here
would be, of course, a great deal--the 'purely mythological or
Herodotean element,' as Strauss calls it--and the miraculous element
generally, that he would probably at first reject; but if he was
of an appreciative nature--and I am presupposing that, because
I don't think the theory of education is for the apathetic and
unsensitive--he would see, I believe, not only the extraordinary
sublimity of language and expression, but the unparalleled audacity
and magnificence of thought and aspiration. That he would realize the
points in which these conceptions were wild, deficient, or childish,
would not blind him, I think, to the grandeur of the other side.

"As a matter of fact, we mix up moral duty with intellectual and
spiritual so clumsily, and force it so inopportunely and immaturely
upon our children, that if in later years questionings begin to
arise, or complications in any part of life, the smash that follows
is terrific: the whole thing goes by the board.

"For instance: many a man who undergoes a moral conversion will
reject his whole intellectual growth angrily and contemptuously as
savoring of the times of vanity. In my scheme such a waste would be
impossible; the two would be on different planes and not inextricably
intertwined.

"Besides, I think that young men suffer terribly from the shock
inflicted on their affection and traditional sentiment.

"They grow up with certain stereotyped conceptions on religious
subjects, certain dogmas imperfectly understood but crudely imagined
and gradually crystallized into some uncouth shape.

"The prejudices of children, and ideas that have grown with them,
are, I think, ineradicable in many cases.

"Let us take three instances of such ordinary conceptions--'Grace,'
'the Resurrection of the Body,' 'The Holy Spirit.'

"Here are three vast conceptions. The anxious parent endeavours to
explain them to the child: who, in his turn, receives three grotesque
and whimsical ideas which represent themselves to him something in
the following shape:

"_Grace_. The quality which he detests in his schoolfellows; in
which the 'model boys' are pre-eminent; which he knows he dislikes
and loathes, and yet is rather ashamed to say so. The boy who
'rebukes' his schoolfellows for irreverent or loose conversation, the
boy who is always ready in his odious way to do a kindness, the boy
who is never late for school--these seem to him to be the kind of
figures that the clergyman is