the call of the
Unseen Ruler as He summons His children to bring their lives into
unison with Himself, that can turn the feet into the way of
righteousness. There is no impelling force equal to the choice of good
rather than evil except this--that God wills goodness. No other motive
save that can turn the faces of men towards the heights.

IV

The greatest of all questions then is this--how most efficiently to
bring that motive to bear upon the nation. It is in the early and
plastic years that the destiny of individuals is fixed. If anywhere,
it is in our schools that our children shall learn the things out of
which are the issues of life and death. What atmosphere shall we
surround our children with in our schools? is the supreme question.
'To educate without religion is only to produce clever devils,'
declared the Duke of Wellington in his downright way. And as a nation
we have made sure of everything being taught--except religion. No
government-inspector ever asks about it!

What a waste it all is and what a travesty--this pumping of facts and
figures into the weary, jaded brains of little children. Only five per
cent. or so of the people are capable of benefiting by a long process
of education--yet everybody must be confined in dreary barracks from
five to fifteen years, learning things that will never be of use and
are straightway forgotten. We ordained that all the children should be
taught, but in our usual blundering fashion we never settled what we
should teach them. The child looks out on a world of wonder, and
proves its wisdom by peopling every grove and every hill with fairies.
For the child the world is spiritual. And it comes to us and asks how
came it and why came it? But our legislators decreed that, so far as
they were concerned, the child should be taught geography and the names
of rivers and hills, but not about the God who made the rivers and
hills and the world; botany, but not about the God who made the grass
and the flowers; physiology, but not about the God who fashioned man;
dates of kings and of battles, but not about the God whose providence
is written over all history; about laws, but not about the Source of
all law--the divine commands that regulate human action. The only part
of man that the educators considered was the brain. If they
intellectualised the race they deemed that the millennium would come.
They did it. But the millennium is further off than ever. They ca