layman and the laywoman, by the teachers of all
denominations, by some even whom inspectors may consider inefficient
and whom children may tolerate as queer. It will be done best by the
best teachers, but all teachers can share in the work on the one
condition that they have consciously or unconsciously dedicated
themselves to the task. For a teacher to write much about it is
impossible, he must know how greatly he has failed. And he has not the
recompense that comes to many who fail, in the shape of certain
knowledge why success has been withheld.
That his failure is shared by those who strive to make religion move
the world of men is no consolation. Indeed, that thought might make
him hopeless did it not suggest that the aims and methods of both may
be wrong. It is possible to have hoped too much from the school
chapels being full, it is possible to fear too much from the churches
being empty. Piety is no doubt fostered by attendance at a religious
service, but there is some distance between piety and true religion.
It would probably not be untrue to say that Christian education has
seemed more concerned with the ceremonial duties of religion than with
its spiritual enthusiasm, more eager about faith in some particular
explanation of the past than about faith in a re-creation of the
future, more attentive to the machinery of the organisation of the
Church than to the words and commands of its Founder.
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